The real news is not that a figure from popular music has become interested in UFOs, but that "unidentified flying objects" are seen and reported by sane, capable, trained people, including pilots and scientists. After dismissing the subject with scorn for decades, the Times now apparently is willing to take it seriously. Why the change, I'd like to know.
17
"I can’t tell you what it was"
Yes, thank you. Too many people jump from "UFO" to "aliens!" U means unidentified. We don't have enough information to ID it. You can't go from saying "we don't know what it is" to "aliens" without showing how new information allowed you to make that determination. Not guesses, not implications, not "there are no other options" ... actual information.
3
wee doggies! that's a fast ride!
3
Watching the Navy videos, I kept thinking that the "object" looked like a cursor on a video screen and moved like one. In one video, the object seems to stay a certain distance ahead of the jet, then abruptly slides off to the left in a motion that looks like the cursor on my computer. Highly respected cosmologists are exploring the mathematically possible idea that we live in a "Holographic Universe" or in one that can be reduced to computer code. Anything in this strange universe is possible. It is even possible that these "images" are remnants of a previous universe, probes by our future selves into our past or indications of a multi-dimensional reality we are only occasionally able to perceive.
10
The weird thing is that most of ETs who will make contact with us are already dead. They are in another frequency than us without their material body which doesn't support them to stay alive in Earth conditions.
5
The videos are fascinating. But when it comes to UFO's or Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster why is it that all we ever get are grainy blurry images? Hmm. Somehow I think that if we are visited by space aliens it's going to be pretty darn obvious.
6
@David
Some people call it the "Low Information Zone". It is - and will always be - right at the limits of range and resolution of whatever is the current state in camera and sensor technology.
That's where the ability to identify things ceases.
However, often there are indirect ways to arrive at plausible explanations which don't require extraordinary assumptions. See the work that the Metabunk community has done regarding those videos.
5
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool."
-- Richard Feynman
15
god that's so perfect
3
This is a revisionist account. Tom DeLonge's original one is closer to the truth -- he is just a useful idiot spreading government disinformation, just like all the people Richard Doty deceived in the excellent documentary Mirage Men.
Read more here: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/28377/tom-delonges-origin-story-for-to-the-stars-academy-describes-a-government-info-operation
NYT why didn't you ask Tom DeLonge and Elizondo why the officially endorsed Nimitz encounter footage was found on a German server (it's still on the Wayback Machine lol on vision.de) beforehand and why a German TV/film company claimed credit? The truth may or may not be out there, but this is clearly just a bunch of psyops to control the narrative.
Why on earth - yes, earth - does the New York Times award space and credibility to Mr. DeLonge's pursuit of UFOs?
Let me hear what Neil DeGrasse Tyson has to say about the matter. Let Mr. DeLonge sing songs from Enema Of The State.
Leave matters of science - and pseudo science - to others.
5
@Tony Deitrich...and what about Brian May, (BSc, PhD - the guitarist from Queen)? Would you listen to him?
8
a detail missing in the article is that the declassification is designed to reduce the stigma within the pilot ranks around "seeing those things." in other words, assuring that the defense department is getting full visual reports. "a larger issue of an increased number of training range incursions" is a new detail to me but consistent with that concern.
the earth is about 25,000 light years from the center of the galaxy. the sun orbits the galaxy once every 220 million years. incredible odds against just traveling across such distances, much less finding an interesting destination.
the "drake equation" is a rough guess as to the number of "intelligent" civilizations that currently (comoving time) exist in the entire galaxy. my own noodling with the equation suggests that number is around 5 to 10. incredible odds against an alien origin.
i observed a formation of 9 UAPs in my teens using a 10" reflecting telescope. i tracked them for about 1 minute, calculated the visual angle of the formation, worked out the distance assuming a minimum separation between them, concluded they were flying higher and faster than any known aircraft.
i have to believe that UAPs originate here. it is the least improbable of all scenarios. but the pilot sightings describe aerodynamics that defy physical laws, not just known technology. clearly, the defense department is interested to take them seriously -- so should we.
11
The objects in the referenced videos are not identified but in no way unexplainable - which is consistent with the Navy's statements.
Google "Gimbal video" or "Tic-tac video" and look for the thorough analysis on the Metabunk website.
E.g. the "Gimbal video" shows very likely annother (unidentified) jet plane from behind, with the hot exhaust creating glare in the infrared recording.
The rotation effect is caused by the whole camera - gimbal-mounted - rotating.
1
The evidence that objects of unknown origin demonstrating flight characteristics beyond our technology exist in our skies is compelling. While the vast majority of sightings are explainable, a significant number involving trained observers or radar/video evidence are not. The wealth of reputable military people who have come out and said the phenomena is real cannot be ignored. SOMETHING is going on. The case doesn't meet scientific rigor but it meets legal rigor in my opinion. What it is? Who knows? Could be aliens. Why not? How can we with our few centuries of technology speculate as to the capability of some species with hundreds or thousands of centuries of technological development? Unfortunately, the hysteria, mockery, and ignorance surrounding the issue make it career suicide for real scientists to openly pursue. I guess it's up to the pop-punk folks... God speed, Blink 182 guy!!
15
"There are demon-haunted worlds... regions of utter darkness." The Isha Upanishad - India circa. 600 BC
As quoted for Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
I would encourage all so-called UFO-ologists to read Sagan's book before spending their no doubt valuable time pursuing the aeronautical version of alchemy and perpetual motion.
3
People who have lost their faith in religion or politics for answers and solutions are craning their necks skyward for extraterrestrial answers or salvation.
The Gnostic philosopher Monoimus wrote: "Cease to seek after God (as without thee), and the universe, and things similar to these; seek Him from out of thyself, and learn who it is, who once and for all appropriateth all in thee unto Himself, and sayeth: 'My god, my mind, my reason, my soul, my body.' And learn whence is sorrow and joy, and love and hate, and waking though one would not, and sleeping though one would not, and getting angry though one would not, and falling in love though one would not. And if thou shouldst closely investigate these things, thou wilt find Him in thyself, one and many, just as the atom; thus finding from thyself a way out of thyself."
2
If UFO’s weren’t real, then Dave Grohl would only ever be known as the drummer from Nirvana.
‘Foo Fighters’ aside, people have believed in some pretty wacky stuff for as long as people have been people. Assuming that any hypothetical alien beings adhere to the observable laws of nature, it doesn’t seem that a civilization more advanced than our own could have come in contact with mankind, and not have enslaved or obliterated us.
Tumultuous times breed irrational thought.
3
I was picked up by an alien spaceship back in the 1960s, around the time I was trying peyote and morning glory seeds and a few other indigenous mind-altering drugs.
For many years I thought the spaceship encounter was just one of many other hallucinations I experienced that summer, but I remember as if it was yesterday that one of the little beings on the space ship sent a telepathic message to me as he/she/whatever gently shoved me out the spaceship door onto the sacred ground of the Lakota peoples in the black hills of South Dakota:
“You will believe this is a dream, but many years from now you will have your recollection reaffirmed by the words of an enlightened human named Tom DeLonge, to whom all manner of things alien will be revealed in due course.”
Who knew?
14
The government doesnt know anymore than we do.
6
This is too easy.
3
I dont care from where or what career any UFO researcher or self-proclaimed "expert" may claim prior - just have one of them, put some viable, real and hard evidence on the table for real scrutiny.
Its the same request I make of any believer in any God, or gods. Put something real on the table, that at the very least we can all say; "Huh, that's evidence of some THING truly worth pursuing."
I don't care what the artwork on the inside of a Egyptian tomb, a Mayan athletic field, or a deep cave wall sketch looks like to us today. I want to know what it meant when its was drawn, painted, etched. I can't tolerate these self-proclaimed "experts" saying; "Oh that pictograph on a wall looks like a modern light bulb...so therefore they had electricity, which must be Alien given knowledge." No! Show me a physical light bulb from that era! There had to be others, not just a picture likeness of one...to our eyes!
I don't care if a Bigfoot hunter/expert once hunted big game on every continent. That in no way means they know sas-squat about a Bigfoot! Or that any ever existed or exists! Don't tell me you're a lion hunter if you've never caught several. So don't try the same with Bigfoot! Yeti, or Chupachabra! Or UFO's!
They had to exist long before Area51, or the modern spate of "encounters". Not thing leaves no trace.
Unexplained phenomena are nothing but that...unexplained. And ascribing wild, unfounded qualities on them to force an explanation don't float no boat nowhere!
9
@Boregard If 100,000 people saw the same thing at the same time it would still be un-explainable. Seeing is not explaining.
4
Glad to see that a high school graduate (no college) best known as lead singer in a popular band has decided to help us all out by taking on the enigma of UFOs.
I am surprised he has not already garnered a MacArthur (genius) award for his life-changing endeavors in re extraterrestrials.
12
Surely the simplest logical explanation is that these are (previously) unidentified natural phenomena. Think of the many demystifications of just the last few hundred years. I wonder what Cixin Liu thinks of this?
2
@DLB
Have you watched the videos? Those look like natural phenomena to you? Lol
1
@Oliver
See the thorough analysis of the videos at Metabunk.
None of them is showing physics-laws-defying movements.
So the aliens come all this way; do a detectable fly-by and then go home or on to the next galaxy? If I had that kind of power, earthlings would be the least of my concerns or interests.
And, why are their spaceships never gigantic?
3
@RonRich Perhaps broadening your paradigm of the universe and wearing a different set of lens with which to interpret your findings would open your mind.
Sometimes it the things we least understand which deserve our greatest respect.
3
@Anne
Thanks. I see through the lens at the speed of light and the light years that separate us from other stars. Maybe astrophysics has it all wrong.
When I look to the horizon through the lens in my eyes, the world looks flat.
I don't understand Trump...nor those who respect him.
9
@RonRich to play devil's advocate...it could be that by the reference scale of the aliens their ships ARE gigantic. Maybe they are much smaller than ants. Why would they necessarily be our approximate size?
6
He sounded more intelligent when he played that great riff on "What's My Age Again"?
3
If the Navy Knew what these
***(UAPs)*** were, or at Least if the Navy wanted to LIE about it, like they Usually do; then the Navy would have at least said that these are just some Top Secret classified technology, or just said that these are Drones, or and told us something that sounds Realistic and Believable, like they Usually have done.
But NO, the Navy didn't say Any of those things! The Navy could have just LIED about this, like they Usually do!
So now that the Navy is FINALLY ADMITTING, that even they Don't know what these UAPs are; you people who say that they have been Lying to us all of this time, STILL don't Believe!
The Navy is Publicly Admitting that they don't know what these UAPs are; and some people seem to Think that they have way More knowledge than the U. S. NAVY?
8
Here's the thing. Despite all the fanfare and appearance of legitimacy DeLonge thinks he brings to the table there is no more evidence or proof for the existence of nuts and bolts flying saucers then there was before he threw his hat in the ring. The researchers I've been following for years are turning towards psychology and consciousness and away from what Tom is doing.
3
@John David Jacobs.... John Mack... The psychological explanations don't hold much water... for the abduction element anyway... but that's a whole other can of worms...
2
Having seen three UFOs silently flying in formation several years ago, I'm convinced. If one refuses to believe they exist and that we humans are the only ones in this vast universe, I suggest a library card would be the first step.
17
Given the incomprehensible vastness of the universe, with many billions of galaxies, each containing billions of stars surrounded by unknown numbers of planets, I just don't think it's reasonable that this tiny speck of sand that we call Earth is the only place where sentient life has developed. I believe that there is other life out there. Whether any such life has visited Earth is, of course, a much trickier question. The distances involved and the time it would take to travel them (based on our level of scientific knowledge) have made it seem impossible. Yet, how many things that we now take for granted were considered impossible, until we reached a level of scientific and technological advancement which allowed us to see that they WERE possible? If life from any other world has reached us, it would simply mean that they are far enough ahead of us technologically to have solved the problem of traveling at multiple times the speed of light.
In thinking about the whole question of possible extraterrestrial visitors, the main question I find myself asking is whether our human race is psychologically and morally prepared to face the implications of an encounter with extraterrestrial life.
29
I can answer that last question: absolutely not!
8
In a few interviews that I've seen, and some books that I've read, some scientists and space industry people who are convinced of the extraterrestrial origin of some of the UFO's--those that exhibit flight that no known conventional Earth bound aircraft can duplicate, believe that these craft can travel inter-dimensionally, which seems far-out, until you realize that such a civilization would have to be thousands if not millions of years beyond us.
One scientist in particular, I remember him saying that this would explain why the most unusual aircraft, disappears in the blink of an eye. These are trained, serious scientists, not tin-foil hat wearing people who downed a couple of six -packs.
If we ever make contact it'll will be a game changer, about our origins and who we are.
18
Ah....self delusion. Enjoyable for a safe non violent pastime and it's cheap! And all these hobbyists are convinced that they will be the one to make contact and become famous.
How they will pick out this Seeker from someone else wandering around their kitchen in Potsdam and tapping this other person on the shoulder and crushing the dream of priority for Mr. Blink is left to conjecture. Conjecture...what a nice way way of saying slightly misguided.
9
I hope he’s done with the aliens thing soon. We need him to track down the Loch Ness monster, Sasquatch, and the Yeti.
17
Investigate all you want: I'm all for it. But just remember that there is zero evidence that "objects" can move around the atmosphere such as depicted in the videos from the military planes. There is also zero evidence that "extraterrestrials" have visited our planet. But there is plenty of evidence regarding space travel that such a visit would be so unlikely as to be virtually impossible, given what we know about the universe. Anything else is idle speculation, of the Star Trek persuasion.
13
@Tom There is zero evidence that objects can move the way they are depicted in the military videos? Um, aren't the videos depicting that, by definition, the very evidence you say doesn't exist? "There is no evidence that the thing I am seeing is actually being seen by me" seems close to your logic here... Evidence doesn't become invalid because it doesn't fit our current knowledge. What did we know 50 years ago? What will we know in another fifty? Explain quantum entaglement etc... fully, find a Grand Unified Theory that works... THEN maybe, we can claim to know what is impossible but until then, claiming that something is impossible, is the true "idle speculation."
16
@Sci guy How long do you think it would take a half-way talented videographer to put together such a video in imovie? 10-15 tops? Now imagine if you had all the resources in the world available to make a 45 second movie ... how is this evidence? It doesn't exactly meet scientific standards, Sci guy.
1
@RM @Sci guy
There wasn't any need to fake those videos. There is a normal explanation available for all of them.
Un-identified is NOT the same as un-explainable.
Take the "Gimbal" video: the object we see is consistent with IR videos of other jet planes from behind, with the hot exhaust creating a glare from over-exposure in the camera.
The observed rotation is not limited to the object. Close analysis shows that it's the CAMERA that's rotating, due to the principle of its gimbal mount in a typical FLIR pod.
Google "gimbal video glare".
3
From a scientific viewpoint, I'm going to need a bit more than an unidentified flying object to prove that aliens exist. Some people will accept anything as a basis of fact when they need it to be true, it's just human nature.
16
@Michael D see the disclosure project by Greer-- evidence summarised in in Unacknowledged and Sirius documentaries. ITs quite mainstream--we areanything but alone
1
The ridicule aspect on the phenomena has now dissolved. It's time to have grown up conversations and quickly. Our airspace here on earth (not just USA) has objects of an unknown source, freely moving about at incredible speeds with technology seemingly very advanced. It can only be a few choices to discuss on the table. Adversarial foreign powers? Our own secret black projects? Another race sharing this planet, but which has remained hidden (Cryptoterrestrials)? Or something just not of the human race as we know it (visitors from somewhere else or another time). It's time to solve the puzzle. People can handle the truth. Put the best people on this to work it out. History will judge those who did something when called upon.
18
I'm sorry. Blink-182 was pure vanilla. And not the organic kind.
5
@Jim mmmaybe, but it was fun music and onpoint for the times
1
Im excited this information has been brought out of the shadows of our culture, but I fear the narrative TTSA is presenting to us. Hearing them refer to the phenomena as ‘the UFO threat’.
I know it’s the militaries job to protect the country but why would you militarize a relationship with a species millions of years ahead of humans?
It’s been known through credible whistleblowers that these craft have a great interest in OUR hostility towards each other and the planet. They have a interest in our nuclear weapons program and they routinely interfere with nuclear tests and have even deactivated weapons in mid air..
We need to extend our hands in peace with these species that’ve been visiting the Earth for thousands of years, not point our guns at them. A species millions of years ahead of us would’ve learned the #1 spiritual lesson constant in ALL ideologies: do no harm to others as you wouldn’t want done to yourself.
12
Somewhere, Dr J. Allen Hynek is looking at all of this and saying - "thank you Mr. DeLonge and Mr. Elizondo."
Keep going gentleman.
10
I find this story so typically American: a person believes he is or can become an expert though he doesn't have or plans to acquire the education relevant to the topic. He chooses to ignore the numerous times these "events" were debunked and turned out to be banal phenomena. I guess that everyone has the freedom to do so. But why, we, the readers, should care to hear about it?
29
And another reason (as if we needed one) why celebrities’ opinions about science are stupid.
@AH yes, and that is in fact the very thing that makes this (and the states) so great. I hate Blink 182 and don't believe in UFO's, but that he can indulge his interest and perhaps contribute to our understanding is wonderful.
3
Just as long as he doesn’t make anymore Blink 182 albums I wish him the best in his new endeavor .
7
@Charlie
Hilarious, I was just about to post a similar comment.
It is about Time that the Navy started ADMITTING that Some of these UAPs, are ***(REAL)***!
This has been happening for DECADES now!
If these UAPs in these videos were from some TOP SECRET CLASSIFIED program, then the Navy would have Definitely Classified these videos! So for the people that are saying that the UAPs in these videos are Just some Advanced DRONES, or from some Secret classified technology; it makes absolutely No sense to say that; because if this was from something Top Secret, the Navy would have Definitely made these videos as CLASSIFIED; but the Navy didn't classify these videos.
And it CAN'T be the Russians or China; because if these UAPs were from Russia or China, don't you think that Russia or China would have USED this type of Advanced technology AGAINST us by now? Or at least Russia and China would have TOLD us that they have such Advanced Technology like this, just to SCARE us, like they told us about their supposed HyperSonic missiles? And these UAPs are NOT the HyperSonic missiles that Russia and China are talking about; because these UFO objects can do way MORE things than what a HyperSonic missile can do!
Whatever these UAPs are, they are NOT from us or a Foreign country. Because even the Navy is Now willing to Admit, that they DON'T know what these UAP objects are!
3
@Ken Jason They are dirt on the lenses of the cameras. Please prove me wrong.
2
FORMER Blink-182 member Tom Delonge*
He should have just joined the Foo Fighters
10
Drip drip the truth is leaking out slowly but surely
2
At least this is a good start, that the existence of UAP’s / UFO’s are beginning to be taken seriously by the MSM, just wonder when it will make the news across the pond...!
I think it’s definitely time for ‘Full Disclosure’, I live in hope!
One of my favourite clips featuring many UAP’s, has to be NASA’s tether’ experiment, plenty of clips showing it on YouTube!
5
Maybe these are interdimensional beings, not extraterrestrial?
3
When it comes to space travel, we've been handicapped by our propulsion systems, all of which rely on expanding gas technology to move us from point A to point B. And we've been in this rut for near 200 years. So yes, I am confident 'they' are coming here to look around, but we can't get 'there', due to our slowness. 20,000 MPH in space isn't very fast
2
Was it the ancient Sumerians who were the first civilization to figured out our solar system nearly 6 thousand years ago? So lets just say it takes 10,000 years for a technological civilization to come about that could travel to near by stars. The science doesn't exist today but maybe in the future.
Figure how long it takes for evolution to produce those capable of doing so,10,000 years is a relatively short time so it would be pretty coincidental for modern civilizations to rise up at the same time with similar capabilities.
A good question would be when we evolve socially to end all our problems and have great lives, will we want to explore space or would we have better things to do? Being human we might turn to more spiritual matters. Man does not live by math alone. We might have the desire to spend our lives reading holy books and meditating on the meaning of life. AI do our heavy lifting for us. I really doubt our future would have us traveling the galaxy.
1
@JoeG
Unless people are desperate to leave a future Earth sunken in over-population, chaos and devastation ...
I think it's safe to assume that if this extra-terrestrial technology is real, that they are light years ahead of us technologically, both literally and figuratively.
6
'Aliens Exist" is one of their best songs - especially as a companion to "Adam's Song", and its qualities are not dependent in any way on whether you believe any of this.
Anything that promotes space exploration, astronomy, and a healthier examination of our place in the universe is fine by me.
26
2019 is likely to be remembered for the year in which the US Navy changed its procedures and guidelines for the reporting of UAPs or UFOs, and for the fact that it has confirmed these videos are authentic.
The time for scoffing and cynicism are over. Now that we can agree that there's something there we can set about finding out what they are, who created them, and what they're here for.
27
The human mind cannot create or produce radar data.
The reality of Sky People is just that simple.
6
@TOBY
This phrase.... 1 Corinthians 13:12
"For now we see through a glass darkly"
Could be written by anyone who knows what radar data is. Amazing it was written before radar, eh?
1
Good on Mr. DeLonge and good on the NYT for reporting on this. I recommend reading the books by or about Jacques Vallee about the UFO phenomenon. He is highly credentialed as a scientist and while no one has "the answer" to the questions UFO raise, his is an excellent model for how we ought to proceed.
12
@MAL He’a okay, but misses the fact that highly advanced science looks magical to us hairless apes. Sometimes nuts and bolts looks freaky if you don’t understand it. And credentials shouldn’t be that impressive to people who are healthily skeptical. Let his credentials be data points in evaluation, not impressive or convincing. But on the whole he is many steps above most published ufologists and worth reading. As is “ufos and nukes” and Leslie.
2
Ugh.
Blink 182 is just not the same without his voice.
I first heard Blink 182 in the 1990's - they were playing on Union Square in SF under a pair of pop up tents. Two years later, they filled the Oakland Coliseum. Fun band. Still listening to them and now my kids are too.
6
@Djt give their latest album a shot, it's really good. I'm a Tom fan for live (saw AVA last week in Boston) but Skiba is super talented.
1
@Djt Good Lord, when will these "not the same with Tom" comments end. Get over it. I love the guy, his voice, his band - but I'm not stuck in the past.