UFO enthusiasts and skeptics alike awaited the release of a tranche of documents from the Department of War on the phenomenon the government calls "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon (UAP)," which the rest of us know and love as UFOs.
UFO skeptic Adam Frank was unimpressed.
"Taken as a whole, it’s the kind of thing we’ve seen for decades: fuzzy images; unverifiable personal testimony; no hard evidence," Frank writes in Everyman's Universe.
"Given the explosive congressional hearings we've seen where witnesses claim the government has lots of crashed alien spaceships and dead alien bodies, I was kinda hoping for a whole lot more," he said.
"It was all just so… boring."
I found some of the "evidence" silly and some of it profoundly unexplainable. As Frank says, it's the same kind of "evidence" we've seen for decades. Nothing verifiable. Simply phenomena that defy explanation and resist any evidentiary conclusion.
Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb is a UFO believer. Loeb is seeking alien technology using the sensors and telescopes of his Harvard-sanctioned Galileo Project. The project includes true believers like Rear Admiral Timothy Gallaudet (whose enthusiasm sometimes leads him down very unscientific paths, including believing in the existence of Atlantis) as well as skeptics like Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptical Inquirer.
Loeb and his team reviewed the recently released documents.
So what did Loeb find in this latest release? He told me he and his team took Trump’s advice and had fun with it. Always an optimist, he said, “The best is yet to come, because higher quality data will take more vetting by layers of government bureaucracy before it is released.”
“The biggest impact of today’s release is psychological: This topic deserves to be within the mainstream of public or scientific discourse,” he told me. “Like any detective story, the mystery can be resolved with high-quality evidence.”
But of course we’re still waiting for that high-quality evidence to emerge, as Loeb freely admits.
“After reviewing the new files, my research team concluded that none of the objects is sufficiently extraordinary to require an exotic origin. Interesting details regarding the videos are unfortunately redacted, and all images could be explained as either reflections in the camera optics or human-made objects,” he told me.
Frank suggests that if we're going to be shown objects moving in extraordinary ways, show us the proof.
"If UAPs have made inhuman aerial maneuvers, then show us the actual radar data, including the radar systems used, so that independent researchers can plot trajectories and see whether anything involved really did break the laws of physics," Frank writes.
Most of the evidence from airborne radar is from FLIR (Forward-Looking Infrared) thermal imaging technology. It senses infrared radiation (heat) and creates an image based on temperature differences between an object and its background.
Most of the military footage comes from the AN/ASQ-228 ATFLIR (Advanced Targeting Forward-Looking Infrared) pods used on Navy F/A-18 Super Hornets.
Skeptics like Frank argue that without corresponding radar data, FLIR footage can be misleading. Thermal artifacts, "glare," or even distant jet engines can look like "inhuman" objects when viewed through an infrared lens without the distance and speed data that a radar provides.
The AN/ASQ-228 ATFLIR is an incredible piece of technology. It allows pilots to track objects that are otherwise invisible to the naked eye. The ATFLIR is obviously great for targeting and shooting down enemy fighters. Tracking UFOs? Not so much.
We are going to find evidence of aliens in the near future. As our means of discovering their sophisticated technologies improve, we will be able to detect them. Are any of them here on Earth? Do they visit us? Do they live among us?
Perhaps we're not looking in the right place.
Strange objects that have appeared either underwater or were transmedium—transitioning instantaneously from water to air or vice-versa—have gone largely unexplained, if not denied. The possibilities of what they could be may stretch far beyond human understanding. Could they be underwater UAPs, otherwise known as underwater submerged objects, or USOs?
“We are pretty convinced these craft are operated by higher-order intelligence that is not human,” Gallaudet says. “I don’t believe they’re of the natural world as we know it. They may come from Earth, but I don’t believe they belong to the plant and animal kingdoms as we know them.”
The odds that intelligent aliens exist somewhere are very good. We are not alone. Whether they've visited us is the question most of us want proof of before believing.
