Tag: close encounters

Scientists are getting serious about UFOs. Here’s why

For millennia, humans have seen inexplicable things in the sky. Some have been beautiful, some have been terrifying, and some — like auroras and solar eclipses before they were understood scientifically — have been both. Today’s aircraft, balloons, drones, satellites and more only increase the chances of spotting something confounding overhead.

In the United States, unidentified flying objects, or UFOs, came into the national spotlight in the late 1940s and early ’50s. A series of incidents, including a supposedly crashed alien spaceship near Roswell, N.M., generated something of an American obsession. The Roswell UFO turned out to be part of a classified program, the remnants of a balloon monitoring the atmosphere for signs of clandestine Russian nuclear tests. But it and other reported sightings prompted the U.S. government to launch various projects and panels to investigate such claims, as Science News reported in 1966 (SN: 10/22/66), as well as kicking off hobby groups and conspiracy theories.

In the decades since, UFOs have often come to be dismissed by scientists as the province of wackos and thus unworthy of study. The term UFO has a smirk factor to it, says Iain Boyd, an aerospace engineer at the University of Colorado Boulder and director of the school’s Center for National Security Initiatives.

But government agencies and officials are trying to change that attitude. Among the biggest concerns is that the stigma associated with reporting a sighting has the side effect of stifling reports from pilots or citizens who might have valuable information about potential threats in U.S. air space — such as the Chinese spy balloon that traversed North America and made headlines last year.

“If there’s something interfering with flights, people or cargo, that’s a problem,” Boyd says.

To help reduce the stigma, many serious investigators now refer to UFOs as “unidentified anomalous phenomena,” or UAPs, coined by the U.S. Department of Defense in 2022. “The term UAP brings science to the issue,” Boyd says. It also rightly broadens the view to include natural atmospheric phenomena as well as things outside the atmosphere, such as satellites and particularly bright planets such as Venus.

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Why is the Pentagon’s UFO office so clueless about UFOs?

On July 11, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) reintroduced the most extraordinary legislation in American history. The Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Disclosure Act alleges that shadowy elements of the U.S. government have surreptitiously operated “legacy programs” that retrieve and seek to reverse-engineer UFOs of “unknown” or “non-human” origin.

As a remedy, the Disclosure Act would establish a blue-ribbon review board to gradually and strategically release long-withheld UFO-related records publicly via a “controlled disclosure campaign.”

Schumer and Rounds’s reintroduction of the legislation is particularly notable because it was largely gutted, at the request of the Pentagon’s UFO office, by House lawmakers last December. The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) — established in 2022 — also issued repeated categorical denials of the stunning UFO-related activities alleged in the Disclosure Act.

In a lengthy, error-laden report released in March, for example, the office stated that it “found no empirical evidence that the [U.S. government] and private companies have been reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology.”

The reintroduction of the Disclosure Act, in full, is thus a stunning double rebuke of AARO. Notably, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), who led the charge to establish the office, is a cosponsor of the legislation.

Moreover, the Senate Intelligence Committee appears set to require the Government Accountability Office, Congress’s investigative watchdog, to conduct a review of AARO. In other words, key members of Congress — including the senator who established it — appear to have little confidence in the Pentagon’s UFO office.

This should come as no surprise. AARO’s landmark, congressionally-mandated historical review of government involvement with UFOs contains a multitude of errors and omissions, astoundingly poor analytic tradecraft and, in at least one instance, an egregious falsehood.

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UFO breakthrough as two of UK’s most famous cases finally ‘solved’

A British UFO researcher claims to have solved one of the UK’s most intriguing UFO mysteries 34 years after it was spectacularly captured on film.

Dubbed the “Calvine UFO” it was snapped in the Scottish area of the same name by two hikers on August 4 1990.

Six staggering photographs they took are said to show an odd diamond-shaped object in the sky, seemingly tailed by one or two Harrier jets.

The images were reportedly handed to the the Scottish Daily Record by the witnesses for publication.

The newspaper handed the prints and negatives to the Ministry of Defence (MOD) for comment, which is said to have returned them, but bizarrely, the story was never published.

The images and negatives also disappeared.

The story only became public in 1996 when Nick Pope, a former MOD civil servant, responsible for investigating UFO phenomena, wrote an unclassified version of the event in his book, Open Skies Closed Minds.

Mr Pope stated that he had a copy of the photo enlarged on his office wall at the MOD but this was later removed by his superiors.

In August 2022 retired RAF press officer Craig Lindsay released what was purported to be one of the original photos to the press.

A handwritten note on the back, named the photographer as Kevin Russell, but attempts to trace him have so far proved fruitless.

This image was analysed by Andrew Robinson, a senior lecturer at Sheffield Hallum University, who concluded there had been no manipulation of the photographs or editing and it was a genuine print from the time.

But, the question nobody has been able to answer is what was this diamond shaped craft and why was a military jet following it?

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U.S. Marine Corps Releases UAP Information Sharing Policy to The Black Vault

The U.S. Navy / U.S. Marine Corps has released its policy and procedure for sharing UAP-related information with the Department of Defense’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO). This release follows a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by The Black Vault on April 14, 2024, and is similar to a different directive previously released to Mr. Douglas Dean Johnson in March 2024 by the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The FOIA request sought “a copy of records (which includes videos/photos), electronic or otherwise, of all records that pertain to your agency’s policy and procedure on sharing information with the DoD’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO).” This included all policy, procedure, memorandum of understanding, memorandum of agreement, letters, other memos, etc., outlining the Navy’s policy on sharing information at any classification level with the AARO. The request also asked for any procedures adopted from prior efforts such as the UAP Task Force and the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group (AOIMSG).

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‘Clearest UFO photo ever seen of creepy spaceship chased by fighter jet’ uncovered

On August 4, 1990, a pair of hikers embarked on a trek through the Scottish Highlands, unaware that they were about to snap what’s been hailed as the ‘clearest UFO photo ever taken’. The photograph, known as the ‘Calvine photo’ after the nearby hamlet where it was snapped, would go missing and become the subject of myth for thirty years.

However, after 13 years of relentless investigation by Professor David Clarke, a former journalist and now academic at Sheffield Hallam University, the elusive image was finally located. Prof Clarke discovered ex-RAF press officer Craig Lindsay, who had retained a copy of the photograph depicting the extraordinary scene the two hikers witnessed.

In the astonishing image, a sizable saucer-shaped craft is distinctly seen, with a jet fighter seemingly in hot pursuit. The hikers originally handed over the photograph to the Daily Record newspaper in Scotland, but it eventually ended up with the British Ministry of Defence, where it remained shrouded in secrecy until 2022.

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A Way to Solve the UFO Mystery

Can any of us make a difference in finding an explanation for UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects), which are now called Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP), or have we learned helplessness?

It seems that many people think in their heart of hearts that they cannot make a difference in helping identify UFOs or UAPs. Many even giggle when thinking about UFOs.

But what if we could help figure out what the mysterious UFOs are? For that, let’s examine what we know about UFOs:

  • UFOs or UAPs have been described as objects like orbs, spheres, ovals, tic-tac-shaped items, triangles, or simply lights that can go faster than the speed of sound without any sonic boom.
  • They can have sudden accelerations and decelerations with thousands of times the force of gravity, whereas the most agile jet fighters today can accelerate only at nine times the force of gravity.
  • They can go from one medium to another—underwater to midair to space and vice versa.
  • No detectable source of propulsion (no flaps, no rudder) has been detected to explain their movements.
  • They have mostly been observed at altitudes between 5,000 and 35,000 feet.
  • They have been reported around military bases and nuclear facilities. The Pentagon has had UFO or UAP reports from several states of the United States and also from the Middle East and Asia. Other reports have originated from England, Italy, Argentina, Peru, Uruguay, and many other countries.

What can be some possible explanations for UFOs?

In our recently released book, The New Science of UFOs, Dr. Eric Haseltine and I examine most of the possible explanations for UFOs, including optical illusions, natural phenomena, advanced human technology either from the U.S. or from a foreign country, deliberate fakes, and extraterrestrials. We also note that probably not all UAPs have the same explanation.

NASA and other parts of our government say they need more data to reach conclusions.

Could each of us help?

We definitely can help if we get over our learned helplessness and stigma about UFOs.

All over the world, billions of cell phone users can take photographs and videos of what they see. By paying attention to what we see in the sky, each of us can help solve the UFO mystery.

Because as Yogi Berra said, “You can observe a lot by just watching.”

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European UAP Sightings in 2019-2023: Raw Data by Country and Year

The table and charts below represent the raw data of UFO/IFO observations reported to seventeen UAP organizations from eleven European countries where data are available.

These raw data are provided thanks to the contributions of the following organisations listed in Table 1, which belong to the EURO UFO net virtual community, as well as national institutions like GEIPAN (France) and the Italian Air Force (Aeronautica Militare Italiana), which have published their statistics online.     

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Report claims 12 people at Red Rocks saw massive UFO hovering in the sky

Following dozens of Colorado-based UFO reports that have been filed earlier in 2024, four more reports have been added to the list during the month of June. One report on the National UFO Reporting Center website is particularly interesting, featuring a sighting that’s said to have taken place at about 1 a.m. with a dozen witnesses at one of Colorado’s most iconic venues.

A published report of the incident states that in the early morning hours of June 5, 12 observers saw a metallic disk estimated to be “several hundred feet long” in the sky above the Golden-Morrison area. The disk was reportedly spotted by someone who was working at Red Rocks Amphitheater, who pointed it out to other coworkers around him.

As the others turned to look, the account states that the mysterious object was spotted hovering above the treetops on a hogback ridge about a mile or so north of Red Rocks.

According to the report, the large disk had three levels of windows, looking like a “really long three-story office building.” It was totally silent.

The reporting party of the incident also noted that the disc started to slowly tilt before vanishing once observers’ eyes were on it, with the full sighting said to have lasted about 30 seconds.

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Canadian military joined recent U.S. forum on UFOs; Pentagon trying to identify ‘metallic’ orbs

The Canadian military has confirmed it participated in a May 2023 forum for Five Eyes intelligence partners that was held by the director of the Pentagon’s UFO research program.

“Our nation’s militaries routinely exchange information on a number of subjects as part of our long-standing cooperation as partners in defence,” a Canadian National Defence spokesperson told CTVNews.ca. “While the details of the meeting remain classified it can be characterized as the sharing of information on the subject of UAP and no further details can be shared at this time.”

Following decades of denial and dismissal by U.S. authorities, both the Pentagon and NASA are currently studying what they call “unidentified anomalous phenomena” or “UAP,” terms for what are more commonly called “unidentified flying objects” and “UFOs.”

NASA held its first public meeting on UAP(opens in a new tab) last week, nearly a year after launching an independent study(opens in a new tab) into the subject. The 16-member panel included NASA experts and the director of the U.S. Department of Defence’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), which was established in July 2022(opens in a new tab) to expand previous Pentagon UAP research efforts.

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Pentagon official reveals tantalizing seven-minute encounter with glowing blue UFO – which emitted enough energy to ‘power a small city’

A US Department of Defense contractor’s tantalizing encounter with a giant, glowing UFO has sparked 10 years of research and two patents inspired by his encounter.

Three witnesses, including that Pentagon engineer, report that they captured electronic evidence of a ‘barbell’ UFO, half the length of a football field, that glowed an eerie ‘indigo’ blue.

The craft, they said, flew silently over an old logging road in southwestern Ontario, Canada, on August 28, 2013, near where the trio had camped for a hunting trip. 

DailyMail.com spoke with the case’s first investigators, who shared electronic data from the contractor’s attempt to film the object — showing ‘white noise’ pulses in the video that recur in one-second loops identical to strobing light from the UFO itself.

‘The captured data of the event,’ the witness reported, ‘may be the first real physical proof of not just a craft flying, but that it flies by virtue of an incredibly complex and […] powerful spinning electromagnetic propulsion system.’

The case was investigated by the same nanotechnology expert whose analysis of a 2007 mass UFO sighting in Texas became a centerpiece of the Steven Spielberg-produced UFO docuseries ‘Encounters’ last year on Netflix.

‘Is there another ‘barbell’ case we’ve investigated like this?’ that engineer, UFO investigator Robert Powell, told DailyMail.com of this rare case. ‘No, it’s the only one.’

Powell told DailyMail.com that UFO cases with this shape are so rare that only about ’50 to 60 cases’ exist ‘throughout history.’

Powell, whose new book on UFOs has garnered praise from former Defense Department intelligence official Chris Mellon, personally visited the contractor’s lab and worked with him on analyzing the eerie interference on his UFO video.

‘He gave me a tour of the defense facility,’ Powell said, who vetted the source’s identity and biographical claims.

‘There was a heavy duty commercial 3D printer in the lab and there were offices with three or four engineers that worked there beside him in that his building,’ he noted.

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