Culture and science
Scientific studies, academic projects, panels and surveys. 227 events, newest first.
Government9 Jun 2022
NASA said it would commission an independent team, chaired by astrophysicist David Spergel, to study unidentified aerial phenomena using only unclassified data and recommend how NASA could help. The 16-member team began work in October 2022.
Photo: NASA Headquarters / NASA/Joel Kowsky, Public domain
Sightings2 Apr 2022
A streak of light crossed several Maharashtra districts on the evening of April 2, 2022, and a hot metal ring about 3 m across and a sphere were found in Sindewahi, Chandrapur. Astronomer Jonathan McDowell linked the streak to the reentry of a Chang Zheng 3B third stage.
Photo: Ganesh Dhamodkar, CC BY-SA 4.0
MilitaryApr 2022
U.S. Space Command officials confirmed the velocity data for a January 2014 fireball off Papua New Guinea that Harvard researchers had argued came from outside the solar system. NASA noted the short data record makes the interstellar origin hard to confirm.
Photo: Abraham Loeb and Frank H. Laukien (Galileo Project), CC BY 4.0
Media30 Oct 2021
Harvard's Galileo Project, led by Avi Loeb, named former Pentagon intelligence official Christopher Mellon and former AATIP figure Luis Elizondo as research affiliates, to help choose sites for its sky-watching instruments and weigh the implications of any findings.
Photo: Max Moszkowicz, CC BY 3.0
Government19 Oct 2021
In a University of Virginia Center for Politics talk with Larry Sabato, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said he had spoken with Navy pilots whose radars locked onto unknown objects. He said no one knew what they were and hoped they were not an adversary's technology.
Photo: Bill Ingalls, Public domain
Close encounters26 Jul 2021
Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb announced the Galileo Project, a privately funded effort to search systematically for evidence of extraterrestrial technological objects, including UAP and interstellar visitors, using purpose-built instruments and publishing data openly.
Photo: Christopher Michel, CC BY-SA 4.0
SightingsJul 2021
In July 2021 the group UAPx and University at Albany physicists ran a week of camera and radiation monitoring at Avalon on Catalina Island. Their later paper said several early candidates were explained, leaving one unresolved dark spot recorded on 16 July.
Photo: Don Ramey Logan, CC BY-SA 4.0
MilitaryJun 2021
The South China Morning Post reported that Chinese military researchers, including Chen Li of the Air Force Early Warning Academy, proposed using AI to analyze a growing volume of unidentified aerial object reports from radar, pilots and observatories.
Media30 May 2021
University of Rochester astrophysicist Adam Frank, who searches for signs of alien technology, argued in a New York Times guest essay that the UFO reports then in the news were poor evidence of extraterrestrial visitors, while saying the sightings deserve scientific study.
Photo: DanielPenfield, CC BY-SA 4.0
Media15 Mar 2021
Former New York Times reporter Ralph Blumenthal published the first biography of Harvard psychiatrist John Mack, who studied people reporting alien abductions. The book drew mixed reviews, including criticism that it was uncritical of Mack's conclusions.
Photo: Becket01, CC BY-SA 4.0
Media26 Jan 2021
Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb's book argued that the interstellar object 'Oumuamua could be an artifact of another civilization. Reviewers called it provocative, but many scientists were unconvinced, noting the object can no longer be observed to test the idea.
Photo: Christopher Michel, CC BY-SA 4.0
Sightings1 Aug 2020
After loud booms over Central Tapanuli, a stone of over 2 kg punched through the roof of coffin maker Josua Hutagalung's house in Kolang, with more fragments found nearby. Arizona State University classified it as a rare carbonaceous (CM) meteorite.
Photo: Ahmad Fairuz, CC BY-SA 4.0
Sightings11 May 2020
The U.S. military reported that China's Long March 5B core stage reentered uncontrolled over the Atlantic. Long metal pieces then reported in the villages of Mahounou and N'guinou, Ivory Coast, were attributed by astronomer Jonathan McDowell and others to the rocket; no injuries were reported.
Photo: China News Service, CC BY 4.0
Media31 Mar 2020
History premiered The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch, a series following a team funded by owner Brandon Fugal, including astrophysicist Travis Taylor, as it investigates reported phenomena at the Utah ranch. It has continued for several seasons.
Photo: US Army, Public domain
Whistleblowers2020
Former Pentagon official Luis Elizondo and former intelligence official Christopher Mellon, who joined Tom DeLonge's To The Stars Academy in 2017, left the company at the end of 2020. They later said the firm's science mission was losing out to entertainment.
Photo: Max Moszkowicz, CC BY 3.0
Sightings12 Dec 2019
Astronomer Beatriz Villarroel and colleagues published the first paper of VASCO, a project comparing 1950s sky-survey records with modern surveys to find objects that appear to vanish. A 2021 follow-up reported nine short-lived point sources on one 1950 plate; their cause is debated.
Photo: Beatriz Villarroel et al., CC BY 4.0
Media25 Sep 2019
Kevin Knuth, Robert Powell and Peter Reali published a peer-reviewed paper estimating accelerations implied by witness and sensor accounts, including the 2004 Nimitz case, from roughly 70 g to over 5,000 g. Critics argued some figures rested on doubtful readings of the data.
Photo: United States Navy, Public domain
WhistleblowersJun 2019
Notes said to record a 2002 talk between physicist Eric Davis and retired Vice Adm. Thomas Wilson, ex-DIA director, about being denied access to a UFO program, spread online. They have no provenance; Wilson called them fiction and denied the meeting, and Davis has not commented.
Photo: U.S. Navy, Public domain
Media31 May 2019
History premiered a six-part series following Luis Elizondo, Tom DeLonge's To The Stars Academy and former Pentagon official Chris Mellon. It featured Navy pilot David Fravor describing his 2004 encounter and other accounts tied to the Navy cases.
Photo: Max Moszkowicz, CC BY 3.0
Media13 May 2019
Stanton Friedman, a nuclear physicist who lectured on UFOs for five decades and whom a colleague called the original civilian investigator of the Roswell crash, died at 84 at Toronto Pearson airport while returning home to Fredericton. He said he never saw a UFO himself.
Photo: SMG2019, CC BY-SA 4.0
Media15 Apr 2019
Harvard's Amir Siraj and Avi Loeb posted a paper arguing that a small meteor that hit the atmosphere near Papua New Guinea on January 8, 2014, recorded in U.S. government fireball data, had an orbit showing it came from outside the solar system. The claim remains debated.
Photo: Aloeb, CC BY-SA 4.0
Media8 Jan 2019
History premiered a period drama from executive producer Robert Zemeckis, starring Aidan Gillen as astronomer J. Allen Hynek, with episodes drawn from Air Force Blue Book cases. It ran two seasons before History ended it in 2020.
Photo: U.S. Air Force, Public domain
Media2019
UNC Wilmington religious studies professor D. W. Pasulka published 'American Cosmic' with Oxford University Press. Based on six years of interviews with scientists and tech figures who believe in extraterrestrial contact, it treats UFO belief as a new, technology-centered form of religion.
Sightings18 Dec 2018
A roughly 10 m meteor exploded over the Bering Sea off Kamchatka on Dec. 18, 2018. Infrasound stations logged it, but astronomers did not notice until March 2019, when NASA's JPL added it to its fireball database and it drew attention at a planetary science conference.
Photo: NASA/GSFC/LaRC/JPL-Caltech, MISR Team, Public domain
Media12 Nov 2018
Harvard astronomers Shmuel Bialy and Avi Loeb argued in a peer-reviewed letter that sunlight pressure could explain the first known interstellar object's odd acceleration if it were a very thin sheet, raising the possibility of an artificial light sail. Most astronomers favored natural explanations.
Photo: Alan Fitzsimmons (Queen's University Belfast), Isaac Newton Group, Public domain
