UFOs: skeptics, disclosure, and contact
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pigfarmer
tall, thin, irritable
Pentagon UFO chief resigns after warning recent sightings could be foreign powers — or aliens
Multiperspectivity is a term that stuck from a 'cinema appreciation' class I was required to take at some point. We've all seen it. Here's what it looks like from the NY Post
Ronny Reyes
Published Nov. 12, 2023, 12:26 p.m. ET
The Pentagon’s UFO chief will step down next month after saying that several reported sightings of objects flying through the sky over the US are either the work of foreign nations or aliens, warning that the latter would be the preferred scenario.
Sean Kirkpatrick, head of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), announced his plans to leave last week after heading the department for 18 months, a job he deferred his retirement for in hopes of finding evidence of extraterrestrials.
After investigating more than 800 cases during his brief stint as director, Kirkpatrick warned of the presence of UFOs, and although there has yet to be any hard evidence of aliens, he said the alternative was much more frightening.
“If we don’t prove it’s aliens, then what we’re finding is evidence of other people doing stuff in our backyard,” he told Politico. “And that’s not good.”
Sean Kirkpatrick headed the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office for nearly 18 months.C-Span
Kirkpatrick added that he was satisfied with what he accomplished in his time with the AARO, including working to make the Pentagon’s UFO files more accessible to the public.
The office, which was established last year, has made headlines over its investigations into UFO sightings reported by military pilots and for helping detect the Chinese surveillance balloons flying over the US.
Kirkpatrick himself made headlines in June when he slammed whistleblower David Charles Grusch, a former intelligence officer who claimed the US had been secretly recovering alien spaceships for decades.
3
Under Kirkpatrick, the Pentagon has been more transparent over its investigations into UFOs, but officials said there’s still no hard evidence of aliens.NASA
Despite being open to the idea of aliens among us, Kirkpatrick testified before congress that there was “no credible evidence thus far of extraterrestrial activity” or “off-world technology.”
He criticized Grusch’s claims as “extremely unethical and immoral,” noting that the whistleblower refused multiple requests to speak with the AARO.
The Department of Defense touted Kirkpatrick’s leadership, crediting him with creating its first public-facing website to bring more transparency to the AARO’s work.
“His commitment to transparency with the United States Congress and the American public on UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) leaves a legacy the department will carry forward as AARO continues its mission,” the Department of Defense said in a statement.
“Our department is stronger and better prepared for future scientific and national security challenges because of Sean’s distinguished service to our country.”
Tim Phillips, Kirkpatrick’s deputy, will lead the office until the Pentagon names a new chief.
Multiperspectivity is a term that stuck from a 'cinema appreciation' class I was required to take at some point. We've all seen it. Here's what it looks like from the NY Post
Pentagon UFO chief resigns after warning recent sightings could be foreign powers — or aliens
ByRonny Reyes
Published Nov. 12, 2023, 12:26 p.m. ET
Las Vegas police spot suspected UFO — and residents claim to see aliens
The Pentagon’s UFO chief will step down next month after saying that several reported sightings of objects flying through the sky over the US are either the work of foreign nations or aliens, warning that the latter would be the preferred scenario.
Sean Kirkpatrick, head of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), announced his plans to leave last week after heading the department for 18 months, a job he deferred his retirement for in hopes of finding evidence of extraterrestrials.
After investigating more than 800 cases during his brief stint as director, Kirkpatrick warned of the presence of UFOs, and although there has yet to be any hard evidence of aliens, he said the alternative was much more frightening.
“If we don’t prove it’s aliens, then what we’re finding is evidence of other people doing stuff in our backyard,” he told Politico. “And that’s not good.”
Sean Kirkpatrick headed the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office for nearly 18 months.C-Span
Kirkpatrick added that he was satisfied with what he accomplished in his time with the AARO, including working to make the Pentagon’s UFO files more accessible to the public.
The office, which was established last year, has made headlines over its investigations into UFO sightings reported by military pilots and for helping detect the Chinese surveillance balloons flying over the US.
Kirkpatrick himself made headlines in June when he slammed whistleblower David Charles Grusch, a former intelligence officer who claimed the US had been secretly recovering alien spaceships for decades.
3Under Kirkpatrick, the Pentagon has been more transparent over its investigations into UFOs, but officials said there’s still no hard evidence of aliens.NASA
Despite being open to the idea of aliens among us, Kirkpatrick testified before congress that there was “no credible evidence thus far of extraterrestrial activity” or “off-world technology.”
He criticized Grusch’s claims as “extremely unethical and immoral,” noting that the whistleblower refused multiple requests to speak with the AARO.
The Department of Defense touted Kirkpatrick’s leadership, crediting him with creating its first public-facing website to bring more transparency to the AARO’s work.
“His commitment to transparency with the United States Congress and the American public on UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) leaves a legacy the department will carry forward as AARO continues its mission,” the Department of Defense said in a statement.
“Our department is stronger and better prepared for future scientific and national security challenges because of Sean’s distinguished service to our country.”
Tim Phillips, Kirkpatrick’s deputy, will lead the office until the Pentagon names a new chief.
pigfarmer
tall, thin, irritable
I can't help but wonder what the real story is with Grusch and all this. To be fair based on past experience there is a much greater chance than not that it's all bullshit designed for some other purpose than disclosure. I don't really think so but you have to admit it's a possibility. In 2023 an anonymous document drop isn't going to cut it.
pigfarmer
tall, thin, irritable
We Have a UFO Problem. What We Don’t Have (Yet) Is a Serious Answer.
The image from a 2015 video provided by the Department of Defense shows an unexplained object as it is tracked flying along the clouds. | Department of Defense via AP
By GARRETT M. GRAFF
11/16/2023 05:00 AM EST
Journalist and historian Garrett M. Graff is the author of UFO: The Inside Story of the U.S. Government's Search for Alien Life Here ― and Out There. His previous book Watergate: A New History was a finalist this year for the Pulitzer Prize in History.
The U.S. government has studied UFOs on and off now for 80 years, dating back to the dawn of the “flying saucer” age in 1947, when an Idaho businessman flying near Mount Rainer reported seeing bright saucer-like objects moving through the skies at tremendous speeds. It was hardly the first time humans spotted strange things in the sky — just a few years earlier, World War II pilots over Europe reported being chased by glowing green balls that came to be known as “foo fighters” — but the “flying saucers” caught the public’s imagination and launched a fascination that continues to this day.
Back then, at the dawn of the Cold War, the Pentagon launched three successive secret programs — known as PROJECT SIGN, GRUDGE and BLUE BOOK — that ran for decades without ever solving the mystery of what UFOs actually are. Neither did a secret CIA study panel in the 1950s, congressional hearings in the ’60s, and other assorted efforts over the years. Nor, most recently, did a series of classified Pentagon projects in the 2000s and 2010s, sponsored by Harry Reid and run by Las Vegas business titan Robert Bigelow, known as the Advanced Aerospace Weapon Systems Applications Program that was first reported by POLITICO and The New York Times in 2017.
Now, amid renewed public fascination and lawmaker interest in the years since AAWSAP was publicized, the Pentagon, the intelligence community and NASA have recommitted — albeit somewhat half-heartedly — to studying what the government now calls UAPs, unidentified anomalous phenomena, a term it introduced both to decrease the giggle factor of UFOs as well to acknowledge the possibility that not every UFO is actually either flying or a physical object. Ironically, it’s the second such rebranding: It was actually the early Air Force efforts of GRUDGE and BLUE BOOK, in part, that helped to popularize the very term “UFO,” which was intended to reduce the giggle factor of “flying saucers” and make witnesses feel more comfortable coming forward to talk.
The truth across all those decades, military projects, commissions, reports and hearings is that the vast majority of UFO sightings are easily identified and dismissed. They’re a mix of confusion about ordinary astronomical events (the planet Venus represents a huge chunk of UFO sightings), normal aviation events (planes flying in formation at night that look to an observer like a giant triangular craft), or what the intelligence community in a recent report called “clutter,” e.g., sky trash.
But there’s always been a stubborn percentage of UFO and UAP sightings that can’t be dismissed as known phenomena or technology. Depending on the exact data set and timespan, the percentage of true “unknown unknowns” ranges from around 5 percent up to 20 percent. No one knows what those sightings actually are. Put another way: There appear to be true UFOs and UAPs, mysteries we can’t solve. In recent years, repeated congressional hearings have had Pentagon officials and experienced naval aviators testify they have encountered craft or phenomena that appear to defy known physics, technologies more advanced than anything the U.S. understands.
EXIT INTERVIEW
Are Aliens Real? We Asked the Pentagon’s Outgoing UFO Chief.
BY LARA SELIGMAN | NOVEMBER 12, 2023 07:23 AM
That feels like, to me, a subject worthy of serious study. And in a country that spends nearly a trillion dollars a year on national defense, homeland security and intelligence, it’s weird to me that the U.S. government doesn’t take these questions more seriously.
After having spent two years researching the government’s history with UFOs, what surprises —and disappoints — me is the ho-hum response of the military, government and intelligence community to actually solving the mystery of UFOs. The military efforts have always been low-level and low-budget — a handful of personnel, based for decades at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. They never received the scientific or investigative resources they asked for, and despite numerous proposed plans over the years for wider, better data collection and the deployment of more advanced instruments, the government always failed to act on them. Funding from NASA and the federal government to support what’s known as the “search for extraterrestrial intelligence” has amounted to a mere pittance over the last 40 years —appropriations usually measured in the six or seven figures that, across decades, don’t even equal the cost of a single fighter jet — comparatively tiny sums that have frequently fallen victim to cheap congressional funding stunts as small-minded lawmakers question whether we should care about the rest of the universe at all.
To me, there’s a clear blueprint for what a serious governmental effort to study UAPs would look like — five hallmarks of a project that could deliver real advances and new knowledge about UFOs and UAPs.
First, the project needs to be removed from the realm of the military and intelligence. While some chunk of this conundrum is likely unknown technologies and thus national security-related, the most interesting answers probably will come around questions of science and our understanding of the world around us. The Pentagon’s approach across 80 years has been myopic in its focus on “Is this a threat or not?” The question that consumed the first decade of UFO studies in the 1940s and 1950s, at the dawn of the Cold War, was: Are UFOs secret Soviet craft being built by kidnapped Nazi rocket scientists? Once the military ruled out that possibility, it simply lost interest in finding other possible answers.
Second, any serious effort must be international and cooperative. Too often, we treat UFOs as if they’re a US-only fascination, but the truth is UFOs have appeared the world over and there’s surely much we have to learn from reports and sightings elsewhere. Relatedly, and third, it must be open and transparent. Too often, ufology — like The Washington Post slogan about democracy — dies in darkness. Government secrecy and international geopolitics have kept some of the most intriguing sightings from being solved. One of the most intriguing and famous sightings during the Cold War happened inside the Soviet Union — a September 1977 appearance in the sky of a bright, glowing jellyfish-shaped object, known as the Petrozavodsk phenomenon. It had puzzled Soviet scientists but was quickly solved by American military personnel, who recognized the light and shape as part of a Soviet ballistic missile test that had been hidden from Soviet scientists by their own government. As The Moscow Times wrote later, “It appears that the rigid compartmentalization of information in the Soviet Union prevented anyone in Russia from connecting the dots sooner.”
UFO 'cover up'?: Lawmakers want answers
Finally, we need to build something long-term and sustainable; SETI and UFO efforts time and time again over the last eight decades have fallen apart because they’re small-scale, reliant on a single key person or two, and succumb to shifting priorities, funding and personnel. We shouldn’t expect quick answers and shouldn’t lose interest in a year or budget cycle or two.
So what would a serious UFO and UAP effort find? The truth is that there are important, meaningful and world-transforming answers we would likely uncover here even if we never discover an alien spacecraft from Alpha Centauri buzzing the USS Nimitz on a random Tuesday.
The spies and analysts who work in earthly intelligence always try to draw distinctions between secrets and mysteries; their realm and strength, they say, is primarily in uncovering secrets — knowable facts purposefully concealed from public view. (The capabilities of the latest Chinese hypersonic weapon, for example, is a secret; how the Egyptians built the pyramids is a mystery.) Much of the story and history of the popular culture, media and governmental focus on UFOs has been trying to understand where that critical line is between knowable secrets and unknown mysteries: How much of the UFO phenomena is attributable to secret human technology or visiting extraterrestrial activity versus simple physics, meteorology and astronomy that we just don’t yet fundamentally understand?
UFOs and UAPs surely continue to confound us, in part, because we know so little about the world around us. As much as we now know about meteorology, astronomy, the heavens and physics, it’s worth remembering how new (and still evolving) much of that knowledge truly is. Most of the core principles we have uncovered about physics, time, space and astronomy have been discovered in just a human lifetime or two. In fact, before you even get to the mysteries of space, much of our understanding of our own planet is startlingly new in historic terms.
Western scientists have only known about the existence of gorillas, our closest living relative, for about 150 years; before 1847, reports of their sightings were dismissed as stories of a mythical creature akin to a yeti or a unicorn. The first dinosaur was discovered and identified in 1824, and it’s effectively only been in my lifetime that we’ve come to recognize they were wiped out in an asteroid collision and that many dinosaurs were feathered. Giant squids existed as a myth for thousands of years, traceable to Aristotle and ancient Greece, until a French ship actually caught one in 1861, and it wasn’t until 2004 that biologists actually spotted one in its natural habitat. My high school geology teacher, Mr. McGraw, would remind us that the theory of plate tectonics — now widely understood as the way the entire Earth moves — wasn’t even proven when he himself was a student. We still know less about the bottom of the oceans than we do the surface of the moon. “There is a tendency in 20th-century science to forget that there will be a 21st-century science,” J. Allen Hynek, one of the world’s most influential astronomers and ufologists said, “and, indeed, a 30th-century science, from which vantage points our knowledge of the universe may appear quite different.”
In 2022, ufologist Jacques Vallée — now 82, the author of a dozen books on “the phenomenon,” and after investigating some 500 cases personally — told WIRED he still wonders what UFOs really are and is more convinced than ever the prophecy he wrote in his diary as a teen will now likely come true: “I will probably die without seeing any solution to this immense problem.”
The truth is that there is almost certainly not one single answer to the mystery of UFOs or UAPs. The truly “unexplained” cases — that is, the cases that actually puzzle military personnel and experienced scientists, not counting all those that are easily dismissed as mistaken planes, Venus or the like — is almost surely a pie chart made up of various-sized slices of four (or more!) answers, ranging from the mundane and terrestrial to the truly extraordinary.
The first two categories of “unsolved” sightings are probably true UFOs and surely have human, terrestrial explanations: They’re as-yet-unidentified advanced military technologies, e.g., drones from Russia, China and Iran, or “sky clutter,” trash and weird stuff that floats around unnoticed and we don’t generally bother monitoring. This is how we ended up this past winter shooting down the Chinese spy balloon — then, once we knew what to look for, realizing there had been other such spy balloons — and then, once we were paying attention to strange things, ended up in quick succession using quarter-million-dollar missiles and the world’s most advanced fighter jets to shoot down three more “UFOs” that might very well have been nothing more threatening than a weather balloon from an Illinois hobbyist club, the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade.
DEFENSE
Pentagon announces long-awaited UFO reporting form
BY ERIC BAZAIL-EIMIL | OCTOBER 31, 2023 04:44 PM
The other two categories of “unsolved” cases are the UAPs, that is, phenomena we don’t yet understand — as-yet-unknown or little-understood meteorological, astronomical and atmospheric phenomena, like ball lightning, plasma, St. Elmo’s Fire, and a whole bunch of other weird and wonderful quirks of our universe that we need to solve and identify. For instance, scientists are still trying to figure out what “ball lightning” really is; it seems to be responsible for some puzzling UAP sightings over the years and has been a mystery since the time of the Greeks. A 2019 paper in the journal Optik by Russian scientist Vladimir Torchigin theorized that ball lightning might be light photons trapped in spheres of air, akin to a very weird soap bubble.
And then we get to the fourth category where, I believe, the most extraordinary mysteries lie. These answers will only emerge as our knowledge of physics itself evolves and lets us look anew at what’s happening in our world that we don’t understand — inter-dimensional or time-traveling visitors, wormholes, extraterrestrials or something even weirder, what one official once called the astronomical truths that are “stranger than the strangest fiction.” It’s easy here, again, to think we know more than we do. As Harvard’s Loeb points out in his recent book Interstellar, when French nun Lucile Randon died earlier this year, the world’s oldest person at aged 118, the entire understanding of relativity and quantum mechanics had occurred during her lifetime.
Imagine what we will learn about physics in the next human lifespan — or the next 500 years or the next 10,000 years if we have the chance. Just this summer, for example, scientists found for the first time that the universe around us is roiled by gravitational waves that bend space-time. Italian astrophysicist Carlo Rovelli has a new book arguing for the possibility of “white holes,” a theory that attempts to answer what happens at the center of a black hole; he theorizes the black hole “bounces,” almost like a basketball, time is reversed and everything that the black hole swallowed then reemerges. We’ve never seen a “white hole,” but as he points out, black holes existed only as a theory until relatively recently. (As late as 2000, when he was beginning a new academic role, Rovelli recalls his boss asking him if he really thought black holes existed at all.)
NATIONAL
NASA names its new UFO boss — after initially saying it wouldn’t
BY MATT BERG AND OLIVIA ALAFRIZ | SEPTEMBER 14, 2023 05:45 PM
We need to be humble about how much weirder the world and universe around us likely is. As British biologist J.B.S. Haldane wrote nearly a century ago, “My own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.”
I believe our government should be more interested in this “queerer world” than it is — in part, because this quest for understanding will help us recognize why protecting and prolonging human civilization matters.
This, to me, is an important part about the search to solve UAPs: The hope, optimism and wonder that can come from what we have to learn here still. We have so much left to learn, if we have the chance and can manage our way through the next fraught period of human existence. The lifespan of the average species on Earth is about five million years, meaning that if we take care of ourselves and our planet (big “ifs” to be sure), we may have not just hundreds or thousands of years of advancing knowledge ahead of us, but millions. Perhaps, somewhere along that way, there will be a fundamental principle or discovery that will render most UAPs banal —or, conversely and perhaps even more likely, there’s a fundamental principle or discovery yet to be made that will render UAPs truly extraordinary, visitors from the future, past, far-away, or even other dimensions, science that we can’t even contemplate today.
Determining the line between science fiction and science fact has always been the core of the UFO story, a key part of what’s attracted generations of both amateur and serious ufologists to study the sky. As Philip Morrison, one of the inventors of the SETI field, said, “Either we’re alone in the universe or we’re not, and either possibility boggles the mind.”
We Have a UFO Problem. What We Don’t Have (Yet) Is a Serious Answer.
It’s time to take this out of the hands of the military and give it to scientists equipped to ask and answer the biggest questions.
The image from a 2015 video provided by the Department of Defense shows an unexplained object as it is tracked flying along the clouds. | Department of Defense via AP
By GARRETT M. GRAFF
11/16/2023 05:00 AM EST
Journalist and historian Garrett M. Graff is the author of UFO: The Inside Story of the U.S. Government's Search for Alien Life Here ― and Out There. His previous book Watergate: A New History was a finalist this year for the Pulitzer Prize in History.
The U.S. government has studied UFOs on and off now for 80 years, dating back to the dawn of the “flying saucer” age in 1947, when an Idaho businessman flying near Mount Rainer reported seeing bright saucer-like objects moving through the skies at tremendous speeds. It was hardly the first time humans spotted strange things in the sky — just a few years earlier, World War II pilots over Europe reported being chased by glowing green balls that came to be known as “foo fighters” — but the “flying saucers” caught the public’s imagination and launched a fascination that continues to this day.
Back then, at the dawn of the Cold War, the Pentagon launched three successive secret programs — known as PROJECT SIGN, GRUDGE and BLUE BOOK — that ran for decades without ever solving the mystery of what UFOs actually are. Neither did a secret CIA study panel in the 1950s, congressional hearings in the ’60s, and other assorted efforts over the years. Nor, most recently, did a series of classified Pentagon projects in the 2000s and 2010s, sponsored by Harry Reid and run by Las Vegas business titan Robert Bigelow, known as the Advanced Aerospace Weapon Systems Applications Program that was first reported by POLITICO and The New York Times in 2017.
Now, amid renewed public fascination and lawmaker interest in the years since AAWSAP was publicized, the Pentagon, the intelligence community and NASA have recommitted — albeit somewhat half-heartedly — to studying what the government now calls UAPs, unidentified anomalous phenomena, a term it introduced both to decrease the giggle factor of UFOs as well to acknowledge the possibility that not every UFO is actually either flying or a physical object. Ironically, it’s the second such rebranding: It was actually the early Air Force efforts of GRUDGE and BLUE BOOK, in part, that helped to popularize the very term “UFO,” which was intended to reduce the giggle factor of “flying saucers” and make witnesses feel more comfortable coming forward to talk.
The truth across all those decades, military projects, commissions, reports and hearings is that the vast majority of UFO sightings are easily identified and dismissed. They’re a mix of confusion about ordinary astronomical events (the planet Venus represents a huge chunk of UFO sightings), normal aviation events (planes flying in formation at night that look to an observer like a giant triangular craft), or what the intelligence community in a recent report called “clutter,” e.g., sky trash.
But there’s always been a stubborn percentage of UFO and UAP sightings that can’t be dismissed as known phenomena or technology. Depending on the exact data set and timespan, the percentage of true “unknown unknowns” ranges from around 5 percent up to 20 percent. No one knows what those sightings actually are. Put another way: There appear to be true UFOs and UAPs, mysteries we can’t solve. In recent years, repeated congressional hearings have had Pentagon officials and experienced naval aviators testify they have encountered craft or phenomena that appear to defy known physics, technologies more advanced than anything the U.S. understands.
EXIT INTERVIEW
Are Aliens Real? We Asked the Pentagon’s Outgoing UFO Chief.
BY LARA SELIGMAN | NOVEMBER 12, 2023 07:23 AM
That feels like, to me, a subject worthy of serious study. And in a country that spends nearly a trillion dollars a year on national defense, homeland security and intelligence, it’s weird to me that the U.S. government doesn’t take these questions more seriously.
After having spent two years researching the government’s history with UFOs, what surprises —and disappoints — me is the ho-hum response of the military, government and intelligence community to actually solving the mystery of UFOs. The military efforts have always been low-level and low-budget — a handful of personnel, based for decades at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. They never received the scientific or investigative resources they asked for, and despite numerous proposed plans over the years for wider, better data collection and the deployment of more advanced instruments, the government always failed to act on them. Funding from NASA and the federal government to support what’s known as the “search for extraterrestrial intelligence” has amounted to a mere pittance over the last 40 years —appropriations usually measured in the six or seven figures that, across decades, don’t even equal the cost of a single fighter jet — comparatively tiny sums that have frequently fallen victim to cheap congressional funding stunts as small-minded lawmakers question whether we should care about the rest of the universe at all.
To me, there’s a clear blueprint for what a serious governmental effort to study UAPs would look like — five hallmarks of a project that could deliver real advances and new knowledge about UFOs and UAPs.
First, the project needs to be removed from the realm of the military and intelligence. While some chunk of this conundrum is likely unknown technologies and thus national security-related, the most interesting answers probably will come around questions of science and our understanding of the world around us. The Pentagon’s approach across 80 years has been myopic in its focus on “Is this a threat or not?” The question that consumed the first decade of UFO studies in the 1940s and 1950s, at the dawn of the Cold War, was: Are UFOs secret Soviet craft being built by kidnapped Nazi rocket scientists? Once the military ruled out that possibility, it simply lost interest in finding other possible answers.
Second, any serious effort must be international and cooperative. Too often, we treat UFOs as if they’re a US-only fascination, but the truth is UFOs have appeared the world over and there’s surely much we have to learn from reports and sightings elsewhere. Relatedly, and third, it must be open and transparent. Too often, ufology — like The Washington Post slogan about democracy — dies in darkness. Government secrecy and international geopolitics have kept some of the most intriguing sightings from being solved. One of the most intriguing and famous sightings during the Cold War happened inside the Soviet Union — a September 1977 appearance in the sky of a bright, glowing jellyfish-shaped object, known as the Petrozavodsk phenomenon. It had puzzled Soviet scientists but was quickly solved by American military personnel, who recognized the light and shape as part of a Soviet ballistic missile test that had been hidden from Soviet scientists by their own government. As The Moscow Times wrote later, “It appears that the rigid compartmentalization of information in the Soviet Union prevented anyone in Russia from connecting the dots sooner.”
Fourth, we must build an effort that’s data-based and instruments-based. Our data on the UFO sightings people see and report is almost worthless; it’s too haphazard, incomplete, and unreplicable. This was one of the key messages of this summer’s congressional hearings. As Ryan Graves, the executive director of the organization Americans for Safe Aerospace, told the House Oversight and Accountability Subcommittee on National Security, the Border and Foreign Affairs in July, “My recommendations would be to make that a sensor-centric operation in order to make it as objective as possible.” Instead, we should look to the model of efforts like the Galileo Project, led by Harvard astronomy chair Avi Loeb, to map and study the sky on a comprehensive, routine basis to establish a better baseline of what’s strange and what’s not. (Just in recent weeks, Galileo has started the first-ever UAP observatory on the roof of the Harvard astronomy building.) As Loeb said to me last week, “Trust in data. People are a waste of time.”UFO 'cover up'?: Lawmakers want answers
Finally, we need to build something long-term and sustainable; SETI and UFO efforts time and time again over the last eight decades have fallen apart because they’re small-scale, reliant on a single key person or two, and succumb to shifting priorities, funding and personnel. We shouldn’t expect quick answers and shouldn’t lose interest in a year or budget cycle or two.
So what would a serious UFO and UAP effort find? The truth is that there are important, meaningful and world-transforming answers we would likely uncover here even if we never discover an alien spacecraft from Alpha Centauri buzzing the USS Nimitz on a random Tuesday.
The spies and analysts who work in earthly intelligence always try to draw distinctions between secrets and mysteries; their realm and strength, they say, is primarily in uncovering secrets — knowable facts purposefully concealed from public view. (The capabilities of the latest Chinese hypersonic weapon, for example, is a secret; how the Egyptians built the pyramids is a mystery.) Much of the story and history of the popular culture, media and governmental focus on UFOs has been trying to understand where that critical line is between knowable secrets and unknown mysteries: How much of the UFO phenomena is attributable to secret human technology or visiting extraterrestrial activity versus simple physics, meteorology and astronomy that we just don’t yet fundamentally understand?
UFOs and UAPs surely continue to confound us, in part, because we know so little about the world around us. As much as we now know about meteorology, astronomy, the heavens and physics, it’s worth remembering how new (and still evolving) much of that knowledge truly is. Most of the core principles we have uncovered about physics, time, space and astronomy have been discovered in just a human lifetime or two. In fact, before you even get to the mysteries of space, much of our understanding of our own planet is startlingly new in historic terms.
Western scientists have only known about the existence of gorillas, our closest living relative, for about 150 years; before 1847, reports of their sightings were dismissed as stories of a mythical creature akin to a yeti or a unicorn. The first dinosaur was discovered and identified in 1824, and it’s effectively only been in my lifetime that we’ve come to recognize they were wiped out in an asteroid collision and that many dinosaurs were feathered. Giant squids existed as a myth for thousands of years, traceable to Aristotle and ancient Greece, until a French ship actually caught one in 1861, and it wasn’t until 2004 that biologists actually spotted one in its natural habitat. My high school geology teacher, Mr. McGraw, would remind us that the theory of plate tectonics — now widely understood as the way the entire Earth moves — wasn’t even proven when he himself was a student. We still know less about the bottom of the oceans than we do the surface of the moon. “There is a tendency in 20th-century science to forget that there will be a 21st-century science,” J. Allen Hynek, one of the world’s most influential astronomers and ufologists said, “and, indeed, a 30th-century science, from which vantage points our knowledge of the universe may appear quite different.”
In 2022, ufologist Jacques Vallée — now 82, the author of a dozen books on “the phenomenon,” and after investigating some 500 cases personally — told WIRED he still wonders what UFOs really are and is more convinced than ever the prophecy he wrote in his diary as a teen will now likely come true: “I will probably die without seeing any solution to this immense problem.”
The truth is that there is almost certainly not one single answer to the mystery of UFOs or UAPs. The truly “unexplained” cases — that is, the cases that actually puzzle military personnel and experienced scientists, not counting all those that are easily dismissed as mistaken planes, Venus or the like — is almost surely a pie chart made up of various-sized slices of four (or more!) answers, ranging from the mundane and terrestrial to the truly extraordinary.
The first two categories of “unsolved” sightings are probably true UFOs and surely have human, terrestrial explanations: They’re as-yet-unidentified advanced military technologies, e.g., drones from Russia, China and Iran, or “sky clutter,” trash and weird stuff that floats around unnoticed and we don’t generally bother monitoring. This is how we ended up this past winter shooting down the Chinese spy balloon — then, once we knew what to look for, realizing there had been other such spy balloons — and then, once we were paying attention to strange things, ended up in quick succession using quarter-million-dollar missiles and the world’s most advanced fighter jets to shoot down three more “UFOs” that might very well have been nothing more threatening than a weather balloon from an Illinois hobbyist club, the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade.
DEFENSE
Pentagon announces long-awaited UFO reporting form
BY ERIC BAZAIL-EIMIL | OCTOBER 31, 2023 04:44 PM
The other two categories of “unsolved” cases are the UAPs, that is, phenomena we don’t yet understand — as-yet-unknown or little-understood meteorological, astronomical and atmospheric phenomena, like ball lightning, plasma, St. Elmo’s Fire, and a whole bunch of other weird and wonderful quirks of our universe that we need to solve and identify. For instance, scientists are still trying to figure out what “ball lightning” really is; it seems to be responsible for some puzzling UAP sightings over the years and has been a mystery since the time of the Greeks. A 2019 paper in the journal Optik by Russian scientist Vladimir Torchigin theorized that ball lightning might be light photons trapped in spheres of air, akin to a very weird soap bubble.
And then we get to the fourth category where, I believe, the most extraordinary mysteries lie. These answers will only emerge as our knowledge of physics itself evolves and lets us look anew at what’s happening in our world that we don’t understand — inter-dimensional or time-traveling visitors, wormholes, extraterrestrials or something even weirder, what one official once called the astronomical truths that are “stranger than the strangest fiction.” It’s easy here, again, to think we know more than we do. As Harvard’s Loeb points out in his recent book Interstellar, when French nun Lucile Randon died earlier this year, the world’s oldest person at aged 118, the entire understanding of relativity and quantum mechanics had occurred during her lifetime.
Imagine what we will learn about physics in the next human lifespan — or the next 500 years or the next 10,000 years if we have the chance. Just this summer, for example, scientists found for the first time that the universe around us is roiled by gravitational waves that bend space-time. Italian astrophysicist Carlo Rovelli has a new book arguing for the possibility of “white holes,” a theory that attempts to answer what happens at the center of a black hole; he theorizes the black hole “bounces,” almost like a basketball, time is reversed and everything that the black hole swallowed then reemerges. We’ve never seen a “white hole,” but as he points out, black holes existed only as a theory until relatively recently. (As late as 2000, when he was beginning a new academic role, Rovelli recalls his boss asking him if he really thought black holes existed at all.)
NATIONAL
NASA names its new UFO boss — after initially saying it wouldn’t
BY MATT BERG AND OLIVIA ALAFRIZ | SEPTEMBER 14, 2023 05:45 PM
We need to be humble about how much weirder the world and universe around us likely is. As British biologist J.B.S. Haldane wrote nearly a century ago, “My own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.”
I believe our government should be more interested in this “queerer world” than it is — in part, because this quest for understanding will help us recognize why protecting and prolonging human civilization matters.
This, to me, is an important part about the search to solve UAPs: The hope, optimism and wonder that can come from what we have to learn here still. We have so much left to learn, if we have the chance and can manage our way through the next fraught period of human existence. The lifespan of the average species on Earth is about five million years, meaning that if we take care of ourselves and our planet (big “ifs” to be sure), we may have not just hundreds or thousands of years of advancing knowledge ahead of us, but millions. Perhaps, somewhere along that way, there will be a fundamental principle or discovery that will render most UAPs banal —or, conversely and perhaps even more likely, there’s a fundamental principle or discovery yet to be made that will render UAPs truly extraordinary, visitors from the future, past, far-away, or even other dimensions, science that we can’t even contemplate today.
Determining the line between science fiction and science fact has always been the core of the UFO story, a key part of what’s attracted generations of both amateur and serious ufologists to study the sky. As Philip Morrison, one of the inventors of the SETI field, said, “Either we’re alone in the universe or we’re not, and either possibility boggles the mind.”
Rick Hunter
Celestial
I love History but unless you are a schoolteacher or Ph.D. professor it isn't going to pay the bills. I work as an archivist, one of a very few other career paths you can do with this education. I love my job but I'm spending two hours on the road everyday and $$$ in gas and car parts for well under 40k a year. Much as I hate to do it, I have to find something closer and probably unrelated to History. I'm staying above water but not getting ahead financially, and it just has to be done.
nivek
As Above So Below
nivek
As Above So Below
CIA's secret office has conducted UFO retrieval missions on at least NINE crash sites around the world, whistleblowers reveal
A secretive CIA office has been coordinating the retrieval of crashed UFOs around the world for decades, multiple sources told DailyMail.com.One source said that at least nine apparent 'non-human craft' have been recovered by the US government – some wrecked from a crash, and two completely intact.
Three sources briefed on those alleged top secret operations told DailyMail.com that the Office of Global Access (OGA), a wing of the Central Intelligence Agency's Science and Technology Directorate, has played a central role since 2003 in orchestrating the collection of what could be alien spacecraft.
The three sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid reprisals, have all been briefed by individuals involved in those alleged UFO retrieval missions.
Though the shocking claims sound like they come from a science fiction novel, they are part of a growing body of evidence suggesting the US government could indeed be hiding advanced vehicles that were not made by humans.
(More on the link)
.
pigfarmer
tall, thin, irritable
Mexican aliens are 'definitely not human' and have 30% DNA of 'unknown species'
The aliens sparked chaos when they were unveiled earlier this year (Image: Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
The mystery Mexican aliens presented to the world earlier this year have had their DNA tested – and it confirms that they are not human.
The world was shocked and baffled in equal measures when two miniature corpses were unveiled by controversial Mexican journalist Jaime Maussan. He claimed that they were centuries-old alien corpses found in Peru – with the latter country starting legal proceedings against Maussan for allegedly stealing them from the country.
The 70-year-old controversial bloke who found the mummies claimed that the finding of them was “the most important thing that has happened to humanity”. He added: “I believe that this phenomenon is the only one that gives us the opportunity to unite.”
New tests 'prove' they have 30% unknown DNA (Image: Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
He said: “This is the first time extraterrestrial life has been presented in this manner. We have a clear example of non-human specimens unrelated to any known species on our planet. The public has the right to know about non-human technology and beings. This reality unites humanity rather than dividing us. We are not alone in this vast universe; we should embrace this truth.
They were first displayed in Peru in 2017 (Image: Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
The mummies were first uncovered in Peru, and had been on display there as recently as 2017 – this was confirmed by Peruvian officials earlier this year. Ufologist Will Galison is one of those who had actually seen the mummies up close in Peru, and claimed that we should be far more worried about them than we actually are.
When questioned by NubTV he said: “They found one bone in the arm of one of the mummies that clearly was not the organic bone that was there. So that raises the question, is the rest of it fake? My thinking shifted when I was up in the friend's house in the country, north of New York. And I saw a deer skull on the mantel and the back of that deer skull, to my mind, resembled the front of this of this skull and I thought 'oh wow'.
Could the fellas have looked like this when alive and kicking? (Image: Getty Images)
“It was obviously put together - the question is was it put together in 2015 . . . or was it made 1,000 years ago? I do not think that they flew down in saucer and landed on Earth recently, or even 1,000 years ago, because a CT scan showed another thing according to some of the doctors that examined these things: the leg bones on these things were suffering from osteoporosis.”
Mystery Mexican aliens are 'definitely not human' and have 30% DNA of 'unknown species'
Controversial journalist Jaime Maussan presented the alien mummies to the world earlier this year, and new DNA tests could prove that they are actually real aliens
The aliens sparked chaos when they were unveiled earlier this year (Image: Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
The mystery Mexican aliens presented to the world earlier this year have had their DNA tested – and it confirms that they are not human.
The world was shocked and baffled in equal measures when two miniature corpses were unveiled by controversial Mexican journalist Jaime Maussan. He claimed that they were centuries-old alien corpses found in Peru – with the latter country starting legal proceedings against Maussan for allegedly stealing them from the country.
The 70-year-old controversial bloke who found the mummies claimed that the finding of them was “the most important thing that has happened to humanity”. He added: “I believe that this phenomenon is the only one that gives us the opportunity to unite.”
New tests 'prove' they have 30% unknown DNA (Image: Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
And this week, speaking in front of the Mexican Congress, he claimed that the aliens have been DNA tested, and it showed that 30% of the DNA is “not from any known species”. Mexican researchers appearing alongside him confirmed that the mummies with just three toes were “authentic”.He said: “This is the first time extraterrestrial life has been presented in this manner. We have a clear example of non-human specimens unrelated to any known species on our planet. The public has the right to know about non-human technology and beings. This reality unites humanity rather than dividing us. We are not alone in this vast universe; we should embrace this truth.
They were first displayed in Peru in 2017 (Image: Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
"These specimens do not belong to our terrestrial evolution. They were not creatures discovered after a UFO crash. Instead, they were found in diatom mines and later transformed into fossilised mummies.”The mummies were first uncovered in Peru, and had been on display there as recently as 2017 – this was confirmed by Peruvian officials earlier this year. Ufologist Will Galison is one of those who had actually seen the mummies up close in Peru, and claimed that we should be far more worried about them than we actually are.
When questioned by NubTV he said: “They found one bone in the arm of one of the mummies that clearly was not the organic bone that was there. So that raises the question, is the rest of it fake? My thinking shifted when I was up in the friend's house in the country, north of New York. And I saw a deer skull on the mantel and the back of that deer skull, to my mind, resembled the front of this of this skull and I thought 'oh wow'.
Could the fellas have looked like this when alive and kicking? (Image: Getty Images)
“It was obviously put together - the question is was it put together in 2015 . . . or was it made 1,000 years ago? I do not think that they flew down in saucer and landed on Earth recently, or even 1,000 years ago, because a CT scan showed another thing according to some of the doctors that examined these things: the leg bones on these things were suffering from osteoporosis.”
Rick Hunter
Celestial
CIA's secret office has conducted UFO retrieval missions on at least NINE crash sites around the world, whistleblowers reveal
A secretive CIA office has been coordinating the retrieval of crashed UFOs around the world for decades, multiple sources told DailyMail.com.
One source said that at least nine apparent 'non-human craft' have been recovered by the US government – some wrecked from a crash, and two completely intact.
Three sources briefed on those alleged top secret operations told DailyMail.com that the Office of Global Access (OGA), a wing of the Central Intelligence Agency's Science and Technology Directorate, has played a central role since 2003 in orchestrating the collection of what could be alien spacecraft.
The three sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid reprisals, have all been briefed by individuals involved in those alleged UFO retrieval missions.
Though the shocking claims sound like they come from a science fiction novel, they are part of a growing body of evidence suggesting the US government could indeed be hiding advanced vehicles that were not made by humans.
(More on the link)
.
I don't know about these folks here, but I would be highly surprised if we did not have any craft or artifacts. UFOs are common enough that some of them are going to crash and any government would love to get ahold of that stuff.
Dejan Corovic
As above, so bellow
David Grush said on Joe Rogan interview that China has one UFO retrieval team. China only has access to its own territory, so I guess, one team is enough.
Dejan Corovic
As above, so bellow
I think that the latest is that the whole legislative UFO disclosure thing had stalled and that man-in-black had done their work behind the curtains.
So, it doesn't really matter anymore what David Grush said or done. His hands are tied and by default he can't prove anything.
So, it doesn't really matter anymore what David Grush said or done. His hands are tied and by default he can't prove anything.
Rick Hunter
Celestial
Regardless of what the outcome is, this has been a historic event. Just the fact that we have people willing to talk about it in front of Congress and they are willing to listen is major progress. Remember, there were two other witnesses besides Grush testifying also. I think this could open the door to more testimony in the future.
Dejan Corovic
As above, so bellow
This tech simply can't be private property. It must belong to US people.
pigfarmer
tall, thin, irritable
One of my favorite book series is Taylor Anderson's Destroyermen. There is a part in that where a piece of advanced technology falls into the hands of primitives who immediately squabble over it for their own advantage. People with torches swords and shields fighting over a WW1 era Wickes class destroyer - they don't even know how to 'turn it on' or what to do with it if they did.
Sound familiar? This is beginning to sound like A Tesla in King Arthur's Court.
Sound familiar? This is beginning to sound like A Tesla in King Arthur's Court.
Spaceman spiff
Noble
So the Schumer Amendment was apparently gutted. It has no teeth now, the MIC can do whatever they want and keep circling the issue as they wish.
This is what happens when you trust bureaucrats in a country that already has political rot going deep. MIC can just buy/blackmail whatever opposition they want.
If the Disclosure folks inside have a plan B, now is the time to go unconventional.
This is what happens when you trust bureaucrats in a country that already has political rot going deep. MIC can just buy/blackmail whatever opposition they want.
If the Disclosure folks inside have a plan B, now is the time to go unconventional.
pigfarmer
tall, thin, irritable
Former Navy rear admiral supports UFO whistleblower claims
Updated: DEC 13, 2023 / 08:20 PM CST
(NewsNation) — A former Navy rear admiral and administrator of the government’s lead meteorological agency told NewsNation he believes whistleblower David Grusch’s claims of a secret UFO retrieval program run by the Pentagon.
These are historic times in the growing push for greater government transparency surrounding UAPs, more commonly called UFOs.
Legislation that adds unprecedented disclosure demands to the annual defense spending bill hangs in the balance.
NewsNation continues to put a spotlight on whistleblower testimony and efforts by lawmakers to bring more transparency to the UFO issue. One of those people is retired U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet, who led the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) under former President Donald Trump.
Gallaudet said he is convinced the story Grusch is telling is true based on his experience in the military and government. He also told NewsNation correspondent Ross Coulthart there were attempts to cover up UFO sightings by members of the military. NewsNation is not able to independently verify the evidence that Gallaudet said led him to this conclusion.
Gallaudet said the planet has been visited by entities he described as “non-human.” He said he absolutely believes non-human intelligent beings are real.“We’re being visited by non-human intelligence with technology we really don’t understand and with intentions we don’t understand either,” he said.Gallaudet spent his career serving his country, starting in the Navy where he worked in areas like aircraft carrier combat operations and assisting Navy SEAL teams during counter-terrorism operations, according to his official biography.
Schumer: Credible sources say UAP info kept from Congress More recently he served as acting administrator of NOAA, the agency that forecasts weather and monitors ocean and atmospheric conditions, where he analyzed the science behind weather and other phenomena.
“One of my jobs in the Navy, I was the chief meteorologist of the Navy at the time when Orion was encountering the UAP off the U.S. East Coast,” he said. Gallaudet said he received a video containing the “Go fast” video, which shows a fighter pilot’s encounter with a UAP, from his superior officers. “I learn now that these were occurring in training airspace and causing near mid-air collisions. So that safety issue is important,” he said. “But the Navy didn’t do anything about it. Then they actually pulled back that email from my computer on the secret network. ”Gallaudet believes that was part of a cover-up. “This technology, we’re still trying to learn about and it could give us an advantage in any military conflict,” Gallaudet said. “That’s a good reason not to disclose the nature of the technology. I think for the foreseeable future, we don’t want to release and disclose all of the technology that we’ve recovered. However, I think it’s about time that we do disclose that we are in contact with non-human intelligence, that’s what needs to be put out there in the public.”
UFO whistleblower says people were harmed over UFO coverups
Gallaudet also said it’s important to talk openly about the flight safety risks that go along with UAP encounters.
Despite his level of seniority in the Navy and NOAA, Gallaudet said he was not put into any UAP programs.
“They’re special access programs, very tightly restricted. So you have to look into what one’s job is and the need to know,” he said.
For classification or clearance at a certain level, Gallaudet explained those two elements are prerequisites to gaining access.
“In my job as oceanographer of the Navy, for example, it really wouldn’t have made sense for me to have been read into these crash retrieval programs,” Gallaudet said. “it’s really kind of a Cold War legacy of over classification.”
The government has continued to deny any crash-retrieval programs involving non-human technology. While those like Grusch and Gallaudet are speaking out about their experiences, other high-ranking people in government continue to say they have seen no credible evidence of UAP phenomena.
“What you have going on right now with legacy classify programs, special access programs without Congressional direction and White House policy, that’s not going to change,” he said.
Former Navy rear admiral supports UFO whistleblower claims
- A former Navy admiral says he believes UFO whistleblower allegations
- He says the military covered up UAP encounters during his time in service
- He says government should disclose "contact with non-human intelligence"
Updated: DEC 13, 2023 / 08:20 PM CST
(NewsNation) — A former Navy rear admiral and administrator of the government’s lead meteorological agency told NewsNation he believes whistleblower David Grusch’s claims of a secret UFO retrieval program run by the Pentagon.
These are historic times in the growing push for greater government transparency surrounding UAPs, more commonly called UFOs.
Legislation that adds unprecedented disclosure demands to the annual defense spending bill hangs in the balance.
NewsNation continues to put a spotlight on whistleblower testimony and efforts by lawmakers to bring more transparency to the UFO issue. One of those people is retired U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet, who led the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) under former President Donald Trump.
Gallaudet said he is convinced the story Grusch is telling is true based on his experience in the military and government. He also told NewsNation correspondent Ross Coulthart there were attempts to cover up UFO sightings by members of the military. NewsNation is not able to independently verify the evidence that Gallaudet said led him to this conclusion.
Gallaudet said the planet has been visited by entities he described as “non-human.” He said he absolutely believes non-human intelligent beings are real.“We’re being visited by non-human intelligence with technology we really don’t understand and with intentions we don’t understand either,” he said.Gallaudet spent his career serving his country, starting in the Navy where he worked in areas like aircraft carrier combat operations and assisting Navy SEAL teams during counter-terrorism operations, according to his official biography.
Schumer: Credible sources say UAP info kept from Congress More recently he served as acting administrator of NOAA, the agency that forecasts weather and monitors ocean and atmospheric conditions, where he analyzed the science behind weather and other phenomena.
“One of my jobs in the Navy, I was the chief meteorologist of the Navy at the time when Orion was encountering the UAP off the U.S. East Coast,” he said. Gallaudet said he received a video containing the “Go fast” video, which shows a fighter pilot’s encounter with a UAP, from his superior officers. “I learn now that these were occurring in training airspace and causing near mid-air collisions. So that safety issue is important,” he said. “But the Navy didn’t do anything about it. Then they actually pulled back that email from my computer on the secret network. ”Gallaudet believes that was part of a cover-up. “This technology, we’re still trying to learn about and it could give us an advantage in any military conflict,” Gallaudet said. “That’s a good reason not to disclose the nature of the technology. I think for the foreseeable future, we don’t want to release and disclose all of the technology that we’ve recovered. However, I think it’s about time that we do disclose that we are in contact with non-human intelligence, that’s what needs to be put out there in the public.”
UFO whistleblower says people were harmed over UFO coverups
Gallaudet also said it’s important to talk openly about the flight safety risks that go along with UAP encounters.
Despite his level of seniority in the Navy and NOAA, Gallaudet said he was not put into any UAP programs.
“They’re special access programs, very tightly restricted. So you have to look into what one’s job is and the need to know,” he said.
For classification or clearance at a certain level, Gallaudet explained those two elements are prerequisites to gaining access.
“In my job as oceanographer of the Navy, for example, it really wouldn’t have made sense for me to have been read into these crash retrieval programs,” Gallaudet said. “it’s really kind of a Cold War legacy of over classification.”
The government has continued to deny any crash-retrieval programs involving non-human technology. While those like Grusch and Gallaudet are speaking out about their experiences, other high-ranking people in government continue to say they have seen no credible evidence of UAP phenomena.
“What you have going on right now with legacy classify programs, special access programs without Congressional direction and White House policy, that’s not going to change,” he said.