Last week, The New York Times and Politico published articles reporting that the US government has funded programs to study UFO sightings for several years. The mission of the Aviation Threat Identification Advanced Program (AATIP) was to "collect visual and audio evidence of sightings of unidentified flying objects."
Among the declassified documents, there is a video of a meeting of American pilots with "an aircraft surrounded by some kind of luminous aura, moving at a very high speed and at the same time rotating," wrote The Times. As the article pointed out, the AATIP program began in 2007, focused on potential unidentified military threats, and had a total of nearly $ 22 million in funding from the US Department of Defense, "which of course was not in the national budget."
The Times and Politico reported that Defense Department officials confirmed that such a program did exist, but was closed in 2012. However, a few days later, a statement appeared in the press of a certain Luis Elizondo, who introduced himself as a former military intelligence officer. He announced that he continued to carry out research work under this program after its formal closure. In October of this year, he decided to resign, ostensibly in protest, as he was fed up with all this secrecy that was created around the program. He is now an employee of the UFO research startup Stars Academy of Arts and Science.
"These aircraft demonstrate capabilities that are currently not available to any piece of technology in the United States or any foreign technology we know," Elizondo told CNN on Monday.
“My personal opinion: this is convincing proof that we are not alone. Whatever it means."
However, Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the Search for Extraterrestrial Civilizations (SETI) and a former military intelligence officer, was not at all convinced by such revelations, even though Shostak himself believes that we will find aliens within the next 20 years.
“If you serve in the Air Force and witness something unidentified, then you probably want to know what it is. But it doesn't have to be somehow connected with aliens,”Shostak shared in a conversation with Business Insider about the situation around the AATIP program.
"Despite more than 50 years of UFO sightings, we still have not received convincing evidence that we have been visited by alien civilizations."
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But this is not the only reason why Shostak is skeptical about all such statements and claims that aliens have allegedly been visiting us for a long time.
Perhaps it's worth starting with the fact that outer space is simply incredibly huge. For example, the spacecraft Voyager 1, owned by the aerospace agency NASA, has left our solar system and is now traveling at a speed of about 61,000 kilometers per hour. If the probe were directed, say, towards the closest star system to us - Proxima Centauri - it would take the spacecraft almost 75,000 years to get there. But she is only 4.24 light years from us. By cosmic standards - literally around the corner.
Shostak is sure that if an alien civilization existed within a radius of 35 light years from Earth, it would definitely know about our existence. If it goes further, it is unlikely, since we have not been sending signals into space for so long.
“The only signal sources they could pick up in this case would be television, radio, radar signals, and so on. But mankind began to actively use all these signals only after the 40s of the last century,”Shostak says.
“Therefore, if other civilizations are more than 35 light-years away from us, then our signals simply did not have time to reach them. I doubt that alien civilizations, if they exist, of course, are capable of traveling faster than the speed of light. Moreover, I doubt that their technology can travel even at the same speed of light."
In a radius of 50 light years around us there are only about 1400 star systems, the astronomer notes.
“It might seem like a lot. But if you look at the question from the perspective of the search for extraterrestrial life, then in fact it is practically nothing. Unless it can be assumed that some kind of civilization is literally hidden under our noses. But this is unlikely,”Shostak continues.
Even if we assume that our Earth is indeed visited by alien civilizations, then there is no logic in all this either. Among all the cases of confirmed reports of encounters with UFOs, there are practically no reports of contacts with direct witnesses of these events (unless, of course, we take into account reports of abductions by aliens, which, in fact, scientists most often turn out to be hallucinations against the background of pathological insomnia, and sometimes pathological tendency to lie).
“They are probably the best neighbors in the universe. If they are here, they are actually doing nothing. What is this? They sent a whole fleet of spacecraft here in the form of flying saucers just to fly around, attract people's attention and ultimately do nothing?”- says the astronomer.
"It's hard to believe that aliens will arrive here hundreds and hundreds of light years away and then show complete inactivity."
Shostak compares this situation to Europeans who discovered America, but decided not to contact Native Americans at all:
“They don't try to land, they don't spread their diseases, they don't do anything at all. We just decided to walk to the nearest mainland, show off in front of the local population and, in fact, that's all."
In addition, Shostak believes that the reasons for visiting Earth are generally unconvincing.
“I constantly ask myself: why would they visit us right now? They did not visit our Founding Fathers in the late 1700s. The Romans, too, seemed to have no problems with them. Therefore, it is not entirely clear why, in fact, should they visit us right now?"
Shostak disagrees that the Pentagon's AATIP videos shown in the news unconditionally confirm the existence of aliens. According to him, about 90 percent of all UFO sightings have a scientific explanation. Again, this does not mean that the remaining 10 percent are aliens.
“It only means that there is no explanation for these cases. Some do seem interesting, but overall I am sure that each of them can be explained from the point of view of science, even if at the moment there is no such explanation in science."
Sarah Seeger, a planetary scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who searches for habitable planets, agrees with Shostak and reflects this in her article for The Times, where she says that “people are often mistaken that science has an explanation right here and now. to any observed phenomenon”.
Another controversial point for Shostak, increasing his skepticism around this whole story, is that all the main work on the AATIP program was given to the contractor - the private company Bigelow Aerospace, based in Nevada. According to The Times, American entrepreneur Robert Bigelow may have become the head of the program in part because his friend and former Senator from Nevada Harry Reid is its founder. Shostak says he met Bigelow and describes him as "a very pleasant person" who sincerely believes in aliens, "but is not a scientist."
“If you want to prove and study some phenomenon that is of great value for science in the future, then most likely you will attract completely impartial people to work. I think so. Providing a solution to the issue to someone who already “knows” the answer to it cannot be an objective choice,”Shostak says.
With regards to the UFO sightings themselves, there is most likely a simpler explanation than the alien visit. Many different facts cannot be ruled out that could explain such observations. Problems with the camera, unknown optical effects, atmospheric phenomena, the light of stars and planets, the presence of unmanned aerial vehicles in the observation area, after all - most often something among this list is the right choice.
Nikolay Khizhnyak
