Regularly linked to alien-occupied flying saucers making stops on Earth from the outer reaches of deep space is an equally puzzling riddle: unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAP, a new term that encompasses objects that cannot be immediately identified and that are detected in the air, underwater or in space or that appear to travel between these domains.
Specialized sensors are now being sent into the field. This equipment is built to sense UAP and decipher what’s behind frequent sightings at certain hotspots. The UAP mystery has blossomed for years, thanks in part to military pilots who have recalled their related encounters. Congressional hearings, specially created military organizations, even NASA itself – all have been involved in their own close encounters with UAP. So far, a consistent cry has been “more data.”
Even SpaceX rocket chief Elon Musk admits he’s being hounded by people looking for the answer to the question “are we alone?” “Are there aliens? Or are we alone? People often ask me if I’ve seen any evidence of aliens. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen any evidence of aliens yet. As far as I know, we’re the aliens. And I think that if anyone knew, it would probably be me, and I haven’t seen any evidence of aliens,” Musk said recently said.
To be in the know, and for many eager to shed light on UAP, it’s all about reliable, truth-revealing, and scientifically rigorous data collection.
Related: NASA UFO report finds no evidence of ‘extraterrestrial origin’ for UAP sightings
Progress and improvements
Since the 1950s, there have been several attempts to use specialized sensors to identify UAP, says Robert Maxwell, a member of the Board of Directors of the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies (SCU). “The problem has always been that a UAP is unlikely to show up where your high-end sensors are.”
Today, a number of modern groups have developed UAP detection systems, Maxwell said. “Clear progress and improvements have been made.”
Although the ability to build and deploy these types of systems today is further advanced than ever before, says Maxwell, “none of these current programs have a quantity of systems or a standardized quality system that can allow large numbers to be delivered in a controlled manner.” are used. fashion.”
Maxwell believes that a successful UAP detection program will require a significant budget to build, distribute and maintain more than 1,500 UAP sensor systems, “but also require the ability to hire staff for the development and maintenance of such systems.”
What is a cha-ching calculation that sounds from the cash register? In the tens of millions of dollars, Maxwell estimates.
Multimodal counting
One scientific effort to untangle the UAP riddle is the Galileo Project, an effort led by Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb.
This initiative built an integrated software and instrumentation system designed to perform a multimodal count of aerial phenomena and recognize anomalies. Loeb believes that UAP represents a long-standing mystery that can and should be explored using the tools of contemporary science.
Loeb told Space.com that testing of the detection equipment is underway at a Harvard Observatory site and that the Galileo Project would assemble a second observatory in Colorado.
“We are starting to collect data with our Harvard UAP Observatory and want to analyze it with machine learning software,” Loeb said.
The goal is to automate the identification process and check whether objects are natural (birds, insects), man-made (balloons, drones, airplanes), Loeb said, “or something from beyond Earth.”
Wanted: consistency
Bringing a fresh and new take to the UAP detection scene is Alex Hollings, Editor-in-Chief of Sandboxx news. He notes that the Department of Defense has used a wide variety of sensors to detect UAP under different conditions, including electro-optical (video), infrared and radar.
However, there doesn’t seem to be much consistency, Hollings said, regarding detection through sensors. “This means that in some incidents, for example, anomalous objects can be detected by radar, but in others not.”
One element of the sensor conversation that Hollings says has remained “under-examined” is the variety of radar arrays and frequencies used in reported UAP incidents.
“There have been cases where the powerful radar systems on board Aegis destroyers detect an anomaly, while the fire control radars on board scrambled Super Hornet aircraft do not. That is sometimes seen as an element of added mystery, but today’s tactical stealth aircraft can also produce different results depending on the radar frequency. But in addition to finding the right radar frequency, we also need to find a way to search all the data we have more effectively.” Hollings said.
Mountain of data
In the big picture, here in the US, look at the entire area that the military monitors on a daily basis. It amounts to approximately 29 million square miles (75 million square kilometers).
“So to sift through all the chatter, the military sets up filters, similar to when someone searches for a used car online, essentially saying, ‘Only show me things that meet this criteria.’ It takes a bunch of data and turns it into a pretty big pile, and then people keep walking over that pile looking for threats or problems,” Hollings said.
The same goes for integrated air defense systems and more localized radar arrays. Take, for example, the MIM-104 Patriot system, which works in a similar way, Hollings points out, only signaling returns that could represent incoming threats.
“But all these arrays do to detect a lot of other things, from flocks of birds to dense clouds and everything in between,” Hollings noted.
Harnessing artificial intelligence
“Sifting through all that radar data is nearly impossible for the human eye, but using artificial intelligence to sift through all the static data can yield promising results,” Hollings said.
Similarly, AI could eventually detect stealth aircraft using existing radar arrays by just filtering the chatter – perhaps a capability useful for detecting UAP and teasing out a trend or pattern related to it.
“If UAP researchers can identify some similarities between anomalous radar signals, they could be used to train AI to detect them elsewhere,” Hollings says.
Drive detection
Then there is the use of infrared or thermal detection to identify and learn more about UAP.
“Heat sensing can obviously tell us a lot about propulsion, that is, if we’re talking about something that has propulsion. If so, whether or not UAP uses a combustion-based model via exhaust gases. And or there is not exhaust…well then we’re talking about something that is just that not used propulsion, like a natural phenomenon perhaps, or something that uses a form of propulsion that we are completely unfamiliar with,” Hollings said.
But beyond propulsion, Hollings said he’s interested to see how infrared sensors can capture UAP to determine if these things could potentially be some kind of laser-induced plasma filament holograms. That just happens to happen in the US Navy have a patent for such technology.
Holograms and Occam’s razor
“Such a hologram would be capable of incredible speeds and maneuvers that appear to defy physics, may not produce a radar return, and could potentially be very convincing,” Hollings said. “Above water, I argue that it may be possible to project such a hologram from a submarine on the surface… but that is a tall order,” he said.
Projecting such a hologram over land would be an even taller task, Hollings added. But admittedly, Occam’s razor rears its ugly head. That’s a scientific and philosophical rule that primarily favors the simplest, known bodies of competing theories over more complex explanations of unknown phenomena.
This means that Occam’s Razor should be invoked against extraterrestrial visitors if there is no other data, Hollings said.
Military activity
Earlier this year, RAND jumped into the UAP fray, a think tank that aims to help spice up policy and decision-making through research and analysis. Their report was entitled: Not the X-Files – Public reports of unidentified aerial phenomena mapped across America.
RAND specialists examined where people are likely to report sightings of UAPs in the United States. And what factors predict where people are more or less likely to report UAP sightings?
The results of the RAND analysis provided guidance for government officials, highlighting outreach to civilians near military operating areas and the need for improvements in data collection.
“We hypothesize that many civilians may not be aware that they are near areas where military operations are taking place,” the RAND study points out. UAP reports are significantly associated with areas of military activity. If some of these UAP reports are indeed authorized aircraft, the report continues, “then communicating that such activities are being conducted nearby could reduce the likelihood that the public will report these aircraft as UAPs.”
Public reporting
Furthermore, the RAND assessment of the situation calls for designing a detailed and robust system for public reporting of UAP observations. Such a system – perhaps run by government agencies or non-governmental groups – would be helpful in minimizing hoaxes and reports of misidentified objects. The report adds that public reporting of anomalous phenomena could be an asset to government agencies in identifying potential threats in U.S. airspace.
“Greater transparency in how observations are collected, researched and used could also help mitigate the conspiracy theories that have long surrounded aerial phenomena,” the RAND study concludes.
Overall, there is a palpable increase in anxiety for action items to get to the bottom of UAP identification. And that comes down to digging deep into data, claims Sandboxx News editor Hollings.
“I think the only way we can find answers for UAP is by taking a systematic approach to identifying patterns in the data,” he concludes. “If we can find just one commonality across multiple occurrences, that gives us a data set to look elsewhere.” best…or worst case might point us to new detection methods.”
