Again I want to make clear I'm not defending crazy theories and all that stuff but going 100% implies that you know it all that you are some kind of God that knows the entire universe, everything that lives in it, their intentions, their history and so on...

It's as if we had lived 1000 years ago and you would have told me that you are 100% certain that man will NEVER fly in the sky cause by what is known 1000 years ago a human flying is absolutely impossible and unthinkable.

As for finding us as we are such an insignificantly small planet lost in an insignificant solar system on the outskirts of the Milky Way, I get what you mean, the universe is so unfathomably huge, beyond what most people can conceive that finding us would appear to be pretty much close to impossible and that may be true but my point is we don't know...

We don't know what technologies such creatures have. Look at us, 3 billion years ago we were just single cells, 100 million years ago we were mice and other such primitive mammals, about 2 million years ago we slowly began a transition towards intellectual domination though we still were animals, 50 thousand years ago we began mastering tools and at that point it was clear no other animals could catch up with us, 10 thousand years ago we began recording history, 400 years ago we began industrializing our societies, 50 years ago we split the atom and began creating the very first artificial brains known as computers, 20 years ago we began implementing a world wide network in some ways recreating neuronal patterns, some kind of brain at the scale of the planet that we called Internet...

What we will be able to achieve in only 100 years could be unthinkable today and what we will be able to achieve in 1 million years which is NOTHING at the scale of the universe and its 13.8 billions years history, we probably don't even have the brain capacity to even remotely understand.

By your comments here an there you seem like a smart person which is why I think I can level with you on this notion. The universe is far too mysterious and exotic and we are only beginning to understand what it is made of and how it works. If Aliens were to visit us, they'd have to master technologies that would allow them to transcend the limits of the speed of light as you said earlier in this thread but what if they do? What if all the theories on folding space and creating wormholes were something those aliens master perfectly after maybe millions of years of technological evolution?

Again I agree that it's not logical that they come from far, hover in our skies for 5 minutes and leave. But until we have some kind of ultimate proof that we are alone or unnoticed by aliens we can at best consider highly unlikely that we have been visited but we cannot completely rule it out, hence 99% probable that we have not been visited.

One last thing, since the 1930's we have been broadcasting signals into space which means that any intelligent species that exists within a radius of roughly 90 light years from earth must have noticed our existence. 90 light years may not be much at the scale of the galaxy but that bubble is growing and I don't know how many stars must be by now inside that bubble, about 100? More? Which means that this 99% I'm arguing about is going to decrease as time goes by, just saying

Sorry for the long post.

Most modern phones have an automatic setting to adjust to night lighting in them.  They aslo all have a built in flash.

Disregarded?  If one person posts a blurry, off angle video, sure.  But if several people post high quality video?  There's a bit more investigating done.  But, nope, always some guy on a dirt road with a shaky, blurry camera from 19shitty9.  Always.

If they can disguise themselves while flying, then they can disguise themselves while flying.  It's as good of an argument for aliens existing as it is for them not existing.

If their technology is so advanced, why even bother coming to such an inferior, outdated place?  Boredom?  A living museum?  Well if their tech is so advanced, wouldn't they have some way to observe us from afar without being ever being at risk of being detected?  Finally, what's the point of them hiding from us if they're so vastly more intelligent? What's the risk of being seen?  

UFO’s don’t always need to be aliens...

It’s a strange flying object. Could it be an advanced jet from the US that they may have not recognized?

This logic doesn't help anyone and only gives fuel to the crazies. It's about probabilities here. Some probabilities are too low to be even considered. Saying "nothing is 100% sure" is not helping anyone and is not driving us forward. It's basically not making a point at all. Yes the possibility of Aliens stumbling upon earth is not absolute zero, but it's as close to zero as it can possibly get. And at some point you have to round numbers to make any sense.

Saying that it's not 100% sure gives the impression that both opinions are equally valid, which they are not. One is backed by numbers and logic and the other is based on wishes and hot air. It's the same tactic radical media is using. They invite 2 climate scientists with opposing opinions as if they are equally valid, completely ignoring that one of the opinions is heavily supported by science and the other is not. It gives a false picture of duality and does a disservice to science as a whole.

Saying that it could be true is not progressing the discussion. It takes it into circles and spreads misinformation. The chances aren't 50:50, they aren't 1:100, they aren't even 1:10000000000. The odds are so low that they become scientifically insignificant and not worth to pursue and waste resources on it. Crazies who put out their theories that have zero backing from science need to be shot down instantly with hard numbers. 99% is not doing that, it's just fueling their delusions. That's why smart people say "it never happened" and get on with their lives because they are bound to be mathematically correct.

As for numbers decreasing, this is false hope again. Most people don't realize how small or big those numbers actually are. 70 years or 90 lightyears might as well be zero in the scale of the universe. And that does not even include the odds of life actually developing and then also being in the exact same time frame. As years increase it actually becomes less and less likely to be visited by a species that picked up our signal, because by the time they reach us we're most likely not even here anymore. Humans will most likely not even exist anymore by the time our first electromagnetic transmissions reach the edge of our own galaxy. It would take 100000 years for the signal to leave the Galaxy. That's just one single galaxy out of trillions. And it's not even a big one. To reach the next Galaxy it's another 2.5 million lightyears. Modern humans have lived for about 20000 years. In that time frame you cannot even travel through a quarter of our own galaxy assuming you can even do it at light speed.

So not only would those aliens have to be residents of our own galaxy, they would also have to be pretty close to our solar system. It's safe to say that there probably is not any developed life right now in our own solar system. The next star system is 4 lightyears away. Now think of how big the chances are that there is actually life and then multiply those chances that it has also been alive within the last 20000 years within this billion years old universe.

People need to know those numbers and most people who do believe that aliens visited us are completely unaware of them and would instantly agree if someone explained to them the actual probabilities. The odds aren't increasing from 1% to 2%. They are progressing in about the same speed as a microbe on a marathon track. Nobody would watch that, because there is no way we will ever see that microbe arrive at its goal.

Hundreds of ex government employees have come forward with proof and people still don't believe. They don't want to admit that the world doesn't revolve around them. According to scientists The NY Times spoke to, they actually discovered previously unknown metals in their research of alleged crash site materials, stuff they hinted was not of this world.

"Why won't Aliens just talk to us?" Well, why don't you stop to have a conversation with a beetle? Maybe they don't want nothing to do with us since we can't even be civil with each other. Or they're just watching and waiting.

While I'm sure the probability of these sightings being aliens is actually extremely low there is nothing particularly surprising about them hiding from us. If they want to check us over to work out how to conquer us and colonise the planet its going to be subtle. The reality is they would likely send a very small team of aliens, handful to our system and then base themselves on another planet, Mars or further out seems likely. It's likely they would manufacture their required equipment in our system as well as develop biological weapons etc. The last thing they would want is to make their presence obvious so we start accelerating development and increasing our weapons. Life is all about resources and gathering them. Just sending a small craft between the stars takes huge energy and probably decades in transit. The idea of huge motherships coming is extremely unlikely.

We simply do not have enough information to form any real opinion on how much life is out there but recent developments have shown the existence of planets is extremely common and many found are in the goldie locks zone even for nearby stars. The chances of intelligent life elsewhere surely has increased with those discoveries. We really have no idea about such life though. Multi-cell lifeforms like us may be the rarity where as single cell life may be extremely common. Maybe if we survive long enough to see other stars ourselves we will discover a 100 worlds with single cell life for every multi-cell life planet and 20 extinct civilisations for every 1 still existing. As we develop more sophisticated communication equipment maybe we will discover signals that tell us where such life is. If their data rate is so huge compared to ours it will just appear as random background noise if they can transmit a gigabyte of data in the time it takes us to send and recognise a single bit. They may even be using other carrier systems. If you live in a cave which you have never left how could you predict what was outside?

That's what makes discoveries so exciting. We don't even know the majority of species on our own planet as most are undiscovered in the sea we mainly only know about the majority of life on the land and life that exists near the surface of the sea. Alien's that come to earth rarely with the intent of staying hidden just to take biological samples. It could be only 2 alien individuals that actually have to collect samples from just about every region on the planet and follow up samples etc. Not much opportunity to see them. Their intent may be to conquer and setup a colony within 300 years not 3 years.

Is it logical to take the human perspective as a benchmark? Actually, we ourselves have located a number of possible candidates for life outside of our solar systems. In this very narrow time span we do space exploration. We, the product of hot monkey love. To think what other, more advanced forms of consciousness could achieve.

I'm not speculating. May it be hoaxes, very strange weather phenomena, aliens, or something else entirely. Personally i think its ignorant to fixate on extraterrestrial biological life traveling in spaceships ala Enterprise and E.T.

Ignoring our current understanding of physics leads nowhere. We can only assess things with our current understanding. Even if we've been visited by aliens in some form we cannot comprehend right now it's still absolutely meaningless. If it cannot fit in our current understanding it might as well have never happened at all.

There are some very smart people in this world pushing our understanding of the universe, but until we make that next leap it's moot for regular people like us to contemplate about what might as well be magic. An alien could be hovering right now above my head but unless I actually understand that there is an alien presence it might as well not be there.

I hope I'm getting my point across, getting a bit philosophical now.

Did you read my first statement? Lol at your camera phone argument, go out side at midnight and film me a movie of a airplane and post it on YouTube... I want to see those amazing night lighting settings... Sure thing boss, a flash... Those 2 leds that can't  illuminate a car 50 feet away can illuminate a flying object in the sky mlies away?

For the next questions, ask yourself this, and the answer to this questions is the answer for your questions. what would humans do if they would find life in a planet in the nearest solar system to our and technology was ready to a flight there? Would it be important if they were ahead or behind technologically? After the first observation from far what would be the next step? If they were like we were in the prehistoric time, do you think engagement would be beneficial to us? Would you engage a primitive and violent kind just because? If you can elaborate a good answer to these questions you have yourself good answers to your questions... 

I said alien.  Not UFO.  I don't care about what you see in the sky, show me an alien.

At the end of the day, that's the argument.  Show some evidence.  Because the absence of evidence in this case is embarrassingly weak for anyone who believes it.