Tag: Dr. Kevin Knuth

‘The Research is Only Just Starting,’ UAlbany Prof Says of UFOs

 

March 28, 2020                          (altamontenterprise.com)

• Why do people reject notions of extraterrestrial life on Earth? Associate professor of physics at the University of Albany, Dr. Kevin Knuth, chalks it up to “human arrogance.” “It happens time and time again,” said Knuth, a former NASA scientist. Often, humans are simply unable to accept the truth.

• When Knuth was working toward his doctorate at the Univeristy of Minnesota, he and some other students were mulling over a newspaper report of cattle mutilations near the school’s campus. A physics professor added to the puzzle by informing the students about UFO sightings at a nearby nuclear site. Knuth and the students laughed it off. Years later, Knuth came across a video of Robert Hastings talking about “nuclear incursions” by UFOs, including the time they were seen over that same Minnesota nuclear site. Knuth decided that perhaps he should take a closer look into it.

• Knuth examined at the case of the head of Harvard’s psychiatry department, Professor John E. Mack, who had interviewed hundreds of proclaimed alien abductees. Before his passing in 2004, Mack told the BBC, “I would say there is a compelling, powerful phenomenon here that I can’t account for in any other way.” “[I]t seems to me that it invites a deeper, further inquiry.” Harvard dropped the investigation.

• Knuth says that interest in UFOs has fallen victim to “circular logic” where, because it feels so unscientific, many scientists won’t touch the subject, leading to a reinforcement of the idea that interest in UFOs is solely the purview of pseudoscientists and conspiracy theorists. Knuth noted that, “There’s been scientists who have been interested in this all along, but… were afraid of the stigma.” The government’s new term, ‘UAP’ or ‘unidentified aerial phenomena’ is another deliberate attempt to escape the stigma of UFO research.

• Since the US Navy acknowledged last year that Navy videos released in 2017 (including the ‘tic tac’ UFO) were “real”, Knuth has sensed a shift in credibility toward UFOs. Some of these UFOs achieved up to 5000 times the acceleration of gravity and indicated an unnatural, non-human origin. He now sees a ‘very real science’ to these strange observances that have been made across the globe and throughout history. “Now the trick is looking for an explanation.”

• Knuth entertains two working hypotheses in approaching a UFO incident. One is that extraterrestrials are behind the encounters. The other considers the possibility of an Earth-based civilization having “extreme technology.” Said Knuth, “For me, it suggests that we missed some physics somewhere.”

• To that end, Knuth became a member of both UAP eXpeditions and the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies. UAP eXpeditions will be renting two vessels to navigate an area of the Pacific Ocean that is considered a UFO hotspot, and is near where the USS Nimitz had an infamous (‘tic tac’) encounter in 2004. (see previous ExoArticle here) Knuth is also working on simulations to predict where these craft might have originated from within the universe.

• Knuth believes that the UFO subject could prove critically important someday. “No matter what it is, it’s something we don’t know [scientifically],” says Knuth. “And isn’t that something we should want to know about?”

 

ALBANY COUNTY — When asked why people reject notions of extraterrestrial life on Earth, Kevin Knuth, an associate professor of physics at the

University of Albany and a former scientist for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, chalked it up to “human arrogance.”

                     Robert Hastings

“It happens time and time again,” Knuth said. “‘The Earth is flat. Humans couldn’t possibly have descended from apes.’ It’s hard to believe, so it’s easier not to.”

That a pandemic would tank the United States economy and fundamentally alter the lives of every American was also hard to believe, just a month ago. Now, millions, if not billions, of people are confined to their homes, wondering about new hypotheticals after what was once an impossibility exploded into their reality.

The story of Knuth’s interest in UFOs is not dissimilar. While he was at the University of Minnesota, two weeks into working toward his doctorate, a report in the local paper of two cattle mutilations near the school’s campus caught the attention of incoming students.

“We were actively discussing this,” Knuth recalled, “scratching our heads, trying to figure out what kind of crazy place we all came to.”

Overhearing one of those conversations, a physics professor offered the students information about UFO sightings at a nearby nuclear site as a means of furthering discussion, but the students, including Knuth, largely ignored him.

“When he walked away, we laughed our asses off because it seemed so ridiculous,” Knuth said.

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This Silicon Valley Startup is Dedicated to Detecting UFOs Off the California Coast

Listen to “E150 11-3-19 This Silicon Valley Startup Is Dedicated to Detecting UFOs Off the California Coast” on Spreaker.

Article by MJ Banias                       October 23, 2019                         (vice.com)

• A team of venture capitalists, university professors, and military veterans are launching a non-profit project to track UFOs (or the new term UAP – Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon) off the coast of California. Based in Oregon, UAP eXpeditions will provide “the public service of field testing new UAP related technologies.”

• Along with some of the Silicon Valley UFO Hunters, UAP eXpeditions will pioneer the ability to predict, find, observe, and document UAP for study and analysis. Says Kevin Day, the group’s founder and CEO, the company will use “classical observation techniques, by trained observers and scientists, while using the latest experimental technologies—in the right places and the right times.”

• Day is a retired U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer and radar operator who served on the USS Princeton during the 2004 “Nimitz Tic Tac UFO Incident”. He has also appeared on the History Channel’s Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation and Discovery Channel’s Contact.

• Day recalls tracking the infamous “Tic Tac” UFOs for several days around Catalina Island off the coast of California using the USS Princeton’s advanced radar system. Now, he believes that these objects continue to operate along the same trajectory and “migrate” from Catalina Island (off of LA) south along the California coast to Guadalupe Island (off of the Baja Peninsula of Mexico).

• Day believes that his experience tracking these unidentified objects has given him special abilities such as “advanced cognition”.

• UAP eXpeditions intends to put state-of-the-art cameras, experimental monitoring devices, and other high tech gear into the field and attempt to track unknown aerial objects off the coast of California. This way, the company can “offer technology developers a way to test their new tech at no direct cost to them.”

• Leading the UAP eXpeditions’ team of scientists is Dr. Kevin Knuth, a former scientist with NASA’s Ames Research Center, now an associate professor of physics at the University of Albany specializing in machine learning and the study of exoplanets. Knuth says, “[T]he goal of the expedition is to give us some ground truth. We aim to try to observe these objects directly, and record them using multiple imaging modalities.”

• First, the team “will obtain current satellite imagery of the area and determine whether these anomalous objects can be observed. We will monitor these satellite images both manually and using machine learning and build up a database of detections, classifications, and any observed patterns of activity,” says Knuth. Second, in about a year the team will anchor a large boat off the coast of California loaded with various cameras and sensors to detect and record anomalous aerial activity. If the satellite imagery identifies a cluster of unknown objects, the team will go hunting for UFOs.

• “We plan to have high-quality drones in the air with imaging capabilities. We are looking into IR imaging, as well as detectors for x-ray, gamma-ray and custom-built neutron detectors (which are designed to look for dark matter),” says Knuth. “The key to ensuring consistency is reproducibility and this requires additional study.”

• It is, admittedly, a bit of a wild goose chase and will cost a boatload of cash. While Day’s team is working on grant proposals and potential crowd funding, they know that the vast majority of funding will have to be private. Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur and MIT technologist Rizwan Virk and the Toronto-based CEO of the quantum computing company, ReactiveQ, Deep Prasad have both signed on to help with securing investment for the project.

• Other individuals on the team include Luis Elizondo, former Pentagon staffer who quit his job to hunt UFOs with Tom DeLonge; Sean Cahill, the former Chief Master-at-Arms who served aboard the USS Princeton during the 2004 Nimitz Incident; and optical physicist and UFO researcher Bruce Macabee.

• Knuth states, “The failure to study these (UFO) phenomena scientifically has resulted in a state of ignorance, which is unacceptable.”

 

With this summer’s revelation that the US Navy considers UFOs and “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena” (UAPs) to be real, a team of venture capitalists, university professors, and military veterans are launching a project to track UFOs off the coast of California.

Kevin Day

UAP eXpeditions is a non-profit group based in Oregon that will “field a top-notch group of uber-experienced professionals providing the public service of field testing new UAP related technologies.” With some of the Silicon Valley UFO Hunters, UAP eXpeditions will pioneer the ability to predict, find, observe, and document UAP for study and analysis. They will use “classical observation techniques, by trained observers and scientists, while using the latest experimental technologies—in the right places and the right times,” Kevin Day, the group’s founder and CEO, wrote in a Facebook post viewed by Motherboard.

              Dr. Kevin Knuth

Day, who has appeared on the History Channel’s Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation and Discovery Channel’s Contact, is a retired U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer and radar operator. Day served in the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group on the USS Princeton during the 2004 infamous “Nimitz UFO Incident” which was reported by The New York Times in December of 2017.

He recalls tracking the infamous “Tic Tac” UFOs for several days around Catalina Island off the coast of California using the USS Princeton’s advanced radar system. Now, he believes that these objects continue to operate along the same trajectory and “migrate” from Catalina Island south along the California coast.

The company’s white paper is pretty wild. It asks, “Do fleets of UAP ‘migrate’ from Catalina Island to Guadalupe Island with a certain frequency? And if so, how well do whale songs correlate, if at all, to UAP appearances?” It’s unclear how whale songs are relevant here, but let’s move along.

Day, who believes that his experience tracking these objects has led to some curious special abilities, such as “advanced cognition” told Motherboard that the organization is hoping to “offer technology developers a way to test their new tech at no direct cost to them.” Using state of the art cameras and other experimental monitoring devices, the idea is to put this high tech gear into the field and attempt to track unknown aerial objects off the coast of California.

Leading the team of scientists is Dr. Kevin Knuth, a former scientist with NASA’s Ames Research Center, now an associate professor of physics at the University of Albany. Knuth specializes in machine learning and the study of exoplanets.
While the organization and the project is still in its infancy, Knuth told Motherboard that “the goal of the expedition is to give us some ground truth. We aim to try to observe these objects directly, and record them using multiple imaging modalities.”

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NASA Expert Urges to Take Alien Claims Seriously – ‘There Must Be Life’

by Sebastian Kettely                 March 19, 2019                       (express.co.uk)

• With the rocket-based space travel, it is estimated that it would take between 5 and 50 million years for a civilization like ours to colonize our Milky Way galaxy. This should have happened several times already with previous civilizations in the history of our galaxy. But there is still no hard evidence of space faring civilizations. This discrepancy has been dubbed the Fermi Paradox.

• While a growing community of UFO researchers are certain that aliens visit Earth on a regular basis, such claims are immediately dismissed by the scientific community. Scientists demand solid proof – “smoking gun” evidence – which could once and for all prove the existence of UFOs.

• A former NASA researcher and physicist at the University of Albany, Kevin Knuth, argues that such immediate skepticism to all UFO-related theories is counterproductive. “I think UFO skepticism has become something of a religion with an agenda, discounting the possibility of extraterrestrials without scientific evidence, while often providing silly hypotheses describing only one or two aspects of a UFO encounter reinforcing the popular belief that there is a conspiracy,” says Knuth. “In the end, the skeptics often do science a disservice by providing a poor example of how science is to be conducted.”

• Knuth does not rule out the possibility of extraterrestrial UFOs visiting the Earth. “[S]ince little is known, the extraterrestrial hypothesis cannot yet be ruled out. “The fact is that many of these encounters… defy conventional explanation.”

• Knuth said it would greatly benefit the scientific community to try and better understand alien visitors should they ever arrive. “[T]his would present a great opportunity for mankind, promising to expand and advance our knowledge and technology, as well as reshaping our understanding of our place in the universe.”

• William Borucki, the principal investigator for NASA’s Kepler mission, said, “If we find lots of planets like ours we’ll know it’s likely that we aren’t alone, and that someday we might be able to join other intelligent life in the universe.” The biggest problem faced by human explorers today is the lack of speedy and efficient interstellar travel technology. “Unless we get lucky, the search for signs of life could take decades.”

 

NASA’s hunt for proof of alien life is at the forefront of the space agency’s deep space exploration. But here on Earth, many conspiracy theorists and self-appointed UFO-hunters are already certain aliens visit Earth on a regular basis. Most of these alien claims, supposed UFO sightings and stories of mysterious crop circles appearing overnight are immediately dismissed by the scientific community. A former NASA researcher and physicist at the University of Albany, however, has argued immediate scepticism to all UFO-related theories is counterproductive.

             Dr. Kevin Knuth

Kevin Knuth, an associate professor at Albany, argued in an opinion piece for Cosmos Magazine, the odds of life existing outside of Earth are pretty high.

The “unsettling and refreshing” possibility is exactly why, he argued, more attention needs to be paid to what is happening in the skies.

Dr Knuth said: “I think UFO scepticism has become something of a religion with an agenda, discounting the possibility of extraterrestrials without scientific evidence, while often providing silly hypotheses describing only one or two aspects of a UFO encounter reinforcing the popular belief that there is a conspiracy.

“A scientist must consider all of the possible hypotheses that explain all of the data, and since little is known, the extraterrestrial hypothesis cannot yet be ruled out.

“In the end, the sceptics often do science a disservice by providing a poor example of how science is to be conducted.
“The fact is that many of these encounters – still a very small percentage of the total – defy conventional explanation.”

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Could Stories of Alien Encounters Be Real?

by Kyla Cathey              July 1, 2018             (earth.com)

• Former NASA research scientist and current physics professor at State University of New York, Albany, Dr. Kevin Knuth, recently wrote in a column for The Conversation that the idea that extraterrestrials exist is actually more realistic than the belief that they don’t. Given the probabilities, “there should be a number of intelligent civilizations in the galaxy”, writes Knuth. “It’s time to reconsider whether we’re really alone.”

• “The problem is that there has been no single well-documented UFO encounter that would alone qualify as the smoking gun. The situation is exacerbated by the fact that many governments around the world have covered up and classified information about such encounters. But there are enough scraps of evidence that suggest that the problem needs to be open to scientific study,” says Knuth. “Government instigated “skepticism surrounding alien encounters has taken on a life of its own.”

• When scientists do look at UFO sightings, they find that they’re more common than previously thought. A survey of astronomers found that more than 60 percent reported seeing unexplained activity in the night skies. Many felt that UFOs should be better studied, and a majority were willing to do so.

• “This is a topic worthy of open scientific inquiry, until there is a scientific consensus based on evidence rather than prior expectation or belief. If there are indeed extraterrestrial craft visiting Earth, it would greatly benefit us to know about them, their nature and their intent,” Knuth wrote.

 

Humans have always wondered whether they are alone in the universe, from stories about trolls, elves and other mythical beings to modern speculation about beings from other planets. Now, one physics professor is questioning whether humanity should take reports of UFOs and alien encounters more seriously.

In a column for The Conversation, Dr. Kevin Knuth – a former NASA research scientist and current physics professor at State University of New York, Albany – thinks it’s time to reconsider whether we’re really alone.

             Dr. Kevin Knuth

“I have always been interested in UFOs. Of course, there was the excitement that there could be aliens and other living worlds. But more exciting to me was the possibility that interstellar travel was technologically achievable,” he wrote.

The idea that extraterrestrials exist is actually more realistic than the belief that they don’t, Knuth points out.

“Even if intelligent life developed on a very small percentage of these planets, then there should be a number of intelligent civilizations in the galaxy,” he wrote.

However, the distance between planets and stars and the nature of time and technological discovery makes the chances of other sentient beings finding us – or vice versa – much more unlikely. Even so, there should have been evidence of other civilizations existing, even if humans and aliens have never met one another, he wrote.

And there might be.

“The problem is that there has been no single well-documented UFO encounter that would alone qualify as the smoking gun. The situation is exacerbated by the fact that many governments around the world have covered up and classified information about such encounters. But there are enough scraps of evidence that suggest that the problem needs to be open to scientific study,” Knuth wrote.

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