NYT Takes a Look at the White House UAP Council

The New York Times recently posted an article taking a deeper look into the White House's UAP Advisory Council along with some of their results. Composed of a veritable who's-who of cross-domain experts, the council's goal is to focus on data-driven science using the "same rigor" of any scientific endeavor.

Oddly, the article didn't reveal much other than what had been reported earlier in the last couple of months regarding the latest UAP data releases along with skeptical comments and some competing organizational in-fighting. The NYT quoted that the current results were "low-hanging fruit." 

Regardless, here's the makeup of the panel (led by Avi Loeb):

• Liberty Capito - professor of Data Science 
• Carol Cleland - professor of Philosophy
• Richard Cloete - Computer scientist at Harvard University
• Omer Eldadi - Psychologist a
• Tim Gallaudet -retired Navy admiral
• Robin Hanson - professor of Economics
• Ross Howard - producer of the Event Horizon podcast 
• Kevin Knuth - professor of Physics
• Ravi Kopparapu - NASA Goddard Space Flight Center expert 
• Ben Lamm - CEO Of Colossal Biosciences
• Jacob Haqq Misra- Meteorology and Astrobiology specialist
• Devesh Nandal - postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Astrophysics
• Garry Nolan - professor of Pathology
• Michael Shermer -publisher of Skeptic magazine
• Peter Skafish - Anthropologist
• Matthew Szydagis - professor of Physics 
• Jennice Vilhauer - clinical Psychologist

As I've always noted while following this phenomena for over 50 years now, if UAP technologies are in the hands of governments, there is no way they are going to reveal anything substantial to the public. Why would they? It would, of course, provide significant technological advantages that you wouldn't want other governments to know about. But at least there is an attempt to move public opinion from wild speculation to something more at a Level 2 approach. Time will tell.

I think Michal Shermer said it best in the article - "many sightings are 'stuck in this kind of low-information zone' where 'you can’t quite make out what’s going on.'" 

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SETI Institute Kickstarter for Scanning the Sky

What if we could create a network of independent sky scanning systems that could coordinate the observations of anomalous astronomical events that might hint at extraterrestrial activity? As they note - “A potential discovery must be carefully authenticated by independent organizations and different instruments before it is announced as credible evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence.”

Well, it seems the SETI institute has partnered with SkyMapper - a Kickstarter funded device that links to a global network of independent, separated instruments - each running on a rooftop anywhere in the world. 

You can find out more here: https://www.seti.org/news/disclosure-needs-data/

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Could Different Arrangements of Matter Become Conscious?

Well, it is interesting when philosophers jump in on extraterrestrial life. Pober & Schwitzgebel (2026) published a recent and very speculative paper arguing on how extraterrestrial consciousness could arise in different arrangements of matter (think of what biological constructs are needed for human consciousness to arise). Their logic is simple:

  P1: The universe contains at least a thousand different behaviorally sophisticated species
  P2: These species have substantially different substrates

  P3: Some of these species with substantially different substrates are conscious

  Conclusion: Therefore, consciousness is possible in substantially different substrates

Adding some other thoughts - each galaxy has over a million planets - combine to that a relaxation of the constraint that it must be the same substrates as on Earth. Interesting to speculate on, but in terms of the levels of argument, it's a Level 4.

You can read the paper here: Substrate Flexibility and the Copernican Principle of Consciousness

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Are we really Nearing Disclosure of Extraterrestrials?

Well, the title says it all - can we really be near something definitive? There's been a lot of noise in the press recently starting with the Trump administration's announcements from the Dept of War and some more initial analysis here. Nevertheless, the first point to call out is that there are no references to the terms of “UFOs” (other than a small tag) or “extraterrestrials” in the government release notes. All text points to UAPs (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) - which implies the releases are still in the realm of anomalous objects that could originate anywhere. The primary quote being:

"The American people can now access the federal government's declassified UAP files instantly. The latest UAP videos, photos, and original source documents from across the entire United States government are all in one place – no clearance required. While past administrations sought to discredit or dissuade the American people, President Trump is focused on providing maximum transparency to the public, who can ultimately make up their own minds about the information contained in these files."

 

Granted, you can search the released declassified documents for those terms. As far as I’ve been able to tell - nothing earth shattering has appeared. Both The Conversation and The Skeptic did a nice job reviewing this early release (from which I have to quote one author noting - “...absolutely nothing stands out beyond the usual blurry photographs, grainy videos, artist reconstructions, and countless stories about weird things in the sky and in space.”)  Scientific American also did a short overview noting a statement from Sean Kirkpatrick, "There’s nothing unexpected in their release. And without any analysis or context, [it] will only serve to fuel more speculation, conspiracy and armchair pseudoscience, particularly from the playhouse politics theater company..."

No matter your political affiliation it is readily apparent that the administration is attempting to appease critics complaints about not following through on some of the early campaign promises. This doesn’t imply, however, that national security would be compromised in any way if the US or any government entity had some strategic advantage from anything technological be it from other countries or extraterrestrial in origin - this being the most problematic part of disclosure.  

So here we sit again with just as much (if not more) speculation regarding extraterrestrial life. It's difficult to note whether this stands in Level 3 or Level 2 of the exoastronomy categorization - but, it mostly fits in Level 2 due to government classification and documentation.

You can go out and download the released material directly (as have thousands on social media that are full of speculation). I’m sure there’s more to come.  

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Trump Continues the Stir about Alien Life

Whitehouse.gov Photo

Well, not to be outdone, President Trump announced he would be releasing government files about aliens, UFOs and extraterrestrial life just after Obama had mentioned the possibility of alien life in an oddly  stated verbal attack. Thursday he stated on Truth Social:

 

Based on the tremendous interest shown, I will be directing the Secretary of War, and other relevant Departments and Agencies, to begin the process of identifying and releasing Government files related to alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and unidentified flying objects (UFOs), and any and all other information connected to these highly complex, but extremely interesting and important, matters.

This places obvious pressure on the defense department to release something - but, I'm not convinced there will be much. If the black budgets of the overall US spend on defense (est to be about 7% of $1 trillion) had any advanced technologies that gave the US any strategic advantage, they're not going be transparent about it.

There's a lot more to say about this in a future post regarding some of the nonsense surrounding the AARO and other attempts of disclosure. More to come.

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Obama Creates a Stir about Aliens

As usual, social media went into a frenzy about UFOs, aliens and extraterrestrial life this week when Bryan Tyler Cohen interviewed former president Barack Obama. What was missed by most was that Cohen stated that the questions for the end of the interview were a ‘lightning round’ to give quick answers. Obama was asked, "Are aliens real?" and quickly answered, "They're real but I haven't seen them”. There was no time for him to qualify his answer except for a quip about Area 51 as Cohen jumped to the next question.

Obama has always had the position that the odds of extraterrestrial life in the universe are very high. He stated after the interview - "I was trying to stick with the spirit of the speed round, but since it's gotten attention let me clarify….Statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there's life out there. But the distances between solar systems are so great that the chances we've been visited by aliens is low, and I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us. Really!"

This is a typical Level 4 overreaction to the UFO and extraterrestrial conspiracy. You can watch the intervew here (the lightning question is at 43:55): 

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The Eschatian End to an Extraterrestrial Civilization

If you’re familiar with Dr David Kipping of Columbia University you may have seen his appearances on various YouTube channels or his Cool Worlds channel talking about extraterrestrial life. Kipping recently published a very short paper hypothesizing how we might first detect an extraterrestrial civilization based on observational bias. But, before we get into that let’s first pronounce the new word derived by Kipping - eschatian (es-ska-ti-un) derived from the word eschatology (es-ska-ta-le-gee)^[1] meaning the final events in the world or history. Typically eschatological discussions are reserved for Christian theology but the word does serve some purpose to what some may coin “end times”.

So how does that definition tie to extraterrestrials? Kipping hypothesizes that our first detection of signals may be very similar to other types of large and loud events in then universe (think supernovae explosions, gamma-ray bursts, etc) or objects that emits large amounts of energy that can be detected. Add to that astronomers are burdened with something called the Malmquist bias meaning we detect the brightest, most energetic objects first and lower energy objects are hidden until more sensitive technology is developed.

Given those conditions our first detections of any extraterrestrial civilization may very well be its end - the “loud” burst of energy from a nuclear war or some other catastrophic event. As Kipping notes 

 

rare examples of loud civilizations will truly be more likely to be detected, against the backdrop of what is (presumably) a more abundant quiescent population.

 

He goes on to create a simple toy mathematical model based on the fraction of loud and quiet civilizations and their possible time windows of extreme energy output from an event. In his discussion, the suggestion is some wide field observations may be able to detect such transient events.

This is an interesting hypothesis that touches Level 2 of the exoastronomy categorization. Granted, this is highly speculative without actual values to use for the model. However, these are the types of scientific speculations we need to see more of. His paper can be found here. (I may do a deeper dive on the model in a later post)

1. Note that I'm not using standard dictionary pronunciation guides here↩

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Washington Post Skeptic Op-Ed on UAPs

NASA UAP Study Committee

Recently, the Washington Post ran an editorial speculating about the origin and beliefs surrounding UAPs. If you’ve looked at my categorical breakdown of how to classify any information regarding UFOs or UAPs, you’ll see this clearly falls under my lowest Level 4, or, non-verifiable conjecture or opinion (see the definitions of levels here). Now, you might disagree with me and the author based on all of the testimonial evidence provided by government hearings. But, Mr. Shermer is espousing his own opinion on the matter as a contributor to Skeptic Magazine.

As usual, even the small additions of wording like “tinfoil-hat-wearing kooks” (even when written in the negative as “not kooks”) and “Bart Simpson balloon” still pushes the public stigma against positive and constructive conversations regarding the phenomena. Those types of small stereotypes printed in the negative do not help with modifying the conversation towards positive, scientific and cultural discussions.

The real meat of my disagreement comes in the punch line “could UAPs really be space aliens?” And, as usual, the extraterrestrial hypothesis is thrown under the bus with the tired old skeptic standard - distances between stars is too far, grainy photographs, etc. What’s interesting is why I consider this a Level 4 analysis in my rating system. The answer is that it is just as easy to post a similar op-ed with a different viewpoint using the identical argument. In fact, the entire article could be exactly the same except for the last 2 paragraphs that focus on religious-like beliefs due to declining religiosity. These could be rewritten to emphasize stronger evidential analysis while compiling scientific evidence (moving the conversation to Level 3).

If you’ve read this far you probably think I’m in complete disagreement with his opinion. I’m not. It’s more about the tone of the discussion and where we need to focus on both rational and scientific investigation without throwing the old stones (that I’ve been seeing since the 1960s).

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ExoAstronomy Next Steps

ESA/Hubble,
M. Kornmesser

I've been thinking about where to go with this blog for quite a while now. So many new things and ideas have popped up in the last year of Covid its been difficult to focus on a particular topic - to name a few: UAPs and Government releases, James Webb Telescope, Avi Loeb's Galileo Project, Mars 2020, Cambrian evolution, new ocean exoplanets, reassessment of the Drake Equation, etc.

As I noted earlier, if anything, it is more than apparent that extraterrestrial life is more than just a scientific problem, it is a sociological problem (there's a full blog post being drafted just on that point alone). But the problem is exciting because it is becoming readily apparent that we will discover some form of alien life soon. The implications are immense and hopefully, I will be able to keep you updated here!

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Astronomers, UFOs and the Null Hypothesis

In a recent article, Ethan Siegel a Senior Contributor on Astronomy in Forbes magazine, provides a very good overview as to why scientists seems to remain mostly mute on the topic of UFOs. Clearly, part of the problem is that UFOs as a general topic doesn't specifically apply to one scientific discipline such as astronomy - it applies to many different areas of science, sociology, biology, engineering, philosophy, etc. Astronomers tend to get the brunt of the questions - especially due to SETI and astrobiology (or, just because they keep their eyes on the sky).

Many people complain that science isn't doing enough to study the UFO evidence. But, is it really a scientific problem? If aliens revealed themselves wouldn't it fall directly into a social/political problem space? Yes, scientists and engineers would be happy to start extending our knowledge based on what we might learn at that point but currently the types of science we need falls more into statistical work and observational evidence since much of the measures are not repeatable. This is more in line with investigators, sociologists and other disciplines (like the military, of course).

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Significant UFO Disclosures on the Rise

Interesting to see the amount of press interest in UFOs / UAPs recently. It's really quite unusual to see the mainstream media start to report these sightings and stories without some silly, campy quips or side stories to save face (in 'My Blog List' in the right column of the home page, the reporter Billy Cox, aka Devoid, was quite serious on the topic but was shut down recently).

I will be writing much more on this in the future, but to hear a former President of the United States admit there are unknown craft in the sky and that's reported in mainstream media might just raise the extraterrestrial problem more into the scientific realm (even though the discussion was still part of a comedy program).

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Extraterrestrial Mix of Science and Speculation

CSIRO/A. Cherney

I really liked this article on some of the most important topics for extraterrestrial life - Extraterrestrial evidence: 10 incredible findings about aliens from 2020

 

This is probably one of the better overviews that keeps an open mind on what some of the possibilities are. It would have been nice to see some demarcation on what is speculation vs scientific results - but, it can be gleaned from the text. Enjoy!

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Extraterrestrial Cognitive Dissonance?

Quartz had a recent interesting article that talks to the popularity of the science of searching for extraterrestrial life. Their initial example of the media sensation regarding Oumaumau, the unusual object that was observed within the Solar System, is revealing on how scientific information along with speculation can be distorted. Sutter and Siegel calling Bialy and Loeb's paper (2018) insulting and/or sensationalist was too extreme in my opinion (deGrasse Tyson as well). The authors were clearly speculating which warrants more investigation rather than anger. The paper is well structured, scientific and worth a look.

The more significant problem is that scientific speculation gets mixed with popular extraterrestrial theories and UFOs by those with what the article calls 'cognitive dissonance'. This mix can be easily remedied by clear, logical scientific defense of evidential speculation. Academic institutions are going to have to give in sooner or later to this as younger scientists enter the mainstream.

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What is it Like to be an Extraterrestrial (or a Bat for that matter)?

It's unusual that my very first post in this blog is about philosophy and not scientific topics such as exoplanets or astrobiology. Nevertheless, I do have a partial academic background in philosophy and just happened to come across some work by David Chalmers and Ned Block (both philosophers at NYU who specialize in philosophy of mind / nature of consciousness) that I feel pertain to the future of the problems that will be faced when we encounter intelligent life outside our planet.

In 1974 an article was published in The Philosophical Review by Thomas Nagel (another NYU philosopher) entitled 'What is it like to be a Bat?' Since it was published it has become one of the most cited works dealing with the nature of consciousness (if you wish to read it reprints can be found through simple web search). Nagel at that time was defending the position that physical reductionism cannot adequately explain what it is to be a biological being.

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