What accounts for the U.S. governmentâs revived interest in UFOs? Seth Shostak on strange events, human psychology, and alien life. â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â Unclassified What accounts for the U.S. governmentâs revived interest in UFOs? Seth Shostak on strange events, human psychology, and alien life. Artem Kovalev (Originally published 2022 | 06.24) For the first time in more than half a century, the U.S. Congress held a hearing in May on unidentified flying objectsâor as the American government now officially refers to them, âunidentified aerial phenomena.â Members of the House of Representatives discussed the mysterious happenings as potential threats to national security, a serious issue the U.S. government needs to address with more transparencyâand without the longstanding stigma associated with science-fiction portrayals of UFOs as alien spacecraft. Members of Congress and Pentagon officials at the hearing noted that this stigma has deterred military pilots from speaking up about unidentified objects they came across over the yearsâthough the military has been working to encourage reporting in its ongoing, and increasingly public, efforts to understand and explain sightings. Since the early 2000s, according to U.S. Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence Scott Bray, the United States has seen âan increasing number of unauthorized and/or unidentified aircraft or objectsâ in military training areas and other designated air space. Bray was testifying at the hearing nearly a year after the Office of the Director of Naval Intelligence released a landmark report on UFOs. Meanwhile, itâs clear that Congress, the military, and the intelligence community arenât the only elements of the U.S. government paying attention. In early June, NASA announced it would begin its own independent study of âobservations of events in the sky that cannot be identified as aircraft or known natural phenomenaâfrom a scientific perspective.â Whatâs behind these investigations, and where are they leading? Seth Shostak is a senior astronomer at the SETI Institute, in Mountain View, California, which is dedicated to the âsearch for extraterrestrial intelligenceâ in the universe. According to Shostak, Congressâ renewed interest in UFOs followed public revelations in 2017 about Pentagon research into the subject and puzzling U.S. Navy videos of apparent objects in the skies. Shostak says American military and intelligence authorities are now trying to make investigating and communicating about these objects a higher priorityâresponding to increased public curiosity and new directions from Washingtonâthough officialsâ recent public statements demonstrate how many questions about UFOs remain unanswered. Shostak sees no evidence supporting theories of their connection to extraterrestrial visitors, but he says more openness and transparency from the American governmentâsomething NASAâs new investigation especially holds the promise ofâwill help keep such theories from taking off into elaborate stories about conspiracies and cover-ups. Graham Vyse: How did the American government become so concerned with these occurrences? Seth Shostak: It goes back to 2017, when The New York Times published an article featuring three videos taken by the U.S. Navy planes, including footage taken off the coast of San Diego. In all three videos, something in the frame couldnât be identified. It seemed like the government had evidence of things in our skies other than what we already know is up there. To many in the UFO communityâby which I mean at least a third of Americans, who believe Earth has been visited by alien spacecraftâthis was a chance for the government to prove it was honest and not withholding information from the public. The fact that a reputable sourceâthe Navyâhad evidence of this strange phenomenon created pressure for investigations. Vyse: What exactly did the videos show? Advertisement Shostak: They all came from cameras on Navy planesâinfrared cameras used to target enemy aircraft. They showed these shapesâround blobs, or blobs that look like peanuts, or blobs resembling Tic Tac mints. Sometimes the things would disappear, swinging out of the field of view at whatâs apparently a very high speed. Now, that âapparentlyâ is important, because you canât judge speed unless you know the distance of these things, but the pilotsâwhose voices can be heard in the videosâclearly didnât know what they were. Vyse: The Times story also described a secret Pentagon program that had investigated UFO reports for many years. What effect did the public revelation of this program have? Shostak: It appeared that the government had been studying UFOs despite claiming it was done with all that. Ultimately, lawmakers on Capitol Hill decided to spend some money and look into it. In 2020, Congress said U.S. intelligence agencies needed to produce a report on the subject. That came out last summer. The report had two partsâa public portion and a classified portion. The public portion was really anodyneâreally milquetoast. It basically said, We donât understand a lot of these things. Not one word of it referred to the possibility that these objects might be extraterrestrial crafts. Even so, many in the UFO community thought the classified portion of the report had evidence of extraterrestrials. Thatâs the thing about conspiratorial argumentsâyou canât disprove them. Vyse: In public debates about UFOs, what are the most common explanations you hear for what they might be? Shostak: There are three types of explanations put forward for those Navy UFO videos. There are the prosaic explanationsâthat, for instance, we could be seeing the exhaust of a commercial jet. Another type of explanation is that we could be looking at an aircraft from another countryâmaybe drones sent to spy on American military exercisesâbut that strikes me as implausible. Other countries are checking out what the U.S. Navy is doing off the coast of San Diego? It could be, I suppose. Then, of course, there are the explanations involving extraterrestrial craft having come to Earth to observe the Navy. That idea is totally perplexing to me. Why would aliens, advanced enough to get all the way to Earth, be interested in observing what the U.S. military can do? It would be like going back to Ancient Rome and spending all your time looking at a place where they manufacture swordsâit might be interesting, but itâs of no real importance. Gabriele Motter More from Seth Shostak at The Signal: âI donât think the government is malevolent on these issues. I donât think theyâre trying to hide anything. In fact, they couldnât hide anything. I mean, how could aliens have arranged things such that only the U.S. government could find evidence for their presence? What about all the other countries in the world? What about the fact that thereâs radar for commercial aviation all around the globe? There are 100,000 flights a day, and they need to know whatâs up in the air. If something were visiting us in their airspace, honestly, commercial aviation would grind to a halt. Theyâd stop putting planes in the sky until they figured out what it was.â âHistorically, the U.S. government hasnât been all that interested in UFOs. In the 1940s and 1950s, there were a number of government studiesâProject Blue Book, Project Sign, Project Grudgeâbut none of those investigations claimed to have found anything interesting. They were ultimately discontinued, in part because of how much money they cost. ⦠Several U.S. presidents have talked about UFOsâand before they were elected, even promised the electorate theyâd look into the issue. They know thereâs a constituency for that, even if itâs not important to most Americans. It gratifies certain people who think the government knows more than itâs telling the public.â âI believe aliens are out there, yes. We at the SETI Institute are trying to find them, but we donât claim weâve found anything yet, which sets us apart from the UFO crowd. If we were to find a signal made by a transmitter that we believed was truly extraterrestrial, weâd immediately call up people in other countries with other equipment and ask them to verify that signalâand if it couldnât be verified, we wouldnât believe it ourselves. That makes us different from someone who only has witness testimony of once seeing something in the sky. Thatâs just a story, and stories donât carry a whole lot of weight in science.â [Continue reading ...]( [The Signal]( explores urgent questions in current events around the worldâto support it and for full access: [Subscribe now]( The Signal | 1717 N St. NW, Washington, DC 20011 [Unsubscribe {EMAIL}](
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