The Pentagon Report could be a stepping stone to proper UFO science
Better data collection on UFOs is needed
What’s in the UFO report?
The No. 1 thing the report focuses on is the lack of high-quality data. Here are the highlights from theslender nine-page report, covering a total of 144 UAP sightings from U.S. government sources between 2004 and 2021:
UFOs are taboo among scientists
UFO means unidentified flying object. Nothing more, nothing less. You’d think scientists would enjoy the challenge of solving this puzzle. Instead, UFOs have been taboo for academic scientists to investigate, and so unexplained reports have not received the scrutiny they deserve.
One reason is that most scientists think there isless to most reports than meets the eye, and the few who have dug deeply have mostlydebunked the phenomenon.Over half of sightings can be attributedto meteors, fireballs, and the planet Venus.
Another reason for the scientific hesitance is that UFOs have been co-opted by popular culture. They are part of a landscape of conspiracy theories that includes accounts ofabduction by aliensandcrop circles. Scientists worry about their professional reputations, and the association of UFOs with these supernatural stories causes most researchers to avoid the topic.
But some scientists have looked. In 1968, Edward U. Condon at the University of Colorado published thefirst major academic study of UFO sightings. The Condon Report put a damper on further research when it found that “nothing has come from the study of UFOs in the past 21 yearsthat has added to scientific knowledge.”
However, areview in 1998by a panel led by Peter Sturrock, a professor of applied physics at Stanford University, concluded that some sightings are accompanied by physical evidence that deserves scientific study. Sturrock alsosurveyed professional astronomersand found that nearly half thought UFOs were worthy of scientific study, with higher interest among younger and more well-informed astronomers.
If astronomers are intrigued by UFOs – and believe some cases deserve study with academic rigor – what’s holding them back? Ahistory of mistrustbetween ufologists and scientists hasn’t helped. And while UFO research has employedsome of the tools of the scientific method, it has not had the core of skeptical, evidence-based reasoning that demarcates science frompseudoscience.
A search of 90,000 recent and currentgrants awardedby the National Science Foundation finds none addressing UFOs or related phenomena. I’ve served on review panels for 35 years, and can imagine the reaction if such a proposal came up for peer review: raised eyebrows and a quick vote not to fund.
A decadeslong search for aliens
While the scientific community has almost entirely avoided engaging with UFOs, a much more mainstream search for intelligent aliens and their technology has been going on for decades.
The search is motivated by the fact that astronomers have, to date, discoveredover 4,400 planets orbiting other stars. Called exoplanets, some are close to the Earth’s mass and at just the right distance from their stars to potentially have water on their surfaces – meaning they might be habitable.
Astronomers estimate that there are300 million habitable worldsin the Milky Way galaxy alone, and each one is apotential opportunityfor life to develop and for intelligence and technology to emerge. Indeed, most astronomers think it very unlikely thathumans are the only or the first advanced civilization.
This confidence has fueled an activesearch for extraterrestrial intelligence, known as SETI. It has been unsuccessful so far. As a result, researchers have recast the question “Are we alone?” to “Where are the aliens?” The absence of evidence for intelligent aliens is called theFermi paradox. First articulated by the physicist Enrico Fermi, it’s a paradox because advanced civilizations should be spread throughout the galaxy, yet we see no sign of their existence.
The SETI activity has not been immune from scientists’criticism. It was starved of federal funding for decades and recently has gotten most of its support fromprivate sources. However, in 2020, NASAresumed funding for SETI, and the new NASA administrator wants researchers topursue the topic of UFOs.
In this context, the Pentagon report is welcome. The report drawsfew concrete conclusionsabout UFOs and avoids any reference to aliens or extraterrestrial spacecraft. However, it notes the importance of destigmatizing UFOs so that more pilots report what they see. It also sets a goal of moving from anecdotal observations to standardized and scientific data collection. Time will tell if this is enough to draw scientists into the effort, but the transparency to publish the report at all reverses a long history ofsecrecy surrounding U.S. government reports on UFOs.
I don’t see any convincing evidence of alien spacecraft, but as a curious scientist, I hope the subset of UFO sightings that are truly unexplained gets closer study. Scientists are unlikely to weigh in if their skepticism generates attacks from “true believers” or they get ostracized by their colleagues. Meanwhile, the truth is still out there.
This article byChrisImpey, University Distinguished Professor of Astronomy,University ofArizona is republished fromThe Conversationunder a Creative Commons license. Read theoriginal article.
Story byThe Conversation
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