A scan of star systems up to more than 80 light years away was performed around 1980 I believe, and no traces of energy emmissions were found. This leads to the conclusion that either there are no intelligent life forms living this close to us, or that they are so highly advanced that they have managed to evade our primitive technology. Seeing as they would have had thousands or millions of years to evolve, the latter seems like a very valid alternative. So then we have the question of why they would shield themselves from us but still visit us periodically in spaceships.

If their civilization is anything like ours, I am sure that there will be "lawbreakers" who set out (probably close to the speed of light or even warp speed) and decide to have a little "fun" with our planet, dipping low enough to let some humans see them, and then laugh hysterically at forums like these  

Anyway, there are many reasons that intelligent life forms would not want to make contact with us immediately. They may be testing and studying us so that they can be sure that if they one day do make contact with us, our government won't blow them all up with nuclear missiles. Another possible situation could be that they just don't care. Since they must have extremely advanced technology to sheild their energy emissions or to travel at such high speeds from so far away, there would be most likely nothing on our planet that they could possibly use that they don't already have. It is likely that to them we look like primitive flies who are just learning how to use their wings. In this situation they would have no reason whatsoever to expend the effort in 'making contact' and trying to explain their complicated selves to us. Maybe any UFO sightings are simply caused by mildly curious 'tourists' of this civilization.

If they visited us they realised that if they interfere with our way of life it will cause anarchy. It's like going to a remote south-american tribe with a flashlight and radio.

hey, there is no intellegent life form outer there.

Willing to bet on it? Let's make a calculation one in One Bilion stars has planets. One of One Bilion planets has life. One in One bilion inhabited planets has inteligen life.
A presumtion ............
The Question
(Submitted January 15, 1997)

How many stars are there, named and un-named, known to exist ?

The Answer
This is a very good question! There are too many stars for scientists to actually count one-by-one, so other methods of estimating the total number of stars are used. We believe that there are on the order of 10^21 stars in our Universe. If you write that number out, it looks like this: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. This is a lot of stars!

Sincerely,
Laura Whitlock
for the Ask an Astrophysicist team

I believe there are extraterrestrials and they are concerned about what we are doing to this planet. There are different ones, some want to rule the planet and some want to help it and in ignorance the American government is shooting at them all. We are lucky there have not been great concequences from these beings who have their own agendas. If I was them I would launch a mass attack on earth and rid it of it's human plague, restoring some sort of balance only they are smarter than that because they know that if left alone we will be our own demise. Like everything in the physical, there is light and dark, which would you prefer to live in please choose soon and start living it.