If you follow Futuro Prossimo you know that a task force of luminaries of NASA has spent the last year poring over 800 UFO sightings. A fascinating topic, even for those like me who are skeptical about everything and take nothing for granted. We are not talking about some episode of the X-Files series, but about a careful and detailed analysis of unclassified events recorded over the course of 27 years. That's why I spent the last two days listening to the research team's first public lecture. If you missed it you can watch it here.
For those who haven't seen it, can I spoil the ending? Only 2-5% of these events remain truly unexplained. Everything else, well, maybe not so much “out there”.
Let's go in order. The NASA study group made up of 16 people including scientists, business executives, federal employees and even a former astronaut (there is also an Italian scientist, Federica White, who works at the University of Delaware in the Department of Physics and Astrophysics) has examined reports of UFO sightings, sorry: UAP over the past seven months. It wasn't a joke organize the event: it is the first public meeting in history that a government agency holds on the subject of unidentified flying objects. The first out of a movie or a novel, I mean. Of course, he didn't reserve the same emotions.
Tell us more
During the meeting, David Spergel, a former Princeton University astrophysics professor and member of the task force, called for the collection of better quality data to study and understand so-called “unidentified anomalous phenomena” (UAP).
“Currently, there are very few high-quality observations and data curation on UAPs is limited,” Spergel said, adding that available data from eyewitness reports is often confusing and does not provide conclusive evidence to support recognition and detection. analysis of these phenomena.
In other words, the lack of high-quality data makes it impossible to draw scientific conclusions about the nature of UAPs. It's like trying to draw a portrait with a brush that's too big.
Many tasks, little Force
Let's analyze the definition that the NASA task force did of the UAPs. “Observations of events in the sky that cannot be identified as known aircraft or natural phenomena from a scientific perspective.”
As you know, although the common imagination often associates these sightings with possible signals of extraterrestrial intelligence, the US government is more interested in understanding whether these observations could represent a threat to national security.
And at the moment he is groping in the dark.
We haven't seen anything yet
The task force still has work to do, and this "check point" with the public seems to have only served to ask not to be made fun of anymore.
You got it right. Few quality data, a lot of fluff and (at the moment) only unclassified cases. Spergel has asked NASA to push the government to give them currently classified material, which evidently includes more precise data on UAPs.
With a footnote: Nadia Drake, another member of the task force and a science journalist, estimated that only about 20 cases in total, among those studied by the panel, are truly anomalous. Even one more than zero is worth it, he reiterates: for this reason we must also encourage the collection of a mobile app that allows people to send and share sightings.
If you want to find it then, while waiting for the next "check point" of the task force scheduled for the end of the summer, there is some news. Actually, two.
The first: Experts invite everyone to look up to look for signals from the sky. The second: the mystery is still alive. And in a world where we no longer believe in anything, even ignorance of something is a blessing.
