The Times UFO story is fascinating but unfortunately I still have rational part of my brain that gets in the way and reminds me that even if intelligent civilizations exist out there, the distances are so vast that it's probably impossible for anyone to ever traverse them

The solar system right next door to us is about 20 trillion miles away. So even if we somehow lucked out and a civilization lives there, they would need to have technology hundreds of years ahead of ours to come here. If such technology is even possible.

Keep in mind that Mars is only 60 million miles and we are still years away from putting a person on that planet. Will we figure out how to traverse TRILLIONS of miles before we destroy ourselves with our own technology? Seems unlikely to me.

There are likely billions of intelligent civilizations out there, but the best guess is that they all go extinct before figuring out how to travel across whole solar systems. What that means is we're not alone, but we're on our own. Just a cheery thought for a Friday.