An independent study commissioned by the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has found no proof of unidentified anomalous phenomenon (UAP) in the public domain having extraterrestrial origin.
After the publication of the study, carried out by a panel of 16 experts outside of NASA, the US space agency appointed a new director to study the UAPs better in line with the panel's suggestions. The UAPs were earlier called unidentified flying objects (UFOs) in the United States. The new director of UAP research at NASA is Mark McInerney.
The NASA describes a UAP as an observation of events in the sky that cannot be identified as aircraft or known natural phenomena.
"To date, in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, there is no conclusive evidence suggesting an extraterrestrial origin for UAP. When it comes to UAP, the challenge we have is that the data needed to explain these anomalous sightings often do not exist; this includes eyewitness reports, which on their own can be interesting and compelling, but aren’t reproducible and usually lack the information needed to make any definitive conclusions about a phenomenon’s provenance," says the study.
The study, however, has a major limitation as it is based on unclassified data. For decades, former government officials and independent researchers have claimed that the US government is in posession of classified information related to extraterrestrial —alient— aircraft and even creatures. Such claims have found increased traction in recent years as a consistent trickle of information from the classified realm has come into the public domain.
In January, it emerged that the US government has 510 UAP sightings and 144 of those are unexplained.
Over the years, there have been several sightings of unexplained UAPs and some of the most notable ones have been from elements within the US military. For example, in 2014, US figher pilots tracked 'tic tac' UAP, which are called so because those flying objects were shaped like tic tac pills. They were very fast and remain unexplained. There is also the case of a mysterious orb flying over Iraq.
In 2020, some of the UAP videos were released by the US government. About the video below, Guardian notes, "One of the videos shows an incident from 2004, and the other two were recorded in January 2015. The videos became public after unauthorised leaks in 2007 and 2017, and the Navy previously verified their authenticity."
Now, with the creation of a designated post at NASA to study the UAPs, there is one more aspect to the US government UAP-related activities. The Department of Defence already has a All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) that was established in July 2022.
