Differences

This shows you the differences between two versions of the page.

--- transportation:ufo [2025/06/09 05:11] – [Department of Defense (DoD)] timb
+++ transportation:ufo [2026/03/10 20:42] (current) – [Search / SETI] timb
@@ Line 198: / Line 198: @@
 https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/01/is-humanity-alone-in-the-universe-what-scientists-really-think/
+== Decide Now; We Won’t Know Much More Later Re UFOs ==
+Robin Hanson - Aug 20, 2025
+By now humanity has seen hundreds of thousands of UFO reports, accumulated over more than eight decades. What have we learned about aliens from them? I suggest that we think about this as a four stage learning and analysis process. All four stages can be done at all times, and we do better over time by improving all of them.
+First, we combine the evidence of specific reports, and our cosmological priors, to estimate a chance that each report so far report was caused by an encounter with a strange advanced civilization (wherever from), i.e., real “aliens”, as opposed to human mistakes, illusions, hoaxes, or foreign mischief. This estimation is done jointly, and produces a joint distribution over these chances.
+Second, we define interesting categories of reports (e.g. saucer shaped, had big acceleration, reported by pilot) and then aggregate those report chance estimates across reports into the chances per category that any report in that category was from a real alien. Including a total chance for the total category of all reports. (And maybe also an expected count of alien encounters per category.) Now we have a total chance of any alien encounters, plus a joint distribution over the interesting categories of alien encounter events, conditional on any of them being alien encounters. E.g., most alien encounters tend to be sauce-shaped and to do a big acceleration.
+https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/decide-now-we-wont-know-much-more
+== Where Are the Aliens? New Study Suggests They’re Stuck Like Us ==
+An astrophysicist has proposed an intriguing explanation for why humanity has never made contact with an extraterrestrial civilization.
+Ellyn Lapointe - October 15, 2025
+In 1950, famed astrophysicist Enrico Fermi posed a profound question during a casual lunch with colleagues: Where is everybody? In other words, if there’s an extremely high probability that advanced alien civilizations exist somewhere, why haven’t we found evidence of them?
+That’s how the story goes, at least. But regardless of the circumstances surrounding its utterance, that question—known today as the Fermi paradox—has captured the minds of researchers ever since. In a new paper, which has not yet been peer reviewed, astrophysicist Robin Cordet proposes “radical mundanity” as one possible explanation.
+Cordet, a senior research scientist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, who is based at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, suggests the galaxy is home to a modest number of alien civilizations that aren’t that much more advanced than our own. Because their technology is similarly limited, neither civilization can detect the other.
+“The idea is that they’re more advanced, but not much more advanced. It’s like having an iPhone 42 rather than an iPhone 17,” Corbet told The Guardian. “This feels more possible, more natural, because it’s not proposing anything very extreme.”
+https://gizmodo.com/where-are-the-aliens-new-study-suggests-theyre-stuck-like-us-2000672801
@@ Line 251: / Line 279: @@
 https://www.theregister.com/2024/08/29/seti_intergalactic_search_alien/
+== SETI Thinks It Might Have Missed a Few Alien Calls. Here’s Why ==
+The researchers who scan the skies for radio signals from extraterrestrials are now rethinking their approach.
+Matthew Phelan - March 9, 2026
+Scientists hunting for radio signals from any form of advanced extraterrestrial life that might be out there trying to contact us are now starting to wonder if something has been messing with their work.
+A new study published by researchers at the SETI Institute, short for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, has tested the possibility that “space weather” could render strong premeditated alien broadcasts into the kind of fainter radio signals that SETI typically ignores.
+“SETI searches are often optimized for extremely narrow signals,” according to Vishal Gajjar, an astronomer at the SETI Institute and lead author on the new work, published this past Thursday in the American Astronomical Society’s Astrophysical Journal.
+https://gizmodo.com/seti-thinks-it-might-have-missed-a-few-alien-calls-heres-why-2000730730
+== SETI admits its search for alien life may be too narrowly focussed ==
+Solar winds near aliens’ homes – and ours – might be blowing away signs of alien technosignatures by broadening signals
+Simon Sharwood - Tue 10 Mar 2026 05:27 UTC
+The SETI Institute, the nonprofit that conducts a search for extraterrestrial intelligence by examining radio waves for artefacts that are unlikely to be the result of natural processes, thinks it may have been going about it the wrong way.
+As explained in a paper and post published last week, SETI points out that it has focussed its attention on narrowband signals and tries to compensate for interstellar events that might distort signals.
+The organization’s new research points out that solar winds or coronal mass ejections may distort signals within aliens’ star systems. SETI therefore hasn’t been looking for likely signals that We Are Not Alone, because it assumed that alien civilizations transmitted narrowband signals.
+“If a signal gets broadened by its own star’s environment, it can slip below our detection thresholds, even if it’s there, potentially helping explain some of the radio silence we’ve seen in technosignature searches,” said Dr. Vishal Gajjar, Astronomer at the SETI Institute and lead author of the paper.
+SETI’s researchers made that suggestion after studying data describing signals sent by human-made probes and finding signal distortion on many missions – the paper mentions Mariner IV, Pioneers 6, 10, and 11, Helios 1 and 2, Viking missions to Mars, Mars Express, Venus Express, and Rosetta missions.
+https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/10/seti_admits_its_search_for/
@@ Line 1067: / Line 1127: @@
 https://gizmodo.com/these-states-have-the-most-ufo-sightings-2000493512
+== What People Are Getting Wrong This Week: UFO Disinformation ==
+The truth, it seems, is not out there.
+Stephan Johnson - June 10, 2025
+Disinformation has a tendency to metastasize. Lies mutate with each retelling until the final product looks nothing like the original source. This phenomenon is particularly striking in the world of UFOs, where decades of institutional secrecy have created fertile ground for speculation to flourish.
+Late last week, The Wall Street Journal published a report revealing how various governmental and military agencies have been spreading disinformation about UFOs since at least the 1950s. Based on research conducted by the congressionally mandated All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) that was never made public, the WSJ report sheds light on (or explains away) UFO events as varied as Area 51, the Malmstrom nuclear missile incident, and the Air Force's "Yankee Blue" program—three events that have shaped public opinion on UFOs for decades, and, according to the report, were themselves shaped by official disinformation. If this report is accurate, much of what people believe about UFOs is wrong because of deliberate lies fed to us by our government.
+https://lifehacker.com/entertainment/what-people-are-getting-wrong-this-week-ufo-disinformation
@@ Line 1428: / Line 1498: @@
 https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/24/11/14/0543247/experts-testify-us-is-running-secret-uap-programs
+==  Witnesses Tell Congress of UFO Sightings ==
+Posted by BeauHD on Wednesday September 10, 2025 @12:00AM
+A U.S. congressional hearing today on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs) featured testimony from military veterans and witnesses describing encounters with mysterious craft, including glowing red squares, tic-tac-shaped objects emerging from the ocean, and videos of missiles striking unidentified orbs. While NASA maintains there's no evidence of extraterrestrial life, lawmakers stressed the need for transparency, whistleblower protections, and further investigation.
+There were four witnesses at today's hearing:
+Jeffrey Nuccetelli: U.S. Air Force veteran and self-described UAP witness who investigated the reported "red square" sighting above Vandenberg Air Force Base.
+George Knapp: Award-winning journalist and chief reporter at KLAS-TV, known for his decades of UFO coverage and multiple Peabody Awards.
+Alexandro Wiggins: Navy veteran of 23 years who reported witnessing a "Tic Tac" UAP aboard the USS Jackson in 2023 and noted his father's work at Area 51.
+Dylan Borland: Air Force veteran and UAP witness with little public information or media exposure available.
+"The public senses that it's real and the people in authority dismiss them," said Knapp, arguing that the public can handle the truth. One of the clips he showed lawmakers was of a drone operator tracking a glowing orb off the coast of Yemen before a missile struck the object. "That's a Hellfire missile smacking into that UFO and just bouncing right off," he said. "What the hell is that?" Knapp said the clip is not unique, claiming multiple video servers with similar UAP footage are being kept from Congress. Borland testified: "This craft interfered with my telephone, did not have any sound and the material it was made of appeared fluid or dynamic."
+https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/25/09/09/2336255/witnesses-tell-congress-of-ufo-sightings
+====== Database ======
+== The National UFO Reporting Center Online Database ==
+The NUFORC Databank is the largest independently collected set of UFO / UAP sighting reports available on the internet.   For 25 years, it has been the go-to resource for researchers and the general public interested in following the most recent first hand UFO witness accounts, or delving into a deep archive of historical reports.   The reports are freely available to the public to browse through the indexes below.   For any other use, including commercial use, please refer to our Terms of Service at the bottom of the page.
+NUFORC staff review each report, and grade them as follows:
+  *     TIER 1: The most dramatic sightings – strange structured craft or highly anomalous phenomena seen at close distance.  Indicated by a bright yellow Open! Link.
+  *     TIER 2: Objects exhibiting unusual characteristics such as incredible speed, non-inertial turns, unexplainable propulsion, etc. Indicated by a faded yellow Open link.
+  *     TIER 3: Other reports that cannot be easily explained.
+  *    TIER 4: Reports we feel are explainable by human or natural phenomenon. Explanations are rated as Possible (indicated by ?), Probable or Certain.
+Note: Reports received prior to March 2023 have not yet been graded.
+https://nuforc.org/databank/
@@ Line 1696: / Line 1804: @@
 https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/06/08/0520236/how-false-ufo-stories-were-created---sometimes-deliberately---by-the-us-military
+== Pentagon Has Been Pushing Americans to Believe in UFOs for Decades, New Report Finds ==
+The government wants you to believe.
+Lucas Ropek - June 11, 2025
+UFOs have been back in the news a lot lately, and it may be the case that the government wants it that way. Last week, the Wall Street Journal published the first of a two-part series that probes the ways in which the Defense Department has been responsible for creating and fostering the UFO mythology in America.
+The article shows that the government has, at various points over the years, purposefully sown disinformation about UFOs, in an effort to make Americans believe in little green men. This news comes as the result of an internal investigation by Sean Kirkpatrick, the head of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), which was specifically set up within the Pentagon to investigate UFO sightings. Kirkpatrick, who spoke with the Journal, says he’s found evidence that the government “fabricated evidence of alien technology” in an effort to distract from real weapons programs being carried out by the government in secret.
+The Journal frames its findings as a “stunning new twist in the story of America’s cultural obsession with UFOs” but, while the story’s specific anecdotes are certainly new and quite interesting, its broader findings are not, nor are they particularly stunning. Instead, they parrot what many critics of the UFO narrative have long said: that the UFO mythos grew out of a disinformation campaign created by shadowy defense officials to obscure more terrestrial secrets about America’s national security community.
+https://gizmodo.com/pentagon-has-been-pushing-americans-to-believe-in-ufos-for-decades-new-report-finds-2000614615
+==  Shocking radar footage shows Hellfire missile fired by US military bounce off UFO over ocean ==
+Shane Galvin - Sep. 9, 2025 / Updated Sep. 10, 2025, 6:57 a.m. ET
+The House Committee on Restoring Public Trust unveiled a shocking new video that shows a hulking US military weapon bounce off a UFO as it flew over the ocean.
+The wild footage shared by Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.) during the disclosure hearing on Capitol Hill on Tuesday shows a Hellfire missile fired by a US military drone striking a glowing orb that flew off the coast of Yemen.
+The speeding object was paced by a 100-pound Hellfire air-to-ground round fired by an MQ-9 drone, which made contact and bounced right off, as shown in the radar footage from October 30, 2024.
+The footage came from a separate MQ-9 drone, which recorded the orb spinning after the missile made contact and continuing on its way, UFO expert George Knapp said at the hearing.
+“There’s a server where there’s a whole bank of these kinds of videos that Congress has not been allowed to see — that the public has not been allowed to see,” Knapp said at the hearing.
+https://nypost.com/2025/09/09/us-news/shocking-radar-footage-shows-hellfire-missile-fired-by-us-military-directly-hit-ufo-over-ocean/
+== Newly Released Video Shows U.S. Reaper Drone Shooting at ‘UFO’ ==
+A grainy new video provides fresh fodder for America's UFO enthusiasts.
+Lucas Ropek - September 11, 2025
+A recent Congressional hearing revealed video of a Hellfire missile fired by a Reaper drone “bouncing off” an unidentified flying object, which has onlookers—Congress included—scratching their heads. The hearing took place in a House Oversight subcommittee meeting on UFO transparency that was partially hosted by MAGA congresswoman and state-sanctioned UFO investigator Rep. Anna Paulina Luna.
+The video sure is, uh, something. As Fox News melodramatically puts it:
+<blockquote>
+    A House hearing on unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs) stunned lawmakers when video evidence showed a U.S. drone firing a Hellfire missile at an orb off Yemen—only for the object to remain intact and keep moving, raising urgent questions about technology beyond known military capabilities.
+</blockquote>
+The video was first shared publicly by Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Missouri), who noted that it was “taken [on] October 30 of 2024″ and characterized it as an “MQ-9 drone tracking an orb or this object off the coast of Yemen.” Burlison said the footage is “presented as received from a whistleblower. Independent review is ongoing.”
+https://gizmodo.com/newly-released-video-shows-u-s-reaper-drone-shooting-at-ufo-2000657322
+== Space Command chief throws cold water on the question of UAPs in space ==
+“I am not aware of anything that is extraterrestrial, other than comets and things like that.”
+Stephen Clark – Mar 4, 2026 2:32 PM
+DENVER—Last month, President Donald Trump took to social media with an announcement that he would direct the Pentagon and other federal agencies to “begin the process” of disclosing government files related to alien life and UAPs (unidentified anomalous phenomena). It was the latest chapter in a yearslong slow burn of sensational claims, congressional hearings, and yes, the military’s release in 2020 of intriguing videos that do, indeed, appear to show things that defy simple explanations.
+Subsequent reports from NASA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) did not find any link between the unexplained phenomena and aliens, but that didn’t stop enthusiasts from wanting to know more.
+“To date, in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, there is no conclusive evidence suggesting an extraterrestrial origin for UAP,” a NASA blue-ribbon panel wrote in a 2023 report. “The limited amount of high-quality reporting on unidentified aerial phenomena hampers our ability to draw firm conclusions about the nature or intent of UAP,” the DNI report stated in 2021.
+Government officials have said little about Trump’s most recent social media post on the matter. The president cited “tremendous interest” in the files, whatever they might contain. Perhaps the most famous UAP videos released by the Pentagon to date were captured by cameras on Navy fighter planes operating over the sea.
+https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/03/space-command-chief-throws-cold-water-on-the-question-of-uaps-in-space/