Coming Down to Earth on UFOs

Carl Sagan is a hero of mine. The late astronomer—best known as the host of the 1980 television series Cosmos—was a firm believer in the existence of extraterrestrial life somewhere in the universe, though he estimated the odds of aliens having visited Earth to be vanishingly small. In fact, he spent a portion of his early career debunking alleged alien abductions and UFO sightings. It was in this context that Sagan coined the now-famous phrase, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." I cannot agree more. Yet, much to my surprise—and to the dismay of several of my friends—I find myself entertaining the possibility that aliens not only exist, but have visited us on Earth. Surely, this is an "extraordinary claim" for which I have no conclusive evidence? So how did I, a self-declared skeptic, end up here? Allow me to explain.

First, I want to clarify that I'm not "claiming" that aliens have visited Earth; my suggestion is only that the evidence, while not conclusive, is substantial enough to give the "extraterrestrial hypothesis" equal weight to other working explanations for what the Pentagon calls UAP, or "unexplained aerial phenomena." I also believe that a conversation in academia and elsewhere about the societal ramifications of possible extraterrestrial life would be a productive exercise, regardless of whether extraterrestrial life exists or not.

I'm trying to be very precise with my words here so that I'm not mistaken for a "UFO cultist," as Sagan referred to them. Indeed, I'm making no claims about alien abductions, crop circles, cattle mutilations, Area 51, Bigfoot, etc. These are all spurious nonsense—a marriage of fevered imaginations and credulous minds.

With that clarification out of the way, I feel that I should address some of the points that have been politely raised by well-meaning friends since I've begun writing on this subject:

It's just secret drone technology—ours or China's.
I'm willing to concede the U.S. and China have advanced technology that we don't know about. But the problem with this explanation is that these UAP are seen defying our understanding of the laws of physics. I agree, the United States undoubtedly has next-gen technology, but what we're seeing appears to be next-next-next-gen technology, at the very least—technology that our science has scarcely begun to conceive of. And this isn't just my opinion; it's the opinion of the Pentagon's UAP report.

For what it's worth, the report also rules out secret U.S. or adversarial technology, but this is exactly what the Pentagon would say if it was secret technology, so make of this what you will.

It's just an optical illusion—parallax, glare, weather balloon, etc.
Here again I'll concede that some (even most) of the UAP footage we've seen can be explained as an optical illusion—an artefact, or a lens flare, etc. But the Pentagon's report identified 143 cases in which there wasn't sufficient evidence to conclude that it was an optical illusion. Moreover, the report cites numerous instances in which unidentified objects were detected on multiple sensors at once. And, of course, there is pilot testimony, which I find compelling.

Enough of these cases are clearly real objects that we can't dismiss all of them as optical illusions. And so we're left, once again, with objects which appear to defy our understanding of physics, which are unlikely to be secret U.S. or adversarial drone technology.

It's a glitch in the system.
How can an object descend from 80,000 feet above sea level to 15 feet in a fraction of a second? It can't—isn't it more likely to be a glitch? It's true that in many of these cases, the software had just been updated on these fighter jets when they began detecting UAP. The timing is suspicious. But as mentioned above, there are numerous instances in which UAP were picked up on multiple instruments simultaneously. Surely, an object that is filmed in infrared, detected on radar, and seen with the naked eye can't be dismissed as a mere glitch.

Again, we're left with very few plausible explanations.

What about Occam's razor? Aliens aren't a very parsimonious explanation.
"All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one." Yes, but all explanations aren't equal in this scenario; the Pentagon's report identified cases which it believed cannot be explained by any of the above means. We're talking about real objects in the sky which exhibit "unusual movement patterns and flight characteristics," which will require "scientific advances" to fully understand, according to the report. We have no choice but to conclude that there is no simple explanation—whatever these UAP are, they are extraordinary.

You believe the Pentagon? They have no reason to tell the truth.
Think of what the Pentagon is admitting, though: that the United States does not have air superiority in its own sky. The report says that our airspace is routinely violated by objects the Pentagon can't explain, which pose a threat to flight safety. Supposing the Pentagon is lying, surely it could concoct a better explanation than this. Why admit that these are real objects in the first place? There's no particular reason to do so—unless it's the truth.

My point is this: whereas the Pentagon's report concludes (in all-capitalized, bold, and underlined text) that UAP are a possible threat to national security, therefore we need at least a working theory as to what these objects are so that we can prepare contingency plans. And the extraterrestrial hypothesis deserves serious consideration, free of the stigma which typically—and often deservedly—surrounds the subject of UFOs. I also think that placing humanity in a cosmic context would provide much-needed perspective and urgency to address climate change, nuclear and biological weapons, and other threats to our species, as I've written elsewhere.

It's hard to say what Carl Sagan would make of the recent UFO/UAP revelations. I think he'd find them interesting, to say the least. But one thing's for sure—he would not abandon his rigorous skepticism, and neither should we. No one wanted it to be true more than Sagan that extraterrestrial life exists, but precisely because we want something to be true, we must apply the most stringent evidentiary standards to it. This is something that the cringe-inducing pseudoscience of "Ufology" has traditionally lacked, but my hope is that the mainstreaming of this conversation will result in a more serious and scientifically rigorous investigation of UAP. The truth, as they say, is out there—and it may be much closer to "here" than we previously imagined.