On June 25, 2022 the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released the Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena. It was a nine-page unclassified document, though there are suggestions in the press that some classified portions were not released. That may not be a sinister cover-up if so, but rather a normal procedure to protect U.S. military capabilities and tactics. While the report did not reject the possibility of extraterrestrial life as the origin of these encounters, neither did it exclude extraterrestrial life as the cause.
Interior Communications Electrician 3rd Class Elias Simon records flight operations aboard the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz (CVN 68). Nimitz, is the flagship of Carrier Strike Group 11, whose aircraft had a close encounter of the first kind in 2004. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Dalton Reidhead/Released.). File photo only.
The War Zone (Drive) has an article about affirmative steps that the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) is considering in terms of electronic data collection of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP.) Electronic surveillance is a touchy subject as far as North America is concerned, so AARO seems to be looking for certain locations where UAP may be found. Those places might best be identified by U.S. naval fliers who know where to expect these craft (See story below.)
May 31, 2023
Five Eyes anglophone intelligence alliance comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. Illustration credit: Tang Yan Song (Shutterstock.)
On May 31, 2023, NASA held a public meeting to discuss Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (née, Unidentified Flying Objects.) They had been charged the previous year with setting up their own UAP data collection program in coordination with the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO.) It was revealed today that the Pentagon has asked the United Kingdom to share their findings with the U.S. and vice versa. Also, a meeting was held last week between the Five Eyes Alliance (FVEY), consisting of Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom on the same subject of unidentified flying objects.
Of particular interest among the 2-5% of unexplained reportings are the metallic spheres which have been reported by U.S. Navy pilots and captured on film by Department of Defence surveillance drones at various places around the world, including areas of combat such as Mosul, Iraq (See video below of an object between 10,000 and 30,000 feet that catches the attention of a Reaper UAV.)
The drones reportedly vary in size from just a foot or more in diameter to something a bit larger, so clearly they are not large enough to be manned (by anyone on this planet.) They perform in ways that not only human technology has not yet reached, but in ways we have not yet even been able to hypothesize. As The Hill rightly wonders: “. . . how would spheres, lacking wings or apparent forms of propulsion, execute maneuvers of any kind?” Clearly something is “up there,” but what?
As Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, Director of the AARO noted:
‘To be sure, rigorous scientific analysis may ultimately identify a prosaic explanation for such observations. In the meantime, however, such metallic orbs are prima facie evidence of extraordinary technology. After all, how would spheres, lacking wings or apparent forms of propulsion, execute maneuvers of any kind?’
In his presentation, Kirkpatrick also described the UAP characteristics most frequently received by his office. This range of attributes, in short, amounts to a UAP profile that Kirkpatrick’s staff is “out hunting for.”
Intriguingly, this profile includes small (3 to 13 feet in diameter) ‘“’spherical’”’ objects capable of flight at a range of velocities, from ‘“’stationary’”’ to twice the speed of sound, despite a perplexing absence of ‘thermal exhaust’ such as heat from an engine. Of particular note, as Kirkpatrick made clear, some of these highly anomalous characteristics are observed via multiple sensors.”
The Hill.
April 19, 2023
Kirkpatrick testifies to Congress
In a small hearing room the director of the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) Sean Kirkpatrick to members of the Senate Armed Services subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities. The meeting was only several hours long and included several new but disappointing videos of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena. It’s clear the anecdotal observations of UAP/UFOs by people on the ground or by Navy F-18 pilots at 20,000 feet trying to dodge these objects on the one hand and keep up with them on the other is not the best way to study these objects. The director said so much himself. He also stated on several occasions that there was no evidence to suggest extraterrestial origins of these objects, but a worthy question from members of the committee might have been “What sort of evidence are you looking for that might suggest something not produced on this planet?” A follow-up question might be why these objects are sighted so often around sensitive military facilities. To date, more than fifty Navy pilots have reported encountering these objects (if that is the correct term to use.)
April 17, 2023
Senate Armed Services Committee to review UFO threat assessment this Wednesday
A bipartisan group of lawmakers is doubling down on solving the decades-old UFO mystery. On Wednesday, the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities will hold the second hearing on the phenomenon in over 50 years.”
The article in the online political journal mentions that there will be usual share of politics and “buck-passing,” but the article also provides additional tantalizing information, including the fact that:
. . .satellites have observed UAP. In one noteworthy incident, a U.S. surveillance satellite captured multiple images of a “Tic Tac”-shaped craft, which intelligence analysts immediately compared to the object in the most well-known UAP case.”
April 14, 2023
The subject of the United States Navy and Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena continues to make the news every few months. Most recently, Dr. Sean M. Kirkpatrick, Director of the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) was in the news for approaching Dr. Abraham (Avi) Loeb, Head of the Head of the Galileo Project, Astronomy Department, Harvard University to request collaborating with Loeb in a paper on UAPs.
The Galileo Project is an international scientific research project to systematically search for extraterrestrial intelligence or extraterrestrial technology on and near Earth and to identify the nature of anomalous Unidentified Flying Objects/Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UFOs/UAP).”
Comet Oumuamua, designated 1I/2017 U1 is an interstellar object which entered the solar system in the fall of 2017. Its nature remains a mystery. Illustration credit: Joshimerbin (Shutterstock.)
That a government scientist charged with investigating unknown objects that defy known physics and travel at hypersonic speeds, only to stop or change direction on a dime, and in some cases, submerge under the ocean surface traveling at high speed as well suggests to some scientists that the United States Navy and specifically the AARO is at a dead end in their investigations. True, they have been able to explain many if not most of the UAP reported to them, but there is sizeable residue of incidents that defy explanation. U.S. Senators such as Marco Rubio (R, FL) in particular who have no opinion one way or another about the origin of these craft are nevertheless concerned with what they see as a potential security risk to the United States. Many of these reports come from highly trained military pilots off the East Coast of the U.S. who insist the encounters are continuing to this very day.
The paper suggests that interstellar objects such as Comet Oumuamua may not be comets at all, but rather ships that release drones to discover things about the planets that the ship encounters. That Oumuamua (which means “scout” in Hawaiian.
The paper at this point has not yet been refereed (i.e., peer reviewed), but is available for reading at this link.
Photo (left): Dandelion seeds (credit admin): To understand the relevance of this photo, read the draft of the paper here.
March 2, 2023
A follow on article in Politico continues on the topic of UAP and the less than desired government response.
August 23, 2022:
Yesterday there was an interesting article in the Capitol political e-zine “The Hill.” It dealt with recent Congressional legislation creating an agency to investigate and track. UFO’s. The legislation says that:
Temporary nonattributed objects, or those that are positively identified as man-made after analysis, will be passed to appropriate offices and should not be considered under the definition as unidentified aero-space-undersea phenomena.”
117th Congress, 2nd Session, IReport 117-132 NTELLIGENCE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2023
So, what the Senate is saying is that only transmedium objects (i.e., objects that fly through space, air and water) and that are constructed by alien (i.e., other than human) technology should be reported under the guidelines of the law. In practical terms, this means (1) either nothing will ever be reported again because there is no history of extraterrestrial technology ever being encountered, or (2) members of the intelligence community and the current and former presidents know more than you, I, and Dana Scully about what is “up there.”
One other interesting fact in the story in The Hill. Apparently those restricted airspaces off the eastern coast of the U.S. have specific, designated corridors where U.S. military aircraft access them. I suppose there are certain GPS coordinates and altitudes where fighter aircraft enter and egress. Apparently, many of the UFO (UAP) sightings that the U.S. Navy has noted come from objects that are blocking these “doorways” used to access the zones. This suggests that whoever is piloting these UAPs are aware of the significance of these points.
Credit VFR Map
Nor is the Navy the only service branch to report unusual phenomena. A number of UFO/UAP sightings over the years have occurred in proximity to American ICBM bases.
### Story begins HERE: Close encounters of the first kind
On my previous blog site, I had posts that speculated on life elsewhere in the galaxy (e.g. Wolf 359), and given this report and my inclination to comment on current news items from a Scriptural perspective, I thought it worthwhile to do so on this story as well, involving pilots from the USS Nimitz Carrier Group in 2004 who filmed the first of a series of videos involving an unknown object. I watched the Sixty Minutes report on the topic last month and the testimony of one of the Naval pilots, Lieutenant Ryan Graves who said: “I am worried, frankly. You know, if these were tactical jets from another country that were hangin’ out up there, it would be a massive issue. But because it looks slightly different, we’re not willing to actually look at the problem in the face. We’re happy to just ignore the fact that these are out there, watching us every day.” In other words, if these objects which fly more than five times faster than our jets can, had Russian or Chinese flags or insignia on them, then there would be a national crisis. We would quickly build up our forces in the area and attempt to intercept these aircraft. But because these objects are devoid of any identifying marks, we downplay or discount their significance. So, I think it is probably time that an appropriate committee in Congress exercise oversight in this area, before Klaatu and Gort land in Lafayette Park on a Superbowl Sunday.
Extraterrestrial life: Fermi paradox vs. the Drake equation
People have wondered about the possibilities of life among the stars for millennia. Imagine the thoughts of mariners on watch at night as their ships crossed the vast sea, or shepherds who gazed at the stars while guarding over their herds. Or, the ruminations of philosophers. Some of their thoughts were, in fact, recorded and survive to this day. Distinguished historical personalities such as Aristotle, Lucretius and Plutarch (Beck, 1971) each weighed in. By the Middle Ages, Galileo, Kepler, and Fontenelle added their voices. German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss in the early nineteenth century even suggested cutting a huge triangle into the forests of Siberia and planting wheat in this design, which would then, if sufficiently large, be visible from the moon or perhaps even from Mars. It would be a sort of cosmic greeting, courtesy of a beautiful mind. Or, perhaps, the mother of all crop circles.
Physicist Enrico Fermi was the author of a simple paradox which he voiced sometime around 1950 in the company of several friends and colleagues, including Edward Teller. If the number of inhabited systems ran into the hundreds of thousands of systems, Fermi reasoned, then there were certainly civilizations more advanced than ours. In that case, why are they not trying to contact us? Fermi, on that occasion, was famously quoted: “Where are they?” or “Don’t you ever wonder where everybody is?” Altogether, there are approximately two dozen possible answers to Fermi’s question, ranging from the hypothesis that the aliens are dead, that the celestial distances are too great between us and “them,” to the notion that the aliens never existed in our universe (or at least our galaxy) in the first place. The hypothesis that we are indeed, alone, in the galaxy is currently occupying the minds of more and more members of the science community, despite all the discoveries of exoplanets (currently numbering about 4,000.)
In the last century, American astronomer and astrophysicist Frank Drake estimated that the number of advanced civilizations in the Milky Way (our galaxy) was between 1,000 and 100,000,000. This range was computed by multiplying seven variables such as the birth rate of stars by the fraction of stars with planets, by the number of habitable planets, etc. However, we don’t have accurate numbers and the value of some variables in the equation are highly, perhaps even wildly, speculative, so we will likely never know the answer with any reasonable certainty. But it is the sheer potential of the Drake equation that drives organizations like SETI.
Australian physicist Brandon Carter (1983) also concluded that life was rare in the galaxy, because the biosphere we have on our planet Earth depended on at least one, if not two, statistically improbable, even miraculous, events to achieve what we have today in such a short time period (4-6 billion years.) And, if there was life elsewhere in the galaxy, then certainly it would have evolved. But then, how could it have reached the degree of technology and sophistication in the same, short time that we have without miracles in the evolution of their own species? And in that case, how much more improbable would a civilization be that is more advanced than ours? Oxford researchers Andrew E. Snyder-Beattie, Sandberg, Drexler, and Bonsall (2021) agree with the “original argument suggested by Brandon Carter that intelligent life in the Universe is exceptionally rare, assuming that intelligent life elsewhere requires analogous evolutionary transitions.” Snyder-Beattie, Sandberg, et al. conclude: “It took approximately 4.5 billion years for a series of evolutionary transitions resulting in intelligent life to unfold on Earth. In another billion years, the increasing luminosity of the Sun will make Earth uninhabitable for complex life.”
But, despite these gloomy prognostications by Fermi, Carter, Snyder-Beattie, et al., there are the unidentified flying objects that the Air Force investigated and there are the Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena that the Department of Defense is currently studying.
Recent history
American author Charles Fort (1874-1932) spent a good deal of his lifetime collecting anecdotal accounts that science of his day could not readily explain. These accounts were essentially newspaper clippings from around the world. A believer in extraterrestrial life, his books are full of accounts of fish falling from the sky, people hearing trumpets in the middle of nowhere, or seeing air ships or search lights cross the North American continent before Pilatre de Rozier and François Laurent launched the first hot air balloon in 1783 in Europe.
After World War II, reports of “flying saucers” started to pour in and before long, people such as Barney and Betty Hill were reporting close encounters of the fourth, kind, while one space ship allegedly crashed in Roswell, NM. It wasn’t easy being an involved, curious teenager as I was back then. You had to bump elbows with people like George Adamski and Edgar Cayce (Cayce was dead when I was a teenager, but his legacy lived on.) Some “UFOlogists” were plainly nut cases, others were people with vivid imaginations, paranoid tendencies or hucksters trying to make a quick buck. The Air Force established several reporting and investigative agencies such as Project Sign, Project Grudge, and Project Blue Book. Most of the reports they processed could be explained as ordinary, if sometimes uncommon, objects or events. But there was a certain percent that could not be explained (as the Navy pilots from the Nimitz discovered.) Eventually, these programs were phased out.
What extraterrestrial life might look like
Friendly alien life form. Concept credit: Dottedhippo (iStock.)
When we think of extraterrestrial aliens, we think of creatures having two legs and two arms because Hollywood has conditioned us to that image. This archetype exists so an actor can conveniently fit inside a costume. This motif is also what you might see at a Comcon convention. Hollywood creatures also have two eyes, two nostrils, a mouth, and so on. But intelligent extraterrestrials could be giants, or exist on a nano-level where they are microscopic to us. In fact, they might more closely resemble bacteria, parasites, or arthropods such as dust mites. Or, perhaps robots or viruses. There have been sci-fi movies such as Night of the Comet where a spectacular heavenly visitor contains viral particles that infect people and/or machinery as the Earth passes through the tail of the comet. In fact, one of the earliest theories of where SARS-CoV-2 came from was that it was transported to Earth on Comet 2I/Borisov, a fragment of which crashed in China in October 2019 and subsequently caused the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 (according to that theory.)
Alien nanobots attacking virus. But suppose this was a human red blood cell and there were millions of these alien microscopic bots in someone’s body? To what end? Concept credit Petestopher (iStock.)
Sensient lifeforms might exist in a parallel dimension moving among us even now. They might not be visible nor otherwise detectable They could be silicone-based rather than carbon-based. They could be disembodied, completely without form or shape-shifters and so on. Future science may be able to elicit portals (“doorways”) between dimensions or alternative realities if there are alternative realities, but this is way beyond our ability in the foreseeable future. Right now these are theories and not universally accepted theories at that.
In many ways, we are very unimaginative when it comes to speculation, about how alien life might appear, and most of us are confined to the “box” in terms of thought. This is because most people (scientists, authors, Hollywood directors, et al.) believe in evolution, and we’re all anchored to our own observations on Earth. But some forms of intelligent life on earth seem alien as it is. Many scientists and sci-fi writers, when asked to name the most intelligent, “alien” species on this planet will name squid or octopuses.
Close-up of the tentacles of an octopus underwater. Photo credit: Freder (iStock.)
Popular Mechanics has the best speculation on what extraterrestrials might—or might not—look like. The article polled both scientists and science fiction writers. Because of Fair Use copyright restrictions, I cannot reproduce all of the points in the article, though I encourage you to visit the link above yourself. It is worth reading. Also, articles here and here.
What the Bible teaches us that might apply to extraterrestrial life
What would the natures of aliens be like? Lutheran theologian Ted Peters poses two extremes. There is the benevolent, “we-come-in-peace model” typified in The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951 version.) Then, there is the hostile alien found in movies such as War of the Worlds, Independence Day, Invasion, The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008 version) and others.
I read an article as a child which was written from a religious perspective, and quoted Pope John or Pope Paul speculating on the moral issues of intelligent life elsewhere. Would Martians have souls? Would they be benevolent, or fallen, perhaps unredeemable creatures? I’ve learned as I’ve researched this topic that much of the literature on astrotheology has been written by Catholic scholars. That’s hardly surprising. According to a survey in NASA’s Astrobiology magazine, Christianity ranks last among major religions in terms of belief that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe. And the more liturgical the church (Lutheran vis-à-vis Baptist), the more open church members are to the possibility of life “out there.”
Theologians are interested in the religious aspects of life elsewhere, just as sociologists may be focused on alien society. According to David Weintraub, “The crux of the matter is original sin. If intelligent aliens are not descended from Adam and Eve, do they suffer from original sin? Do they need to be saved? If they do, then did Christ visit them and was he crucified and resurrected on other planets?” An example of this line of thinking might be Aslan in C.S. Lewis’s series The Chronicles of Narnia. Narnia is a fictional, fallen realm (like Middle Earth) more or less run by animals and mythological creatures (with some humans, present.) Lewis provides Narnia a redeemer in the shape of Lion, who identifies himself in the Voyage of the Dawntredder as none other than Jesus, the Lion of Judah. One of the fundamental questions in Astrotheology is whether Jesus’ death on the Cross and His resurrection was sufficient to redeem all creatures (Romulans and Klingons included) or whether His substitutionary death (or some other) had to be repeated on a planet-by-planet basis. Most Christians after some thought would probably conclude that this sacrifice was “once for all” (Hebrews 10:10.) But then Earth becomes the focus of the galaxy again. Earth is center stage and every other extraterrestrial civilization is a spectator.
Weintraub finds a middle ground in the writings of twentieth century author Paul Tillich: “Weintraub determined that the views of Lutheran theologian Paul Tillich appear to represent a suitable consensus. Tillich argued that the need for salvation is universal and the ‘saving power’ of God must be everywhere. At the same time, he maintained that God’s plan for human life need not be the same as his plan for aliens.” In fact, while Scripture is mostly silent on the question of life elsewhere, life elsewhere would not and should not shake Christian theology, though it might undeniably shake society.
There is also the question of ethics, colonization, and so forth as far as Christianity is concerned if it is ever confronted with trips to other planets. How should we treat the environment on Mars? Hawking said we need to introduce a permanent presence elsewhere in case of some cataclysmic, extinction level event on Earth. Is terraforming Mars a good thing or a something vile which we have no ethical or “earthly” right to? Richard O. Randolph addresses these concerns in the book Exploring the Origin, Extent, and Future of Life: Philosophical, Ethical, and Theological Perspectives. In Chapter Fifteen, he points out that God was not interested in creating scenic vistas such as fire falls or mountain tops, beaches, innumerable grains of sand and countless stars to match—worlds without end. What God did want and focused on was the presence of life, capped by the creation of man. Randolph states that in our world was included the notion of predation “the forced forfeiture of the life or well-being of one organism so that another organism can live and flourish.” Do we want to observe the rights of “killer hornets” to exist or to protect the virus that causes smallpox, or should these be eliminated for the sake of preserving life among people? Do people have the right to eat animals? These are issues in predation. Whether we do pursue strip mining or hunt a species of whales to the point of extinction is a matter of ethics, however, and hopefully Christians weigh in on the issue as moral and ethical people. Certainly God does not desire that we obliterate every member of a species which He has created.
Randolph continues by noting that all life has intrinsic value, and this has been codified in the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 and elsewhere. Thus, nations capable of spaceflight take laborious precautions against introducing pathogens from Earth to other planets when they launch probes. Presumably this respect applies when or if we may encounter lifeforms on other planets (and that includes plants and microbes as well. Randolph warns us that “God’s preferential option for life grounds the claim that all of life has intrinsic worth, and that God intended for extraterrestrial life to flourish and be self-determinant.” So, while we certainly have the right to defend ourselves from hostile, predatory species, we also have an obligation to respect life which He has created, and exercise humility in our dealings with others (including other species, extraterrestrial or not.”
God is still God
I love science fiction movies, and sci-fi literature as well as long as the names of the characters have enough vowels for me to keep track of who is who. But If Klaatu did land in Lafayette Park, my faith would not be shaken. My God is a God who hears my prayers and Who has delivered me from danger in the past. He protected me from rockets and mortars when I was in Vietnam, so I suppose He can guard me against death rays and body snatchers as well. Nor would I allow myself to be seduced by any strange notions of God that aliens might have. What Paul writes in Galatians 1:8 is certainly clear enough to me.
My personal opinion
As a teenager growing up in New York State, I was involved with the UFO community. James Moseley, a famous UFO investigator was a personal friend of mine. I went to the Pentagon to speak to the Project Blue Book personnel while a junior in high school, visited NICAP, and met other people like-minded people and became involved with other related activities. So, what are the Navy pilots seeing? Assuming the pilots are visually seeing the same “anomalies” that are being picked up simultaneously on radar, then that rules out some sort of radar glitch (because the pilots visually confirm the object) and it also rules out any reflection or optical illusion (because the object appears on radar.) If, indeed, these objects are capable of “…traveling at extremely high speeds, changing direction or accelerating at extremely high rates, and hovering motionless for long periods of time, then these are very unusual objects, indeed. “Furthermore, [since] these craft appear to violate the laws of physics in that they do not have flight or control surfaces, any visible means of propulsion apparently violating Newton’s Third Law, and can operate in multiple media, such as space (low Earth orbit), air, and water without apparent hindrance, sonic booms, or heat dumps” as reported in 2004 by the Nimitz Carrier Group, then they are probably some sort of “unmanned” machine or drone, because no known living creature can tolerate that stress (estimated by naval pilots as 75 to + 7500 g’s.) If these reports by the U.S. Navy pilots are correct, it is also doubtful that these anomalies are Russian or Chinese in origin, even given the Russian and Chinese hypersonic research programs, because these characteristics and abilities are probably a century or more ahead of current capabilities. From what little I know (or anyone knows) of these objects, they may have originated on a planet in another star system, or have been deployed by a ship near Earth and serve the same function to that civilization as the Curiosity Martian rover does for us. They may also have arrived from another dimension or time. Nor do I have any idea why they are hanging out off the coast of Virginia instead of Oak Ridge or Washington (or Moscow for that matter.) Some suggest that they are attracted by the nuclear reactors that the carrier group possesses, but that is just a guess. They are most certainly not demons as some have suggested. Demons are spiritual creatures so I doubt they can be detected by radar. Nor do they machines to go from place-to-place.
As far as initiatives involving the search for extraterrestrial life (SETI) and so on, it may be useful to passively or actively listen for nonrandom radio signals, but I would hope that we are not broadcasting our existence to the stars in an attempt to attract attention.
A great place to look for aliens if Hollywood is to be believed is in a cornfield, as many movies have been made (e.g., “Signs,” “Silent Warnings,” etc.) that place aliens in proximity to corn. But be careful, lest you experience a close encounter of the fourth kind. Photo credit: Ansario (Shutterstock.)
Citations
Beck, Lewis White. “Extraterrestrial Intelligent Life.” Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, vol. 45, 1971, pp. 5–21. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3129745. Accessed 2 July 2021.
Feature photo of Comet Neowise and Stonehenge by Matt Gibson (iStock.)
