Lately there has been a lot of interest in Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP), or what used to be called UFOs. The fascination has not been limited to the general public: It is increasingly spreading among scientists as well. Reports of mysterious objects in the sky are nothing new, of course. They have been occurring since ancient times. But traditionally, most scientists have not taken the subject seriously. Why is that?
One reason is that more than 90 percent of observations can be easily explained. Even those that cannot are usually based on eyewitness accounts, and it is well known that our perceptions are easily fooled. Compounding the problem is that UAP observations are nearly impossible to replicate. You cannot take a sighting, stick it in a lab, and replicate the observations. This is true no matter how many people observed the phenomenon.
Add to this the giggle factor surrounding this topic. For scientists, the stigma connected with such research can have serious consequences for your career. The unfortunate result is that observations without easy explanations typically remain unexplained.
The situation may be changing, however. Following up on its 2021 report about UAP, the Pentagon has created a new All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office with the objective “to synchronize efforts across the Department of Defense, and with other U.S. federal departments and agencies, to detect, identify, and attribute objects of interest in, on, or near military installations, operating areas, training areas, special use airspace, and other areas of interest, and, as necessary, to mitigate any associated threats to safety of operations and national security. This includes anomalous, unidentified space, airborne, submerged and transmedium objects.”
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