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UFO skeptics think that human beings know, [3] as a matter of scientific fact, that UFOs are not extraterrestrial and therefore can be ignored. Yet none of the strongest arguments for this view in fact justify rejecting the extraterrestrial hypothesis as a possible explanation for UFOs. They don't even come close. Actually it is not known, as a matter of scientific fact, that no UFOs have an extraterrestrial origin. If we reject this hypothesis anyway, we are rejecting what just might be the true explanation, without having submitted it to the test. Again, this does not mean that UFOs are extraterrestrial, either; UFOs are, after all, that mean that UFOs are extraterrestrial, either; UFOs are, after all, unidentified. But that is precisely our point: At this stage human beings 1 1 after all, mean are simply do not know. Given that little systematic science has been done, the case for rejecting the extraterrestrial hypothesis out of hand rests on an a priori theoretical conviction that extraterrestrial visitation is impossible: "Tt can't 1 : a 6 aan . oe 6 . oo be true, therefore it isn't." Skeptics offer four main arguments to this effect. "We Are Alone." Human beings have debated for centuries whether intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe, and with the recent discovery of over 400 extrasolar planets, [4] this debate has heated up considerably of late. Good scientific reasons exist to think that intelligent we 1 1 1. 1 a “4 life does not exist elsewhere, but increasingly there are equally good scientific reasons to think that it does. Bottom line: We don't know yet. "They Can't Get Here." [5] Skeptics argue that even if there is intelligent life elsewhere, it's too far away from Earth to get here. Relativity theory tells us that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light (186,000 miles per second). At .001 percent of light speed, or 66,960 miles per hour—already far beyond current human capabilities—it would take 4,500 Earth vears for anv vehicle to arrive just from the nearest star system. And at speeds much closer to light a single spaceship would need to carry more energy than is presently consumed in an entire year on Earth. Physical constraints on interstellar travel are often seen as the strongest reason to reject the extraterrestrial hypothesis, but are they clearly decisive? Computer simulations suggest that even at speeds well below light, any expanding advanced civilizations should have reached Earth long ago. [6] How long ago depends on what assumptions are made, but even pessimistic ones yield encounters with Earth within 100 million years, barely a blip in cosmic terms. Additionally, there are growing doubts that the speed of light is truly an absolute barrier. [7] Wormholes— themselves predicted by relativity theory—are tunnels through space-time that would shorten greatly the distances between stars. And then there is the possibility of "warp drive/' or engineering the vacuum around a spaceship to enable it to skip over space without time dilation. [8] Such ideas are highly speculative, but given how far we humans have come in just 300 years since our scientific revolution, imagine how far another Proving Our Ignorance