I am writing this in a hotel room near Penn State University where, in about an hour, I will attend the second day of an international meeting on technosignatures, the SETI Symposium. (SETI is the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.) Researchers from around the world have come here to discuss the best ways to search for evidence that can reveal the existence of intelligent, technology-building life. I think this is exciting.
Last week, however, a claim for the existence of intelligent, technology-building life came from a very different domain, in the form of a former intelligence official turned whistleblower. In interviews, David Grusch, the former Pentagon official in question, alleged that the government possesses intact and partially intact alien vehicles. After looking a little more into this, I can tell you that I do not find these claims exciting at all, especially compared to the stuff I am hearing about at this meeting.
For all the hoopla surrounding the whistleblower story, it is just hearsay. A guy says he knows a guy who knows another guy who heard from a guy that the government has alien spaceships. There’s no evidence here that a scientist like me could use to actually determine anything. The internet was, however, set abuzz by the news (though many of the major news outlets like the New York Times and the Washington Post steered clear of the story). But from my point of view, the important thing to understand about this latest dust-up is that it has all happened before.
In doing the research for The Little Book of Aliens — my new book that is mainly about the amazing frontiers of astrobiology but also explores UFOs/UAPs — I looked into the history of the latter. That is how I found, at the very beginning of UFO history, the story of Captain Edward Ruppelt.
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