Are UFOs real?  Have extraterrestrial visitors ever really been observed, detected, or recorded?   

What I wonder is why would they bother?  If a species were so super-intelligent (by our standards) as to solve the problems of speed-of-light travel, inter-dimensional transport, and defiance of gravity, why would they want to visit earth?  

Do we humans yearn to know what goes on inside an ant colony, and is our goal to someday be able to visit one of their subsoil nests? No, of course not, so why would aliens care to descend into our world?  It may be just our own hubris that assumes that any intelligent life-form would simply be dying to know what happens on our little blue marble. Why would they care?

Also, any species intelligent enough for interstellar voyages would also be intelligent enough to know how radio and television broadcasting works.  No alien researchers would ever need to visit Earth - we're already airing and beaming into the cosmos every conceivable bit of information and data about ourselves.  All an advanced species would need to do would be to monitor our broadcasts.  They could do this from the comfort of their own homes.  And if they did, then they'd know a) everything about our people, our politics, our character, our hopes and dreams, and our violent nature and warlike tendencies, and b) that they'd never, ever want to actually come here and meet us.