In 1450 BC, a bright fiery disk fell from the sky. Its body was about 150 feet in length and it had no voice (Joseph 1). After a few days had passed, discs returned in additional numbers and were said to be brighter than the sun and eventually vanished(Joseph 1). This was recorded in ancient Egypt.
Archaeologists found a stone plaque carved with detailed accounts from multiple Egyptians at the time, all describing the same event. Some theorists argue that this could have been the first recorded case of alien life on Earth (Joseph 1).
If this is true, it would mean that humanity has been experiencing alien phenomena for thousands of years.
According to the National UFO Reporting Center, they receive ten to twenty Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) reports daily. Many reports are de-bunked and found to be either drones or weather balloons, but some go completely unexplained (Bergen 1).
There have been statements made by government officials confirming the existence of aliens. Are the claims swept under the rug? Is our government withholding information? Are the people making these claims simply mentally ill?
On June 5, 2023, A former intelligence officer named David Grusch stood before Congress and made defaming accusations against the United States Government. He claimed that the government has been funding secret Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) retrieval programs and has been reverse engineering technology for decades.
David is a respectable, 39-year-old, United States Air Force veteran who also served in the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), and the Unidentified Arial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF)(Hearing on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena 1).
He comes from a blue-collar family and grew up in Pittsburgh where he joined the Air Force and received an Air Force scholarship in physics. In an interview with reporter Ross Coulthart David said “I always admired people in uniform and I’ve always wanted to be a part of something bigger than myself.”
When the story broke people started speculating his motives for coming forward with this information. They wondered if he had his own personal agenda or if he really had the American taxpayer's best interest in mind.
In a News Nation interview with Gursch, he was asked if he had any sort of mental illness to which he replied no. Soon after the news aired, David was informed that an anonymous tip was sent to The Intercept and that they intended to publish it (Shelton 1).
The tip revealed that in 2018, David Gursch struggled with an alcohol dependency and was committed to a mental health facility due to a suicidal statement he made to his wife (Hanks 1).
When David was made aware of what information had been exposed, he made a personal statement explaining that he had previously suffered from Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) from his time in Afghanistan and that he was grieving the loss of a friend. He explained that he was grateful for receiving the help needed to continue his job.
With this new information surfacing the public and Congress started questioning the validity of his accusations. He clarified in his statement that the allegations he made were not only his but that he was representing and bringing light to the allegations made by many other respectable officials who have put their careers on the line by coming forward.
After the news aired he was curious as to who pulled his file. He contacted the sheriff's department to ask if someone from News Nation requested his records. The sheriff confirmed that it wasn't a journalist who pulled his file. The only other place that would have access to that information would be someone in the intelligence community.
He believes that the intelligence community used this sensitive information in an attempt to discredit him. Regardless of David Grusch's previously suffered from mental illness, he was still evaluated and deemed fit for his security clearance, and The Department of Defense Inspector General sat down with Mr Grusch in confidence and deemed that his complaint was credible and urgent (Baio 1).
This is just one of the many examples of the government sweeping this topic under the rug.
A 2019 survey, conducted by Gallup, found that about 68 percent of Americans believe the United States government knows more about Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) than it is sharing with the general public (Cillizza 1).
With the number of government officials coming forward with information and military video footage surfacing, people in the United States are growing increasingly skeptical about the origin of these strange occurrences.
Many reports of alien phenomena are debunked and are found to be nothing more than clutter, weather balloons, drones, etc. (Sauers 1). However, there is a remaining percentage of reports that professionals cannot explain. With this amount of ambiguity, it leaves people to draw their own conclusions.
Some people believe that extraterrestrial beings are to blame for these sightings. They believe that our government is fully aware and is just withholding information. Others believe that our government (or another country's government) has invented secret technology.
Of course, some people do not believe in the existence of aliens at all and think that all UFO sightings have rational explanations and that the people who are making these claims are deranged and mentally ill.
While it seems easy to deny the existence of aliens and blame it on human error it is simply not rational. An astronomer by the name of David Kipping uses a mathematical formula called Bayesian analysis to determine the likelihood of extraterrestrial life existing somewhere in the cosmos.
He finds that there is a 75 percent probability of life along with a 60 percent likelihood of intelligence which comes out as an overall probability of 45 percent (Delbert 1).
There is a large number of people each year who claim they have had some sort of encounter with aliens. Many celebrities and government officials from all over the world have claimed to have experienced some sort of alien phenomenon. These events have been described anywhere from being traumatic and terrifying to something as simple as seeing a bright light zooming across the sky.
On the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, Celebrity Post Malone talks about an encounter he believes was aliens. He claims he saw “a classic forcefield… kind of like a dome in a circular shape. In Tarzana, looking down at the f---ing city.” (TooFab staff 1).
Many listeners could pick apart his story and question if he was under the influence or making up a fabricated story but he then adds that he was not the only person who saw it. He says four other people with him saw the same thing. Post Malone's story is one out of many others.
While others believe UAPs may be aliens and some say UAPs are just Air clutter, some experts believe that UAPs are of man-made origin.
Roger Shawyer, a British scientist, believes that UAPs are American (Hambling 1). He says that the nature of most of the sightings is consistent with the electromagnetic drive, or as some call it EmDrive, which he invented (Hambling 1). An EmDrive is fairly new and has not been proven to work yet, but it is a concept for a spacecraft thruster (Hambling 1).
Naysayers will say that the EmDrive defies the laws of physics (Sutter 1). Even if the EmDrive was successful, the United States would not be responsible for it. There have been rumors that the Pentagon has been reverse-engineering technology for decades. Some skeptics spark the question if UAPs were of American origin why such craft interrupt military exercises? (hambling 1).
Up until April 2019, the United States government did not have a proper way of reporting unidentified aircraft sightings.
The Navy made a statement to Politico disclosing that “There have been a number of reports of unauthorized or unidentified aircraft entering various military-controlled ranges and designated airspace in recent years.” (Carbone 1). Then in June 2020, the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) was revealed by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (Milburn 6).
This means that there have been many potential sightings of unidentified aircraft that military personnel have encountered. But unfortunately, due to the lack of protocol, they have gone unreported.
Currently, we do not have enough concrete evidence to blame UAPs on Emdrives or aliens. It would be simply ignorant to ignore their existence at all and blame it on weather balloons and clutter.
While this phenomenon has been occurring for tens of thousands of years, we may never know what exactly is the origin of these occurrences. With the wild accusations made by government officials like David Grusch, people have trouble wrapping their minds around the concept of extraterrestrial life and they begin to accuse people of lying.
It's safe and rational for some people to think that all these sightings are birds, drones, and weather balloons.
Unfortunately, these sightings have posed threats to military bases and are still being investigated. Experts are actively trying to solve the mystery behind these strange occurrences. With scientists calculating a high probability of 45% of alien life, it would explain why these UFO sightings are not able to be proven as natural occurrences or human-made.
The nature of the technology is, without a doubt, otherworldly.
Sources
Joseph, Frank. Military Encounters with Extraterrestrials: The Real War of the Worlds. Simon and Schuster, 2018.
Hanks, Micah. “The Struggles of a Whistleblower: Separating Fact From Fiction in the Latest UAP Revelations.” The Debrief, 10 Aug. 2023, https://thedebrief.org/the-struggles-of-a-whistleblower-separating-fact-from-fiction-in-the-latest-uap-revelations/.
“UFO Whistleblower David Grusch Says His Health Records Were Leaked.” NewsNation, 9 Aug. 2023, https://www.newsnationnow.com/cuomo-show/ufo-whistleblower-david-gruschs-health-records-leaked-coulthart/.
David Grusch (UFO Whistleblower) Age, Wife, Family, Biography & More » StarsUnfolded. https://starsunfolded.com/david-grusch/. Accessed 31 Oct. 2023.
Hearing on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena | C-SPAN.Org. https://www.c-span.org/video/?529499-1/hearing-unidentified-aerial-phenomena. Accessed 31 Oct. 2023.
“UFO ‘Whistleblower’ Says Government Has ‘Intact’ Non-Human Craft.” The Independent, 7 June 2023, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/david-charles-grusch-interview-ufo-whistleblower-b2352884.html.
Cillizza, Chris. “8 Takeaways from the Government’s Big UFO Report | CNN Politics.” CNN, 27 June 2021, https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/27/politics/ufos-uap-extraterrestrial-life/index.html.
Sauers, Elisha. “NASA’s Finally Talking about UFOs with Americans. Here’s What They Said.” Mashable, 3 June 2023, https://mashable.com/article/nasa-ufo-uap-study.
Carbone, Christopher. “US Navy Drafting New Guidelines for Reporting UFOs.” Military.Com, 24 Apr. 2019, https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/04/24/us-navy-drafting-new-guidelines-reporting-ufos.html.
“This Math Formula Has Determined the Odds of Aliens Existing.” Popular Mechanics, 20 May 2020, https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a32603529/math-formula-aliens-exist/.
“11 Celebs Who Claim They’ve Had Alien Encounters.” Toofab, Accessed 5 Dec. 2023.
Hambling, David. “UFOs Could Be Secret U.S. Military Craft, Says Electromagnetic Drive Inventor.” Forbes, Accessed 9 Dec.2023. https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2021/06/29/ufos-could-be-us-military-craft-says-electromagnetic-drive-inventor/.
published, Paul Sutter. “Can the EmDrive Actually Work for Space Travel?” Space.Com, 11 Nov. 2020, https://www.space.com/can-emdrive-space-propulsion-concept-work.