Do the math. Billions of galaxies, each with billions of stars, each star possibly holding any number of planets in their orbits, gives the chances that not only aliens, but intelligent aliens exist, almost 100% certainty. It would be much more amazing if they did not exist than if they did.
And of course people are seeing something in the skies. What are those?
Stephen Hawking says that aliens are real but we should not be trying to contact them, because he's afraid they will kill us for the resources on earth. Now far be it for me to disagree with a guy as smart as Hawking, but he's a mathmatician and not a sociologist or philosopher or economist. He says that if humans are willing to murder and destroy each other for goods and resources, then so would aliens. He does make a point - intelligent life is probably also agressive life. Evolution forces the beast to come out in most creatures for the purposes of survival. Even when our numbers were only 20,000 individuals living in ancient Africa, we were probably already killing each other over disputes about territory, food, and of course, women. The violence was probably much more limited though because even someone you despise may be a good hunter or cook and you need them to survive. Not like today where we can look at North Korea and see absolutely no value at all in that country and feel tempted to nuke it just so we can be rid of that madman over there. So I understand why Hawking would say what he said.
But here's where I think he's wrong. Economics says aliens will not attack us for our resources. Why? Because if you possess the technology to zip your entire fleet of spaceships from one galaxy to another, your energy requirements will be so massive, that stopping at Earth to steal its reasources would be like pulling 500 Lamborghinis into a barn to see if you could steal some kerosene from the farmer's lamp in there to keep your fleet of Italian hotrods going. It make no sense. Aliens with that type of energy requirements are going to have a way to harness the energy of stars and wouldn't bother trying to knock-over the planets of other species like a convenience store robbery. And why would they go straight to Earth when they have 8 other planets to choose from that are not inhabited? If you were desparate for money, and you had 9 houses to choose from, would you rob the one you knew had a family in it or would you pick the other 8? Even evil aliens still have to pay their bills and might not be able to turn their expensive weapons on us just because it wouldn't be worth it, even if all they wanted was the thrill of killing us. And if they're so psychotic that they might do it anyway, then I would wonder how they survived as long as they have in the first place. Social structures run by psychos don't last very long. They always fail and collapse into anarchy until stable people can take control. They might be cruel stable people, but they're still stable, and wouldn't be the kind of people to blow up a tiny island full of smurfs with their big bombs just because they could.
Not only will aliens not attack us for our resources, but if they're smart enough, they would see the value in being trading partners with us. What could we possibly offer aliens as trade? Well it wouldn't be goods or services, so that leaves art and culture. If Hawking is going to use humans as an example of how cruel an alien might be, then I will do the same to suggest how refined and epricurean they might be also. What does a rich alien do with all his money? He might be interested in purchasing music, art, theatre recordings, performance pieces, anything that's unique and not of his (her, its?) kind. Wouldn't you be interested in hearing alien music? You know there would be millions of people that would want to listen to alien music even if it sucked. Think of a super-advanced alien population that numbered 40 Trillion. Even if only 1% of them cared to view and hear Earthling art, that would be 40 Billion aliens that demanded to experience Earth-made art. And what would they give us in exchange? Technology of course. They would tell us how to build a craft that can fly around in space. It would probably cost an insane amount of money to build one but at least we'd know how to do it. We might be able to implement their tech in ways even they didn't think about.
Our trade with aliens will probably be limited to information. I doubt we would see any gold or gems from them, because the cost of transporting those items from their planet(s) to ours would devalue the cargo to the point of worthlessness. But information could be beamed acrossed the stars like some kind of wireless galactic internet. They may find value in something as simple as a soda recipe. If the aliens are carbon based, like us, that means they need water and sugar to survive, so they might like the taste of Coke or Pepsi. Imagine the stock value of Coke when they pick up 40 billion new customers. (assuming the aliens dont just steal the recipe and make it themselves on their planets) Conversely, imagine how fast the stock value of Microsoft will plummet when they get replaced with alien technology. So trading with aliens would cause major shifts in our economy but it would be better and not worse for us in the long run.
But they may never actually visit us (or maybe already have) because they might worry that biological contaminants in their bodies and atmosphere inside their ships could devestate the ecology of our planet, and their new trading partners would all be dead and they would be guilty of accidental genocide. Then again maybe they would be the ones that got sick from our bugs and would bring them to their planet and suffer a massive plague of Earth viruses that would kill of billions of them. We wouldn't want that either. So physical contact might not be worth the risk, unless we can meet in a neutral area, like Mars perhaps, or a deep space station, where there is no ecology to worry about. But if the UFOs people are seeing today are really E.T.s, and we've not yet experienced a plague of alien germs, then they must already have a way of overcoming that problem.
If UFO's are real, and they are actually aliens, as opposed to future humans time traveling (doubtful), then why don't they just reveal themselves and start up some great trading like I described? Well, maybe we're too dumb to understand their technology and they know it. The human brain does have limitations. Chimpanzees will never know how to build an iPod no matter how many times you try to teach them. Humans might just be too limited in our intelligence to comprehend anything the aliens might have to offer, so they just study us while trying to remain hidden, sort of like a zoologist trying to study some rare animals without bothering them. Maybe on of them is like their version of Steve Irwin and is making a reality show about life on Earth. "Look there at that bloke pursuing that drunk hooka, he thinks she could be an ideal mate, Crikey, humans rule! But we can't get too close, they spook easy."
