NASA Can’t Answer Simple UAP Questions
Keith’s note: Today at the NASA UAP media briefing I asked Dr. Dan Evans from NASA “My question with regard to the whole transparency issue: why is it that the NASA Astrobiology website, the NASA citizen science, the NASA education website etc. make no mention of this FACA committee or this FACA meeting today – or the topic under discussion in general? How can NASA address this issue with a straight face without at least acknowledging this great public interest in the topic of life in the universe and do so in the very program – Astrobiology – where these topics are actually being investigated?” I did not get an answer. Instead I got a government spokesperson wandering around using lots of words and talking points – but never actually answering a simple question – why doesn’t NASA mention this topic on the obvious websites that the agency has in place to deal with the specific topics raised repeatedly in this FACA committee’s meeting – and elsewhere? Everyone kept asking about the whole “UAP” acronym. Well, I guess NASA = Never A Straight Answer (audio) Update: I spoke with BBC 5 Live about this event and how NASA never seems to be able to have a conversation with the rest of society – who share a great interest in the idea of life elsewhere in the universe. Instead, NASA transmits talking points and never stop to listen to what real people have to say. There is intelligent life outside of your office cubicle, NASA. FYI. (Audio)
3 responses to “NASA Can’t Answer Simple UAP Questions”
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Keith, there are the politics and mass hysteria about UFOs, and there are the multi-disciplinary sciences of observational data collection, analysis, and interpretation. This panel is supposed to address the latter with the resources of NASA and its partners. The topic really belongs under Earth Science as relates to aviation and lower atmospheric phenomena and under Heliophysics as relates to upper atmospheric, ionospheric, and auroral phenomena. Planetary Science and Astrophysics can also contribute on data analysis techniques and software. Obviously the civil aviation side of NASA can also contribute. But I would not like to see this assigned to Astrobiology as the lead discipline within NASA because that creates a strong antiscientific bias in favor of extraterrestrial origins for UAPs. The public harassment reported by SMD and the panel no doubt comes mainly from ufologists who cannot accept any explanations but extraterrestrial origins. Further funding on this project should be going, as the panel said, to collection, analysis, and unbiased interpretation of existing and future data in usable standard formats well documented with metadata that can be analyzed with data tools including now those with AI capabilities. Let the Public see science in action as this unfolds. The ufologists can contribute on the citizen science if they are willing and disciplined enough to learn the necessary techniques to analyze the data in the public domain as it becomes available. Just getting us all to “Look Up” would be a healthy distraction from 24/7 attention focused on TV, cell phones, and social media. Add apps to our phones to aid and report on observations of anomalies. I already have a useful Physics Tool Box on my cell phone that utilizes magnetometer, audio, altimeter and other instrumentation. Let someone make “tricorders” for all-sky observations. Many interesting new phenomena may be discovered that have nothing to do with alien activity. But there will be much noise and chaff in the observations that must be properly analyzed and removed before any extraordinary claims can be made. E.g., the UAP object that appears to be diving into the ocean when in fact it (whatever it is) is many miles above the ocean. Think first about parallax, perspective, and camera jitter effects, not about superluminal speeds and maneuvers. Better to fund that than to push NASA towards astrobiological analyses and interpretations on the origins of little green men, beyond what it already does in abundance on origins of life and search for biosignatures. As you well know, this is a FACA panel tasked only to make recommendations on new programmatic and strategic objectives for NASA as relate to UAPs. The new funding for related work will need to be recommended by NASA and ultimately approved by Congress, before the UAP priorities are transformed into NASA programs. No fair to blame NASA for not yet touting UAP work on its plethora of web sites. Me thinks you protest too much. Be patient. The NASA web folks have to be paid to do this, and the programmatic funding is not there yet. So says the Ancient Cosmos Mariner, a retired NASA space scientist. And no, I have never seen or otherwise been aware of any extraordinary evidence for aliens, made any extraordinary claims like those of Avi Loeb, or had to sign a NASA non-disclosure agreement to keep me from talking. Not sure that Scott Kelly didn’t have to sign an NDA, he didn’t really answer that question.
I agree with Cosmos_Mariner about studying UAP as atmospheric phenomena. After reading the British Government’s Defence Intelligence Staff report on UAP (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Condign), I’m convinced that the vast majority of “legitimate” sightings are a natural phenomenon caused by buoyant plasma formations. I’ve watched dozens of videos of triangular formations from MUFON and NUFORC, and orange plasma fireballs are relatively common and easy to identify, once you know what to look for. There’s great deal of scientific literature on cold, dusty plasmas and Coulomb crystals that suggest these exotic phases of matter can exist in the atmosphere for considerable timespans, on the order of minutes to hours.
I’m frequently frustrated by these UAP/IFO discussions, because the Condign report was declassified in 2006, and yet the world still treats the phenomenon as a total mystery. But DIS solved the problem more than 20 years ago.
Fascinating! Thanks.