Buddy Holly Hall-- And Little Green Men

 First, already there's been some discussion of the contents of the UAP report. Here is my take, for the little it may be worth: Quite some time ago it was calculated that virtually every star in the galaxy could be visited within about 10,000,000 years, even if you are restricted to a fraction of lightspeed. It could be done with probes using very advanced AI that would be able to replicate using materials readily available in any solar type system. These devices would scan for stars likely to have planets that could support life. Once in a system, some of the probes stay there, and a flurry of others, freshly manufactured,  set out for other destinations. Imagine mold spores scattering by the millions. The numbers of these probes would grow exponentially. And this galaxy has been around for about 5 billion years. Colonization by these sorts of probes could take place in a fraction of the galaxy's age, and it would only take one technologically advanced civilization that manages to solve all of its survival problems and establish itself in its own system to start this process. That could have happened any time in the last 4 billion years. Given what we know now about the number of habitable planets and or moons in the galaxy, it would be surprising to find that it hasn't happened. So, what we would be dealing with would be "machines" rather than little green men. Super intelligent AI devices that have probably been in this solar system for hundreds of millions of years using technology so advanced it would seem magical-- and who knows why they'd be here? They'd be immortal for all practical purposes. There'd be nothing to do but gather information. Where would they be based? Perhaps the outer planet ring systems and in the far reaches of the solar system like the Oort cloud where they could find lots of raw material, lots of hydrogen for their power systems, if they still use anything like fusion, and cryogenic temperatures that would be congenial for them, since they would surely do their "thinking" with quantum computer "brains".  If aliens are here at all, this is really the only scenario that makes any sense and overcomes most of the objections to UFOs as alien craft. In fact, I think this overcomes all of the objections. I think these probes were originally called Von Neuman devices. Such probes might be very good at making their activities discreet, but, assuming large numbers of such things, they would produce an infrared excess, hard to account for from known stellar populations. In fact, there is such an infrared excess. Now back to planet Earth.

Next time it will be a long series of those STUDIES in black and white, but the usual humble things only. No human faces will appear. No BEMs, either.