Global Courant
A committee set up by NASA has researched approx 800 reports of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs), or what most of us would call UFOs (unidentified flying objects). NASA defines these events as sightings “that cannot be identified from a scientific perspective as aircraft or known natural phenomena.”
The creation of this committee shows that NASA takes possible extraterrestrial events very seriously. On Wednesday, May 31, 2023, the committee held its first public meeting to discuss what it’s doing and what it’s found so far ahead of a full report later this year.
It revealed that some reports are easily explained as boats, planes, or the weather, some had comedic, luncheon-based origins, and only a few remain a mystery.
The commission is headed by astrophysicist David Spergel and consists of a team of experts ranging from university professors to a former astronaut. The study has used declassified reports and images to explain some of the mysterious reports, which come from a variety of sources, including military personnel and commercial airline pilots.
Sean Kirkpatrickdirector of the U.S. Department of Defense’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), which also investigates such claims, says it receives between 50 and 100 new reports of UAPs each month.
While UAPs are essentially just another name for UFOs, they don’t have to be airborne specifically. All anomalous phenomena are included whether they are on land, sea, air or space, so this is a slightly broader definition than just unidentified flying objects.
Kirkpatrick also says most UAPs are easy to explain — for example, boats that are low on the horizon and trick pilots with odd perspectives. Only about 2-5% of the database is truly abnormal and cannot yet be explained.
An unexplained aerial object (center) is captured by a US military aircraft.
There are many examples of such events that seem mysterious at first but have innocent explanations. An example occurred at an observatory in Australia where bizarre radio signals were detected. The confusing signals had strange characteristics, but researchers noted that they were mostly seen around lunchtime.
It turned out that the instruments detected microwaves leaking from the lunchroom as people prepared their food.
Declassified Information
Some of the data being studied by NASA has been released – cleared for release – by the US military. Whether or not footage is classified is determined by who and what created it, not what the footage was of.
For example, if a fighter jet takes a picture of the Statue of Liberty, it will be classified. Not because of the subject, but because of what made the photo. The US does not want to show off its imaging capabilities to the whole world.
Another funny revelation came from Scott Kelly, a former NASA astronaut with an impressive resume, who also serves on NASA’s UAP committee. He has decades of experience as a naval pilot, spent a full year on the International Space Station and now serves on the UAP committee.
At the recent panel meeting, he described a flight near Virginia Beach where he and his copilot were convinced they were flying right past a UFO. Upon re-examination, it turned out to be something much more sober. Kelly said: “I haven’t seen it. We turned around, we went to look at it, it turned out to be Bart Simpson – a balloon.”
This highlights the difficulty of analyzing images and reports coming from such a wide variety of sources. Much of the data currently in use is of low quality, making it more difficult to unravel the mysteries they contain.
As a result, the committee hopes to remove the stigma around reporting sightings to encourage more people to bring forward their anomalous sightings.
In particular, it hopes that commercial pilots will become less reluctant to report strange encounters. Pilot reports can help explain more of the images the commission receives, especially if some of it is reliable, high-quality data.
The Pentagon recently released several videos of unexplained phenomena, including a circular object spotted by a military drone.
Indeed, the quality of the recordings was the biggest issue faced by the panel in its preliminary analysis. Usually, sightings are of objects that appear small and often move in strange ways.
The underlying problem, according to committee members, was that these sightings or “encounters” are often captured on cameras or sensors that are not designed to accurately record these strange occurrences.
An apparent UFO could be the result of an old camera malfunctioning, or someone’s perspective being misled by strange lighting and distant objects.
Online harassment
These confounding factors prove difficult to disentangle. The other major issue faced by UAP committee members is online harassment, which adds to the stigma of doing work in this field.
“It’s really disheartening to hear about the harassment our panelists have faced online as they study this topic,” said Nicola Fox, head of science at NLIKE A. “Intimidation only leads to further stigmatization.”
Since this public meeting, an American whistleblower with a background in government intelligence has claimed that the The US may have even more concrete evidence of UAPs. NASA has not commented on this claim, although the whistleblower has not yet provided additional evidence.
While the investigations so far have found nothing that can be explained as extraterrestrial, the public meeting shows an interesting change in the pace of NASA and UFO sightings. In the past, the agency has mainly tried to debunk claims, but now the agency very publicly investigates reports and discusses what it finds on live TV.
A full report will be released later this year with even more details and findings from these investigations. No UFOs or aliens yet, but NASA is now taking the claims of the UAPs very seriously and seems determined to understand them all.
Christopher Pattison is a researcher at the Institute of Cosmology and Gravity, University of Portsmouth
This article has been republished from The conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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