NASA’s hunt for proof of alien life is at the forefront of the space agency’s deep space exploration. But here on Earth, many conspiracy theorists and self-appointed UFO-hunters are already certain aliens visit Earth on a regular basis. Most of these alien claims, supposed UFO sightings and stories of mysterious crop circles appearing overnight are immediately dismissed by the scientific community. A former NASA researcher and physicist at the University of Albany, however, has argued immediate scepticism to all UFO-related theories is counterproductive.
Kevin Knuth, an associate professor at Albany, argued in an opinion piece for Cosmos Magazine, the odds of life existing outside of Earth are pretty high.
The “unsettling and refreshing” possibility is exactly why, he argued, more attention needs to be paid to what is happening in the skies.
Dr Knuth said: “I think UFO scepticism has become something of a religion with an agenda, discounting the possibility of extraterrestrials without scientific evidence, while often providing silly hypotheses describing only one or two aspects of a UFO encounter reinforcing the popular belief that there is a conspiracy.
“A scientist must consider all of the possible hypotheses that explain all of the data, and since little is known, the extraterrestrial hypothesis cannot yet be ruled out.