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Scientists Call for Serious Study of UAPs – ‘Unidentified Aerial Phenomena’

October 26, 2020
ExoNews Editor

Article by Leonard David October 12, 2020 (space.com)

• The US Navy recently admitted that strangely behaving objects caught on video by Navy jet pilots, radar operators and technicians are genuine ‘UAP’s or ‘unidentified aerial phenomenon’. In August, the Navy established a ‘UAP Task Force’ to investigate the nature and origin of these UFOs and to determine whether they pose a threat to U.S. national security.

• These observed UAPs (or UFOs) can purportedly accelerate in the 1000’s of G-forces – far more than a human can survive. Furthermore, there’s no air disturbance visible and they don’t produce a sonic boom.

• Philippe Ailleris, a project controller at the European Space Agency’s Space Research and Technology Center in the Netherlands, has created the ‘Unidentified Aerospace Phenomena Observations Reporting Scheme’, a project to facilitate the collection and study of UFOs reported by both amateur and professional astronomers. This comes as more scientists are calling for a more scientific study of the UFO phenomenon.

• “There’s a need for the scientific study of UAPs and a requirement to assemble reliable evidence, something that could not be so easily ignored by science,” Ailleris told Space.com. Recent technological advances in open tools and software, cloud computing and artificial intelligence with machine and deep learning offer scientists new possibilities to collect, store, manipulate and transmit data.

• Ailleris points to orbiting civilian satellites as a good way to search for UFOs. One avenue is to tap into the ‘free-of-charge’ imagery collected by the European Union’s Copernicus satellites, managed by the European Commission in partnership with ESA. More and more Earth-scanning spacecraft are being launched by private companies that can be used to view the planet and detect possible UFOs. “This evolution will stimulate forward-thinking ideas across different domains, including controversial topics,” Ailleris said. “And why not the UAP research field?”

• Kevin Knuth is a former scientist with NASA’s Ames Research Center and is currently an associate professor of physics at the University at Albany in New York. Knuth is working with Ailleris to employ satellite imagery to detect and monitor UFOs. “We are looking into using satellites to monitor the region of ocean south of Catalina Island where the 2004 Nimitz encounters occurred,” Knuth said.

• The Catalina Island area will also be the target for a 2021 UAP expedition (see here for UAPx website) carried out by Knuth and other researchers “to provide unassailable scientific evidence that UAP objects are real, UAP objects are findable and UAP objects are knowable,” according to the UAPx website. Knuth’s UAPx team includes military veterans and physicists, as well as research scientists and trained observers that will use specialized gear to observe possible UFO activity.

• “I certainly think that (UFOs) deserve to be studied, just like we would do with any other problem in science,” said Jacob Haqq-Misra, an astrobiologist with the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science in Seattle, Washington. In August, Haqq-Misra helped organize a NASA-sponsored interdisciplinary workshop, called TechnoClimes 2020 (see here for website), that sought to prioritize and guide future theoretical and observational studies of non-radio “technosignatures” – observational manifestations of technology that can be detected through astronomical means.

• Ravi Kopparapu is a planetary scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “There’s a fundamental problem that we have right now to scientifically study UAP,” Kopparapu said. “We do not have proper data collection of this phenomena that can be shared among interested scientists to verify claims and filter out truly unexplainable events.” He views the UAP/UFO phenomena as a scientifically interesting problem, driven in part by observations that seem to defy the laws of physics. But Kopparapu is wary of using the term “extraterrestrial”. “That’s because there is absolutely no concrete evidence that I know of that points to them as being extraterrestrial,” he said.

• The entire UFO topic has been maligned by being associated with ET, says Kopparapu. This prevents a thorough scientific investigation by the science community because of a taboo surrounding ET claims. “I think people immediately think about ‘aliens’ when they hear UFOs/UAPs, and I want scientists to not fall for that,” Kopparapu said. “[D]on’t let preconceived ideas cloud judgments. Have an open mind. Consider this as a science problem. If it turns out these have mundane explanations, so be it.”

The U.S. Navy recently admitted that, indeed, strangely behaving objects caught on video by jet pilots over the years are genuine head-scratchers. There are eyewitness accounts not only from pilots but from radar operators and technicians, too.

In August, the Navy established an Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) Task Force to investigate the nature and origin of these odd sightings and determine if they could potentially pose a threat to U.S. national security.

The recently observed UAPs purportedly have accelerations that range from almost 100 Gs to thousands of Gs — far higher than a human pilot could survive. There’s no air disturbance visible. They don’t produce sonic booms. These and other oddities have captured the attention of “I told you so, they’re here” UFO believers.

But there’s also a rising call for this phenomenon to be studied scientifically — even using satellites to be on the lookout for possible future UAP events.

Philippe Ailleris is a project controller at the European Space Agency’s Space Research and Technology Center in the Netherlands. He’s also the primary force behind the Unidentified Aerospace Phenomena Observations Reporting Scheme, a project to facilitate the collection of UAP reports from both amateur and professional astronomers.

There’s a need for the scientific study of UAPs and a requirement to assemble reliable evidence, something that could not be so easily ignored by science, Ailleris told Space.com.

It is necessary to bring scientists objective and high-quality data, Ailleris said. “No one knows where and when a UAP can potentially appear, hence the difficulty of scientific research in this domain.”

New tools

Recent years have seen rapid advances in information and communication technologies — for example, open tools and software, cloud computing and artificial intelligence with machine and deep learning, Ailleris said. These tools offer scientists new possibilities to collect, store, manipulate and transmit data.

Ailleris points to another potent tool. “The location over our heads of satellites is the perfect chance to potentially detect something,” he said.
Working in the space sector, it occurred to Ailleris that Earth-observation civilian satellites could be used to search for UAPs. One avenue is tapping into free-of-charge imagery collected by the European Union’s Copernicus satellites, an Earth-observing program coordinated and managed by the European Commission in partnership with ESA.

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

November 2, 2019
ExoNews Editor

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.

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.

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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