Dr. James McDonald, Senior Physicist

Institute of Atmospheric Physics

University of Arizona

Who can forget when a bunch of kooks tried to raid Area 51 while on psilocybin? Despite more than a million space-heads who RSVP’d “yes” to the Facebook event (with Pewdiepie’s own endorsement), the raid unsurprisingly crashed and burned spectacularly. The whole fiasco was soon reduced to memes and tweets that dismissed the notion of Area 51 (and much less aliens) as pure conspiracy theory, once again.

But what if we told you that not only could aliens be real… but they might already be here on Planet Earth, walking among us? One should not be too abrupt in shutting down their friendly neighborhood conspiracy fan. They ain’t just tripping on Psilocybe ALIEN. After all, even the Pentagon has actual footage of a UFO, released earlier this year:

First Encounters of the Real Kind: Roswell and Project BLUE BOOK

Project BLUE BOOK

The first serious investigation into UFOs was conducted by a specialized unit headed by Dr. J. Allen Hynek. Once headquartered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, the Air Force program called “Project BLUE BOOK” received a whopping total of 12,618 UFO sightings from 1947 to its eventual termination in 1969. 

(To this day, 701 of these reports remain “Unidentified”.)

Roswell Crash: Legit or not?

In the summer of 1947, the entire world was shaken and stirred by events that unfolded near the desert of Roswell, New Mexico. Events that, for civilians and researchers alike, have been known henceforth as the “most celebrated UFO encounter of all time”. 

The Army Air Forces (AAF) reportedly discovered remains of a crashed “flying disc” near Roswell. Accounts of humanoid beings, strange gizmos, and high-level US Government cover-ups were also publicly reported by former military personnel and various witnesses from the local area.

As a result, the General Accounting Office (GAO) started an investigation into these claims. The incident was later dismissed because the AAF classified the debris recovered as the “wreckage of a weather balloon”

But was that really the case?

Flying Saucer Hysteria

UFO sightings (creative commons)

The US Government now recognizes that UFOs exist (though they don’t like using the term), because there are already sufficient reports of UFOs and near-air collisions so as to require special attention. 

In 2021, the official stance remains that these UFOs are “not necessarily extraterrestrials”. Still, this is a pretty huge step in the search for potential alien life forms!

Declassified UFO footage by US Navy Released in 2020

Screenshot of GIMBAL
Screenshot of GIMBAL, one of the 3 declassified UFO footage released by the Pentagon last April 2020. (Video Courtesy: US Dept of Defense)

“There have been a number of reports of unauthorized and/or unidentified aircraft entering various military-controlled ranges and designated airspace in recent years. For safety and security concerns, the Navy and the USAF take these reports very seriously and investigate each and every report.”

  • Joseph Gradisher, spokesperson for Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Information Warfare in a statement from the Navy.

Bizarre encounters with unidentified flying objects were filmed on video by US Navy pilots, almost everyday, from summer of 2014 to March 2015. One of these objects was captured nearby Jacksonville, Florida — shown on tape as rotating furiously, “like a spinning top”:

US Navy superiors were briefed that there were no visible engines nor infrared exhaust plumes visible on the objects (which would have identified them as human-made). Despite this anomaly, the UFOs were observed to have reached “30,000 feet and hypersonic speeds”, according to the Navy pilots.

If you’re curious to see the actual footage, all 3 released UFO videos can be streamed at the Naval Air Systems Command FOIA Reading Room: (Take a look and decide for yourself!)

Official Response of the Pentagon

As part of the UFO investigation, the Pentagon has created a new task force to focus on several of the sightings captured by US military aircraft. 

Called the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF), this newly-minted surveillance sector is only the latest effort in decades of trying to explain bizarre aerial incidents. 

The UAPTF will be controlled by the Department of the Navy, which then reports its findings to the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security. In an August 14, 2020 statement, the Pentagon clarified its exact mission:

“The Department of Defense established the UAPTF to improve its understanding of, and gain insight into, the nature and origins of UAPs. The mission of the task force is to detect, analyze and catalog UAPs that could potentially pose a threat to U.S. national security.

The Department of Defense and the military departments take any incursions by unauthorized aircraft into our training ranges or designated airspace very seriously and examine each report.”

Secret Invasion

So are aliens truly among us? Or are we just tripping? Who knows! Plus, the way 2021 is going, an alien invasion might just be the icing on top of the crazy cake.

One thing’s for sure, though: the serious study of UFO’s must have intensified for a reason. Government agencies have likely noted a pattern emerge after monitoring Project BLUE BOOK (and now SETI) for so long. Dr. J. Allen Hynek said it best:

“I cannot dismiss the UFO phenomenon with a shrug. I have begun to feel that there is a tendency in 20th century science to forget that there will be a 21st century science, and, indeed, a 30th century science, from which vantage points our knowledge of the universe may appear quite different than it does to us.”

ufo green background
Photo by Albert Antony on Unsplash

Does modern science really suffer from a close-minded point of view? Or is there something else NASA’s hiding from us… a deeper, more shocking mystery to unfold? A truth that’s so far-reaching, it’s out of this world?