A congressional subcommittee met on June 26, 2023, to hear testimony from several military officers who allege the government is concealing evidence of UFOs. By holding a hearing on UFOs – now called “unidentified anomalous phenomena” by government agencies – the subcommittee sought to understand whether these UAPs pose a threat to national security.
I’m an astronomer who studies and has written about cosmology, black holes, exoplanets and life in the universe. I’m also on the advisory council for an international group that strategizes how to communicate with an extraterrestrial civilization should the need ever arise.
While the hearings brought attention to UAPs and could lead to more reporting from people who work in the military and aviation, the testimonies did not produce evidence to fundamentally change the understanding of UAPs.
The House subcommittee hearing follows a flurry of activity over the past few years. Public interest in UAPs surged in 2017 after three Navy videos were leaked and The New York Times reported on a shadowy UAP program run by the Pentagon. In June 2021, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a report on the phenomena. In November 2021, the Pentagon formed a new group to coordinate efforts to detect and identify objects in restricted airspace.
Then in May 2022, a House Intelligence subcommittee held the first congressional hearing in over half a century on military reports of UAPs. Little new light...
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