“It makes perfect sense,” one official who is currently advising the military on the issue said, noting that Space Force’s responsibilities are more global than the other branches of the military, which gives U.S. Space Command access to advanced surveillance technologies.
For more than seven decades, highly credible witnesses and sophisticated sensors observed mysterious objects flying in ways that defy easy explanation. But until recently, former presidents, top intelligence officials, members of Congress and pilots had never spoken so openly about UFOs — or the possibility of extraterrestrial life.
Scientists who study extraterrestrial intelligence actually have a few questions about us.
On June 25 of this year, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a brief report entitled “Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.”
UFO hunters have been watching the skies in growing numbers since the Roswell incident in 1947, when rumors spread that a crash site in New Mexico — reported to be that of a U.S. Army air balloon — was, in fact, that of an extraterrestrial aircraft (via History).
The search for life beyond Earth has long inspired all and some — and eyerolls in others. But in recent years, new reporting has made it clear that there really have been hard-to-explain encounters between humans and something that may be operating technology that seems straight out of science fiction. One scientist who’s taking the search seriously is Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb, who joined GBH’s All Things Considered Friday. He’s the leader of the new Galileo Project, which will be looking into space for possible evidence of extraterrestrial civilization. What follows is a lightly edited transcript.
Five reasons why sorting all of this out is so scientifically challenging
In October 2019, U.S. Navy Commander David Fravor, who was the subject of a New York Times article about his 2004 UFO sighting, discussed a spooky new sighting a fellow pilot revealed to him after they were both out of the Navy.
Are there intelligent extraterrestrial civilizations capable of building technologies that can travel between the stars? An international research project is poised to find out.
UFOs have been in the news a lot lately. I am a research astronomer who has written and edited books and created a free online course about the search for life in the universe. While I think we are making progress on detecting life beyond Earth, I view UFOs from a skeptical standpoint, since the evidence that they represent aliens visiting the Earth is unconvincing.
