A committee set up by NASA last year to study what the US government calls “unidentified aerial phenomena”, commonly referred to as UFOs, is holding its first public meeting on Wednesday, ahead of releasing a report in the coming weeks, Reuters reports. by Agerpres.
NASA’s report on the UAP will be published in July
UPDATE 23:30 The NASA team announced that their Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) report will be published in July.
Some phenomena may go unnoticed by astronomers
UPDATE 21:55 Although there are a lot of interesting phenomena that need to be analyzed, many of them may not have been observed.
Currently, there are some substantial limitations to what scientists can observe with the instruments at their disposal, particularly in terms of size.
As Avi Loeb, an astrophysicist, explained to BBC Future, astronomers are able to detect objects with a diameter of around 100-200m, which is roughly the size of a football pitch.
Any smaller object could slip through the space around our planet completely unnoticed.
Many of NASA’s missions take place to investigate whether or not extraterrestrial life exists, experts say
UPDATE 21:30 NASA experts say many of the agency’s missions are aimed at investigating whether or not extraterrestrial life exists.
Observing anomalous events could prove that there are signs of life beyond what is currently known, they say.
But when scientists discover such an anomaly, “we don’t conclude that we’ve discovered life, we look for more data,” adds one of the scientists.
NASA reports that it has found no evidence of extraterrestrial life
UPDATE 19:20 NASA says it has found no evidence of extraterrestrial life.
But he claims that one of his key priorities is “the search for life elsewhere in the Universe”.
“NASA explores the Solar System and beyond to help us answer fundamental questions, including whether we are alone in the Universe,” it said in a statement.
The agency also said it funded “countless” research programs, including several that specifically looked for evidence of extraterrestrial life.
Commercial pilots are very reluctant to report anomalies
UPDATE 19:15 Commercial pilots are very reluctant to report anomalies, says David Spergel, chairman of the NASA team that analyzes UAPs.
These cases are generally underreported, he says, because “there is a stigma among people who report seeing UAP.”
“One of our goals is to remove this stigma,” he adds, “because high-quality data is needed to answer important questions about UAPs.”
UAP data is often difficult to interpret and decipher, and in some cases can be easily distorted.
Spergel says this happened in Australia, where researchers mistook a microwave for radio signals.
“What had happened was that the people in the observatory were heating up their lunch in the microwave oven. This produced a burst of radio signals that was picked up by the sensitive detectors,” adds Spergel.
Also, NASA’s research into UAPs is limited by the number of sensors it has.
This is partly a result of the fact that there are privacy concerns from the American public.
NASA’s UAP research is based on unclassified data
UPDATE 19:00 NASA’s UAP research is based on unclassified data that may be released to the public.
Classified data, according to Nicola Fox, is often kept secret because of the “sensor platforms” involved from the US military.
“If a fighter jet took a photo of the Statue of Liberty, then it would be classified. Not because of the photo, but because of the sensors on the plane,” she said. Unclassified data also allows NASA to “communicate openly” within the organization, within the scientific community, and with the public.
NASA is aware of the widespread interest in UAP
UPDATE 18:45 Dan Evans, from NASA, explained why the space agency is analyzing the presence of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), according to the BBC.
One reason, he says, is that it “raises issues about the safety of our skies.”
“We need to determine whether they pose a risk to aviation safety to ensure our skies remain safe,” he added.
Speaking at the start of the event, Evans said the agency is aware of the broad public interest in UAPs.
Transparent and publicly available research, he added, aims for an “open and honest” dialogue with the public.
“The demand for answers is strong,” he said, adding that scientific data is essential to “separate fact from fiction.”
Scientists are being harassed online
Scientists working on the study of UAPs are being harassed online for studying this topic.
NASA’s Nicola Fox says this is “disheartening” and stigmatizes the UAP’s field of study.
The public has a right to know what’s going on, she says, and the harassment of these scientists prevents that from happening.
Initial news: That 16-member committee, bringing together experts in fields ranging from physics to astrobiology, was formed last year to catalog unclassified UFO incidents and other data collected from civilian government bodies and commercial sectors.
The objective of Wednesday’s public meeting, which will last four hours, “is to hold final deliberations before the agency’s independent team publishes a report this summer,” NASA said in a statement announcing the meeting.
The committee’s work represents the first investigation ever coordinated under the auspices of the US space agency into a subject the government has previously considered the sole purview of military and national security officials.
The NASA study is separate from the recently formalized investigation by the Pentagon regarding the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP), documented in recent years by military aviators and analyzed by the intelligence and defense services of the United States.
The parallel efforts by NASA and the Pentagon – both conducted under apparent public scrutiny – mark a turning point for the US government after decades of diverting public attention, denying and discrediting reports of sightings of unidentified flying objects (UFOs). , dating back to the 1940s.
The term “UFO”, long associated with the notions of “flying saucers” and “aliens”, has been replaced in government discourse by “UAP”.
While NASA’s science mission is seen by some as a promise for a more open approach to a subject long treated as taboo by the defense sector, the US space agency has made it clear from the start that it is not yet there to no conclusion.
“There is no evidence that UAPs are of extraterrestrial origin,” NASA said when it announced the creation of this committee in June 2022.
In its most recent announcements, the US agency presented a new potential interpretation of the acronym “UAP”, referring to it as an abbreviation for “unidentified anomalous phenomena”. The new name suggests that observations targeting other than aerial phenomena could also be included in this phrase.
However, in announcing Wednesday’s meeting, NASA said the US space agency defines “UAPs” as “observations of events in the sky that cannot be identified as known aircraft or as known natural phenomena from a scientific perspective.” .
Defense officials in the United States have said that the Pentagon’s recent initiative to investigate such sightings has led to hundreds of new reports that are currently being reviewed, most of which remain classified as unexplained.
The director of the Pentagon’s new All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) said that the existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life forms has not been ruled out, but that no observations have yet provided evidence of extraterrestrial origins.
Editor: Bianca Chirilă
