Where have all the UFO pictures gone?

Lately I have been grooving to the X-Files episodes over on Netflix streaming. I remember waiting with baited breath each week for the next episode, and cursing the creators when they used a cliffhanger at the end of the season.

If you haven’t watched the show, it has a fairly large portion of its episodes based on the idea that extra terrestrials (aliens, little green men what have you) are visiting the earth, and the government is covering it up. Of course, from the 1940’s on, there have been an endless stream of stories about UFO sightings, abductions, encounters with ET’s, and all that rigmarole. Often, with photographic evidence. Fuzzy pictures of lights in the night sky, to fantastic views of saucer like ships in the day time.

With all this photographic evidence captured over the decades, I would expect (if there were real events) that with the digital camera revolution that if there really were events and activities, it would be captured by multiple people, and shared endlessly on social media. Or that there would be a never ending stream of “very high quality” fakes created in photoshop.

But curiously, I don’t see that. Yes, the usual conspiracy nut groups still exist, and live in their bubble chamber devising conspiracy theories. But it appears that the general population has moved on to the Angry Cat and other memes for entertainment, and that the whole belief in ET visitations are nonsense.

For the record, I believe that there are likely other intelligences in the universe, but I also know that interstellar “warp” drive is a figment of science fiction authors, and that the time of travel between star systems, even at relativistic speeds, is far too long to allow “visitation”. In that vein, the correct way to search is via programs like SETI.