Stop what you’re doing– we’re going to talk about UFOs. 

From as far back as human beings were keeping written records, we’ve been earnestly asking the question, “What else is out there?”

Shit has been stressful since the year of our Lorde 2020. Devastating natural disasters caused by climate change, a global pandemic, actual world war, rampant social and political unrest, fear surrounding the weaponization of rapidly developing technology the likes of which we can’t even begin to fathom, Ellen Degeneres– the list goes on when it comes to reasons for losing sleep. At any other time in human history would we have let a concrete acknowledgment of the existence of UFOs pass by without some fucking hoopla? 

The Allure of Visitors from the Stars

The Greek philosopher Thales was said to stay up nights lying on the beach theorizing about the positions of the stars. The 16th century friar Giardano Bruno was so adamant in his heretical claim that the universe is infinite that he was burned to death for it. My crazy Aunt Dawna, who is absolutely certain that two of her cows have been abducted by extraterrestrials and replaced with two alien cows who look at her like they “know too much”. What do all these people have in common? Like many of us, they simply cannot help but look to the stars and question the known.

——————–Whether you’re anxious for or about the arrival of extraterrestrials, check out ‘Games To Play While We Await Alien Contact’

So, What’s New and How Do We Know It?

For decades, the freshest UFO information came from the History Channel and dusty books from the 80’s at your local public library. Recently though, something new showed up on our radars pointed at the stars– from shockingly verifiable sources (and with audio, no less).

In 2017 Luis Elizondo, the former program director of a government organization called the American Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), shared with the public video footage showing unexplainable shapes in the sky. 

As a result, the existence of the AATIP was revealed and the American arm of the British tabloid The Sun filed a Freedom of Information Act request for all relevant documents pertaining to UFOs. Four years later 1,574 pages’ worth of material was shared with the public and information began to emerge that asked more questions than it answered.

Contained in the Pentagon declassified documents is a report stating that 144 UFOs were encountered in the U.S. between 2004 and 2021. A Pentagon task force was created to look into sightings that occurred within this timeframe. It was determined that most of these UFOs were actual, physical entities (meaning they were observed by multiple sensors and not just the naked eye), of those, only one was discovered to be a weather balloon, the rest remain unexplained. 

The newly-public documents cover topics from deep space exploration and colonization, studies on invisibility cloaking technology à la Harry Potter, as well as data collected by civilian “alien encounter experts” regarding the biological effects of UFO interactions on humans. 

In May 2022 Congress met for a hearing on UFOs, the first of its kind in over 50 years …and it pretty much told us nothing new. Pentagon officials testified under oath that the government had not collected materials from any alien landing on Earth and then they went on to outline plans for better data collection. Flashy and exciting? Not really. But more accurate and interpretable data regarding UFOs is ultimately the pathway to discovering what these objects in the sky are– and whether they’re from beyond the stars.

So no, there isn’t any concrete evidence in these documents and videos of extraterrestrial life. But what we do finally know for certain is that these uncanny, inexplicably quick-moving objects that have been observed in the sky are not of American military origin, and the U.S. government is finally ready to talk about them.

Do you think we’re being told the whole truth about UFOs? Would you drink the milk from Aunt Dawna’s cows? Let us know in the comments.

Cover Image created by DALL·E 2, is a new AI system that can create realistic images and art from a description in natural language.