Earlier today, three witnesses came before Congress to testify about their experiences with unidentified flying objects. A former Navy pilot spoke of the mysterious objects that he has seen with his own eyes and through radar, and how frequently pilots encounter them in the air. A retired Navy commander described the time he pulled his jet up to a Tic Tac–shaped object hovering over the ocean, then watched it suddenly speed up and vanish.
The most anticipated remarks, however, came from a former military-intelligence officer named David Grusch, who went public with his account just last month. Grusch told the House oversight subcommittee on national security that the American government has spent decades secretly recovering mysterious vehicles that have crashed on the ground, and has determined the material to be of “non-human” origin. The government also attempted to reverse engineer some of the technology, according to Grusch. And it’s doing all of this clandestinely, without proper supervision by Congress.
In the hearing, Grusch expanded on his previous claims in response to lawmakers’ questions. If elected officials had never heard about this effort before, how did it get any funding? The military pilfered money that had been allocated for its other programs. A defense official recently testified before Congress that the U.S. military hasn’t found any evidence of extraterrestrial activity on Earth; is that statement correct? It’s not accurate. Has any of the activity been aggressive or hostile? My colleagues have gotten physically injured. By UFOs, or by people within the government? Both.
After not holding a hearing on UFOs for more than half a century, Congress has recently held two in as many years. In that sense, we can count today’s events as historic. But as in the other hearings, this one had no big reveal, no grand answer to humankind’s most existential questions about our place in the universe. The hype surrounding the hearing—and there has been considerable hype—says more about the people who tuned in than about Grusch’s claims. Just as it did in the late 1940s, when stories of flying saucers over Washington state and crash landings in New Mexico captivated the nation, UFO fever today indicates that Americans feel that their government knows more than it’s letting on.
That sentiment is not new, nor is Americans’ belief in conspiracy theories. Though research suggests that conspiracy thinking is not getting worse in the modern-day United States, we are in a moment of acute public curiosity about—and acceptance of—conspiracism. Compared with QAnon, vaccine microchips, and stolen elections, a big UFO cover-up might seem almost reasonable—even if that cover-up involves, as Grusch previously claimed in an interview, the military discovering the “dead pilots” of alien craft. (In Congress today, Grusch declined to give specifics about this and many other claims, saying that there was only so much he could disclose to the public and that he could elaborate in a closed setting.)
The past several years have coincided with an unprecedented mainstreaming of UFO culture. In 2017, when an interstellar object showed up in our solar system, most scientists agreed that it was an asteroid or a comet, but some said it could have been an alien spaceship. (The Harvard professor leading the latter camp, Avi Loeb, recently led an expedition to the seafloor to recover material that he believes could be from alien spacecraft.) Later that year, The New York Times and other news outlets revealed that the Pentagon had a covert program dedicated to cataloging UFOs. Then NASA decided to weigh in on the topic after years of steering clear, and convened a team to consider UFOs in a “scientific perspective.” And who can forget the spy balloons that the military shot out of the sky this year?
These events have unfolded against a shift in public knowledge about the universe beyond Earth, which might help explain why people are interested. In the 1940s, the only planets we knew of were the ones around our sun, and scientists had only recently determined that there were galaxies other than our own. Today, astronomers have discovered more than 5,000 exoplanets, and telescopes can see nearly all the way back to the Big Bang. In the face of so many wonders, the question of whether we’re sharing them with anyone else becomes more urgent, and might even seem more answerable. “I think people are just ready or at least excited about the possibilities of alien contact, maybe more than ever,” Jacob Haqq Misra, an astrobiologist at the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science, told me.
Congress has contributed to this mainstreaming too. Under the instruction of lawmakers, the Pentagon last year established a special office dedicated to investigating reports of unexplainable phenomena in the sky, at sea, and on land. The effort has been unusually bipartisan, with both far-right Republicans and progressive Democrats calling on the military to be more transparent. This month, Senator Chuck Schumer introduced legislation that would create a commission with the authority to declassify government documents about UFOs. “The American public has a right to learn about technologies of unknown origins, non-human intelligence, and unexplainable phenomena,” Schumer said in a statement.
Yes, we do. But some undisclosed documents about UFOs is not synonymous with incontrovertible evidence that aliens have visited Earth. UFOs are just that—objects that are flying, and that we cannot yet identify. If the military is misusing taxpayer money to investigate mysterious debris it doesn’t recognize, that’s bad, whether it’s the remnants of drones from another nation or a non-human craft. “If that’s the case, and auditors have not been allowed into these programs and there’s illegal layers of secrecy,” Haqq Misra said, “then that’s really important to disclose, independent of any connection to anything else”—anything otherworldly. But even as lawmakers assert that UFOs are primarily a national-security concern, by invoking aliens in their discussions, they lend credence to the idea that a connection between the two exists.
Grusch was careful to tell lawmakers that he was only “speaking to the facts as I have been told them”—that is, he has not seen any evidence of alien wreckage or its inhabitants himself. And in general, though his claims are steeped in the language of authority, he simply has not been able to offer any concrete proof. The news website that first published Grusch’s claims reported that the Pentagon had cleared him to speak publicly, but that means only that his remarks don’t contain classified information, not that they’re true. Testifying under oath before Congress is not a measure of truth, either. Outside the hearing, some lawmakers seemed like they didn’t know what to make of the claims.
The prospect of extraterrestrial interlopers may be a national-security question, but it’s also a scientific one. Science requires data, and secondhand accounts just aren’t data. “When NASA brings back rocks on the moon, those rocks are shared with qualified people,” David Spergel, an astrophysicist at Princeton who chaired NASA’s committee on UFOs, told me. “Imagine we had some samples of some craft, [and] we really want to understand what it was. You would make materials from those small samples available for labs anywhere in the world.” In other words, meaningful testimony would show evidence of alien ships and pilots, not just tell the public about them. “That would be pretty awesome,” he said, but it’s not what we’ve got. Today, we heard some extraordinary claims, and, to quote Carl Sagan, they require extraordinary evidence.
"UFO"s don't necessarily = aliens. UFOs are just that, UNIDENTIFIED flying objects. If it's in the air and you don't know what it is, it's technically a UFO. Weather balloon, top secret airplane (of any country of origin), wierd shaped cloud, drone (military or civilian), something dropped (accidentally or on purpose) from another aircraft, etc. It could be anything. I have yet to see any proof that aliens exist. You'd think, if they were advanced enough to make a long trip through space to visit our planet, they'd have the technology to keep us from noticing them. One "sighting" I can see. Everyone makes mistakes, but "sightings" over and over and over? C'mon. ET is not here.
This is SUCH a "tease-fest"... MACE: Okay. You say that the government is in possession of potentially non-human spacecraft. Based on your experience and extensive conversations with experts. Do you believe our government has made contact with intelligent extraterrestrials?
GRUSCH: Something I can’t discuss in a public setting.
MACE: Okay, Lets go to the bathroom and slip notes back and forth under the stalls.
See, we are them, they are our fathers, ' Who come from heaven. ' From the Orion Constellation, as chronicled by the Egyptian Pyramids at Giza, Kemet, that time they ' phoned home ', microwave burst transmission, dna data travelling by wave, speed of light. 12,500 bc, that time they melted the last ice age, seeded the planet with their half blood offspring, homo sapiens, mixing with the earlier Neanderthals, our ancestors. Discovering the truth, answering the question, ' Where did I come from, Daddy ? ' ' You are star stuff ' ~ Robert Bauval The purpose of the Great Pyramid Aliens, travelling here to monitor the petri dish that is Earth, a volcanic sphere with green fuzz growing on it's surface. Maybe, staging a benign patriarchal intervention in the fast approaching global nuke war that will begin in Ukraine, Russia, and China. Zapping icbms, drones, cruise missiles, subs, silos, to prevent the radioactive contamination of the planet. That they are visiting is a good thing, time travelers, growing their children, adapted to the blue planet, half alien, half primate. All good, right ? ' Existential thoughts on alien technology, and the secret effort to weaponize advanced gravitational drive. ' First nation to build it will win the planet.
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They are from here, have been for all time, surprise. Which should stimulate a few thoughts on what you believe to be true, just the facts. ' Umm, I think I need to be told what to think, by my masters. '
Betty Hill, it seems, was far too friendly with the aliens, joking and inquisitive, and actually getting feedback, shown a few things that a higher ranking alien discouraged. Can't make that up, making the story more plausible, it all started with a flashlight signal to a ufo, inadvertently inviting aliens down for a palaver, lol. So, to meet ' them ', swing your lantern, thinking about a friendly get together, friendly visitors and an innocent, naive human, you. Sampling dna, reading the mind's memory, the entirety of a life lived, a record that they keep in a library. I could imagine they have cloned Betty and Barney, on their far off planet, living as humans, off Earth.
1. We are alone in our own solar system, but probably not the universe.
2. Anyone with the technology for interstellar travel could observe us without us ever seeing any evidence of them. They certainly would not be doing low level fly overs and crashing.
They certainly would not be doing low level fly overs and crashing.
What, you don't think individual intergalactic/interdimensional life forms could possibly be inept? Remember, not everyone graduates at the top of their class.
What, you don't think individual intergalactic/interdimensional life forms could possibly be inept? Remember, not everyone graduates at the top of their class.
You mean like slowing down to throw empty beer bottles at Earth as they fly by?
I am pretty sure that the technology that makes interstellar flight possible will all be run by "autopilot".
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1. We are alone in our own solar system, but probably not the universe.
2. Anyone with the technology for interstellar travel could observe us without us ever seeing any evidence of them. They certainly would not be doing low level fly overs and crashing.
1..as sentient beings with something similar to our own physical life form, I agree, but I also suspect there is some form of life elsewhere in our own solar system. 2..
Probably disguised as a closed Dollar General store
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Originally posted by BingB: Anyone with the technology for interstellar travel could observe us without us ever seeing any evidence of them. They certainly would not be doing low level fly overs and crashing.
Add spacey music and cgi effects, to make a spacey ufo documentary, synthesizer canned effects, a button push away. ' To make the sound track sounds like a '60s psychedelic tv sitcom space travel adventure. Mod and zany actors acting like futuristic scientists on a mission of discovery ! .
' Something the size of Camelback Mountain floating down Scottsdale Road.. ' Astounding ! Hair raising ! Revelation ! ' OMG ! What is that ? ' .
!! ' OMG ! It's getting the nukes ! ' . ' Yeah, aliens messing with nukes, can't be good, turning off the nukes ! ' !!
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The thrills the sentries experienced would last a lifetime, if they are all still alive. ' Sir ! There's a UFO hovering above the front gate ! What should I do ? ' ' Keep calm, observe, keep the zone secure ! ' Photon weapon equipped alien spacecraft, tractor beams, signals jamming technology, time displacement, transporters, the whole archangel story. Yeah, pretty exciting stuff, what with the war in Nam in full swing, B-52s taking off every five minutes. ' Private Cortez, take your finger off the trigger of your weapon, be cool, Cortez, do not fire at the spaceship ! ' Yeah, that could have gone wrong in a big way, cooler heads prevailed, calm and collected, reasoning. ' Then it took off straight up, faster than I could move my head, zot ! ' Hovering above the gate, the ground outside the fence line illuminated by the glow of the giant ufo, absolutely silent, a yellowish dark red. Scaring the bejesus out of the sentries, literally shaking in their boots, ' Man, I gotta pee ! ' Nukes and ufos, go together well, and a hint of where to see them on a regular basis. The Russians and Chinese too, must have had similar experiences, a ufo glowing a bright blue, above their nuke silos. ' Боже мой! Играет американский национальный гимн! ' ' Good god ! It's playing the American national anthem ! ' lol !
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Yeah, obviously probing the nukes stored in the underground bunkers with their alien tentacles, molesting the icbms in their silos. ' Sir ! They're messing with the nukes ! ' ' We gotta stop them ! ' ' Stop them ? They're flying saucers, aliens from an advanced civilization ! We can't stop them ! '
Arthur C. Clarke's three laws: ' When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. '
How do they do it ? It's physics, and a better understanding of gravity. Where we're at today..
Yeah, we're a few thousand years behind in interstellar propulsion technology, obviously. ' Primitives playing with nukes, likely burn their own planet, we should intervene ! ' ~ Alien council on Earth's Lifeforms. So, like, they're here to save us from ourselves, still the Neanderthals.
Upcoming special this Friday ! Astounding News that we are not alone in the Galaxy ! It seems that it's true ! Aliens have been with us for all time ! Remember the burning bush story from the Bible ? Moses met the alien on the mountain, ten commandments, worship of pagan idols, the entirety of human existence observed and guided by alien intelligence. They are our fathers, that live in heaven, and who love us, and why they will intervene in a global nuke war, zapping mirv warheads, saving us from ourselves. Divine intervention, a loud booming voice from the sky, ' Stop playing with the matches children ! ' :lightbulb: :Edison: ' Omg ! It's true ! There are aliens on Earth ! '
. So, you see, a gas inside a torus travelling, orbiting, at a velocity near C, may exhibit effects that appear to be counter gravity. Yes, I want a flying car, maybe the builders of the Pyramids had the technology to levitate 80 Ton granite ceiling beams. That would then make the entire puzzle a simple problem. Lex Fridman Podcast - Ryan Graves: UFOs, Fighter Jets, and Aliens ! Nukes, they are analyzing the nukes in the carriers, subs, silos, the better to destroy them ! ' Children, stop playing with the matches, you'll burn our planet ! ' Lex Fridman Podcast - Garry Nolan, UFOs and Aliens. ~ ' Yeah ! A rotating mass generates it's own gravity ! ' ' Why didn't I think of that ? '
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