Page 11 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - September 2021

No Reason To Conclude Aliens In UFOs 11

Sure UFOs Exist. But

There’s No Reason To

Conclude That Aliens Are

Flying Them

by Marc Kaufman

It seems to happen with some regularity.
Claims that Unidentified Flying Objects are
visiting us have captured the public imagination
once more and a big reveal is expected soon.

That will come, oddly, from a government
report required to be released by the end of June
that will supposedly detail the many sightings
made by high-flying military pilots and
unexplained detections by satellites. The
requirement was added to the Covid relief
package that was passed by Congress in
December and orders the Department of
Defense and the Office of the Director of
National Intelligence to release their
recommendations about a next grand on the show.
unclassified findings on the subject, information
observatory for the 2030s.
that has been apparently collected for decades.
What’s more, various political and intelligence
Two of the four concepts being considered — figures have hinted that there is much more
In terms of national defense, these reports could
LUVOIR and HabEx— have as a primary unclassified and also highly classified material
indeed be meaningful. If other nations are
mission the study of exoplanets and their about UFO sightings.
sending drones or satellites of some sort (true
habitability and potentially whether they are
UFOs) to get close to and study American
home to some form of extant life. All these fuzzy photos and firsthand accounts
assets, then that’s important news.
make for good stories, but science they are not.
The report to be formally released later this When it comes to real findings about
But, of course, the UFO drama is
month comes after four years of government extraterrestrial life, that is the very
overwhelmingly about something else: The
acknowledgements of unexplained sightings interdisciplinary realm of astrobiology,
claimed presence of intelligent aliens that are
and will be the most direct and substantive U.S. planetary science, geochemistry, radio
scoping out Earth for reasons ranging from awe-
government account of what officials call astronomy and more.
inspiring or extremely worrisome.
unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) ever
made public. To be science requires a method that includes an
The report — which sources say concludes that
ability to replicate a finding, as well as a
there is insufficient evidence to confirm or
It must by statute include “detailed analysis of hypothesis that can be confirmed or refuted. If
conclusively rule out extraterrestrial UFO
unidentified aerial phenomena data and a finding by its very nature cannot be
sightings — will no doubt be widely consumed
intelligence” collected by the Office of Naval disconfirmed — and nobody will ever have
by a population with many “UFO believers.”
Intelligence, the FBI, and the Unidentified evidence about the alleged presence of aliens in
After all, a 2019 Gallup poll found that 33
Aerial Phenomena Task Force. (This is a this flying objects — then it isn’t science.
percent of American adults said that alien
program the Department of Defense created last
spacecraft from distant planets and galaxies
summer to “detect, analyze and catalog UAPs We’ve just gone through a period when science
have been visiting us.
that could potentially pose a threat to U.S. was often disregarded in favor of belief, and I
national security.”) see this UFO craze as a continuation of that.
I find all this to be not only unfortunate but also
Unless, that is, the flying objects can be
misguided and potentially damaging. The
The report will likely provide details on several determined to be spy assets of another nation.
moment will pass with no intelligent aliens
UFO sightings by Navy pilots that were
identified, and then will return again some time
reported in the New York Times in 2017, and The many people skeptical of alien UFO reports
in the future for another round.
later declassified by the Pentagon. The pilots point to the ways that a very fast-flying jet pilot
reported breathlessly about the shape of the can “see” something that is a common optical
he potential damage is to the very real, very
aircraft — often referred to as Tic-Tac or cigar- space illusion or a radar-confounding collection
challenging, very cutting-edge science being
shaped — and were alarmed by high speeds and of objects. And what looks like a UFO can be a
conducted around the world that seeks to
abrupt stops they identified, with no apparent natural phenomenon or an entirely benign flying
identify actual signs of actual extraterrestrial
propulsion systems identified. object.
life in the cosmos, or at least to know what to
look for when we have space telescopes and
Another Navy pilot reported being met by what And then there’s this logical question: If all
instruments with the necessary power.
seemed to be a strange object hovering in these alien space ships are circling the Earth,
restricted airspace off the Atlantic Coast. The why don’t some of them land or otherwise make
And I’m concerned that a focus on UFOs
pilot told “60 Minutes” that he was stunned their presence known?
imagined to be carrying intelligent alien life
because there was no exhaust plume, no visible
takes away from the hard-won seriousness of
engine and all the makings of something secret This line of thought circles back to the famous
their enormous and so compelling scientific
and maybe dangerous. “Fermi Paradox.”
effort. This is especially true now that the
scientific search for extraterrestrial life is on the
The same spacecraft is seen by various Navy (Continued on Page 12)
front burner for the National Academy of
pilots almost every day, pilot Ryan Graves said
Sciences, which will soon make