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UFOs are almost certainly not alien visitors buzzing in Earth’s skies, but NASA is still funding a study that will look at unexplained views with an open mind.
NASA’s associate director of science, Thomas Zurbuchen, said in a presentation Thursday to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine that the study will seek to scientifically examine what the federal government calls unidentified weather phenomena, or UAPs.
The study, which will cost less than $100,000 and begin in the fall, “will focus on identifying current data, how best to collect future data, and how NASA can use this data to advance scientific understanding of UAPs,” Dr. Zurbuchen said at a phone press conference Thursday afternoon.
Dr. Examining UFO reports could be a “high-risk, high-impact kind of investigation,” possibly revealing an entirely new scientific phenomenon, or possibly finding nothing new or interesting, Zurbuchen said.
Luis Elizondo, a military intelligence official for many years, a little-noticed group ran It’s within the Pentagon, called the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program. The Pentagon said the program was shut down in 2012, but supporters of the program said its work continues. Pentagon in 2021, create a new task force to look into the matter After a report mandated by Congress, it was found that there was not enough data for many observed events.
hour A House subcommittee hearing last month, Pentagon officials testified about military reports of unexplained phenomena, including a reflective spherical object speeding past a warplane. Officials said there was no evidence that these phenomena were extraterrestrial in nature.
NASA’s efforts will be independent of the Pentagon and will be led by David Spergel, an astrophysicist who is currently president of the Simons Foundation in New York and funds basic research work in mathematics and the sciences. NASA has yet to select other scientists to participate in the research.
NASA research will also consider other explanations, such as natural phenomena or unknown advanced technology developed by Russia, China or other countries.
Dr. “Obviously, I think there’s a new science to explore,” Zurbuchen said.
After nine months of study, Dr. Zurbuchen did not expect definitive answers. But he said the effort will help to catalog existing data and ask what other data needs to be collected.
“It’s for a research program that we can implement later,” he said.
Dr. Zurbuchen said many scientists may view UFO research as “not real science,” but it’s important to address controversial questions.
NASA now has a strong program in astrobiology – looking at life elsewhere in the solar system and galaxy – but does almost no study on the possibility of intelligent civilizations sharing our universe.
The gap reflects decades of Congressional skepticism. In 1978, Senator William Proxmire of Wisconsin awarded one of the “Golden Fleece” awards to NASA’s humble SETI program, highlighting what he called a waste of taxpayer money. In 1992, NASA started a radio astronomy program to search for radio signals from alien civilizations, but Congress canceled the effort the following year.
Since then, systematic studies of alien civilizations have been mostly privately funded efforts, such as those conducted by the SETI Institute in California and Breakthrough Listen. This initiative at the Berkeley SETI Research Center is funded by Yuri Milner, a Russian-born billionaire technology investor based in the United States.
During the press conference, Dr. Zurbuchen pointed to NASA research that is trying to identify potential “techno-signatures” — signs of a technological civilization — in astronomical observations. Such signs may include air pollution in the atmospheres of distant planets.
Dr. “We deliberately included this in our research portfolio,” Zurbuchen said.
But Seth Shostak, an astronomer at the SETI Institute, said he doubted NASA would spend millions of dollars on SETI again because its last program was canceled in 1993.
Dr. “NASA has since stayed out of the SETI game because it believes there is no room in its budget for a program that is often seen as a metal duck in the shooting gallery,” Shostak said in an email.
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