Extraterrestrial life
The continued lack of transparency about UFOs in the United States raises concerns not only about the existence of aliens, but also about the psychological consequences of uncovering a conspiracy
If you thought we were finally learning the truth about UFOs, think again. Late last year, a U.S. government bill that would have required the controlled release of all classified documents and artifacts related to UFOs was significantly weakened at the last minute to make it through Congress.
Interest in unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs), the new name for UFOs, revived in June 2023 when former U.S. intelligence whistleblower David Grusch told the Debrief website that he discovered during his official duties that the U.S actually recovered spacecraft from unidentified aerial phenomena. human origin for decades. The allegations led to a congressional hearing in which Grusch and others described what they had learned about this top-secret project or seen with their own eyes while serving in the military. Their statements led to the new Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Disclosure Act, written by a bipartisan group of five elected officials led by Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Republican Senator Mike Rounds.
While it is easy to focus on the exceptionality of the subject or the credibility of the UAP observers, the prospect of alien spacecraft raises serious questions that go beyond whether we are alone in the universe. A great deal of scientific work is underway not only to search for signs of extraterrestrial life, but more recently to ask what it would mean psychologically for us if aliens actually existed, and – perhaps even worse – whether the authorities would us lied about it you know.
Footage from a US Navy aircraft of an apparent interaction with a UAP, released in April 2020. Photo: DoD/AFP/Getty Images
When it comes to governments, it's all about trust. As Republican Congressman Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin stated in his opening statement on July 26, “The lack of [government] Transparency regarding UAPs has fueled rampant speculation and debate for decades and undermined public trust in the very institutions designed to serve and protect them.”
The Disclosure Act was intended to restore public trust and assure Congress that no secret projects were taking place outside of its oversight.
The legislation was modeled on the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992. Frustrated by the growing public perception that U.S. government agents were conspiring with the military to assassinate the president – a belief supported by Oliver Stone's 1991 film “JFK – The Act” found its way to the general public, established a national archive of all records related to the assassination and released the vast majority of them. The process was monitored by an independent body.
The release of UAP records will largely fall to the same companies that have blocked their disclosure for decades
The original text of the UAP Disclosure Act was similar in that it proposed the creation of a national archive that would be overseen by an independent board of nine U.S. citizens. Their job was to decide – free from military, political or corporate influence – when and how information from the archive should be disclosed. The law would have given the panel the ability to hold more hearings, while granting witnesses immunity from prosecution. It also proposed: “The federal government should exercise 'eminent control' over all recovered technologies of unknown origin and biological evidence of non-human intelligence that could be controlled by private individuals or organizations in the interest of the public good.”
In other words, the U.S. government could confiscate any supposed artifacts owned by private individuals or companies and was then required to make them available to the public. In parallel, the law required the Secretary of State to “contact any foreign government that may have material relevant to unidentified anomalous phenomena, technologies of unknown origin, or non-human intelligence, and to request disclosure of such material.”
Former USAF intelligence officer David Grusch speaks at the congressional hearing on UAPs in July last year. Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images
In short, it would have finally revealed the facts about UAPs. However, most of these provisions have now been deleted. All that remains is the archive, which is not managed by an independent body. After the vote, Schumer called the archive “a huge win for government transparency,” but then went on to say it was “an outrage” that the proposed audit committee didn't pass. “Now that means the release of UAP records falls largely to the same entities that have blocked and obscured their disclosure for decades,” he said.
Speaking to News Nation on December 12, Grusch was unequivocal, calling the changes “the greatest legislative failure in American history.”
Not only has the law done little to improve transparency, it is already fueling suspicions that the US government actually has something to hide.
“If it is the case that the UFO/UAP problem has no substance beyond misperceptions, paranoia, delusions, hallucinations, gullibility and disinformation, then the government, military and academic organizations must openly and transparently address every alleged stone in this Investigate the topic,” says clinical psychologist Daniel Stubbings from Cardiff Metropolitan University. “But they have chosen the exact opposite, which increases suspicions that there is something to hide.”
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People have been seeing inexplicable things in the sky for thousands of years. While it's easy to dismiss them as hallucinations or flights of fancy, it's much harder to ignore photos and videos from reputable sources. This is exactly what the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in the USA published in 2021. Its report, “Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena,” details that the U.S. Department of Defense's Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force examined 144 UAP reports prepared between 2004 and 2021. Mostly by military personnel. Three declassified videos of some of these UAPs in action were also released.
It was this material that helped convince Stubbings to take the issue seriously. He interviewed people who believed they had seen something they could not explain and were interested in identifying underlying mental health needs or common personality types among them. He found that all types of personality profiles see UAPs and many are left with unmet psychological needs.
“At first I was confident that the UAP problem could be explained by prosaic psychological and/or situational factors, but the more I looked into real cases, the less certain I became,” says Stubbings.
“I realized that this is a very credible topic. If that’s true, it’s a game-changer,” he says. “If it is not true, it is deeply worrying. How did we get to the point in society where we think all of these things are true and we spend so much money investigating it?”
Traditionally, it is astronomers who look for evidence of other life in the universe. For example, Seti, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, uses telescopes to look for signals that could come from extraterrestrial civilizations. While Seti was once on the fringes of astronomical science, it is now increasingly seen as mainstream.
The Gran Telescopio Canarias on La Palma. Photo: David Rosario Davila/Getty Images
Breakthrough Listen is the largest scientific research program ever, searching for evidence of civilizations beyond Earth. The aim is to study the stars closest to Earth within 1 m and the 100 of our galaxies. The project has been running at the University of California, Berkeley since January 2016 and announced a new headquarters in Oxford last October.
“It’s a huge vote of confidence in the project from one of the world’s leading universities, astrophysics groups and physics departments,” says Steve Croft, an astronomer at UC Berkeley and the Seti Institute and a principal investigator at the new headquarters.
In early December, Croft and colleagues published results from the project with more than 140 terabytes of data (the equivalent of continuously viewing more than five years of high-resolution video) from 97 nearby galaxies. Although they didn't find anything that looked artificial in this particular run, Croft says, “It's a start.”
Other astronomers, using different techniques, have seen things that require further study. Beatriz Villarroel, assistant professor of physics at Stockholm University, leads a team of astronomers studying photographic plates of the night sky dating back to before the launch of the first artificial satellite in 1957.
As satellites orbit the Earth, they can reflect sunlight, causing bright sparkles to appear in the night sky. These leave streaks or points of light on astronomical images that appear and disappear seemingly at random. On a plate from April 1950, Villarroel mysteriously found nine light sources that appeared and then disappeared within half an hour. Observations with the Gran Telescopio Canarias on La Palma in the Canary Islands did not reveal anything about the locations of the light sources that may have flared up.
“There is no astronomical explanation for this type of event,” says Villarroel.
Recently, her team found three bright “stars” on a plate dated July 19, 1952, which have since disappeared. Provocatively, this date is etched in the diaries of UFO enthusiasts around the world because it coincides with a famous incident in which pilots and radar operators saw lights in the sky over Washington DC that they could not explain.
To be true, all it takes is one report, and it changes the narrative of humanity forever
“I think it's very important to do something like this [nearby] Search for extraterrestrial objects because they [astronomical] The community usually looks for things that are very, very far away. I think it's time to do something new,” says Villarroel, who is currently working on establishing the ExoProbe project to search for anomalous objects among the large number of human satellites currently in orbit.
But what happens if she – or someone else – finds irrefutable evidence that non-human intelligences have visited or are visiting Earth?
A few years ago, physicist John Priestland, who runs an engineering firm, wondered what this would mean for us as individuals. “If there is something that needs to be disclosed here, I am very aware that there are many people who will be affected and that, as far as I can see, there is no company that puts people first sets.” he says.
So he founded Unhidden, a charity dedicated to reducing the stigma associated with discussing UAPs, non-human intelligence and the possibility of evidence being covered up by governments.
It's a mission that Stubbings agrees with. “This topic is still stigmatized. People are so afraid to discuss it,” he says. “But it only takes one report to be true, and it changes the narrative of humanity forever.”
For this reason, the Disclosure Act was seen as important, and its amended version was a major disappointment, even potentially dangerous, says Priestland.
“It's all about 'my truth' these days, except for people who happen to see strange things in the sky. We don’t legitimize their truth.” He says they need help and support. “And we need to do that in the context of possible disclosure, because there could suddenly be 8 billion people who have to get used to being told by the very organizations that there is a very different worldview that they are now aware of .”I've been lying to her for the last 80 years.”
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