I've been writing on some pretty serious subjects lately. Healthcare Reform, Bootleg Haggis, Valentines Day and of course Free Beer at Cleo's. It's time, I decided to move on to some really important stuff that preoccupies me on a daily basis - I'm referring to UFO's of course...

I've never seen a UFO, or at least I don't think I have. One of my many hobbies is taking time lapse exposures of the night sky. I use a motor driven mount to avoid elongated star images, and take 15 minute exposures. I did capture an image of a metallic slow moving, low earth orbit vehicle once.

After I developed my images I took the negatives (4x4 inches) to a friend who is an astrophysicist. Fingers trembling, I was convinced I had caught ET on film. I had visions of being on the cover of UFO Nut monthly, talk show circuit and being interviewed by Men in Black (Government agents of course).

It was a satellite...

Well, it was a UFO. At least until my friend identified it. I was a little disappointed. Back to photographing star clusters, fading comets and local traffic from Dulles International airport.

If there are other inhabitants 'out there' then they have to be further than seventy five plus light years from us. We know that because that is our backyard and we know what's there. Not a lot actually.

Scots are a skeptical people and I'm no exception. How can any advanced civilization with the technology to travel hundreds of light years, find our itty bitty little planet and then proceed to crash land on it, in a place like Roswell, New Mexico of all places. I suppose the argument could be made that they are, just like me, great drivers, just not very good at parking. Where's all the debris and wreckage? We've had multiple sightings of crashing UFO's and not a hint of any pieces of them.

UFOoligists point to Area 51 in Nevada as the repository of crash landed UFO's. I don't believe that argument as Area 51 is in reality the Headquarters for the twelve Grand Masons of the Masonic Lodge who secretly control the World.

Of course not... Area 51 is the American equivalent of being stationed in the Outer Hebrides and is just an Air Force base. The Military love secrets and having a cool base in Nevada is one of them. For all I know Area 51 could be the training area for the Air Force competitive Ping-Pong Championship Team - who knows? Who cares?

I've read the Drake equation which is a formula which demonstrates mathematically, how many other entities could exist 'out there'. I use the word 'entities' as I don't like the word aliens (I have a Green Card, so I am one). According to the Drake equation, there are, just like Carl Sagan used to say "billions and billions" of them.

Enrico Fermi after reading and calculating the Drake Equation looked up at the night sky and uttered his now famous line "then, where is everyone?"...

After reading articles on UFO's, looking at grainy images of spacecraft and watching long almost convincing documentaries on TV I am now 100 per cent convinced that we are alone in the universe.

However I could be wrong...

Across the Pond