Unidentified flying objects, or UFOs, seem to follow the same cycle as 17-year-old cicadas: everything is silent and buried for a long time, and then there’s a buzzing swarm of things going on on TV, social media, and even in the U.S. Senate.
The current surge in interest is likely to culminate with an upcoming Pentagon report, which is believed to contain even more of the same kind of hard-to-interpret cockpit videos and pilot statements about unknown aerial phenomena that have been gathered over the years. We will see a multitude of “expert witnesses” and opinion leaders explain how impossible these phenomena are, leading to the inevitable assumption that these sightings are out of this world, that the aliens are here, always circling the heavens of earth just beyond simple identification.
For the vast majority of scientists, especially astronomers and astrobiologists, who are actually systematically looking for life in the cosmos, none of this is particularly interesting. If there weren’t a century or more of science fiction stories and films predisposing us to the idea of extraterrestrial visits, all of these inexplicable phenomena would appear as strange effects in the optics of moving cameras, tracking cameras, the Earth’s atmosphere, and humans visual reactions and psychology are considered. Nobody would call an astrobiologist to ask if there are aliens in our skies.
In fact, perhaps the most damning evidence that UFOs are not an alien technology is that their properties – such as their extraordinary apparent speeds and motions – would disregard all known laws of physics and aviation. In science this is a leap of ridiculous proportions. Time and again we have found that each new level in our understanding of nature is largely compatible with the previous one, only more complete and accurate.
We could imagine that a cosmic species would have new tricks that we don’t know about, but that’s a bit different than succumbing to the stories of magic and superstitions that have haunted us for thousands and thousands of years. The universe may have basic shortcuts that bright minds can catch, but there is no evidence that they really are.
But there could still be something useful in all that energy tormenting UFOs. Our exploration of nature here on earth and out in the universe is not always easy to control or easy to replicate. The cosmos is full of phenomena that appear and disappear sporadically or that have only been observed once during the scientific study of humans and that become uncomfortable prototypes – from exploding stars to comets.
Integrating this type of uncontrolled, unexpected data into our reality models is a major challenge. With that in mind, UFOs are ripe for being used as a test bed for techniques that could collect data at any time and place without the complication of human observers. Global coverage from satellites or aerial monitors, along with the sleepless talents of machine learning, could tell us not only about UFOs, but many other aspects of the world that are otherwise difficult to keep track of: from fleeting atmospheric disturbances to geophysical events. Approaching this as a scientific conundrum and ignoring the noise of talking heads and conspiracy theorists could be both interesting and useful.