NASA experts looked through 800 UFO sightings and found essentially nothing
- Reference: 1685592848
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/06/01/nasa_ufo_panel/
- Source link:
The [1]panel , formed last year, is made up of [2]16 people ranging from scientists and biz execs to federal employees and a former astronaut. They've been studying reports of UFO sightings over the past seven months.
In the panel's first public [3]hearing , held on Wednesday, David Spergel, a retired astrophysics professor of Princeton University, called for the need to collect better data to study and understand UAP.
[4]
"Right now there's a very limited number of high quality observations and data curation of UAP," he said in his opening remarks.
[5]
[6]
"The existing data available from eyewitness reports are often muddled and cannot provide conclusive evidence that supports the UAP recognition and analysis.
"Additionally, an object's background can complicate the data further and render it unusable due to conventional objects that can mimic or overshadow the phenomena completely, such as commercial aircraft, military equipment to the weather, and ionospheric phenomenon like auroras. This lack of high-quality data makes it impossible to draw scientific conclusions on the nature of UAP."
[7]NASA picks its UFO-hunting – sorry – unidentified aerial phenomena-hunting team
[8]Pentagon shoots down UFO rumors but says 650 cases are still pending
[9]Nearly 1 in 5 academics admit close encounters of the anomalous kind
[10]US military spends weekend shooting down Useless Floating Objects
NASA [11]defines UAP as "observations of events in the sky that cannot be identified as aircraft or known natural phenomena from a scientific perspective." Although people, generally speaking, look at weird stuff in the sky and wonder, however briefly, if it's evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence, the US government is more interested in whether these sightings are of foreign hardware that poses a threat to national security.
The objects could be aircraft flown by other countries for defense or intelligence purposes, such as China's [12]not-spying-spy balloons spotted earlier this year; more often than not they're benign, like the [13]reported Bart Simpson balloon. The panel only analyzed unclassified events, and hopes to publish its findings in a report later this year.
[14]
Panel member Nadia Drake, a freelance science journalist, estimated that only two to five percent of the 800 sightings the panel studied were anomalous. Spergel said it wasn't NASA's job to "resolve the nature of these events," but to guide the space agency and provide a "roadmap" of how it can help the US government study UAP.
You can replay the whole session from Wednesday below.
[15]Youtube Video
[16]
"The defense and intelligence agency data on UAP are often classified primarily because of how the data is collected," he said, "not because what's in the data. The camera on an F-35 took a picture of a bird: it's classified. Spy satellite takes an image of a balloon, as we've had in the news some balloons recently, that's classified, and that's because of a desire to not reveal our technical capabilities to other nations."
Instead, NASA should focus on encouraging public collection of data in a more systematic way, and reduce the stigma of reporting UAP: if you see something odd, you're not a loon for letting Uncle Sam know. He even suggested that the agency could develop a mobile app that allows people to submit and share sightings.
"The current existing data and eyewitness reports alone are insufficient to provide conclusive evidence about the nature and origin of every UAP event," he concluded.
"They're often uninformative due to lack of quality control, and data curation. To understand UAP, better targeted data collection, thorough data curation, and robust analyses are needed. Such an approach will help to discern unexplained gap sightings, but even then there's no guarantee that all sightings can be explained." ®
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[1] https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/24/nasa_names_ufo_hunting_team/
[2] https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-announces-unidentified-aerial-phenomena-study-team-members/
[3] https://science.nasa.gov/uap
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZHhsRftzi0zfvUXUG3a3cwAAANQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZHhsRftzi0zfvUXUG3a3cwAAANQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZHhsRftzi0zfvUXUG3a3cwAAANQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/24/nasa_names_ufo_hunting_team/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/21/dod_no_ufos/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/23/academic_uap_experiences_study/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/13/us_ufo_uap_shootings/
[11] https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-to-set-up-independent-study-on-unidentified-anomalous-phenomena/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/13/us_ufo_uap_shootings/
[13] https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-65771398
[14] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZHhsRftzi0zfvUXUG3a3cwAAANQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[15] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3uXUfgSadU
[16] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZHhsRftzi0zfvUXUG3a3cwAAANQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[17] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
If you're on the ground you can't see much, camera or not, unless the 'UFO' is flying pretty low or is the size of an aircraft carrier. The problem then is if it is moving with any speed it will be going by so quickly you won't have time to get your camera out. You basically have to hope it flies low and slow or hovers if you want a random citizen armed with a smartphone to record it.
Pilots are up in the sky and moving quickly so they are better positioned, but a commercial pilot can't change course, speed and altitude to chase one down so it is the same problem where it has to be flying "low and slow" relative to the plane as well as in the same direction, plus the pilot is (hopefully) busy flying the plane not getting out his camera to take a video.
Military pilots are by far the best equipped since they are more free to fly whatever direction, altitude and speed necessary - especially if they were tasked to chase down something unknown showing up on radar rather than just encountering something while on a different mission.
I do have to wonder what sort of camera technology they have though. Is it comparable to a modern smartphone or a decade or two behind the state of the art? i.e. due to slow qualification of stuff for military use and the need for military contractors to find an excuse to mark up a $10 part to $100,000 before they are willing to install it. At least I'm not too impressed with the quality of the video we get to see, though maybe they are digitally zoomed a whole bunch so they just look like crappy noisy low res video from a 2010 era smartphone the same way digitally zooming an iPhone video 50x would look pretty grainy and pixillated.
I suspect you're underestimating the number of people who already have their phones out or start recording.
re. every man.woman and child in the Western Hemisphere has had access to a digital camera 24/7
if you look at UFO photo 'proofs' as human-make-believe phonomenon, the massive increase of phot-capture devices SHOULD lead to a significant increase in those photos, and I really find it peculiar it hasn't. On the other hand, the overall pool of UFO-photo-wannabes has only grown by 2-3 billion. But still, given how many people have a camera now (everybody), there should be more of those proofs. Perhaps UFOs are out of fashion? I'm SO disappointed!
OR, look, here's why: the Aliens got BETTER at hiding, as they realised humans got better at capturing their existance. I bet them alien boffins ave been working real hard over the last 20 years to make them invisible to our tech! What better proof do you need?! :)
2 obligatory xkcd cartoons
1. UFO videos: https://xkcd.com/2156/
2. Settled: https://xkcd.com/1235/
Flying Saucers, Lake Monsters, Ghosts, and Bigfoot
RE: Settled
The graph of camera-carriers hugs 0% until about 2000, but I thought these questions were settled decades before then.
I know how crazy this is going to sound, but...
Sorry, just had to type that... X files, Jose Chung's, From Outer Space.
Anyhoo, as previously stated, I've seen jack in 8 years of looking, go with the can't go faster than C thing etc, but 2% to 5% is a lot given the "scientific" approach of the study. So I'm moving over to the "welcome to Earth" side of the fence.
Ack, ack, ack.
Re: I know how crazy this is going to sound, but...
Time travel really works but the problem with going very far into the future is this tiny problem of the Earth hurtling through space at about 50,000 mph.
(You’ll get there ok but you may find yourself either in outer space or else soaking in lava in the Earth’s interior. Maybe be more careful about what you wish for? We may never recover any time-traveller’s body, if you think about it.)
Re: I know how crazy this is going to sound, but...
To make things worse the solar system is also orbiting the centre of the milky way at around 450,000 mph, and the milky way is itself also moving.
Re: I know how crazy this is going to sound, but...
Great, now "The Galaxy Song" is playing in my head. At least it is drowning the strange clicking voices that were there before....
Ogopogo != Nessy
You could invent a “game” camera and stick em all over the woods and lake shore and such, but you know why the right pictures never get captured? It’s because of the Fermi paradox, i.e. how do you take photos of faster-than-light phenomena. Answer: well, first of all your Polaroid probably isn’t up to the task.
Re: Ogopogo != Nessy
Nessy moves faster than light? I would have thought that would cause some pretty massive problems in Lake Ness, some unexplained Fusion explosions for one...
"The panel only analyzed unclassified events"
More fodder for the conspiracy loons, then? Perhaps trying to get some of the more vocal nutjobs off the politics thing?
"if you see something odd, you're not a loon for letting Uncle Sam know."
But PLEASE, for gawd/ess's sake learn how to make a reliable report! And try not to look/act/sound like a fucking nutjob while you are doing it.
"The current existing data and eyewitness reports alone are insufficient to provide conclusive evidence about the nature and origin of every UAP event,"
And yet virtually every man.woman and child in the Western Hemisphere has had access to a digital camera 24/7 this last decade and a half ... and yet the numbers haven't climbed appreciably since the 1980s[0]. Gut feeling? There is nothing odd to be seen.
[0] The numbers cycle quite obviously with the government babbling about it. This has been true since the late '40s, at least.