NASA says it's found water, carbon and organic matter on an asteroid sample that returned to Earth last month https://t.co/n442kOKgM5 pic.twitter.com/m5TMzf6xUy
— Reuters (@Reuters) October 11, 2023
Sounds like NASA got what it wanted from the asteroid Bennu. "If we're looking for biologically essential organic molecules, we picked the right asteroid, and we brought back the right sample. This is an astrobiologist's dream."
Article:https://t.co/jYvPxdoRw2
— Eric Berger (@SciGuySpace) October 11, 2023
Dr. David Spergel, who headed a vaunted panel on unexplained aerial phenomena, explains how a NASA app and everyday citizens can solve the mystery. https://t.co/5OMOIpztbq
— New York Magazine (@NYMag) October 10, 2023
We want to believe, but within the limits of possibility… — “Why NASA Wants Your UFO Videos”:
Last year, as the topic of UFOs was exploding back into the mainstream, NASA convened a panel of outside experts, the UAP Independent Study Team, to assess the unclassified evidence the government had collected. (UAP, for “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena,” is the government-approved euphemism for UFO.) The group was a science-nerd murderers’ row whose purpose was to help the space agency handle a subject that had long attracted conspiracy theories — but which was also grounds for legitimate questions, considering the unexplained objects people had been observing and recording with increasing frequency. Heading the 17-member panel was Dr. David Spergel, a longtime Princeton professor of astrophysics who in 2021 took over as president of the Simons Foundation, a $5 billion nonprofit that supports basic science research. The group held a public meeting to discuss its work in May and released its final report last month. Among its top-line findings was that it had found no evidence of extraterrestrial UFOs, but that more data would be needed to settle the matter conclusively — including data from civilians who capture unidentified phenomena. It was a circumspect conclusion that, predictably, did little to satisfy true believers on either side of the UAP divide.
Intelligencer spoke with Spergel at his office at the Simons Foundation’s building near Madison Square, where he discussed why NASA got involved in the hunt for UFOs, what the odds of finding aliens are, and whether David Duchovny really believes that the truth is out there.
Why did NASA want to get involved in UFOs?
This starts with the Navy starting to declassify a bunch of images. The most famous one is the “Tic Tac” [filmed by a U.S. Navy fighter off the coast of San Diego], which is about 20 years old now. You look at those incidents and you say, “There’s something weird going on we don’t understand.” Then, having delved into the incident a bit, you realize that you wish they collected better data. What we’re left with is hard to interpret. NASA is a scientific agency. It’s charged with investigating the unknown. And the head of NASA announced, “We’re going to weigh in on this.”
Open Thread: Space, the Final-ish FrontierPost + Comments (79)