UFOs: What if they’re real?
Unidentified flying objects have “accomplished an extraordinary feat,” said Marik von Rennenkampff in TheHill.com. They’ve created agreement between former Trump administration intelligence official John Ratcliffe and former Obama administration CIA director John Brennan. Both men say there have been scores of credible sightings of UFOs— and that, in Brennan’s words, they may be piloted by “a different form of life.” After years of dismissing UFO sightings as the delusions of “tinfoilhat conspiracy theorists,” Pentagon officials are acknowledging that military pilots have repeatedly seen flying objects shaped like “tic tacs,” “inverted pyramids,” and “an acorn” behaving in inexplicable ways—whizzing around at incredible speeds, stopping and turning on a dime, diving into the ocean. In June, U.S. intelligence agencies are finally expected to issue a report detailing what the government knows about “unidentified aerial phenomena.”
The government isn’t going to announce that UFOs are filled with “little green men,” said Gideon Lewis-Kraus in The New Yorker. But it is dropping “the taboo” on the topic and admitting “there are things it simply cannot figure out.” Obviously, “all this is a little weird,” said Ezra Klein in The New York Times. But let’s say that we do eventually get evidence that there is intelligent extraterrestrial life, either via a UFO or an interstellar communication. Conspiracy theorists would see it as proof the government has been lying all along. Militaries across the world would see the existence of aliens as a threat justifying massive new military spending. Perhaps it might even unite mankind, making our superficial differences seem trivial. One way or another, the knowledge we are not alone would “upend how humanity understands itself and our place in the cosmos.”
Most scientists and academics remain skeptical that UFOs are alien craft, said Rizwan Virk in NBCNews.com. But “now that the government is starting to take UFOs seriously,” it’s time for scientists to join a concerted effort to figure out what these objects are. After next month’s report, the public may demand it, said C. Moon Reed in the Las Vegas Sun. “It’s maddening to learn that UFOs exist without also learning what or who they are.” Are they just visual illusions? Extraterrestrial? Friendly? Hostile? It’s time we made a serious effort to find out.