Biden should channel Reagan,
ask Putin about UFOs at summit
Marik von Rennenkampff, Opinion Contributor
In a little-known historical twist, a lighthearted comment about UFOs and alien invasions helped bring the Cold War to a peaceful end
In a little-known historical twist, a lighthearted comment about UFOs and alien invasions helped bring the Cold War to a peaceful end
.
© Getty Images Biden should channel Reagan, ask Putin about UFOs at summit
Winter, 1985. Tensions are high between the United States and the Soviet Union. President Ronald Reagan and new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev agree to hold their first summit in Geneva, Switzerland.
As a series of lengthy meetings grinds on, Reagan and Gorbachev slip out for a private walk. Reagan, an avid science fiction fan, spontaneously asks the Soviet leader, "What would you do if the United States were suddenly attacked by someone from outer space? Would you help us?"
"No doubt about it," Gorbachev responds, to which Reagan says, "We too."
"So that's interesting," Gorbachev remarks as the two leaders share a chuckle.
After decades of mistrust, such lighthearted exchanges build confidence between the two leaders, upon which Reagan and Gorbachev develop a deep and enduring friendship.
Ultimately, the rapport that the two leaders build in Geneva alters the course of history.
In the years after the summit, Reagan softens his harsh rhetoric towards the Soviet Union. Reduced hostilities help Gorbachev ignore the Kremlin hardliners demanding larger Soviet military budgets to match Reagan's defense buildup. More importantly, the détente gives Gorbachev the political latitude to enact the economic and political reforms that usher in a peaceful end to the Cold War.
Thirty-six years after Reagan and Gorbachev's first summit meeting, a new American president is set to meet his Russian counterpart. The setting, once again, is Geneva. As in 1985, tensions between the two nuclear-armed powers run high.
The odds of a Reagan-Gorbachev-style breakthrough are slim. For one, Russian President Vladimir Putin is not the pragmatic leader that Gorbachev was. President Biden, for his part, has sent stern pre-summit messages to Putin. Moreover, a litany of thorny issues is on the agenda.
But Gorbachev and Reagan showed that bitter adversaries can set aside hostile rhetoric and mistrust to cooperate on critical global security matters.
While the threat of nuclear war loomed large in 1985, the Biden-Putin summit comes as the U.S. government grapples with a perplexing national security issue.
Intelligence analysts and scientists appear genuinely stumped by more than 100 encounters with mysterious objects, many flying in restricted airspace. According to a former top intelligence official, some of the unidentified craft move in ways that "we don't have the technology for."
The U.S. government has reportedly ruled out the possibility that the objects are highly classified American aircraft. Moreover, at least one former top official believes that ultra-advanced Russian or Chinese spy planes are not plausible explanations for the more perplexing incidents observed by the military.
Winter, 1985. Tensions are high between the United States and the Soviet Union. President Ronald Reagan and new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev agree to hold their first summit in Geneva, Switzerland.
As a series of lengthy meetings grinds on, Reagan and Gorbachev slip out for a private walk. Reagan, an avid science fiction fan, spontaneously asks the Soviet leader, "What would you do if the United States were suddenly attacked by someone from outer space? Would you help us?"
"No doubt about it," Gorbachev responds, to which Reagan says, "We too."
"So that's interesting," Gorbachev remarks as the two leaders share a chuckle.
After decades of mistrust, such lighthearted exchanges build confidence between the two leaders, upon which Reagan and Gorbachev develop a deep and enduring friendship.
Ultimately, the rapport that the two leaders build in Geneva alters the course of history.
In the years after the summit, Reagan softens his harsh rhetoric towards the Soviet Union. Reduced hostilities help Gorbachev ignore the Kremlin hardliners demanding larger Soviet military budgets to match Reagan's defense buildup. More importantly, the détente gives Gorbachev the political latitude to enact the economic and political reforms that usher in a peaceful end to the Cold War.
Thirty-six years after Reagan and Gorbachev's first summit meeting, a new American president is set to meet his Russian counterpart. The setting, once again, is Geneva. As in 1985, tensions between the two nuclear-armed powers run high.
The odds of a Reagan-Gorbachev-style breakthrough are slim. For one, Russian President Vladimir Putin is not the pragmatic leader that Gorbachev was. President Biden, for his part, has sent stern pre-summit messages to Putin. Moreover, a litany of thorny issues is on the agenda.
But Gorbachev and Reagan showed that bitter adversaries can set aside hostile rhetoric and mistrust to cooperate on critical global security matters.
While the threat of nuclear war loomed large in 1985, the Biden-Putin summit comes as the U.S. government grapples with a perplexing national security issue.
Intelligence analysts and scientists appear genuinely stumped by more than 100 encounters with mysterious objects, many flying in restricted airspace. According to a former top intelligence official, some of the unidentified craft move in ways that "we don't have the technology for."
The U.S. government has reportedly ruled out the possibility that the objects are highly classified American aircraft. Moreover, at least one former top official believes that ultra-advanced Russian or Chinese spy planes are not plausible explanations for the more perplexing incidents observed by the military.
Analysts and NASA scientists also appear to doubt that mundane factors are behind many of the encounters. According to reports, several objects were observed by multiple sensors - such as satellite, radar, infrared and optical platforms - making balloons, distant jetliners or equipment malfunctions unlikely explanations for some of the phenomena.
To be sure, a highly anticipated report on these incidents appears to have found no evidence that aliens are visiting earth. But the fact that the U.S. government, with its near-unlimited investigatory capabilities, is considering "non-human technology" as a plausible explanation for some of the incidents is a remarkable development.
Recent comments by former presidents Obama and Clinton heightened speculation that the government is entertaining extraordinary theories about these phenomena. When asked about the encounters, Obama and Clinton openly speculated about extraterrestrial life. Similarly, Obama's CIA director mused about "different form[s] of life" when discussing the incidents.
Make no mistake: Former presidents and CIA directors - who continue to receive top-level intelligence briefings - do not suddenly speculate about aliens on a whim. Indeed, one can safely assume that Clinton and Obama asked their intelligence briefers some probing questions about what is known about UFOs before speaking publicly about otherworldly life.
Moreover, according to President Trump's former director of national intelligence, such encounters are occurring "all over the world."
Following revelations that China is "overwhelmed" by similar sightings, this phenomenon appears to have global implications. To that end, Biden must raise the issue with Putin.
Amid what promises to be a tense summit in Geneva, a lighthearted, Reagan-style question or comment about UFOs from Biden may yield a surprising response from the Russian leader. It might even alter the course of history.
Marik von Rennenkampff served as an analyst with the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, as well as an Obama administration appointee at the U.S. Department of Defense. Follow him on Twitter @MvonRen.
Make no mistake: Former presidents and CIA directors - who continue to receive top-level intelligence briefings - do not suddenly speculate about aliens on a whim. Indeed, one can safely assume that Clinton and Obama asked their intelligence briefers some probing questions about what is known about UFOs before speaking publicly about otherworldly life.
Moreover, according to President Trump's former director of national intelligence, such encounters are occurring "all over the world."
Following revelations that China is "overwhelmed" by similar sightings, this phenomenon appears to have global implications. To that end, Biden must raise the issue with Putin.
Amid what promises to be a tense summit in Geneva, a lighthearted, Reagan-style question or comment about UFOs from Biden may yield a surprising response from the Russian leader. It might even alter the course of history.
Marik von Rennenkampff served as an analyst with the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, as well as an Obama administration appointee at the U.S. Department of Defense. Follow him on Twitter @MvonRen.
Joe Biden knows about the existence of aliens and UFOs ...
Joe Biden Has Hilarious Response To Fox News Question ...
As UFO buzz enthralls D.C., believers and skeptics agree: The truth is out there
Stephen Bassett
Alex Seitz-Wald
Sun, June 13, 2021
WASHINGTON — Stephen Bassett and Mick West don’t agree on much. Bassett has devoted much of his adult life to proving UFOs are helmed by aliens, and West has devoted much of his to proving they are not.
But they both agree on one thing: It’s good that, after nearly 75 years of taboo and ridicule going back to Roswell, New Mexico, serious people are finally talking seriously about the unidentified flying objects people see in the skies.
“If you look at the level of public interest, then I think it becomes important to actually look into these things,” said West, a former video game programmer turned UFO debunker. “Right now, there is a lot of suspicion that the government is hiding evidence of UFOs, which is quite understandable because there's this wall of secrecy. It leads to suspicion and distrust of the government, which, as we’ve seen, can be quite dangerous.”
Later this month, the Pentagon is expected to deliver a report to Congress from a task force it established last year to collect information about what officials now call "unexplained aerial phenomena," or UAPs, from across the government after pilots came forward with captivating videos that appear to show objects moving in ways that defy known laws of physics.
While those who dabble in the unknowns of outer space are hoping for alien evidence, many others in government hope the report will settle whether the objects might be spy operations from neighbors on Earth, like the Chinese or Russians.
The highly anticipated report is expected to settle little, finding no evidence of extraterrestrial activity while not ruling it out either, according to officials, but it will jumpstart a long-suppressed conversation and open new possibilities for research and discovery and perhaps defense contracts.
“If you step back and look at the larger context of how we've learned stuff about the larger nature of reality, some of it does come from studying things that might seem ridiculous or unbelievable,” Caleb Scharf, an astronomer who runs the Astrobiology Center at Columbia University.
Suddenly, senators and scientists, the Pentagon and presidents, former CIA directors and NASA officials, Wall Street executives and Silicon Valley investors are starting to talk openly about an issue that would previously be discussed only in whispers, if at all.
“What is true, and I'm actually being serious here, is that there is footage and records of objects in the skies that we don't know exactly what they are," former President Barack Obama told late-night TV host James Corden.
The omertà has been broken thanks to a new generation of more professional activists with more compelling evidence, a few key allies in government and the lack of compelling national security justification for maintaining the official silence, which has failed to tamp down interest in UFOs.
In a deeply polarized country where conspiracy theories have ripped apart American politics, belief in a UFO coverup seems relatively quaint and apolitical.
'Truth embargo'
Interest in UFOs waxes and wanes in American culture, but millions have questions and about one-third of Americans think we have been visited by alien spacecraft, according to Gallup.
But those questions have been met with silence or laughter from authorities and the academy, leaving a vacuum that has been filled by conspiracy theorists, hoaxsters and amateur investigators.
West, the skeptic, thinks the recent videos that kicked off the latest UFO craze, including three published by the New York Times and CBS’ “60 Minutes,” can be explained by optical camera effects. But he would like to see the U.S. government thoroughly investigate and explain UFOs.
The government has examined UFOs in the past but often in secret or narrow ways, and the current Pentagon task force is thought to be relatively limited in its mission and resources.
In a new, leaked video, an unidentified object flies around a Navy ship off the coast of San Diego. (U.S. Navy via Jeremy Corbell)
West pointed to models from other countries like Argentina, where an official government agency investigates sightings and publishes its findings, the overwhelming majority of which are traced to unusual weather, human objects like planes or optical effects.
“This is something that we could do here,” West said. “But right now we're left with people like me, who are just enthusiasts.”
John Podesta, a Democratic poobah who has held top jobs in several White Houses, has called on President Joe Biden’s White House to establish a new dedicated office in the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, which would help get the issue out of the shadows of the military and intelligence community.
Podesta, who has harbored an interest in UFOs since at least his days as Bill Clinton’s chief of staff, recently told Politico, “It was kind of career-ending to basically talk about this subject. That has clearly switched, and that's a good thing.”
Believers are unsurprisingly thrilled by the culture shift.
“The ‘truth embargo’ is coming to an end now,” said Bassett, the executive director of Paradigm Research Group and the only registered lobbyist in Washington dedicated to UFO disclosure. “I am elated to finally see this movement achieving its moment.”
Bassett is convinced the government is covering up proof of extraterrestrial life and that everything happening now is elaborate political theater to make that information public in the least disruptive way possible — a view, of course, not supported by evidence or most experts.
“This is the most profound event in human history that's about to be taking place,” he said.
But you don’t have to be a believer to believe that poorly understood things should be investigated, not ignored.
"We don't know if it's extraterrestrial. We don't know if it's an enemy. We don't know if it's an optical phenomenon," said new NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, a former astronaut and Florida senator, in a recent CNN interview. “And so the bottom line is, we want to know."
Two former CIA directors — John Brennan, who served under Obama, and James Woolsey, who served under Clinton — recently said in separate podcast interviews that they’ve seen evidence of aerial phenomena they can’t explain. John Ratcliffe, who was the director of national intelligence under then-President Donald Trump, told Fox News in March there were “a lot more sightings than have been made public.”
Cold War and fish farts
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, pushed the government to conduct the UFO report. For him, it’s a question of national security and understanding whether rivals like China or Russia have developed advanced technology we don’t know about.
“I want us to take it seriously and have a process to take it seriously,” Rubio told “60 Minutes.”
For others, like Ravi Kopparapu, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, and Jacob Haqq-Misra, a research scientist with the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science, it’s about discovery.
"For too long, the scientific study of unidentified flying objects and aerial phenomena — UFOs and UAPs, in the shorthand — has been taboo," they wrote in a Washington Post op-ed. "If we want to understand what UAP are, then we need to engage the mainstream scientific community in a concerted effort to study them."
Scharf looks for life on other planets and is a bit tired of people asking him if alien life has visited us on ours, but he said looking more at the skies could yield information about how our own world works.
A mysterious object hovers over a Navy ship in night vision video. (U.S. Navy via @JeremyCorbell)
“Stuff like this has a scientific interest not because we're necessarily thinking we're going to find aliens, but maybe there's an unknown phenomenon or a collection of phenomena that are giving rise to some of these sightings,” he said. “There's never been a systematic effort to categorize and catalog stuff that people see, and from the past, we know that some of this stuff sometimes turns out to be interesting.”
The history of science is filled with accidental discoveries and incidents where the hubris of religious or scientific authorities dismissed something as ridiculous that later proved true. Scientists didn’t believe meteorites really came from space until the early 1800s, for instance.
Government secrecy can lead to confusion and misunderstanding that might be cleared up with the help of a wider circle of experts and investigators.
Sweden spent years futilely chasing what it thought were Russian submarines off its coast. But when the navy let civilian researchers listen to a recording of the alleged submarine, they figured out it was actually the sound of schools of fish farting.
Important people have had an interest in UFOs for a long time; they just didn’t really talk about it.
Former President Jimmy Carter claimed to have seen a UFO while he was governor of Georgia and even filed two formal reports of his observations. Former President Ronald Reagan allegedly told people he saw one too while riding in a small plane, according to the pilot, who was quoted in a book by John Alexander, the former Army colonel whose paranormal investigations were featured in the book and movie “The Men Who Stare at Goats.”
As the Cold War intensified in the 1950s, U.S. officials worried the Soviet Union would use a UFO hoax to drum up fear in the American public. Civilians started seeing what they believed were UFOs but were actually secret spy planes, like the U-2, so the government settled on a policy of silence and denial.
''Over half of all U.F.O. reports from the late 1950s through the 1960s were accounted for by manned reconnaissance flights,” according to a secret CIA study that was declassified in the late 1990s, The New York Times reported then. ''This led the Air Force to make misleading and deceptive statements to the public in order to allay public fears and to protect an extraordinarily sensitive national security project.''
The very real government stonewalling fed bogus conspiracy theories, which came to dominate the study of UFOs and made the topic even more off-putting to serious scholars.
A new generation
In recent years, though, a newer generation of activists has been at center of recent high-profile disclosures thanks to a more professional, careful and credible approach. They include people with serious national security credentials like Christopher Mellon, the former deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence, and Luis Elizondo, the former Army counterintelligence special agent who led an earlier Pentagon team to investigate UFOs.
The budget for Elizondo’s team — a modest $22 million in the scheme of defense spending — was secured by former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, a powerful ally who has helped drive the resurgence of interest in UFOs.
An unidentified aerial phenomenon in a U.S. military video.
(DoD via To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science)
The newer activists have worked with mainstream news outlets to deliver evidence and eye witnesses that meet their high editorial standards and are careful when speaking to general audiences to avoid talking about aliens — though Mellon and Elizondo have appeared on controversial podcaster Joe Rogan’s show as well as "Coast to Coast A.M.," a long-running radio program devoted to conspiracies and the paranormal.
Both the skeptics and the believers don’t expect the Pentagon report to settle anything. Instead, they hope it will start something new.
“The idea of some super powerful aliens coming to visit us is a very compelling story,” West said. “So if you get even a tiny little taste of something like that, it really spices up the story.”
The newer activists have worked with mainstream news outlets to deliver evidence and eye witnesses that meet their high editorial standards and are careful when speaking to general audiences to avoid talking about aliens — though Mellon and Elizondo have appeared on controversial podcaster Joe Rogan’s show as well as "Coast to Coast A.M.," a long-running radio program devoted to conspiracies and the paranormal.
Both the skeptics and the believers don’t expect the Pentagon report to settle anything. Instead, they hope it will start something new.
“The idea of some super powerful aliens coming to visit us is a very compelling story,” West said. “So if you get even a tiny little taste of something like that, it really spices up the story.”
UFOs and search for alien life: Science and popular culture take on the mission
By Gregory McNamee, CNN
If you're ever studied astronomy, you've probably been exposed to something called the Drake equation
If you're ever studied astronomy, you've probably been exposed to something called the Drake equation
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© Department of Defense/AP This image from 2015 video provided by the Department of Defense, labeled Gimbal, shows an unexplained object at the center.
One side of the equation posits the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which it might be possible to communicate. The other side gives all the variables that add up to that number, including the average rate of star formation, the number of planets around those stars that have developed intelligent life and the ability to send radio signals.
One side of the equation posits the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which it might be possible to communicate. The other side gives all the variables that add up to that number, including the average rate of star formation, the number of planets around those stars that have developed intelligent life and the ability to send radio signals.
© Alistair Heap/Alamy Stock Photo UFO spotters use flashlights to look for stars and aliens in the night sky in South Wales, Australia, in 2008.
"Depending on how you calculate it, the answer can be none, or it can be a billion," said theoretical cosmologist Katie Mack, author of the recent book "The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking)."
"Depending on how you calculate it, the answer can be none, or it can be a billion," said theoretical cosmologist Katie Mack, author of the recent book "The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking)."
© NASA Does Martian soil hold proof of life on other planets? We've sent the Perseverance rover to find clues.
Astrophysicist Frank Drake, who formulated the equation way back in 1961, said it's really a way of showing "all the things you needed to know to predict how hard it's going to be to detect extraterrestrial life."
Mack put it more directly: "The point of the equation is really to show how little we know."
If it's hard for professional scientists to run the numbers, it's harder still for us mere-mortal Earthlings to do the work.
That's where the imagination comes in. So for generations we've been putting our creative minds to work in guessing if extraterrestrials exist, what they might look like and how we've going to greet them and they us, whether with a sign of peace or a ray gun.
Astrophysicist Frank Drake, who formulated the equation way back in 1961, said it's really a way of showing "all the things you needed to know to predict how hard it's going to be to detect extraterrestrial life."
Mack put it more directly: "The point of the equation is really to show how little we know."
If it's hard for professional scientists to run the numbers, it's harder still for us mere-mortal Earthlings to do the work.
That's where the imagination comes in. So for generations we've been putting our creative minds to work in guessing if extraterrestrials exist, what they might look like and how we've going to greet them and they us, whether with a sign of peace or a ray gun.
© Mike Windle/Getty Images Frank Drake speaks at a conference exploring the possibility of life on other planets at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco on October 7, 2015.
UFOs: Have we been visited?
"It's a curious thing that for as long as we've imagined extraterrestrials, they look pretty much just like us," observed Chris Impey, a professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona.
"A couple of centuries ago, they came in galleons in the sky. When zeppelins were invented, the aliens flew in dirigibles. After World War II, they came in flying saucers, the latest and greatest technology we could imagine."
UFOs: Have we been visited?
"It's a curious thing that for as long as we've imagined extraterrestrials, they look pretty much just like us," observed Chris Impey, a professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona.
"A couple of centuries ago, they came in galleons in the sky. When zeppelins were invented, the aliens flew in dirigibles. After World War II, they came in flying saucers, the latest and greatest technology we could imagine."
© 1982 Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved. While we're waiting on the science about UFOs and signs of alien life, entertainment fills the gaps with movies such as "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial."
The anthropomorphism — putting things that are not human in human form — is a constant. So, too, is the belief in alien life forms to begin with.
Strong beliefs in alien visitations
Video: Astrophysicist on UFO sightings: It looks terrestrial, not alien (CNN)
According to a 2018 Chapman University study, 41.4% of Americans believe that extraterrestrials have visited Earth at some time or another, and 35.1% believe that they have done so in recent times.
There are understandable reasons for such beliefs, Impey noted.
For decades, some people have been convinced that the US government has been harboring secrets about visitors from afar ever since 1947, when they believe an alien spacecraft supposedly crashed near Roswell, New Mexico.
"When you know that people aren't telling you everything they know, you start filling in the blanks yourself," said Impey. "The videos, the stories of Air Force and Navy pilots seeing mystery spacecraft, all of these things add up. It's just that people connect the dots way too quickly."
Both scientists and many civilians hold to the maxim that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
As a recent CNN story revealed, for years government and military officials alike ignored sightings of UFOs reported by both military and civilian pilots — just the sort of extraordinary evidence that might substantiate the reality of ETs. The Pentagon, which refers to UFOs as unidentified aerial phenomena, has confirmed the authenticity of videos and photographs accompanying those reports.
Before that recent and still-unfolding news appeared, though, a hard-to-penetrate cone of silence has surrounded the whole question of UFOs, at least as far as the US government and military have been concerned.
Fiction fills in the gaps
Popular culture filled in the blanks, giving expression to UFOs and their otherworldly passengers in vehicles such as ComicCon, movies such as "Independence Day" and "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" and the classic television series "Star Trek" with its bold search for new life and new civilizations.
Beyond that, there's a host of conspiracy theories — some benign, some full of foreboding — with dark warnings of abductions and unwanted experiments.
Impey called the question of UFOs "a cultural phenomenon, not a scientific one."
For all that, he cited the late astronomer Carl Sagan's call for all sides in the discussion to keep an open mind — "but not so open," as Sagan said, that "your brains fall out."
Searching the skies
"From time immemorial, humans have wondered about whether we're alone," said Stephen Strom, former associate director of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory.
Just because the popular imagination diverges from the scientific one doesn't invalidate our hope to encounter lifeforms from other worlds.
After all, the question isn't just whether we're alone, but also whether other civilizations have done a better job of taking care of their planets than we have of taking care of Earth.
It's a matter, then, of "whether it is possible for putative complex civilizations to avoid self-destruction," as Strom put it, and whether we can learn from them before it's too late. Those are among the most pressing questions we can ask these days.
Granted, most space scientists don't share the view that extraterrestrial life is going to arrive on Earth via spacecraft in humanoid form. One who did, the late cosmologist Stephen Hawking, worried that if ETs did arrive that way, they'd likely be on a mission to destroy us.
That doesn't mean that space scientists aren't serious in their search for extraterrestrial life.
"Do we think aliens are out there?" asked Mack. "We don't know where, but there almost certainly are.
"It's very unlikely that life has evolved in only one place in the entirety of the cosmos — the sorts of physical processes that had to occur on the early Earth are probably things that have happened countless other times on distant worlds."
We're likely to learn about other life forms from rovers, spectrometers and chemical analyses of distant atmospheres, she added. When we do, the news will spread fast.
As Mack said, "People really do want to know."
The anthropomorphism — putting things that are not human in human form — is a constant. So, too, is the belief in alien life forms to begin with.
Strong beliefs in alien visitations
Video: Astrophysicist on UFO sightings: It looks terrestrial, not alien (CNN)
According to a 2018 Chapman University study, 41.4% of Americans believe that extraterrestrials have visited Earth at some time or another, and 35.1% believe that they have done so in recent times.
There are understandable reasons for such beliefs, Impey noted.
For decades, some people have been convinced that the US government has been harboring secrets about visitors from afar ever since 1947, when they believe an alien spacecraft supposedly crashed near Roswell, New Mexico.
"When you know that people aren't telling you everything they know, you start filling in the blanks yourself," said Impey. "The videos, the stories of Air Force and Navy pilots seeing mystery spacecraft, all of these things add up. It's just that people connect the dots way too quickly."
Both scientists and many civilians hold to the maxim that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
As a recent CNN story revealed, for years government and military officials alike ignored sightings of UFOs reported by both military and civilian pilots — just the sort of extraordinary evidence that might substantiate the reality of ETs. The Pentagon, which refers to UFOs as unidentified aerial phenomena, has confirmed the authenticity of videos and photographs accompanying those reports.
Before that recent and still-unfolding news appeared, though, a hard-to-penetrate cone of silence has surrounded the whole question of UFOs, at least as far as the US government and military have been concerned.
Fiction fills in the gaps
Popular culture filled in the blanks, giving expression to UFOs and their otherworldly passengers in vehicles such as ComicCon, movies such as "Independence Day" and "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" and the classic television series "Star Trek" with its bold search for new life and new civilizations.
Beyond that, there's a host of conspiracy theories — some benign, some full of foreboding — with dark warnings of abductions and unwanted experiments.
Impey called the question of UFOs "a cultural phenomenon, not a scientific one."
For all that, he cited the late astronomer Carl Sagan's call for all sides in the discussion to keep an open mind — "but not so open," as Sagan said, that "your brains fall out."
Searching the skies
"From time immemorial, humans have wondered about whether we're alone," said Stephen Strom, former associate director of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory.
Just because the popular imagination diverges from the scientific one doesn't invalidate our hope to encounter lifeforms from other worlds.
After all, the question isn't just whether we're alone, but also whether other civilizations have done a better job of taking care of their planets than we have of taking care of Earth.
It's a matter, then, of "whether it is possible for putative complex civilizations to avoid self-destruction," as Strom put it, and whether we can learn from them before it's too late. Those are among the most pressing questions we can ask these days.
Granted, most space scientists don't share the view that extraterrestrial life is going to arrive on Earth via spacecraft in humanoid form. One who did, the late cosmologist Stephen Hawking, worried that if ETs did arrive that way, they'd likely be on a mission to destroy us.
That doesn't mean that space scientists aren't serious in their search for extraterrestrial life.
"Do we think aliens are out there?" asked Mack. "We don't know where, but there almost certainly are.
"It's very unlikely that life has evolved in only one place in the entirety of the cosmos — the sorts of physical processes that had to occur on the early Earth are probably things that have happened countless other times on distant worlds."
We're likely to learn about other life forms from rovers, spectrometers and chemical analyses of distant atmospheres, she added. When we do, the news will spread fast.
As Mack said, "People really do want to know."
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