The American Night Sky

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Unclassified

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What accounts for the U.S. governm= ent’s revived interest in UFOs? Seth Shostak on stra= nge events, human psychology, and alien life.

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Artem Kovalev

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(Originally published 2022 | 0= 6.24)

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=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09For the first time in = more than half a century, the U.S. Congress held a hearing in May = on unidentified flying objects—or as the American government now offi= cially refers to them, “unidentified aerial phenomena.” Members= of the House of Representatives discussed the mysterious happenings as pot= ential threats to national security, a serious issue the U.S. government ne= eds to address with more transparency—and without the longstanding st= igma 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 ob= jects they came across over the years—though the military has been wo= rking to encourage reporting in its ongoing, and increasingly public, effor= ts to understand and explain sightings.
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Since the early 2000s, according t= o U.S. Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence Scott Bray, the United States = has seen “an increasing number of unauthorized and/or unidentified ai= rcraft or objects” in military training areas and other designated ai= r 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. M= eanwhile, it’s clear that Congress, the military, and the intelligenc= e community aren’t the only elements of the U.S. government paying at= tention. In early June, NASA announced it would begin its own independent s= tudy of “observations of events in the sky that cannot be identified = as aircraft or known natural phenomena—from a scientific perspective.= ” What’s behind these investigations, and where are they leadin= g?
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Seth Shostak is a= senior astronomer at the SETI Institute, in Mountain View, California, whi= ch is dedicated to the “search for extraterrestrial intelligence&rdqu= o; in the universe. According to Shostak, Congress’ renewed interest = in UFOs followed public revelations in 2017 about Pentagon research into th= e subject and puzzling U.S. Navy videos of apparent objects in the skies. S= hostak says American military and intelligence authorities are now trying t= o make investigating and communicating about these objects a higher priorit= y–responding to increased public curiosity and new directions from Wa= shington—though officials’ recent public statements demonstrate= how many questions about UFOs remain unanswered. Shostak sees no evidence = supporting theories of their connection to extraterrestrial visitors, but h= e says more openness and transparency from the American government—so= mething NASA’s new investigation especially holds the promise of&mdas= h;will help keep such theories from taking off into elaborate stories about= conspiracies and cover-ups.

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Graham Vyse: How = did the American government become so concerned with these occurrences?
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=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09Seth Shostak:= It goes back to 2017, when The New York Times published an article featuri= ng 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 couldn&= rsquo;t be identified. It seemed like the government had evidence of things= in our skies other than what we already know is up there.
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=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09To many in the UFO community&m= dash;by which I mean at least a third of Americans, who believe Earth has b= een visited by alien spacecraft—this was a chance for the government = to prove it was honest and not withholding information from the public. The= fact that a reputable source—the Navy—had evidence of this str= ange phenomenon created pressure for investigations.
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=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09Vyse: What ex= actly did the videos show?

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Shostak: They all= came from cameras on Navy planes—infrared cameras used to target ene= my aircraft. They showed these shapes—round blobs, or blobs that look= like peanuts, or blobs resembling Tic Tac mints. Sometimes the things woul= d disappear, swinging out of the field of view at what’s apparently a= very high speed. Now, that “apparently” is important, because = you can’t judge speed unless you know the distance of these things, b= ut the pilots—whose voices can be heard in the videos—clearly d= idn’t know what they were.
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Vyse: The Times s= tory also described a secret Pentagon program that had investigated UFO rep= orts for many years. What effect did the public revelation of this program = have?
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Shostak: It appea= red 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.
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=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09The report had two parts&mdash= ;a public portion and a classified portion. The public portion was really a= nodyne—really milquetoast. It basically said, We don’t unde= rstand a lot of these things. Not one word of it referred to the possi= bility that these objects might be extraterrestrial crafts. Even so, many i= n the UFO community thought the classified portion of the report had eviden= ce of extraterrestrials. That’s the thing about conspiratorial argume= nts—you can’t disprove them.
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Vyse: In public d= ebates about UFOs, what are the most common explanations you hear for what = they might be?
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Shostak: There ar= e three types of explanations put forward for those Navy UFO videos. There = are the prosaic explanations—that, for instance, we could be seeing t= he exhaust of a commercial jet. Another type of explanation is that we coul= d be looking at an aircraft from another country—maybe drones sent to= spy on American military exercises—but that strikes me as implausibl= e. Other countries are checking out what the U.S. Navy is doing off the coa= st of San Diego? It could be, I suppose.
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Then, of course, there are the exp= lanations 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 spendin= g all your time looking at a place where they manufacture swords—it m= ight be interesting, but it’s of no real importance.

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Gabriele Motter

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More from Seth Shostak at The = Signal:
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=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09“I don’t t= hink the government is malevolent on these issues. I don’t t= hink they’re trying to hide anything. In fact, they couldn’t hi= de anything. I mean, how could aliens have arranged things such that only t= he U.S. government could find evidence for their presence? What about all t= he other countries in the world? What about the fact that there’s rad= ar for commercial aviation all around the globe? There are 100,000 flights = a day, and they need to know what’s up in the air. If something were = visiting us in their airspace, honestly, commercial aviation would grind to= a halt. They’d stop putting planes in the sky until they figured out= what it was.”
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=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09“Historically, t= he U.S. government hasn’t been all that interested in UFOs. = In the 1940s and 1950s, there were a number of government studies—Pro= ject Blue Book, Project Sign, Project Grudge—but none of those invest= igations claimed to have found anything interesting. They were ultimately d= iscontinued, in part because of how much money they cost. … Several = U.S. presidents have talked about UFOs—and before they were elected, = even promised the electorate they’d look into the issue. They know th= ere’s a constituency for that, even if it’s not important to mo= st Americans. It gratifies certain people who think the government knows mo= re than it’s telling the public.”
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=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09“I believe alien= s are out there, yes. We at the SETI Institute are trying to find = them, but we don’t claim we’ve found anything yet, which sets u= s apart from the UFO crowd. If we were to find a signal made by a transmitt= er that we believed was truly extraterrestrial, we’d immediately call= up people in other countries with other equipment and ask them to verify t= hat signal—and if it couldn’t be verified, we wouldn’t be= lieve it ourselves. That makes us different from someone who only has witne= ss testimony of once seeing something in the sky. That’s just a story= , and stories don’t carry a whole lot of weight in science.” =09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09

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