“UFO’s”

The Pentagon discovers it’s not the flying saucers but their admirers who may be the real security threat.

Reader Lex Fridman apparently has an extensive knowledge of and enthusiasm for UFO sightings, and also an appreciation of ants judging by his personal email address and avatar.

And yet he assures me he’s not Lex Fridman the MIT computer scientist and webcaster who also has a deep knowledge of and enthusiasm for UFO sightings, and has exhibited an admiration of ants in his social-media posts.

He asks some questions, though: “How much did they pay you to write this trash? Do you still have a gag reflex or did they take that along with the journalistic integrity?” He closes with a scatological insult, which, in an undeserved favor to him, I don’t repeat.

I’d say you could call this guy a skeptic.

Under one provision of the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act, the Pentagon’s UFO (or UAP) investigative office was ordered to produce a report on their activities to Congress, presumably with an unclassified version for the public by Halloween of this year. It turns out that the trick was on us because that particular treat still hasn’t shown up nearly two months later. That office, currently known as the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), may have noticed that people were beginning to speculate as to what was causing the delay, so they held a conference call yesterday to take questions from the press. They attempted to assure everyone that they weren’t stalling on purpose or engaging in yet another coverup when it comes to the subject of UFOs. The office has only barely gotten on its feet and they’re trying to get up to speed as quickly as they can. But they still revealed a few interesting tidbits during the call. One of those was an admission that they have received literally hundreds of new UFO reports from both military and civilian witnesses since opening their doors.

A new preprint paper published to the arXiv database suggests that intelligent extraterrestrials might not find planets that host life particularly interesting. If life has evolved on many planets in the galaxy, then aliens are probably more interested in the ones where there are signs not just of biology but technology, study author Amri Wandel, an astrophysicist at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, wrote in the paper. The paper is yet to be peer-reviewed.

The study explores the Fermi paradox, which holds that given the age of the universe, it’s likely that intelligent aliens would have developed long-distance space travel by now, and thus it’s likely that they would have visited Earth. The fact that they haven’t (as far as we know) may be evidence that there is no other intelligent life in the Milky Way galaxy.

The U.S. government currently appears to be engaged in a slow-paced disclosure program. It is time for the rest of us to entertain the possibility that UFOs are extraterrestrial.

This summer marked the 75th anniversary of an event in the U.S. state of New Mexico. An unknown craft crashed in the prairie outside the town of Corona. The military from the nearby city of Roswell got involved and allegedly transported the debris to the air force base there.

Many have speculated about the true nature of what became known as the Roswell incident. The U.S. government said at the time that it was a weather balloon, later changing the story to a special balloon designed to spy on Soviet nuclear activities.

No conclusive evidence has ever been presented to back up either story, leaving the field open to speculation and private researchers such as the late Stanton Friedman. A nuclear physicist with a long career in classified military projects, Friedman spent the last few decades of his life investigating unidentified flying objects and alleged extraterrestrial visits to Earth.

Members of the Pentagon’s UFO task force briefed Canadian military officials earlier this year, a previously unreported meeting that was revealed this week.

The Feb. 22 briefing was led by a U.S. Air Force intelligence officer who contributed to a headline-grabbing June 2021 report on recent American military sightings of unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAP: the term U.S. authorities use for what are more commonly known as unidentified flying objects and UFOs.

Rob Freeman was 12 in 1966 when he left a Scouts meeting at Sarnia’s St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church on a late-March evening and saw something strange in the sky.

Some younger kids were playing in the street and pointed up at what they said was a helicopter flying overhead.

While we all wait for the polls to close today, I thought I would circle back to a topic that hasn’t been generating as many headlines in the MSM lately as it did earlier this year, though there has certainly been activity taking place inside Congress and the Pentagon. The subject is the ongoing drama involving the Pentagon’s UFO investigation office, currently known as the AARO. (The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office.) I say “currently” because that office has gone through a lot of name changes over the past 18 years, evolving from AAWSAP to ATTIP to AOIMSG and others, with yet another name expected to be announced later this year.

Aliens could get in touch tomorrow and we must know what to say to them, scientists have warned, as they launched a new research hub to prepare humanity for first contact.

The University of St Andrews has joined forces with the UK SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Research Network to establish protocols and procedures if aliens are found.

The team warn that although there are measures in place for dealing with threats posed by asteroid impacts, there is no agreed response if a radio signal were picked up from another intelligent lifeform.

Humans are still searching for signs of intelligent alien life on other planets – but how would we react towards it if we ever did make contact?

According to many of our cultural touchstones, there’s only one thing for it if extraterrestrials ever take a cosmic detour to our planet: heavy artillery fire.

But from the sugary 1980s blockbuster ET the Extra-Terrestrial and the decades of Star Trek episodes to the books of Isaac Asimov and Ursula K Le Guin, science fiction writers have long wrangled with the question: how would we really treat them?

In popular culture, extraterrestrials are often cast as second-class citizens or less than human. If it weren’t for the intervention of ET’s human friend, the titular alien would have been cut open on an operating room table. In the 2009 film District 9, millions of alien “prawns” are packed into South African slums – an allegory for human bigotry and cruelty in real life.

While the Canadian government and military usually don’t respond to reports of unidentified flying objects, there have been some recent exceptions, including cases where CF-18 fighter jets were scrambled.

This week, the U.S. intelligence community is set to release a new report on unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAP, the term American officials use for what are more commonly known as unidentified flying objects and UFOs. In the U.S., both the Pentagon and NASA are currently researching the topic.

For its part, the Canadian military routinely states that it does “not typically investigate sightings of unknown or unexplained phenomena outside the context of investigating credible threats, potential threats, or potential distress in the case of search and rescue.”

Well at least we’re consistent. Our heads are in the sand as expected.

A bizarre UFO case dubbed “Brazil’s Roswell” has set the internet abuzz amid rumors that video of a captured “creature” may exist — and could soon be released.

The so-called Varginha incident — an alleged UFO crash, extraterrestrial encounter, and subsequent military cover-up — made global headlines in 1996 and sparked a media frenzy in Brazil, despite official government denials that anything unusual had occurred.

It’s like Fatima but with UFO’s!

The United States’ space agency announced it has selected 16 individuals to participate in the much-awaited study of unidentified aerial phenomena, or what are more commonly referred to as UFOs.

The team will kick off the study Monday and is scheduled to spend nine months reviewing previous observations and determining how to analyze data on future events.

The study will not determine if past reports of UFOs were legitimate but will pave the way for understanding what observations will be needed in future events to better understand the phenomena.

The Canadian government has a plan if questions about unidentified flying objects are raised in Parliament.

Transport Minister Omar Alghabra would lead the response to UFO-related questions in the House of Commons, according to documents obtained by CTVNews.ca. Acquired through an access to information request, the documents also include UFO talking points prepared for the minister’s office and emails about a May 11 UFO briefing attended by his staff.

There are an estimated 100 billion galaxies in the universe, home to an unimaginable abundance of planets. And now there are new ways to spot signs of life on them.

When the space shuttle Atlantis lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center on Oct. 18, 1989, it carried the Galileo in its cargo bay. Arrayed with scientific instruments, Galileo’s ultimate destination was Jupiter, where it would spend years in orbit collecting data and taking pictures. After it left the shuttle, though, Galileo headed in the other direction, turning toward the sun and circling around Venus, in order to slingshot around the planet and pick up speed for its journey to the outer solar system. Along the way, it flew around Earth too — twice, in fact, at altitudes of 597 and 188 miles. This gave its engineering team an opportunity to test the craft’s sensors. The astronomer Carl Sagan, a member of Galileo’s science team, called the maneuver the first flyby in our planet’s history. It also allowed him to contemplate what a spacecraft might find when looking at a far-off planet for signs of intelligent life.

While UFO sightings in Canada have come down from pre-pandemic levels, Alberta remains near the top reporting provinces.

Those numbers come as the issue of unidentified aerial phenomenon is being taken more seriously by the media and politicians, the latter who have been feeling increasing pressure to investigate them.