Perhaps I should have asked the question to a Pilot. Under the cloak of anonymity that this thread provides, I'm sure there'd be some stories come forth.....
I doubt it. Half of the guys never look outside, and the other half that do can probably tell you the name of the satellite they're watching. I've never seen anything that doesn't have a simple explanation...that doesn't involve aliens. I expect it was all summed up by Douglas Adams.
The Drake equation, mentioned earlier, is simply a way of condensing the vastness of the universe into something that we can perhaps understand. There's a pretty good explanation here:
Drake Equation: Estimating the Odds of Finding E.T.
In essence though, if you plug some quite reasonable numbers into the equation, you end up with only one civilisation in the Milky Way. That doesn't mean that others haven't existed, but the big filter that most people never consider is that of time. As a technological civilisation we've only been around for a couple of hundred years. How long will we last? If you assume civilisations last a million years (which is probably unlikely), you still end up with the problem that your million years is unlikely to coincide with another's million.
Next we get to the Fermi paradox, which (from Wikipedia) is this:
- There are billions of stars in the galaxy that are similar to the Sun and many of these stars are billions of years older than the solar system
- With high probability, some of these stars have Earth-like planets, and if the Earth is typical, some may have developed intelligent life.
- Some of these civilisations may have developed interstellar travel, a step the Earth is investigating now.
- Even at the slow pace of currently envisioned interstellar travel, the Milky Way galaxy could be completely traversed in a few million years.
- So where is everyone?
Plus, we have the concept of Von Neuman machines...and the question of why they haven't come knocking on the door.
There are aliens painted on the toilet walls at Wycliffe Well....but I suspect they might not be real.