The NASA advisory board tasked with studying unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) held its first public meeting on Wednesday, and it was quite the event! The team discussed their plan for writing a report on UAPs, which is scheduled to be released later this year. While many topics were covered, the team made it clear that they were not specifically searching for aliens.
Dan Evans, the assistant deputy associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, emphasized that there is no convincing evidence for extraterrestrial life associated with UAPs. During the four-hour livestreamed meeting, the team discussed the significant barriers to uncovering the nature of UAPs, including insufficient data and stigma surrounding the topic.
The panel chairman, David Spergel, stated that the team’s role was not to resolve the nature of these events but to create a roadmap for NASA that could potentially guide future inquiries into the topic. NASA formed the UAP team in 2022 with 16 experts in scientific disciplines like physics and astrobiology to investigate “observations of events in the sky that cannot be identified as aircraft or as known natural phenomena.”
In the past, unexplained objects in the sky were referred to as UFOs, but US officials later changed the initialism to “UAP” to avoid the sci-fi stigma associated with the UFO term. The US government redefined the “A” in UAP to mean “anomalous” and expanded the definition to include phenomena that might occur underwater or in space.
Public interest in UAPs has spiked in recent years due to leaks of US Navy videos, high-profile articles in The New York Times, and coverage of a 2004 incident by 60 Minutes. The new round of UAP mania resulted in many high-ranking US government officials, including former President Obama, making public remarks about the unusual nature of unknown objects apparently flying in US airspace.
Unlike previous government approaches, which historically placed the investigation of UAP under military or national security control, NASA’s civilian panel marks a departure. The NASA panel is solely scrutinizing unclassified reports from civilian observers, unlike the Pentagon’s ongoing study of UAP sightings reported by military aviators.
During the meeting, the UAP panel members expressed their frustration with attempting to study ill-defined phenomena. Mike Gold, the executive vice president of Civil Space and External Affairs at Redwire, stated, “We don’t even know that we’re looking for a needle.” It’s clear that there is still much to learn about UAPs, and the NASA team is dedicated to uncovering the truth.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Science Panel on Extraterrestrial Life has issued a report finding that there is no convincing evidence of extraterrestrial life linked to unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs).
The Chairman of the committee, Alan Stern, said the panel conducted an extensive review of scientific literature, open-source materials, and government assessments of unidentified aerial phenomena. The panel consisted of experts from a wide array of fields including astrophysics, geology, engineering, and astronomy.
The report concluded that, while there are many reports of UAPs, there is no evidence of their origin nor any evidence of their belonging to extraterrestrial civilizations. The panel stated that UAPs, while still unexplained, are likely the result of technological innovations in terrestrial aviation and/or natural phenomena in the atmosphere and geospace.
The mission of the committee was to ‘spur scientific progress towards understanding the physical properties of UAPs, contributing to a fuller understanding of their origin, and help lay groundwork for prediction of their impact on aviation safety in the future.’
The panel acknowledged that at this time, with available information, it is not possible to draw definitive conclusions about the origins of UAPs or their connection to extraterrestrial life. However, the panel believes that continued research and observations of UAPs could be useful for advancing our knowledge of natural phenomena in the atmosphere and geospace.
In light of the findings of the NASA Science Panel, US officials are emphasizing that UAPs remain unexplained but there is currently no evidence of extraterrestrial life linked to UAPs. They are hopeful that more research in the field of UAPs can help to further our understanding of the phenomena.
