'Mysterious flying saucers' are illusions or evidence of the presence of intelligent space creatures?
It was a typical day for Alex Dietrich. A US Navy lieutenant commander was flying an F-18 Super Hornet during a training mission in the skies over the Pacific near San Diego. Nearby, another of his colleagues was also present on his ship. Then suddenly there was a voice on the radio.
It was the operations officer aboard the USS Princeton who asked Alex to investigate a suspicious aerial object that repeatedly rose to an altitude of 80,000 feet, plummeted to sea level, and then suddenly disappeared.
When the two planes reached the location where the mysterious object was last known, they saw water boiling on the surface of the ocean.
A few moments later Alex saw the object for the first time. It was a 40-foot-long, square-shaped white object with no wings attached, and it was just above the surface of the water.
As they got closer to the object, it was gone. The unknown object flew toward the sky at an inexplicable speed.
This is the famous 'tick-tock' incident of 2004, the video of which was released by the New York Times. In the footage, which has also been confirmed by the US Department of Defense, a square shadow can be seen suddenly disappearing at a surprising speed.
This is one of hundreds of strange incidents that have come to the attention of the authorities. First investigated by the US government in 2021 were these mysterious objects called 'UFOs', which have now disappointingly been given the serious name of 'UAP' or Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon.
And now, for the first time, NASA will release the results of its research on these objects, while a subcommittee of the US Congress has also met on the same issue.
In America's 76-year-old interest in aliens, there have been mentions of mysterious flying saucers, strange lights, and the mystery of Area 51. However, the scientific community has finally moved on.
But how will serious incidents be selected for investigation? And why are scientists paying attention to this issue now?
Trend
The phenomenon began in 1947 when people across the United States began reporting unusual shapes they allegedly saw in the sky.
Kenneth Arnold, an Idaho businessman who was searching for the wreckage of a crashed fighter jet in his small plane, first saw the light shining at 10,000 feet in June in the mountains near Washington.
According to him, nine objects in the sky were flying at a speed of 1200 miles per hour. At that time no plane could fly at that speed. This is where the craze for flying saucers in America was born.
Flying saucers had never been mentioned before in America. But within a month of Arnold's mention, 10 such incidents were mentioned across the country, which experts dismissed as hoaxes, but a wave of anxiety spread across the country.
And the challenge, in this case, is that the more we think about these things, the more likely we are to see them.
Take the example of Corona. When scientists examined the incidence of sightings of these objects, they found that these sightings increased when people were confined to their homes and therefore kept their eyes on the sky all the time.
One reason for this theory is that such observations usually occur during economic downturns.
According to a US government analysis in 2022, 350 pilots and others observed such objects in just one year, a staggering increase.
However, in reality, very few such observations are unusual. Of the 800 observations NASA reviewed, only two to five percent were difficult to explain.
According to NASA's head of research, David Spergill, these observations can be divided into two parts.
The first part consists of observations that are considered mysterious due to balloons, drones, atmospheric changes, or camera malfunctions.
Whenever they hear of a sighting that mentions a bright light, they know it must be caused by an airplane.
An example of the second list is the lights seen in 2015 by British astronaut Tim Peake. He was looking out of the International Space Station after spending 186 days in space when he noticed the lights moving in a certain way. First, they saw three, then four lights. He later told a BBC show that he thought he was seeing an alien spacecraft.
Tim Peck soon realized that he was not looking at a mysterious object, but small droplets that were being released from a nearby spacecraft after a Russian cosmonaut urinated.
Often an ordinary thing turns into something close to sight. The same happens with the planet Venus, which is as big as Earth, but because of its distance of 70 million kilometers, can often look like a flying saucer.
Similarly, pieces of land or water crystals found in space have also deceived people by posing as space creatures.
However, it is difficult to understand these objects without looking through the eye of a camera.
"There are three to four billion mobile phones around the world that can take good pictures, check GPS positions, and provide a lot of information," says David Spergill.
"The best thing to do is to take pictures of an object from multiple cameras at the same time, which will make it easier for researchers to understand whether it is an optical illusion or something else," he says.
A mysterious object
In October 2017, astronomers using a telescope spotted a strange white object among the clouds in Hawaii. This object was traveling at a very high speed.
This object was named 'Omwamwa'. The strange thing was that it was fast but its speed was increasing. In November, the object was traveling at 38 km/s, which was inexplicable because comets usually speed up as they pass closer to the Sun, but this object did not have a tail.
Scientists were also surprised. Was it an unusual comet or something else? Avi Loeb is a professor at Harvard University known for his controversial search for extraterrestrials.
He said that it was sent to Earth by a spaceship.
Although most scientists until now believed that Oomwamoa was a natural object, possibly an unusual comet, it had all the characteristics of a UAP.
However, David Spergill does not consider this to be evidence of extraterrestrials.
"If we see something that accelerates and then slows down, that would be unusual," he says.
They look at this matter from the point of view of time. Most of the stars around our solar system are billions of years younger or older than the Sun.
David Spergill says, "It's about remembering what 100 million years mean." If you were to show a person living in 1923 today's cars, planes, or technology, they would be impressed but not surprised. If you show all this to someone living in the year 1023, they will think we are all magicians. A thousand years is a huge leap in technology. And 100 million years will be 100,000 such steps.
A new discovery
NASA doesn't expect to find evidence of intelligent aliens visiting Earth, but it's certainly a possibility.
However, their purpose is to produce a report that examines events around the Earth, including unpredictable weather conditions.
For example, electric discharges called 'sprites' illuminate the surface of the earth in red. They have been reported since 1886 but were first captured on camera in 1989. However, they remain a mystery until now.
"Many people are ignorant of a lot of interesting things," says David Sturgill. Sprites are among the things that David says scientists didn't believe in before the high-speed camera.
This is not just a matter of curiosity. Anything in the atmosphere that is undetectable can be dangerous to satellites and aircraft.
"I was surprised to see the number of balloons and drones in the air," says David Sturgill. And that number is growing. A few of them can be harmful to the aircraft.
However, high-quality data is essential for any progress. NASA realizes that they need to dispel the concepts associated with flying saucers.
When Dietrich's ship went down after the incident, his companion said that whoever heard of the incident was amused.
However, both of them had to give interviews for years and became famous.
When NASA first publicly convened a meeting on the issue, Nicola Fox, associate director of the Science Mission Directorate, said that sadly many of the people involved in the research were being maligned online.
David Spergill says he hopes the research he publishes will reduce the perception that there is a conspiracy.
Some believe it should have happened long ago.
In June 1947, Kenneth Arnold told the media that "if I were running the country and saw something so unusual and told us, I would definitely get more information about it."