Culture and science
Scientific studies, academic projects, panels and surveys. 227 events, newest first.
Select any year above to see what happened that year.
Open Science and research as a timeline
Government19 Dec 2025
Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS came no closer to Earth than about 270 million km (1.8 AU), on Dec. 19, 2025, per NASA, posing no danger. Astrophysicist Avi Loeb kept pointing to anomalies, while NASA treated it as a natural comet.
Photo: NASA, ESA, STScI, D. Jewitt (UCLA), M.-T. Hui, Public domain
SightingsOct 2025
Two peer-reviewed papers by Beatriz Villarroel, Stephen Bruehl and colleagues reported that brief star-like flashes on 1950s Palomar survey plates clustered around nuclear test dates and UFO reports. Other astronomers argued the flashes are plate or copying artifacts.
Photo: Palomar Observatory (scan by Michael Vergara), CC BY-SA 3.0
Media16 Jul 2025
Weeks after the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS was found, Avi Loeb and two co-authors posted a non-peer-reviewed paper asking whether it could be alien technology. NASA describes it as a comet, and astronomers quoted in the press said the evidence points to a natural object.
Photo: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/B. Bolin, CC BY 4.0
Sightings24 Mar 2025
A large glowing spiral was seen and filmed across the UK and much of Europe on the evening of March 24, 2025, prompting UFO speculation. The Met Office and astronomers attributed it to the frozen exhaust plume of a Falcon 9 launched from Florida that day.
Whistleblowers22 Nov 2024
The Sol Foundation, a UAP think tank founded by Stanford academics, held its second annual symposium on Nov. 22-23, 2024. Speakers included former NOAA head Tim Gallaudet, a former Senate Armed Services staffer, and scientists Garry Nolan, Avi Loeb and Jacques Vallee.
Government26 Aug 2024
The Defense Department announced that Dr. Jon T. Kosloski, a scientist on detail from the National Security Agency, would direct the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, which had been led by an acting director since late 2023.
Photo: All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, Public domain
MediaJun 2024
Tim Lomas and Brendan Case of Harvard and Michael Masters of Montana Tech argued that scientists should stay open to the idea that some UAP reflect intelligences hidden on or near Earth. The speculative paper drew wide coverage; the authors acknowledged it would meet skepticism.
MediaJun 2024
Penn State historian Greg Eghigian published a global history of the UFO phenomenon with Oxford University Press, drawing on archives, old newspapers and interviews to trace how witnesses, scientists, governments and media responded to sightings and abduction reports.
Whistleblowers19 Jan 2024
Sean Kirkpatrick, AARO's first director, wrote in Scientific American that claims of a secret U.S. program to recover and reverse-engineer alien craft were unsupported by evidence, arguing they spread by circular reporting among a small group of advocates.
Photo: Defense.gov, Public domain
Media14 Dec 2023
University of Utah geographers Richard Medina and Simon Brewer, with Sean Kirkpatrick of the Defense Department, modeled about 98,000 U.S. public sighting reports from 2001-2020. More reports came where light pollution and tree cover allow open skies and where aircraft and military sites are near.
SightingsNov 2023
Harvard's Galileo Project began continuous recording with an eight-camera infrared array at its first observatory in Massachusetts. Over five months it tracked about 500,000 objects; 144 trajectories stayed ambiguous, which the team said were likely mundane.
Photo: Abraham Loeb and Frank H. Laukien (Galileo Project), CC BY 4.0
MediaNov 2023
St. Martin's published 'Encounters', a book by UNC Wilmington religious-studies professor D. W. Pasulka on people who report experiences with nonhuman intelligences and the spiritual meaning they attach to them.
Government14 Sep 2023
NASA's independent UAP study team released its final report, urging better-calibrated sensors and data and a larger NASA role. It said the scientific literature holds no conclusive evidence of an extraterrestrial origin. NASA said it was appointing a director of UAP research.
Photo: NASA, Public domain
Government12 Sep 2023
At Mexico's first congressional UAP hearing, journalist Jaime Maussan displayed two small mummified bodies he claimed were non-human. UNAM said its lab had only carbon-dated samples and drew no conclusions about origin; scientists widely called the bodies a hoax.
Photo: ProtoplasmaKid, CC BY-SA 4.0
MediaJun 2023
Harvard's Avi Loeb led a June 2023 search off Papua New Guinea for fragments of the 2014 fireball IM1, recovering tiny metal spherules he said might be interstellar or even technological. Other scientists disputed it, attributing the material to coal ash and the seismic trace to a passing truck.
Photo: NASA, Public domain
Government31 May 2023
NASA's independent UAP study team held a livestreamed public meeting ahead of its report. Chair David Spergel said the main lesson was the need for high-quality data, and NASA said it had seen no convincing evidence linking UAP to extraterrestrial life. Panelists reported online harassment.
Photo: NASA Headquarters / NASA/Joel Kowsky, Public domain
Sightings24 May 2023
Harvard's Galileo Project announced that its first seven peer-reviewed papers were online in the Journal of Astronomical Instrumentation, ahead of a special issue. They describe the project's methods and its multi-sensor ground observatories for recording and screening aerial phenomena.
Photo: Christopher Michel, CC BY-SA 4.0
Sightings15 Apr 2023
A swirling light photographed amid the northern lights over Alaska was explained by University of Alaska Fairbanks physicist Don Hampton as fuel vented by a SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage about three hours after a California launch, freezing into ice that caught sunlight.
Photo: United States Air Force photo by Senior Airman Joshua Strang, Public domain
Government7 Mar 2023
Pentagon UAP office director Sean Kirkpatrick and Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb released a draft, 'Physical Constraints on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena'. It was not peer-reviewed or an official Pentagon document; a speculative passage on a mothership releasing small probes drew wide headlines.
Photo: Christopher Michel, CC BY-SA 4.0
Sightings13 Feb 2023
Astronomer Krisztian Sarneczky in Hungary spotted a small asteroid hours before it hit, only the seventh found before impact. It entered the atmosphere at 02:59 UTC over the English Channel as forecast, fireball cameras recorded it, and meteorites were later recovered in Normandy.
Photo: Wokege, CC BY-SA 4.0
Media2023
Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb published 'Interstellar' (HarperCollins), a popular book following his earlier 'Extraterrestrial' and tied to his search for interstellar objects and possible alien technology.
Photo: Aviloeb, CC BY-SA 4.0
Government21 Oct 2022
NASA named 16 people to its independent UAP study team, chaired by Simons Foundation president David Spergel, with work starting Oct. 24, 2022. The nine-month study was limited to unclassified data and aimed to recommend how NASA could collect and analyze UAP data.
Photo: NASA Headquarters / NASA/Joel Kowsky, Public domain
Government13 Oct 2022
France's space agency CNES, through its UAP office GEIPAN, held the CAIPAN II conference in Toulouse on Oct. 13-14, 2022. More than 100 scientists, investigators and associations presented methods and tools for investigating UAP reports.
Photo: GEIPAN / Wizly-08, Public domain
Close encounters23 Aug 2022
Three researchers at the Main Astronomical Observatory of Ukraine's National Academy of Sciences posted a preprint describing daytime-sky video of fast bright and dark objects. They estimated sizes of 3 to 12 meters and very high speeds; the paper was not peer reviewed when posted.
Photo: Alexey laa, CC BY 4.0
Media14 Jun 2022
Science and Technology Daily, a state-run paper, reported that a Beijing Normal University team had found suspicious narrow-band signals in FAST data; the report was then removed. Lead scientist Zhang Tongjie said radio interference was a very likely cause.
Photo: SCJiang, CC BY-SA 4.0
