The chance to encounter exotic phenomena makes life exciting. The boring routine, on the other hand, is the meeting of the mundane. We crave the exotic over the mundane. Because of this tendency, Richard Feynman warned: “We must be careful not to believe things just because we want them to be true. No one can fool you as easily as you can fool yourself.” This pearl of wisdom warns against getting carried away with the interpretation of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP).
Yesterday, a New York Post reporter sent me a video taken by a television news crew from a helicopter over Manhattan, showing a fast-moving ball of light during the day. He asked, “Do you believe it is an object or a phenomenon of the camera or light? Does it appear to bear any similarity to other types of UAP reportedly seen around the world?”
I thanked the reporter for sharing the interesting video and explained that the moving spot is most likely an optical artifact of the helicopter glass in front of the camera, namely a bright spot caused by reflection of sunlight as the camera gradually changed its orientation relative to of the camera. Sun and the ground. But even if this were a real object, its apparent speed is OK with the speed of sound and not extraordinary.
The Galileo project I lead published a new, comprehensive paper last week detailing a detailed, careful analysis of commissioning data from half a million aerial objects collected over a five-month period. The paper was placed on this web page. In the coming months, our research team will try to triangulate outliers and find out whether they are exotic or commonplace based on their measured distances.
Two days ago, the new director of the Pentagon’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, Jon Kosloski, stated at a US Senate hearing: “We have some very anomalous objects… Many reports are about everyday objects like birds, balloons and unmanned systems. while others do not have sufficient data for a comprehensive analysis… only a small percentage of reports received by AARO are potentially anomalous.” Kosloski mentioned a UAP sighted in 2013 near Aguadilla, Puerto Rico.
Infrared video from a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol helicopter shows the object flying over the ocean before disappearing into it or possibly splitting in two. AARO determined that the UAP was actually flying over the airport the entire time and disappeared in the infrared images because it was the same temperature as the water behind it. The apparent split was due to two separate objects close together coming in and out of view.
Kosloski also reported that AARO explained the well-known GOFAST video taken by a US Navy fighter jet off the coast of Florida in 2016. In that case, the apparent speed of the object in the video was actually due to parallax related to the camera’s perspective. In another case from 2018, a drone flying over Etna was “actually 170 meters away from the plume – and did not fly through it.”
AAROs new report examines UAP cases dated between May 1, 2023 and June 1, 2024, as well as historical incidents not included in previous reports. AARO’s ability to resolve cases “remains limited by a lack of timely and actionable sensor data.” AAROs Report 2022 studied 510 UAP cases reported by government agencies and the US military. Of these UAPs, AARO was unable to identify a minority of 171 objects, stating: “Some of these uncharacterized UAPs appear to have exhibited unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities, and require further analysis.”
Identifying most of the unidentified could be satisfactory for national security purposes. But even if one in a million objects is exotic, that particular object could revolutionize astronomy. This is why the Galileo project conducts a thorough and careful systematic study of the sky over many months, rather than relying on anecdotal reports from those who happened to be in the right place at the right time. By summer 2025, we hope to have three operational observatories with triangulation capabilities for identifying distances to millions of aerial objects.
There is precedent for US government data uncovering exotic phenomena while seeking out the mundane, and as a result, advancing new knowledge in astronomy. In 1967, gamma-ray bursts were discovered by the Vela satellites searching for bursts of high-energy photons from secret nuclear weapons tests above the atmosphere.
After the bursts were determined to be of cosmic origin, their existence was revealed to astronomers through a paper published in 1973 by a research team at Los Alamos National Laboratory. In 1997, the X-rays from the gamma-ray burst were associated with galaxies at cosmological distances. It is now known that long-duration bursts, lasting more than a few seconds, are emitted by relativistic jets that penetrate the envelope of massive stars as their cores collapse to form a black hole.
The possibility that some UAPs were sent by intelligent cosmic neighbors is the reason the public is fascinated by their existence. According to Feynman’s advice, we should be guided by data, rather than wishful thinking. The nature of UAP will be revealed by scientists, not journalists or politicians.
