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UFO is the popular term for any aerial phenomenon whose cause cannot be easily explained. It has been established that a very small percentage of reported UFO sightings, perhaps 5% or so remain classified as unidentified flying objects in the strictest sense of the term. Any examination of YouTube or other popular websites will show you that UFO believers are a large and enthusiastic group. We all know that UFO's have there believers, but at the end of the day, are they real? And, who can tell us what the truth is?
In order to fully understand the question surrounding the validity of UFO reports, which is of course the question as to whether or not any UFO's have come to earth from any other civilizations far from our own solar system, we have to fully understand the true difficulty that these visitors would have in getting here from there.
The closest star system that we know of is Alpha Centauri. It is about 4-1/2 light years away from us. To understand how far away this is you need to think about light. It is commonly known that light is the fastest thing we can think of. Despite its quickness it still takes light 4 years and six months to get here from there. Truly, this is really really far. Looking at it very simply, the speed of light is about 670,616,629 miles per hour. To round it up a little we can estimate that light travels at almost 3/4 of a BILLION miles per hour. That's really fast, and as fast as that is, it still takes light almost 5 years to get here from Alpha Centauri.
No matter how you look at it, any and all advanced civilizations interested in coming here have to overcome so pretty difficult problems. If there are really advanced beings living in the neighborhood of Alpha Centauri and they are able to travel in their vehicles at ten percent of the speed of light (67,000,000 miles per hour) it would then take them almost 50 years to get here. And you have to ask yourself at this point, is it really worth the trip? If these beings could "only" fly at 6 million miles per hour, then it would take them more than 500 years to get here. When you look at the numbers it is easy to doubt that UFO's come from other worlds somewhere in space.
None of this takes into account that science has yet to identify a likely habitable planet anywhere near Alpha Centauri. Indeed, when you really take a good look at it, it is difficult to imagine that any far off space travelers would consider making the trip here when you take into account time and distance.
What If You Could Travel Faster Than The Speed Of Light?
Certainly, that would make it a whole lot easier, but; problems remain. Something has to be the fastest thing in the universe. Right now it happens to be photons of light, the lightest particles in the universe. Now, The heavier something is, the harder it is to get it up to speed. It's true for cars on the highway and it's true for elementary particles. According to Einstein's theory of special relativity, published in 1905, nothing can go faster than light. That speed, explained Einstein, is a fundamental constant of nature: It appears the same to all observers everywhere in space. Anything weighing more than one photon is going to be problematic when it comes to space travel.
Einstein's theory states that objects will gain mass as they speed up, and that speeding up requires energy. The more mass gained, the more energy is required. By the time any object reached something approaching the speed of light, its mass would be therefore infinite, and so would the amount of energy required to increase its speed any further. To go beyond infinity is impossible.
So here is the problem. The UFO takes off from somewhere "out there" and it wants to come here. The faster it travels the heavier it gets and the more energy it burns on the way. The slower it travels the longer it takes, and at some point they would have to conclude that the trip here is either going to take too long or cost too much in energy.
100 years of testing have bolstered Einstein's idea. According to Donald Schneider, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State: "There is no experiment that has contradicted special relativity. We have accelerated sub-atomic particles to well over 99 per cent of the speed of light, but not equal to or exceeding the speed of light."
Realistically speaking, the closest star system to earth that could possible support life as we know it is Epsilon Eridani. It is a Sun-like star, located roughly 10.5 light years from the Earth. Epsilon Eridani is slightly smaller than our Sun, with around one quarter of the Sun's luminosity. If we think that UFO's come here from Epsilon Eridani, the we have to take the above numbers and double them. That is how far away Epsilon Eridani is. If UFO's do not come from Epsilon Eridani then they come from some place much much further than we can even imagine.
When you look at the numbers you have no choice but to conclude that "space travel" is awfully difficult, and extremely burdensome.
Or is it?
Everything depends upon what you mean by "space travel". Einstein was a bit of an eccentric and he liked to play games with words. A lot of intelligent people are and they say things that we take one way because we think that there is only one way. Sometimes they trick us because things can be looked at in a way that is totally different than we think at first.
Einstein said that "nothing can travel faster than the speed of light", and for space travel to be feasible, it would seem that UFO's would have to travel at or perhaps faster than the speed of light which is not at all efficient. What if though, the term "space travel" does not mean what we think it means; that is -- a ship traveling through space? What if "space travel" means instead, that space itself is actually traveling? You stay put, and the thing you are going to also does not move, but instead the space between you and your destination moves or curves in such a way that the distance between just narrows? If space itself can move then maybe it can be folded or twisted in such a way that it brings you close enough to your destination that you simply hop over.
What About The Speed Of Light?
None of this makes the laws aganist speeding faster than light go away, but there is a "loophole" to this law and Einstein gave it to us a long time ago. He said that nothing could go faster than the speed of light. The space between the stars is mostly nothing, therefore, if nothing can go faster than the speed of light then space which is nothing could travel faster than the speed of light! If you have a long ribbon and you coil it into a spiral, then the length of the ribbon will change. The distance between the two ends would shrink or get smaller. Small enough to touch if you coil it tight enough.
The Gravity Lens
What if space itself could move? Well there is evidence that it does. That space changes its shape. The evidence can be found in the study of something called a gravity lens. When light from a very distant source is "bent" around a very dense and massive object then you have a gravity lens. The truth is that a gravity lens does not bend the light. Rather it bends the path that the light moves in, and the light travels in a straight line within curved space. So, we can actually say that a gravity lens bends or moves space.
If you bend space in the right way, the distance between two things could be altered, and things could become nearer or further from you. If you could find a way to measure curved space directly, that is point-to-point without stretching your measuring stick through the same path as the light, then definitely, you could shorten the distance between to objects in space. And, if you could shorten that distance enough, then you could possibly reduce the time it would take to get from point A to point B. Maybe even short enough for you to get there in your lifetime!
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Bending the light's path. In the above image the observed star is really
"invisible" to us. Because it sits behind the large massive object we
shouldn't see it at all. We only do because the space the star light
travels in is bent around the big object.
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