Kind: captions
Language: en
hey everyone who out there is into
aliens well this earthling sitting right
here
certainly is which is why in late june
i was totally psyched when the pentagon
released its nine page report
on unidentified aerial phenomena or uap
formerly known as ufos and it was
invading our news cycle
the report provides an assessment of
over 140 ufo sightings between 2004
and this year a number of which involve
navy personnel the report comes after
the declassification of a few videos
showing
mysterious sightings and while it
doesn't mention
extraterrestrial links to these events
it says there's too little information
quote to allow for detailed trend or
pattern analysis
so we have to ponder
have explorers from elsewhere in the
universe been visiting
us and what can science tell us about
what we might be seeing
in the sky this is nova now where we
probe for answers behind the headlines
join us i'm alok patel
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some videos that have circulated in the
news and social media show
black and white images of what a pilot
would see during flight
clouds water but then
you see some kind of blobs or tic tacs
because they look like tiny candy
that seem to make unusual movement
patterns
if truth is what you are after you don't
have to do belief
you can do confirm there are rigorous
processes
for getting there hakeem olu shayi is an
astrophysicist at george mason
university
he's been space science education lead
for nasa's science mission directorate
i wanted to get his reaction to the
release of that uap assessment
okay so now we can apply
some rigorous analysis and figure out
what's going on
i've completely given up on the
extraterrestrial ufo flying around
earth's atmosphere notion i find that to
be ridiculous on a lot of levels
if there's an unknown if there's a
mystery oh i love it there's a problem
to be solved
love it but filling in the blank with my
favorite bias or make-believe
is not the way i approach things to fill
in the blank with with what i think it
is to allow
the data to tell me the story but you
know research is in the
realm of the unknown so there's always
going to be little deviations but if you
take one step back
you'll see that you know what we call
our concordance
you know all the scientists agree that
doesn't mean that we all agree on a lie
when i was looking at the uap i
sincerely wanted to believe
that this was something coming from
another planet another world finally
and you know i'm reading this quote
right now and it says that
with the conclusion that it was probably
a physical object because
most of them were quote registered
across multiple sensors
to include radar infrared
electro-optical weapon seekers and
visual observation
so when we have that kind of physical
data what makes the uap so
unusual what those pilots were saying
did that
conform or contradict our understanding
of physics
yeah our approach to data is to distrust
everything
from the outset human perception
is not reliable
so what we have to do is we have to make
reliable
rigorous measurements from the data and
every time you make a measurement there
are uncertainties associated with making
those measurements
understand what i'm trying to figure out
here you have a moving
object observed from a moving object
that's carrying a moving camera lots of
movement
that's a lot of movement you're just
looking at its position relative to
background stuff so
it's tough to disentangle all of that
and so you can have one perception of oh
my god
look at that acceleration speed but once
you do a rigorous analysis you find that
it's not as extreme as
maybe you thought and so until we go
down those steps it's hard to draw
conclusions
but there is what is likely and what's
not likely
of the 144 uap reports mentioned in the
document
only one of the unidentified aerial
phenomena was
identified and it was a large deflating
balloon
i'm over here wondering about the other
if i see anything that's human-like at
all
i'm like it's human name something else
that you know of that's doing what
humans do building
craft and flying around and if you're
from another planet
what are the chances that you're doing
what humans do
it's very small i'm guessing yeah for
someone like me
to the untrained eye it was the
combination of
wanting to believe and also the fact
that these pilots were like
i can't say their exact quote because
i'll get kicked off the podcast but they
were saying
what the explicit is that and then you
know we need the perspective
of scientists like yourself to say
everyone cool your jet so
in your experience then what are some of
the usual bodies
that we're used to seeing in the skies
and then normal things out there that
people may mistake for uaps because
we're just not trained
to see that type of pattern that type of
blob if you will
right venus every
year you know every time i'm associated
with an observatory
going back to the 90s when venus is
the evening star people called the
observatory said you see this light in
the sky
it's following us and people would be in
a darn near or panic sometimes because
they'll call from their car
and so if something is sufficiently far
away no matter where you go you're gonna
see it
and it happens year after year after
year
venus is the ufo you know but if you
check out the unclassified intelligence
document
what i find interesting is that the
remaining unexplained are are put in
these five categories including
airborne clutter birds balloons things
natural atmospheric phenomena like ice
crystals
or usg or industry developmental
programs which are classified which is
you know i can see a conspiracy theory
saying that foreign adversary systems
like some chinese or russian something
or an other bin yeah now i find it
kind of implausible to think that there
could be so many different possibilities
for this when we should be able to just
look at it
and say that's what it is you would
think right with all the cameras around
and all we get is tic tacs and blobs
right
it's about being skeptical you know when
we write scientific papers
you need to be able to reproduce my
experiment you need to have access to
the same data
so the data that you're getting is not
your data you're getting it from
somebody else
but someone has to do an independent
analysis
and it has to be rigorous for me it
remains an
unknown don't be so damn
trusting and don't fill in the blank but
scientists can be skeptical of these
uaps
and still consider the possibility of
there being life elsewhere in the
universe do i think it's probable and
likely i do
absolutely and the biggest piece of
evidence is how quickly we find
evidence for life in earth's fossil
record
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there is irrefutable evidence
going back 3.8 billion years
so as early as we can look in the fossil
record
for life we find it here on earth
and it is the only planet we study
closely
so that says to me that this process
gets started really quickly
when the conditions are right now really
quickly
includes hundreds of millions of years
so you know that's a different time
scale
of quickly but we use earth as a guide
to finding life on other worlds we're
going to come up with ideas like the
habitable zone
the habitable zone is the orbital region
around a star
in which an earth-like planet can have
liquid water on its surface
because the temperature is just right
and possibly
support life right which is restrictive
for where life could possibly be and
when we see
other planets or i see a headline about
proxima b
and they're like hey that is an
earth-like planet and it is
close enough to this star to possibly
have
the condition to bring life and that is
based on everything we have learned
on our planet of how life may have
originated and so
what i'm gathering you're saying is that
when we talk about life in the universe
that's based on assumptions that we've
made here about how life
starts and so that's why you say it's
restrictive am i correct and saying
almost you just keyed in on the key
distinction
and that is the difference between how
life exists today
on earth versus how life starts
today we have a web of life
that depends ultimately on sunlight and
animals that use
oxygen chemistry for metabolism but what
the astrobiologists and biologists have
realized
is that when life got started it was in
the absence of oxygen
oxygen was poisonous to this early life
so now you don't need a habitable zone
to get life started all you need is
liquids the right thermodynamics and the
right stuff available
and so that can be under the ice of
enceladus europa
on titan's lakes enceladus and europa
are
icy moons of saturn and jupiter
respectively
and titan is another one of saturn's
moons with
pools of liquid methane on its surface
who knows right
so that's the idea there right is that
life gets started
in the absence of oxygen completely the
opposite of what life looks like
today on earth so that makes sense to me
and that makes me
even more convinced on my theories that
there has to be extraterrestrial life
somewhere oh absolutely now there's life
and there's life
okay so if you look at earth it's not
until you get to the ediacaran period
right before the cambrian explosion
that you start seeing you know large
multicellular
life and some diversification of life
the ediacaran period
spans 635 million years ago
to 541 million years ago a time period
when the planet transitioned from
microscopic organisms
to a cambrian world swarming with
animals
so really you're talking about almost 4
billion years
of setting the stage for
multicellular life so what this says to
me about probabilities about life in the
universe is that chances
are it's everywhere there's liquids
now when you have the rare situation
that your life is able to find more
energetic pathways
like life here on earth did it learn to
to perform photosynthesis
and it learned to utilize oxygen then
that's
one energetic pathway that led to us
you know perhaps there are others if you
find those pathways
that is where a habitable zone really
stands out because sunlight is energy
and it's all about energy you know think
about it this way
if you live on venus you don't know that
stars exist
because the atmosphere is just so damn
thick so having a surface that's
bathed in sunlight that's bathed in
starlight
that's intense enough to support life is
not something that you can guarantee
that's going to be rare even if you are
the right distance
your atmosphere isn't necessarily going
to be right and that's what we see with
venus earth and mars right only earth
turned out to be earth this is this is
trippy i feel so fortunate to be an
organism right now
but you should be your concentrated
energy man
that's what i see life as these days
just concentrated energy
figuratively and literally yeah you know
i understand what you're saying when
300 million years is probably quick
relative to what we know about universe
processes
yeah but in terms of probability that
there was intelligent
extraterrestrial life out there in your
opinion it's not probable that
they would be in a humanoid flying
object
like if we saw uap it's not probable
that that life somewhere out there also
has a similar
understanding of physics with the same
type of jet propulsion technology or
whatever
to create a ufo we always assume that
aliens
are going to be way more advanced than
we are at this point
i'm thinking maybe we are the advanced
aliens
team human yeah i don't consider humans
to be the only intelligent species
on earth personally once you know you're
you you're intelligent
right but now going from intelligence
to technological advanced technology
that's another major
leap of all the species we've had on
earth we're the only ones who've done
that we've had
species use simple technology but doing
what we've done
oh that is something
i think is incredibly rare
i'm so proud to be a human but also
enlightened right now because i never
thought of it that way because you know
as you're mentioning this
i i brought up proxima b earlier yeah
people see that they're like oh it's
it's earth-like it's still four point
what 4.3
light years away which means whatever
intelligent
life would have to be able to do
something that we cannot do richard
branson is not going to light year
no anytime soon no one's pulling this
off when you look at it from like a
universal perspective all of our space
travel is damn near a joke right
because space is vast how far
are we going you know that's like taking
one step in your living room it's like
i've
explored america you know
for me the question is does life exist
in the universe
does intelligent life exist in the
universe does technological life
exist in the universe yes it does i've
observed it
here on earth so yes it does exist in
the universe
which means that it will exist elsewhere
in the universe
the statement is there are levels to
this
and if you look at the four and a half
billion year history of earth
you can see the levels because for the
first four billion years
there were no bears pooping in the woods
right
so there's a lot of coincidences that go
into
becoming us
ever since the former soviet union
launched sputnik space travel has
redefined what humankind thought was
possible
but how far can we really go after the
break
we talked to someone who takes our
technological intelligence
to its interstellar limit
we're getting signals from mro
tango delta touchdown confirmed
perseverance
faithfully on the surface of mars
ready to begin seeking the sand of past
life
if we find life on mars it will be like
the algae
it won't have binoculars and
self-awareness
adam stelzner was chief engineer of the
perseverance rover and the mars 2020
project
the nasa mission that landed the rover
on mars in february of this year
with the goal of seeking signs of
ancient life and collecting samples of
rock and soil
he's also the chief engineer of the mars
sample return which is what's going to
hopefully bring
all that martian material back to earth
if the life on mars
is advanced enough to perceive things
like
motion we would definitely look
like a ufo because we come
ripping in using a set of technologies
that have
yet to show up to the surface of mars it
would
look like a dream or a ghost or
something stelzner also led the team
that developed the sky crane landing
system for the curiosity rover which
landed on mars in 2012
but way before that oh and before that i
was a
wannabe rock and roller
back in 1984 21 year old adam was
playing bass for a rock band in the bay
area
heading to a gig one night there was a
big beautiful constellation
over the east but on his way back he had
a cosmic revelation
and as i was driving home after the show
it was over the west
and i was like whoa the stars are moving
stelzner was looking at the
constellation of orion
which made him curious about the stars
so we signed up for courses in astronomy
and physics at the local community
college
i was totally blown away by the idea
that there are some simple laws that
govern
the way our universe works then i just
got into
physics and the application the creative
application of physics
which is the art of engineering it's one
of the beautiful things about science
it's an endeavor to discover the truth
it's an
endeavor to understand our universe and
so very very um woven
into that act is appreciating the
partial nature
of our understanding of the universe
though we know that we don't know all
the laws of physics
there are poor zones of our universe
that we can't quite
understand and explicitly describe today
he says there is science to support the
possibility of life
beyond earth through the kepler mission
and our observations of the
solar system and our galaxy we've come
to realize that
many many more stars than we thought
have planets around them
and many many of those planets are in an
area where liquid water would be capable
of
existing and our tendency
would be that those could be places
where life as we understand here on
earth could flourish
there's a great equation called the
drake equation and it basically goes
like
you take the number of stars and you
multiply it by the probability that
there's a planet around a star
and then by the probability that there's
life
formed or in that planet and as long as
you put
anything close to a good estimate for
the number of stars
you end up with certainty that there
must be life out there
because there are hundreds of trillions
of stars and yet why haven't we heard
from them
why hello you know time
we've only been talking and emitting
uh electromagnetic radiation that would
tell the universe that were
pier for maybe 100 years 50 years
uh and so that has to go some distance
before it gets there and comes back
so if there aren't some laws of physics
to be
learned that change your understanding
you know we won't be talking to folks
much
out there in the universe because it
takes thousands of years for the message
to get there
when the office of the director of
national intelligence
released that document about the
unidentified aerial phenomenon or as a
lot of us saw it a ufo
over american airspace what was your gut
reaction what was the first thing you
thought when you saw and heard
that report well some of the things
are very hard to
explain especially where there's
multiple sightings
especially when there's multiple methods
of detection like
pilots are seeing them and they're being
picked up by radar and tracked by some
of the
devices on these aircraft but still
skeptical
i mean still skeptical that some
intelligent entity
capable of the biggest hardest deal
is is crossing the distance from
wherever they are
to to here you know
would be so foolish just to let us see
them
if they didn't want to be seen so you
know you as an expert of as you worded
it of
identified flying objects what is it
about the motion of some of these that
makes them so fascinating
is there is there something particular
that they do or don't do look
i'm laying down a big caveat right
um so at we've all
been driving our car and looked at an
airplane that seemed to be floating in
air and not
moving it's just sitting there in the
sky well that's because your perception
of how
far it is from you puts it in a place
where it looks like it's not moving but
it really is in fact moving
now that said some of these observations
seem to not be that kind of a thing
stelzner says
it's telling that the report didn't
dismiss these observations
as a fluke of human perception the
motions seem to be associated with
forces
that would if they were here on earth
move air
around or need to have wings
or need to have rocket plumes or need to
have some other
of the tools that we use to provide
forces
in such a way and we see none of the
telltale signs
that we would expect from ways that we
would apply
such forces or generate such power and
energy
what about that is going against our
understanding of law of physics is there
something about this that you're like
like what exactly is puzzling about it
um it's mostly what the
pilots are discussing
it's rotated
and they are amazed at the capacity of
this
apparent object to move against the
very strong winds and move it as
as it is the vehicle's um
radar or targeting system does pick up
this object
and it's moving above the water and so
we know it can't be
too far away we have a targeting
system that has just picked up an object
to do that it needed to know where that
object was in distance from it to
and we have data about how far the thing
is away so
i don't think that they all are
dismissible from a perception
perspective
richard branson just uh flew to the edge
of space
off in new mexico a couple of days ago
somebody has a license with the faa to
conduct an experiment or
fly certain fast in certain area and
that's not generally known to everybody
and somebody else sees their
rocket ship go rip and buy and they say
what the heck
we develop here in this country missiles
that go very very fast
call them hypersonic right they go
faster than mach 3 mach 4.
you know if you happen to see one of
those from us from our
nation or from some other nation being
tested
you would be very surprised and if you
didn't
you know know that was going on and
you're a pilot you'd be freaking out
are there any specific experimental
aircrafts
that you think people could see up there
and wouldn't move in a way the average
person would understand
the us make a couple of fighter planes
that use thrust
vectoring that means out of the back end
of the engine
the nozzles can move and the f-22 is a
supersonic
fighter aircraft we've been making them
for maybe 20 years
it will do all sorts of things that
totally defy your intuition
it's a pointy fast looking thing and
it's sitting up on its tail
and then it moves forward and starts
flying the aerodynamic surfaces would
essentially be stalling
it defies your intuition your physical
understanding of how
aircraft work mostly because you've
looked at a lot of aircraft
in your lives all of us have none of
which had thrust vector control
if the government were working on
another wild aircraft that could do
unexpected things in the sky would they
tell us
not necessarily in the 1950s they
secretly tested u2
spy planes in nevada leading to years of
supposed ufo sightings
absolutely if the federal government
were doing something special
there might be all sorts of people
certainly citizens and maybe even other
folks in the government that don't know
about it
another category in the report is other
well in that bin of other this is where
the classic ufo the classic flying
saucer would find itself
in that taxonomy i personally don't
spend too much time
because if it's a flying saucer from
another planet
well i'm not going to worry about it
because the fact that they got here
they way so far ahead of us that if they
want to come and eat our brains
or enslave us our brains will be eaten
and we will be enslaved they've got a
huge upper hand
if there are creatures that live in in
other parts of the universe which i do
definitely believe the mathematics tells
us there are
so these are vast distances you know if
human beings using the technology that
we
all the laws of physics that we
understand today were to try and go from
here to the nearest star
it would take generations of human
beings living in a spacecraft
successfully think about how long
the longest most stable nation has
existed on the surface of
earth and a group of humans would have
to be
more stable and exist for a longer
period of time in a spacecraft
to make it to the next star and so if
another
species has figured out how to cross
that distance in an appreciably
shorter time they've got crazy
technology there's a set
of laws of the universe a set of
behaviors of the physical universe that
we have yet to understand
and that maybe when we unlock that which
might be
tomorrow it might be in a hundred years
we may never get there
that we might find a universe filled
with a chorus of conversations
between other intelligent species that
are happening
my sense is that uh if these ever were
or ever are other entities from another
place
they're leveraging a set of laws of
physics that we have not discovered yet
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nova now is a production of gbh and prx
it's produced by
terence bernardo ari daniel joslyn
gonzalez
isabel hibbard sandra lopez monsalve and
rosalind tordesillas
julia court and chris schmidt are the
co-executive producers of nova
sookie bennett is senior digital editor
christina manan is associate researcher
robin casimir is science editor
and devon robbins is managing producer
of podcasts at gbh
our theme music is by the dj with other
worldly astronomical
turntable talent dj kid koala
i'm alopatel we'll be back in two weeks
which is enough time for you to try and
find a uap and decide if it's a foreign
government spy plane
a cloud formation a missile test venus a
massive balloon ice crystals
a secret u.s military experiment or
maybe just maybe it's an alien spaceship
coming to say what's up
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