NASA panel: No convincing evidence for extraterrestrial life connected with UAPs

Gold went on, "I don't know what the phenomenology is that we're looking for. We say 'anomalous'—what does that mean? Anomalous acceleration? I think as we try to look at the data, we're starting from an almost impossible position if we don't know what we're looking for. Is it a radiation signature? Is it something electromagnetic? Is it something like that? [That's] why this is so challenging and frustrating to me that we're talking about monitoring something that we don't even know what we're supposed to monitor."

"You're right, we don't know exactly what we're looking for," agreed Jen Buss, CEO of the Potomac Institute of Policy Studies. Still, some team members expressed optimism that the scientific method and the development of new observational techniques could cover unexpected discoveries in the UAP space.

But wrangling the scope and definition of UAP is only one of the challenges they face. Lamenting the poor quality of UAP sighting data—especially the preponderance of potential optical illusions and misconceptions—was a common theme during the meeting.

At one point, Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, director of the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office in the US Department of Defense, presented a video of three objects reported as UAP by a pilot. The ADARO office later determined that the three objects seen in the video were commercial aircraft that were much farther away than anticipated by the people who made the sighting.

Later in the meeting, Joshua Semeter of Boston University presented slides related to a famous Navy video popularly called "Go Fast." The slides showed how one could use the data on-screen in the video and trigonometry to calculate that the target object was actually traveling at 40 mph, which was about wind speed at the time. He described that the object's apparent speed on the video is due to a combination of parallax effects, such as zooming in on an object that is 13,000 feet above the ocean's surface. Shortly thereafter, former astronaut Scott Kelly stood up and recounted a story about the time his RIO jet co-pilot saw a UFO that turned out to be a Bart Simpson balloon.

Kelly's comment got chuckles from the panel, but the moment highlighted the challenges the panel faces regarding stigma. During the session, the issue of societal taboos around UFOs also came up. Despite the Pentagon encouraging military aviators to document UAP events, many commercial pilots still hesitate to report them. In addition, several panelists previously reported instances of online abuse and harassment, triggering comments from NASA's science chief, Nicola Fox, who expressed disappointment. "Harassment only leads to further stigmatization," she said.

Much like the public's perception of artificial intelligence from popular media, it is very difficult to separate public perception of the UAP topic from a century's worth of science fiction related to visitors from other worlds. Aside from a lack of data and the fact that unknown objects are unknown because key data about them does not exist, stigma is likely the biggest albatross that the panel carries as it attempts to complete its mission.

And to be clear, although the possibility of extraterrestrial life hasn't been ruled out, Spergel did his best to dampen the public's expectations that NASA might discover aliens visiting Earth: "To make the claim that we see something that is evidence of non-human intelligence would require extraordinary evidence, and we have not seen that."