NASA UFO panel in first public meeting says better data needed
Send a link to a friend
[June 01, 2023]
By Joey Roulette and Steve Gorman
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Members of an independent NASA panel studying
UFOs, or what the U.S. government now terms UAP for "unidentified
anomalous phenomena," said in their first public meeting on Wednesday
that scant high-quality data and a lingering stigma pose the greatest
barriers to unraveling such mysteries.
The 16-member body, formed last year among leading experts from
scientific fields ranging from physics to astrobiology, held a four-hour
session streamed live on a NASA webcast to deliberate their preliminary
findings ahead of issuing a report expected later this summer.
The panel's chairman, astrophysicist David Spergel, said his team's role
was "not to resolve the nature of these events," but rather to give NASA
a "roadmap" to guide future analysis.
NASA officials said several panelists had been subjected to unspecified
"online abuse" and harassment since beginning their work in June last
year.
"It is really disheartening to hear of the harassment that our panelists
have faced online because they're studying this topic," NASA's science
chief, Nicola Fox, said in her opening remarks. "Harassment only leads
to further stigmatization."
The greatest challenge panel members cited, however, was a dearth of
scientifically reliable methods for documenting UFOs, typically
sightings of what appear as objects moving in ways that defy the bounds
of known technologies and laws of nature.
The underlying problem, they said, is that the phenomena in question are
generally being detected and recorded with cameras, sensors and other
equipment not designed or calibrated to accurately observe and measure
such peculiarities.
"If I were to summarize in one line what I feel we've learned, it's we
need high-quality data," Spergel said. "The current existing data and
eyewitness reports alone are insufficient to provide conclusive evidence
about the nature and origin of every UAP event."
Taboos surrounding the issue also remain.
While the Pentagon in recent years has encouraged military aviators to
document UAP events, many commercial pilots remain "very reluctant to
report" them due to the lingering stigma surrounding such sightings,
Spergel said.
The NASA advisory panel represents the first UFO inquiry ever conducted
under the auspices of the U.S. space agency for a subject the government
once consigned to the exclusive and secretive purview of military and
national security officials.
PENTAGON-BASED INVESTIGATION
The NASA study is separate from a newly formalized Pentagon-based
investigation of sightings reported in recent years by military aviators
and analyzed by U.S. defense and intelligence officials.
[to top of second column]
|
Workers pressure wash the logo of NASA
on the Vehicle Assembly Building before SpaceX will send two NASA
astronauts to the International Space Station aboard its Falcon 9
rocket, at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida,
U.S., May 19, 2020. REUTERS/Joe Skipper/File Photo
The U.S. military has documented more than 800 cases over the past
two decades, said Sean Kirkpatrick, director of the Pentagon's newly
formed All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO.
But just a few percent are considered beyond relatively simple
explanation, while the rest can be attributed to mundane origins
such as aircraft, balloons, debris or atmospheric causes, he said.
The parallel NASA and Pentagon efforts highlight a turning point for
the government after decades spent deflecting, debunking and
discrediting reports of unidentified flying objects, or UFOs, dating
back to the 1940s.
But in finally addressing the issue head-on, both NASA and the
Pentagon have emphasized the imperative of protecting U.S. airspace,
and by extension public safety and natural security.
In a departure from the Pentagon, NASA's panel is examining only
unclassified reports from civilian observers, an approach Spergel
said permits open sharing of information among scientific,
commercial and international entities, as well as the public.
The term UFOs, long widely associated with notions of flying saucers
and aliens, has been replaced in official government parlance by the
abbreviation UAP.
Recent U.S. law revised the UAP acronym, previously confined to
"aerial" phenomena, to stand for "unidentified anomalous phenomena,"
expanding the NASA study team's research scope to include puzzling
events in space or at sea.
Panel members said the majority of their work still focused on
aerial phenomena.
Moreover, both NASA and defense-intelligence officials have stressed
that while the existence of intelligent alien life has not been
ruled out, they have found no evidence suggesting an
extraterrestrial origin for UFO sightings.
"To make the claim that we see something that is evidence of
non-human intelligence would require extraordinary evidence, and we
have not seen that," Spergel said.
(Reporting by Joey Roulette in Washington and Steve Gorman in Los
Angeles; Editing by Robert Birsel, Bill Berkrot and Himani Sarkar)
[© 2023 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.]This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content. |