Aliens. Um, NO.

I know people who believe in aliens - or rather - believe that we have, at some point in human history, been in contact with aliens.  It often comes about when talking about religion, some people want so badly for there to be more to life that they end up retreating to arguments about how the stories in the could be a reference to alien contact in history.  "Flaming chariots from the sky" and such nonsense.

What really pisses me off are the actual scientists who make obscure references to the possibility that aliens can/could/may contact us.

There are NUMEROUS things keeping us from aliens and aliens from us, lets take a look at the universe and use what we know to make a determination of the possibility that aliens have been in contact with earthlings.

First off, lets talk about DISTANCE, a one dimensional measurement between two objects.

1 light year = 5,878,625,373,183 miles.  Light covers this distance in one year.  (On a side note: to show the EXTREME stupidity of people, when I typed in "1 light year equals..."  bing gave the suggestion of "1 light year equals how many earth years".  A light year is a measure of distance, not a measure of time.)

Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity limits ALL possible speeds to the speed of light (approx. 186,300 miles / second - or 5,878,625,373,183 miles in a year).

Our galaxy is approx. 100,000 light years across.

All information in space - light/radio waves/etc - travels at the speed of light.  Human beings have been broadcasting into space for approximately 100 years, so the only aliens who could possibly know about us would have to live within 100 light years in order to have received any signals from us.

Looking at Earth from a vast distance (10 million light years away or more) will reveal the state of the planet as it was, 10 million years ago, NOT as it is today.  So any alien civilization that exists any more than a few hundred light years away will not know of our existence for a very, very long time, all because of the DISTANCES involved.

The other problem is time.

Consider the approximate age of the universe as we currently understand - approx. 14,000,000,000 years old.

The last 5,000 years or so of human history is hardly even a hiccup on this scale of time.  To simply assume that another life form has risen and continued to exist for long enough period of time to advance to the point where they could travel at/near light speed...  at a sufficiently small enough distance to be aware of our existence... is absurd.

Finding life in the universe is a lot like trying to hit a moving dartboard that's a mile away, while floating in space, while blindfolded.  Hit the board, and you may have found a planet that can support life.  Hit the bullseye and you've found a planet with life on it.  This does not even necessarily mean that the life on this planet is intelligent, it could be plants only, or something else that we can't even imagine!

Many people will defend their religion, when faced with the admission that it is illogical, some people will argue "aliens" which is something completely undefined (unlike religion).  They completely, totally, utterly fail at realizing the size or scope of the universe.  When faced with the limitations of physics, they are only left with one argument, "Well, Einstein could be wrong".

Well, yes, he could be wrong.  But the option with the greater possibility is that the person making the argument is just plain stupid.  I'm sorry to get harsh, but I'm sick of listening to these nonsensical arguments.  It's time to start calling stupid, stupid.