The US military has started to take reports of “unidentified aerial objects” more seriously in recent years, even setting up a taskforce to investigate strange sightings by its personnel.

Many of the reports include mysterious objects spotted by Navy pilots, traveling through the sky at astonishing speeds and seemingly defying the laws of physics.

That’s why, according to Rizwan Virk, an MIT graduate and founder of incubator Play Labs at MIT, it would be a huge mistake to not take these reports seriously going forward. In a recent opinion piece for NBC News, Virk argues that the “profound lack of curiosity” in UFOs resulted in a mess of taboos and biases amongst the ranks of academia.

To Virk, studying UFOs could potentially redefine “all of science” and “lead to a new understanding of our place in the universe, and new advances in materials science, biology, quantum physics, cosmology and social sciences.”

To read more, click here.