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The US government is holding a historic UFO hearing today. Here's how to watch

The hearing will include testimony from a whistleblower who has alleged the Pentagon is hiding evidence of "non-human intelligence."

Update for 1pm ET: The hearing has concluded. See our wrap story for our coverage.

If the truth really is out there when it comes to what the U.S. government knows about UFOs, we may get a little closer to it today.

On Wednesday (July 26), the United States House of Representatives will hear testimony from three witnesses regarding unidentified anomalous phenomena , or UAP, a new term that encompasses not just unidentified flying objects (UFOs) in the air, but also any craft or phenomena that are seen in space or underwater that can't be identified.

The hearing will be held by the House's Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs and will include testimony from former U.S. military and intelligence community personnel who claim to have come in contact with craft that defy physics and known flight capabilities or have even seen evidence of "non-human intelligence."

The hearing will be livestreamed on YouTube by the House Oversight and Accountability Committee starting at 10 a.m. EDT (1400 GMT) on Wednesday (July 26). Watch it live here courtesy of the committee. 

Related: The US Congress is holding UFO hearings this week. What might we learn?

Wednesday's hearing will include testimony from two former U.S. Navy aviators, Ryan Graves and David Fravor , both witnesses to separate highly publicized encounters with what appeared to be unconventional aircraft operating in U.S. military airspace.

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In addition, the hearing will call David Grusch as a witness. Grusch was the subject of a report published last month in which the decorated former combat officer and veteran of the Pentagon's intelligence community claimed to have received "extensive classified information about deeply covert programs that he says possess retrieved intact and partially intact craft of non-human origin." While Grusch's statements have been controversial to say the least, they have received attention from both major news outlets and U.S. politicians .

Some members of the U.S. Congress have also insinuated that there is indeed hidden UFO/UAP knowledge that has been hidden from the public. "The Pentagon and Washington bureaucrats have kept this information hidden for decades, and we're finally going to shed some light on it," Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) said in a House Committee on Oversight and Reform statement . "We're bringing in credible witnesses who can provide public testimony because the American people deserve the truth. We're done with the cover-ups."

Graves, who has been vocal about the need to better understand the UAP issue as it pertains to airspace safety, calls these unidentified phenomena an "urgent and critical national security issue" that deserve better scientific scrutiny. "If UAP are foreign assets, we must respond appropriately. If UAP continue to defy conventional explanation — we must invest in scientific research," Graves said in a press statement. 

 —  UFOs worth investigating despite lack of 'real evidence,' former astronaut Scott Kelly says

 — UFOs will remain mysterious without better data, NASA study team says

 —  Pentagon has 'no credible evidence' of aliens or UFOs that defy physics

This congressional hearing is only the latest in a long line of major milestones concerning UFOs/UAP and the U.S. government and its federal agencies. Nearly a year ago to the day, the U.S. Department of Defense created the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), which aims to collect and analyze all of the data available to the U.S. military and intelligence community related to UFOs. 

In an April 2023 hearing , the director of AARO stated the office "has found no credible evidence thus far of extraterrestrial activity, off-world technology or objects that defy the known laws of physics." Those comments now stand in stark contrast to the claims of the witnesses who will testify at Wednesday's hearing.

NASA also recently held a public meeting of its independent UAP study group, and a report from the group is forthcoming.

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: [email protected].

Brett is curious about emerging aerospace technologies, alternative launch concepts, military space developments and uncrewed aircraft systems. Brett's work has appeared on Scientific American, The War Zone, Popular Science, the History Channel, Science Discovery and more. Brett has English degrees from Clemson University and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. In his free time, Brett enjoys skywatching throughout the dark skies of the Appalachian mountains.

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• Robotron About 70 years too late, but sure, I'll watch the recap. The most entertaining thing about these developments will be the spectacular routine of mental gymnastics on display as skeptics scramble to clarify that they "knew the whole time" that there was something to all these UFO reports. Luckily, we have a lengthy public record of their endless ridicule, scorn and minimization of the issue, which reveals quite a different reality. While the 18 intelligence agencies the U.S. proudly claims as its own surely carry their share of the blame for delaying serious examination of the UFO topic through their tireless obfuscation, it is ultimately the pompous, condescending members of the scientific community--and their legions of defenders of the status quo--who most deserve our derision. Can you image how much further along the discussion would be if typical mainstream UFO pseudo-skepticism didn't pervade almost every major media outlet and institute of higher learning? I'm not talking about reasonable critical thinking about this or that particular UFO case. I mean the blanket denial of hundreds or thousands of reports from credible witnesses swept under the rug because of an inability to accept that humans may not reside on the top rung of the cosmic ladder. Let's hope thing change at least a little after tomorrow's hearing. Reply

Robotron said: About 70 years too late, but sure, I'll watch the recap. The most entertaining thing about these developments will be the spectacular routine of mental gymnastics on display as skeptics scramble to clarify that they "knew the whole time" that there was something to all these UFO reports. Luckily, we have a lengthy public record of their endless ridicule, scorn and minimization of the issue, which reveals quite a different reality. While the 18 intelligence agencies the U.S. proudly claims as its own surely carry their share of the blame for delaying serious examination of the UFO topic through their tireless obfuscation, it is ultimately the pompous, condescending members of the scientific community--and their legions of defenders of the status quo--who most deserve our derision. Can you image how much further along the discussion would be if typical mainstream UFO pseudo-skepticism didn't pervade almost every major media outlet and institute of higher learning? I'm not talking about reasonable critical thinking about this or that particular UFO case. I mean the blanket denial of hundreds or thousands of reports from credible witnesses swept under the rug because of an inability to accept that humans may not reside on the top rung of the cosmic ladder. Let's hope thing change at least a little after tomorrow's hearing.

Paragon_Reason said: I believe it will yet again be a Huge Giant Nothing Burger 🍔 with the Wrong Sauce and No Cheese. Hyped and marketed by the same wastrel band of UFO grifters who sell bottles of Alien-oil for $$$, clicks and views. Will be rife with stories and provide no evidence, names, or locations. I trust no one to disclose UFO/alien history and information that uses the coverup term UAP under the guys of it being a "more inclusive term". None the less, I will watch, bc nothing is as cool as a guy drinking coffee in his underwear, watching a congressional hearing about Aliens 👽🛸....👁️👃👁️

• Dave Thank you to the brave souls reporting at todays hearing. Please watch if you have not done so already. Misdirection revealed. The crack in the glass ceiling has allowed the truth to start seeping through. Spacecrafts with advanced technology beyond earth's capability have been observed numerous times. As they said at the hearing. History has been made today. This is confirmation that intelligent lifeforms are observing us. Only 5% of those observing the sightings report them. Reply
• Robotron Instead of dog and pony shows like this, watch Steven Greer's disclosure videos. There are at least 600 witnesses there, many of whom name names and places. The main problem with this scenario is NOT that there aren't credible witnesses, whose testimony would hold up in a court of law, but that the mass media does virtually no investigative reporting on this topic. It's all Barbie, celebrity breakups and pretty-white-girls-gone-missing. I don't think it was a total Nothing Burger, but without serious follow-up by mass media and academia, it's not likely to rock many boats. Reply
• billslugg The burden of proof in law is about the same as in science, "beyond reasonable doubt". Science formalizes that as "repeatable at five nines". The problem with UFO testimony is there are HUGE benefits to "making it all up" and NO downside since no one can ever prove something did not exist. You can make big money off of this. Get fame and publicity. Testify before Congress. Reasonable people look at this and say: "Wait a minute!! I need more than that, I have a reasonable doubt". In the case of verifying the extraterrestrial origin of "some thing" we need a physical piece of it. A fingernail clipping or matchbook cover would be fine. We can do an isotopic analysis on it and tell, with absolute certainty, it is ET. We can tell you how far from the Sun it formed, and if from outside the Solar System we can tell you which Solar System it came from. If of Earthly orgin, we can tell you which mine the metal came out of. Reply

billslugg said: The burden of proof in law is about the same as in science, "beyond reasonable doubt". Science formalizes that as "repeatable at five nines".

billslugg said: The problem with UFO testimony is there are HUGE benefits to "making it all up" and NO downside since no one can ever prove something did not exist. You can make big money off of this. Get fame and publicity. Testify before Congress. Reasonable people look at this and say: "Wait a minute!! I need more than that, I have a reasonable doubt".

billslugg said: In the case of verifying the extraterrestrial origin of "some thing" we need a physical piece of it. A fingernail clipping or matchbook cover would be fine. We can do an isotopic analysis on it and tell, with absolute certainty, it is ET. We can tell you how far from the Sun it formed, and if from outside the Solar System we can tell you which Solar System it came from. If of Earthly orgin, we can tell you which mine the metal came out of.

• billslugg I am all for the government releasing whatever it knows. As taxpayers we own that information. If it leads to a physical piece of an ET vehicle then, great. It will be the greatest discovery ever. Meanwhile all of the "expert testimony" out there is nothing but words. They might be telling a truthful story about ET or they might be foisting on us a huge pile of baloney. Something that cannot be disproven. You can't prove someone didn't see something. On the other hand it is trivially easy to verify ET origin. If there are so many ET vehicles then where is a piece of one? First one there gets a Nobel Prize. Reply
• Dave Yesterdays hearing was historical. The witnesses were very credible and mentioned they receive nothing for being 'whistleblowers.' We can all look forward to more testimony, as well as evidence in the future. We can now all turn the page in the understanding of this topic. The important event is the testimony being allowed to be shared with the public. This is the tip of the iceberg. As most of us suspected Intelligent lifeforms are observing us. They do not wish to be discovered. They do not wish to contact us. The reasons why are speculative in nature. Humanity is dangerous. We have not yet evolved to be anything beyond separate tribes. War and poverty plague us. We do not take care of our planet, or our own. We must learn to integrate ideologies. Care for the most vulnerable among us, and our world. Come together as one race. The human race. In the future we may select a world leader from amongst our current leaders to run human affairs. Only time will tell. Meanwhile, they are watching. You may not like it, but it is happening. Reply

billslugg said: I am all for the government releasing whatever it knows. As taxpayers we own that information. If it leads to a physical piece of an ET vehicle then, great. It will be the greatest discovery ever. Meanwhile all of the "expert testimony" out there is nothing but words. They might be telling a truthful story about ET or they might be foisting on us a huge pile of baloney. Something that cannot be disproven. You can't prove someone didn't see something. On the other hand it is trivially easy to verify ET origin. If there are so many ET vehicles then where is a piece of one? First one there gets a Nobel Prize.

• View All 44 Comments

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Where to Stream All the ‘Alien’ Movies Right Now

Here’s where you can watch the entire franchise, from Ridley Scott’s 1979 original masterpiece to the most recent, “Alien: Covenant”

If you want to stream all of the movies in the “Alien” franchise, you’ll need more than one subscription. The six films, all released theatrically by 20th Century Fox, have ended up on a variety of sites.

You’ll find the first four films in the franchise, including Ridley Scott’s 1979 original space thriller and James Cameron’s action-packed 1986 sequel on Hulu and Starz, but here’s where to catch the rest of the Xenomorphs, face-huggers and, of course, kickass heroine Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver).

Here’s where to stream all the “Alien” movies right now.

Alien (1979)

In the first film, the crew of the Nostromo – Ripley, Dallas (Tom Skerritt), Ash (Ian Holm), Kane (John Hurt), Parker (Yaphet Kotto), Lambert (Veronica Cartwright) and Brett (Harry Dean Stanton) — answer a deep-space distress call that will prove fatal for most of them. Four decades latter, it’s still tense and eerie as hell.

Stream on Hulu and Starz

Aliens (1986)

James Cameron takes the franchise ball and runs with it in this crowd-pleasing sequel, which sees Ripley reluctantly accompanying a team of marines (who include Michael Biehn, Bill Paxton and Jenettte Goldstein) charged with figuring out what happened at a now-abandoned colony. She fiercely protects young survivor Newt (Carrie Henn), giving us the epic, “Get away from her, you b—h!” showdown.

Alien 3 (1992)

David Fincher’s divisively bleak threequel finds Ripley crash-landing on a planet called Fiorina 161, where the only inhabitants are the former inmates of a maximum security prison. Charles Dance, Pete Postlethwaite, Brian Glover and Charles S. Dutton co-star in what is, arguably, the harshest environment of the whole franchise. It also features one of the greatest shots of the series: A drooling alien cornering a terrified, bald Ripley … and then deciding to leave her alone.

Alien: Resurrection” (1997)

Ripley is back as a human-alien hybrid and is more unstoppable than ever. “Amelie” director Jean-Pierre Jeunet brings some of his favorite actors, including Ron Perlman, along for the ride, as well as Gen X icon Winona Ryder as an android mechanic.

Prometheus (2012)

Scott returned to the director’s chair for this highly anticipated (and mythology-heavy) prequel, which starred Noomi Rapace as the resourceful heroine and Michael Fassbender as the secretly scheming android David.

Stream on MGM+, Tubi

Alien: Covenant (2017)

Scott, Rapace and Fassbender returned for this follow-up, which picks up where “Prometheus” left off. Once again, answering a mysterious space signal proves to be a very, very bad decision. Katherine Waterston of “Fantastic Beasts” stars as the very tough Daniels.

Stream on TBS, TNT and TruTV

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January 11, 2022

E.T.s may be headed toward Earth, but are we ready for them?

by Margaret Crable, University of Southern California

Twenty years from now we might get a call from aliens. In 2017, a powerful radio transmission was aimed at exoplanet GJ 273b, thought to be able to support life. Its message, sent by the alien-hunting group Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence International, contained instructions on how to understand Earthling math, music and time. If it lands on intelligent alien ears once it arrives in about a decade, E.T. now has our number.

Of course, a cosmic call might come much sooner. Space transmissions hoping to attract an alien response have been going out since 1962, when Soviet scientists sent a message in Morse code to the planet Venus in the first attempt at interplanetary communication.

Even if our calls generate no response, it seems increasingly likely humanity will stumble upon life somewhere in the universe one of these days. NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, the most powerful telescope ever sent into the cosmos, is scheduled to launch this winter and will enable scientists to examine thousands of distant planets for "biosignatures"—clues that a planet's atmosphere has been influenced by life.

Concerns over decades of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP)—known more commonly as unidentified flying objects (UFOs)—in our atmosphere, many sighted by military personnel, have recently prompted politicians on both sides of the aisle to push for an official agency to handle UAP investigations.

But are we prepared for an encounter of the "Third Kind"?

The prospect of meeting another civilization raises questions both captivating and concerning. How do we even communicate with an alien species, especially one that may not use language in a form we can recognize and decipher? Will a meeting prompt mass hysteria? And what about strange alien diseases? And how might it affect our views about religion? USC Dornsife scholars weigh in on what to expect when we first meet extraterrestrials.

Across the universe

Humans eager to make friends in other star systems might be disappointed to learn that any developing relationship will likely resemble a phenomenally slow pen pal correspondence, rather than one conducted at the speed of text or email—never mind light. There's considerable distance between us and, for instance, GJ 273b: 12.36 light-years to be precise.

At that distance, it will take a dozen years for our message to arrive and then another dozen for us to receive the return message. It would be 2041, at the earliest, by the time we get a reply.

And, GJ 273b is one of the closer exoplanets (a planet that orbits a star other than the sun). There are only 12 stars within 10 years of Earth around which exoplanets could circle. That means any exchange of information would take place across at least 20 years and more likely many decades.

Although we typically associate aliens with the acceleration of technology, an actual encounter could, counterintuitively, serve to slow our pace of modern communication—and that could be to our benefit, according to University Professor Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, Biomedical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Biological Sciences and Psychology Michael Arbib.

In his 1979 paper, " Minds and Millennia: The Psychology of Interstellar Communication ," Arbib wrote "… the leisurely pace of interstellar communication gives us time to assimilate the messages that we receive … it will require the wisdom of many humans to transform the interstellar message into prescriptions for courses of action."

Curiosity will clearly need to be tempered with caution: Alien civilizations may view us as a resource to conquer—or a food supply—rather than an ally.

"One issue will be whether we even want to communicate and give away our location without first ascertaining their culture," says Vahé Peroomian, professor (teaching) of physics and astronomy.

Richard Jones, lecturer of English as a second language at the USC American Language Institute, has extensive experience in teaching people from very different cultures and linguistic backgrounds how to overcome the obstacles to effective communication. Drawing on that expertise, he has some suggestions on how to best communicate with aliens.

Our radio messages are a good first step at contact and—very importantly—would hopefully allay predation, he argues.

"Transmissions that include mathematical data and music are an excellent idea," he says. "Alien life that lies within our conception of 'intelligence' would hopefully be able to understand the relationships contained here, and that these messages come from another intelligent species."

Lost and found in translation

Once contact was established, the next challenge would lie in making good conversation. Jones has a few suggestions for how to begin.

"'Human' and 'be' would be the first words I would suggest learning how to express," he says. "Then in turn, we could try to learn how they refer to themselves and how they express that they exist—how would they convey the equivalent of the English sentence: "I am human.'"

Ideally, says Jones, if extraterrestrials are able to travel to us, we would do some sort of exchange program where they could observe us and we could observe them in their daily life. "On the basis of this mutual observation, we might be able to construct a number of ideas about what type of words to teach and learn," he says.

For an example of how an in-person encounter between an alien and a linguist would likely go down, readers could try watching the movie Arrival, says Zuzanna Fuchs, assistant professor of linguistics. The 2016 sci-fi thriller follows linguistics professor Louise Banks as she attempts to communicate with extraterrestrials, using a whiteboard to write messages to squid-like aliens floating in tanks.

However, Earthling linguistics may be limited in its relevance. "Many of the tricks and patterns we usually use to help us quickly build our knowledge of a new language in linguistic fieldwork are based on our general understanding of how human languages typically work. The twist is that these patterns would probably be inapplicable to alien language," says Fuchs.

There is also the possibility that aliens may communicate in other vastly different ways from humans, rendering spoken language less helpful.

"It might be possible that alien life forms transmit thoughts via touch or other non-verbal means," Jones says. "Communication between insects—such as the dancing of bees—is sometimes described as language." In that case, first contact might call for a collaboration between a linguist and an entomologist.

Intergalactic germs?

Face-to-face meetings with another species may inspire dreams of intergalactic knowledge sharing—but also nightmares of intergalactic germ sharing. Our own history warns us about the consequences of encounters between isolated civilizations.

When Europeans reached the Americas and first made contact with indigenous communities, they brought with them smallpox, measles and other diseases to which Native Americans had no natural immunity. An estimated 90% of the original inhabitants of North America died from devastating outbreaks of these illnesses.

Of course, any risk of infection from outer space depends on whether alien germs contain even remotely similar molecules to our own. So far, scientists think it's likely there is some shared chemistry between life on Earth and life out in the galaxy. Amino acids and peptides, our familiar precursors to life, have been found on asteroids. Many planets host water, which is where scientists believe life first began on Earth.

In fact, the more immediate risk might lie not in what space brings to humans, but in what we take with us from Earth as we venture into space—and then bring back home later in a changed form.

"Every time we go into space, we bring microorganisms with us. Many of them are highly adaptable, like bacteria, and are some of the oldest organisms to survive on Earth," says Raffaella Ghittoni, associate professor (teaching) of biology. "These microorganisms could change and adapt in space to things like radiation and then, through another space mission, could return with those changes and become more virulent or more infectious."

Can Klingons take communion?

When, or if, we encounter aliens we can probably expect a profound reassessment of religious faith. A 2021 study from the Pew Research Center found that highly religious adults are much more skeptical about the possibility of extraterrestrial life compared with those who are less religious. An alien encounter could throw long-cherished beliefs into question—or appear to confirm them.

Events like solar eclipses are already interpreted by some evangelical Christians as signs of the coming "rapture," a biblical prediction of fiery end times. The landing of a UFO would likely accelerate such apocryphal fears.

However, belief that extraterrestrials signal the end of the world would hopefully be the position of a small minority within religious groups, says the Rev. Dorian Llywelyn, president of the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies at USC Dornsife. There's wiggle room for the existence of extraterrestrials in many religious texts, after all. Judaism's Talmud describes God traveling among 18,000 worlds. Both Buddhism and Hinduism hint at the existence of other, populated celestial realms.

Alien arrival is actually more likely to trigger debate than terror among the faithful, says Llywelyn. Catholics, for example, may find that figuring out how to fit Klingons into Christianity adds a new level to a centuries-long theological discussion around who and what can be "saved": only Christians, only humans or the entire physical world—including, presumably, Klingons.

A valuable lesson

Proof of life beyond planet Earth is sure to restructure our own sense of self and our place in the cosmos. In that moment, spiritual faith may actually work well alongside scientific inquiry, as a guide for making sense of something we don't yet understand.

Whether the life we encounter is a race of galaxy-hopping star people or a small microbe inching across the surface of an exoplanet, it will all require profound self-reflection by us Earthlings. That's a good thing, says Peroomian.

"For millennia, humans have argued that the Earth is special," he says. "At first, we thought it was the center of the universe, then the center of our galaxy, and even when that was disproven, we still think of Earth as special for being the only location in the universe where life exists.

"Finally dispelling this notion will be a very valuable lesson for humanity."

Provided by University of Southern California

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‘What I saw that night was real’: is it time to take aliens more seriously?

The Pentagon has been quietly investigating unidentified flying objects since 2007. The fact that they think they might exist is good news to those who claim to have seen them

I n June, the US government published a long-awaited report into UFOs . Although the report did not, as many had hoped, admit to the existence of little green men, it did reveal that not only were objects appearing in our skies that the Pentagon – which controls the US military – could not explain, but some clearly pose “a safety of flight issue and may pose a challenge to US national security”.

The Pentagon also revealed that it has been taking UFOs so seriously that in 2007 it discreetly set up the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), which has been gathering data on Unexplained Aerial Phenomena (UAPs) ever since.

The unclassified version of the report (there was also a classified version seen only by US lawmakers) found “no clear indications that there is any non-terrestrial explanation” for the sightings. But neither did it rule it out. The report offered five typically mundane possible explanations for the UFOs and, crucially, one catch-all “other” bin.

It’s that “other” bin that has arrested the attention of stargazers and conspiracy theorists. If the US military has been quietly and seriously investigating UFOs (or, as the Pentagon would have it, UAPs) since 2007, and if the Pentagon’s official report cannot rule out the existence of extraterrestrials, is it time we looked again at claims of close encounters and the people who have made them?

Enthusiasm for UFOs and ETs has permeated popular culture ever since a US air force balloon crashed near Roswell in 1947. Conspiracy theorists confused the balloon for a UFO; the US government did a lousy job debunking those claims, and they quickly captured the public’s imagination. Fast forward to 1961, when Barney and Betty Hill told the world’s first alien abduction story.

Andrew Abeyta, professor of psychology at Rutgers University, co-authored We Are Not Alone , a study into why some of us want to believe in aliens. Abeyta explains that belief in aliens is akin to religiosity: unfounded beliefs in unfalsifiable ideas, which require a leap of faith. “People have a need to feel like their lives are meaningful, and these beliefs might suggest that there’s something bigger out there; there’s something more important going on,” Abeyta says

I tell Abeyta about an interview I carried out with a young man in Florida. The man, who did not want to be named, described an ambiguous close encounter that took place during his sleep. When I asked him what he preferred the truth to be – a real encounter or merely a vivid dream – the young man said he would prefer it to be true because that would mean he was “special”.

“I can imagine being a protagonist in an alien-abduction story seems pretty meaningful, like a meaningful achievement, an accomplishment,” Abeyta says. That feeling of specialness plays an important role in these stories. “Feeling like your unexplained experience is a result of an alien abduction just seems more exciting and more important than a natural explanation.”

Still, the topic of alien encounters remains sensitive. I discovered just how sensitive when author Whitley Strieber, who some claim was abducted by non-humans in 1985, terminated our call after learning that I had not read his books. In a subsequent email, he wrote: “I don’t know if I was abducted by aliens or not. The whole point of my work is to describe what happened to me and attempt to understand what it was. I was turned into ‘alien abductee Whitley Strieber’ by the media. That is not my position.” He added: “You are lost in space when it comes to this subject, my friend – all of you.”

After I got off on the wrong foot with Strieber, though, he did come back and introduce me to highly decorated former US navy cryptologist Matthew Roberts. He was stationed on the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt when fighter jets recorded the infamous “Gimbal” and “Go Fast” videos of unexplained objects off the Florida coast during 2015, which went a long way to prompting the Pentagon’s UFO report.

Now retired from the military, Roberts is unmoved by the debunkers. “These things are picked up by multiple sensors that are sometimes from different manufacturers, so to think that they would all be glitching in the same way at the same time would just be impossible – it just doesn’t happen that way.”

Mick West, a science writer and video game programmer turned conspiracy-theory debunker, offers his own, more down-to-earth explanations for the objects: arguing that mundane things – tech glitches, camera glare, balloons and birds – are more likely than aliens.

However, now even the Pentagon has conceded there’s more to UFOs than that. In its nine-page report it states: “Most of the UAP reported probably do represent physical objects given that a majority of UAP were registered across multiple sensors, to include radar, infrared, electro-optical, weapon seekers and visual observation.” In other words, there was something out there and the images were not technical glitches. I ask Roberts about a theory put forward by West that the Gimbal object was glare caused by a nearby aircraft. “All aircraft – nationally, internationally – have to broadcast who they are. If they’re not broadcasting that, that’s very unusual. Mick West, bless his soul, he has never been in the military,” he says.

Roberts explains that, after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, unidentified air tracks escalate very quickly. “It will go to the captain, it will go to the admiral, and they’ll want to know what that is because the thought would immediately be: ‘Is this a commercial airliner? Has it been hijacked?’ We’re not as incompetent as Mick West would have you believe. If something is unidentified, it absolutely has to be identified immediately.”

Despite the debunkers and proliferation of more mundane explanations for UFOs, reports of close encounters have persisted for decades. Terry Lovelace, a retired assistant attorney general in Vermont, USA, and author of Incident at Devil’s Den , kept his abduction to himself for 40 years due to fear of losing his job. He had a close encounter in 1977 while serving in the US air force.

Lovelace, now 67, was on a camping trip in Devil’s Den state park in northern Arkansas with a friend and colleague named Toby when things got strange. They were sitting around a fire, struggling to chat over the din of buzzing crickets and croaking tree frogs before everything went quiet. “That sounds kind of clichéd – out of a movie – but that is exactly what happened to us,” he says.

Three bright lights appeared on the horizon and moved in their direction. When the lights were overhead, they could see that they were emanating from a black triangular prism as wide as two city blocks.

A blue laser beam darted over them, which Lovelace thought was scanning them. When it shut off, they became sleepy. Next thing, he woke and saw Toby peering out of the tent. The triangle was hovering above what appeared to be a dozen children standing in a meadow below them. “What are these kids doing out here in the middle of the night?” said Lovelace.

“They aren’t little kids. Don’t you remember they took us and they hurt us?” Toby answered.

Lovelace says the moment Toby said that, fragmented memories of being inside the UFO flashed in his mind. Years later, hypnosis helped him fill in more blanks and he recalled actually encountering creatures while inside the UFO.

For some, the fact that the Pentagon has finally admitted it cannot explain the behaviour of the objects may have been a surprise but, for PC Alan Godfrey, 73, it merely proves what he already knows.

On a windswept and wet West Yorkshire evening in November 1980, Godfrey was in hot pursuit of a herd of escaped cows in Todmorden’s housing estate. Instead of cows, he stumbled across a giant levitating diamond that would change the course of his life. Godfrey’s close encounter with this UFO went viral worldwide and transformed Todmorden into Britain’s Roswell.

Godfrey, a no-nonsense Yorkshireman born and raised in Oldham, is long retired from the force but still recalls the events of that night when he came face to face with the peculiar object – a diamond-shaped aircraft hovering 5ft off the ground while spinning on its axis.

He just had time to sketch the UFO on his notepad before he was blinded. In his next moment of conscious awareness, he was sitting in his patrol car. The UFO was gone. “I got out of the car, looked at the road surface, and it was like a whirlpool,” he says. The UFO’s rapid revolutions had arranged the dead leaves, twigs and other debris into an autumn-themed spiral.

In the aftermath of his encounter, he had visits from the Ministry of Defence, correspondence from a Russian scientist and interest from the world’s press. He even underwent hypnosis to uncover memories of his abduction.

Godfrey was ridiculed for years – many who claim to have had encounters with UFOs are reluctant to go on the record for fear of the same treatment – but things are changing. High-ranking government officials such as Christopher Mellon, a former US secretary for defence in intelligence, and Luis Elizondo, former director of AATIP, insist that there are aircraft in our skies that don’t obey the known laws of physics. Even Barack Obama has gone on record on the subject, talking to CBS this year: “There’s footage and records of objects in the skies, that we don’t know exactly what they are, we can’t explain how they moved, their trajectory. They did not have an easily explainable pattern. And so, you know I think that people still take seriously trying to investigate and figure out what that is. But I have nothing to report to you today.”

When it comes to abduction stories, sceptics will say these encounters are either hoaxes or accounts of vivid dreams or hallucinations. Christopher French, emeritus professor of psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London, has spent years studying the paranormal and argues that sleep paralysis is a better explanation for many of these stories. “In some cases, you get associated symptoms, and they include a sense of presence; a very strong feeling that there’s something in the room with you,” French says. He adds that sufferers might hallucinate and “see strange lights moving around the room or strange figures or shadow people”.

That doesn’t fit for Godfrey’s story – he was driving and on duty at the time. “I think in Alan Godfrey’s case, he was sleep-deprived; he had been on duty for a long time. The most likely explanation is some kind of hallucinatory experience due to tiredness,” says French. What about the story he told under hypnosis? “The thing with hypnotic regression is that it is one of the best ways known of generating false memories. If you go for hypnotic regression expecting to recover memories of alien abduction, there’s a very good chance that’s what you’ll get.”

But Nick Pope, a former UFO investigator for the Ministry of Defence, is not convinced and thinks that Godfrey is genuine. “He had a lot to potentially lose by coming out with this and yet stuck to his guns.”

Doesn’t a hallucination explain what he saw? “I get that people do have hallucinations, but they tend to be the result of either mental illness or some sort of hallucinogenic substance, and this guy was on duty and was, by all accounts, rational. And so those explanations don’t seem to apply – I’m stumped when it comes to that particular case. Ask yourself: how many times have you been tired and come to the end of a long day? We’ve all been in that situation, and we don’t suddenly construct bizarre narratives about spacecraft and aliens.”

Is it time to start taking these stories more seriously? “I’m not saying that I believe it’s literally true that these are alien spaceships,” says Pope. “But at the very least, these people who were previously disbelieved and ridiculed should be listened to and given a hearing.

“For everyone who tells you these people are attention seekers after fame and fortune, I would say, ‘What fame? What fortune?’ Who outside the UFO community has heard of Alan Godfrey or Terry Lovelace?”

Does Pope think ETs are among us? “I don’t know. I am certain that they are out there, but whether they’re down here or not? I don’t know. I think it’s much more likely that we’re dealing with unmanned probes.”

If not hallucinations, equipment glitches or mistakes, many will say black ops, conducted by the US, China, Russia, or other militaries, are a more plausible explanation than aliens. “I accept that most military personnel won’t have sight of every single black project and, therefore, won’t necessarily know about every secret prototype, aircraft or drone that’s flying,” says Pope. “But the military and government, and the intelligence community have a pretty good idea of roughly where the ceiling is in terms of technology. So, when these expert military witnesses describe the sorts of speeds, accelerations, manoeuvres that are reported with these sorts of incidents, I sit up and take note.”

Whatever one thinks about the veracity of these stories, many of the people who tell them believe they are real, and some suffer from severe mental illness in the aftermath. Chris French says the levels of psychological arousal in people living with PTSD go “through the roof” when they’re asked to retell their stories. “If you do the same thing with the alien abductees, you get the same thing.”

Lovelace’s night in Devil’s Den changed his life and the life of his friend Toby. The US air force got wind of their ordeal and, per military protocol, separated and reassigned them. Lovelace ignored his orders and visited Toby to say goodbye. “Toby was falling apart,” Lovelace says. The two embraced. Toby said: “It happened, didn’t it?” “Yes, my brother, it really happened. You’re not losing your mind,” Lovelace replied.

Lovelace has suffered enormously since that night. “I’ve had 40 years’ of nightmares. I still have a phobia of crossing open ground. I still sleep with a light on and a gun beside my bed.” But he feels vindicated by acknowledgments made by the US government, military personnel and Obama. “I’ve got a long list of people that I’m going to email and say, ‘I told you so.’”

For Godfrey, it’s 40 years too late. He is adamant about what he saw that morning in Todmorden. “I’ve had all sorts: you fell into some sort of trance when you were driving – all that shit. No, it was real. It left debris on the road – my headlights were reflecting off it, as were the blue lights. This was a real incident. I didn’t need the Pentagon to tell me there are things out there. I know what I saw that night was real, nuts and bolts. If I’d got out and thrown a brick at it, it would have gone, ‘Clang!’ It doesn’t change what happened to me and how I was treated back then.”

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US intelligence community releases unclassified report on UFOs

By Meg Wagner , Melissa Macaya, Veronica Rocha and Fernando Alfonso III , CNN

Investigators examined 144 reports of "unidentified aerial phenomenon." Here's what they found.

From CNN's Katie Bo Williams, Zachary Cohen and Jeremy Herb

The US community's long-awaited report examined 144 reports of what the government terms "unidentified aerial phenomenon" (UAP) — only one of which investigators were able to explain by the end of the study.

Here are some key things noted in the document about the findings:

• Investigators found no evidence that the sightings represented either extraterrestrial life or a major technological advancement by a foreign adversary like Russia or China, but acknowledge that is a possible explanation. "We were able to identify one reported UAP with high confidence. In that case, we identified the object as a large, deflating balloon. The others remain unexplained," the report says. A senior US official said that of the 144 reports, they "have no clear indications that there is any non-terrestrial explanation for them — but we will go wherever the data takes us."
• But Investigators were also convinced that the majority of the sightings were "physical objects," the official told reporters on Friday. "We absolutely do believe what we're seeing are not simply sensor artifacts. These are things that physically exist," the official said, noting that 80 of the reported incidents included data from multiple sensors. In 11 cases, investigators believed that there was a "near-miss" collision with US personnel. 

Investigators were particularly stymied by a limited number of incidents where UFOs reportedly appeared to exhibit "unusual flight characteristics," according to the report, which notes these observations "could be the result of sensor errors, spoofing, or observer misperception and require additional rigorous analysis."

• Still, the nine-page report makes clear that more work must be done to identify these objects as "the limited amount of high-quality reporting on unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) hampers our ability to draw firm conclusions about the nature or intent of UAP."
• But despite that challenge, the report does conclude that these objects "clearly pose a safety of flight issue and may pose a challenge to US national security." The report said "Safety concerns primarily center on aviators contending with an increasingly cluttered air domain. UAP would also represent a national security challenge if they are foreign adversary collection platforms or provide evidence a potential adversary has developed either a breakthrough or disruptive technology."

Worryingly for national security professionals, the report also found that the sightings were "clustered" around US training and testing grounds. But investigators downplayed those concerns, assessing that "this may result from a collection bias as a result of focused attention, greater numbers of latest-generation sensors operating in those areas, unit expectations and guidance to report anomalies."

Read more about the report here.

The report concludes "unidentified aerial phenomena" could "pose a challenge to US national security"

The intelligence community's release of the unclassified document marks one of the first times the US government  has publicly acknowledged  that these strange aerial sightings by Navy pilots and others are worthy of legitimate scrutiny.

"The limited amount of high-quality reporting on unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) hampers our ability to draw firm conclusions about the nature or intent of UAP," the nine-page preliminary report says, using the Pentagon's terminology for UFOs.

But despite that challenge, the report does conclude that these objects "clearly pose a safety of flight issue and may pose a challenge to US national security.

"Safety concerns primarily center on aviators contending with an increasingly cluttered air domain. UAP would also represent a national security challenge if they are foreign adversary collection platforms or provide evidence a potential adversary has developed either a breakthrough or disruptive technology," it says.

For some, the UFO report raises more questions than answers

Congressional sources who have seen the classified version of the report have already expressed disappointment there's not more of an explanation to the episodes, saying that the report raises more questions than it answers.

Previous interviews with a half-dozen officials as well as documents reviewed by CNN depict a US military and intelligence community that's struggled over how to remove the issue from the realm of science fiction and consider its actual national security implications.

Even now, multiple sources told CNN, the government almost certainly wouldn't have moved to produce the report without public pressure from key lawmakers, as both Republicans and Democrats have taken an interest in the matter.

While former senior defense officials with knowledge of the most recent iteration of the department's investigations say the Pentagon took it seriously, some pilots and former officials tasked with investigating the matter say senior Pentagon leaders downplayed or ignored the threat.

Erasing the stigma surrounding a serious discussion of UFOs was also the goal for lawmakers in 2020 when they passed legislation requiring the Pentagon and intelligence community to provide more information about these UFO encounters, details that have, until recently, largely remained shrouded in secrecy.

Requiring production of the upcoming UFO report was also one way lawmakers have signaled that they intend to use their oversight authority to ensure coordination among the agencies involved, sources told CNN last month.

"One of the functions of a course like this is that it forces actual coordination within the agencies and makes clear that Congress is actually serious about its oversight function and that there's going to be increased scrutiny along the way," a congressional aide said at the time. "Some of it is a product of getting the agencies to take the issue more seriously and trying to help get rid of the stigma surrounding it."

Investigators stymied by "unusual flight characteristics"

The nine-page report by the US community makes clear that more work must be done to identify these objects as "the limited amount of high-quality reporting on unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) hampers our ability to draw firm conclusions about the nature or intent of UAP."

"Some UAP appeared to remain stationary in winds aloft, move against the wind, maneuver abruptly, or move at considerable speed, without discernable means of propulsion. In a small number of cases, military aircraft systems processed radio frequency (RF) energy associated with UAP sightings," it says.

Still, the Pentagon said in a statement after the report's release that it plans to formalize the study of UFOs.

A memo from Deputy Secretary Kathleen Hicks instructed the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security to create a formal mission for the work currently done by the UAP Task Force.

Hicks framed it as a question of national security, saying, "It is critical that the United States maintain operations security and safety at DoD ranges," noting that many of the observations have been near military areas.

Hicks called for reports of UAP observations to be ready within two weeks of an occurrence or observation.

Pentagon plans to formalize UFO study after release of report

From CNN's Oren Liebermann

The Pentagon plans to formalize the study of UFOs following the release of the report from the Director of National Intelligence on the subject, called Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP).

In a memo from Deputy Secretary Kathleen Hicks, she instructed the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security to create a formal mission for the work currently done by the UAP Task Force.

"Incursions into our training ranges and designated airspace pose safety of flight and operations security concerns, and may pose national security challenges. DOD takes reports of incursions – by any aerial object, identified or unidentified – very seriously, and investigates each one," said Pentagon press secretary John Kirby in a statement Friday afternoon.

The Pentagon stressed the need to better observe and collect data about UAPs to better understand their nature.

What is a UFO?

From CNN's Zachary Cohen

In short, a UFO is a flying object that looks or moves unlike any aircraft used by the US or any foreign country.

By their very nature, UFOs are shrouded in mystery and there are still a lot more questions than answers about these unexplained incidents.

There have been numerous UFO sightings in recent years but the military has only recently verified a handful of those reported encounters.

In April, the Pentagon confirmed the authenticity of photos and video taken by Navy personnel in 2019 that appeared to show triangle-shaped objects blinking and moving through the clouds.

Another set of photos from Navy personnel showed three objects apparently flying in the sky, shaped like a sphere, an acorn and a metallic blimp.

In April 2020, the  Pentagon released three short videos  from infrared cameras that appeared to show flying objects moving quickly. Two of the videos contain service members reacting in awe at how quickly the objects are moving. One voice speculates that it could be a drone.

The Navy previously acknowledged the veracity of the videos in September of 2019 but officially released them months later, "in order to clear up any misconceptions by the public on whether or not the footage that has been circulating was real, or whether or not there is more to the videos," Pentagon spokesperson Sue Gough said at the time.

"After a thorough review, the department has determined that the authorized release of these unclassified videos does not reveal any sensitive capabilities or systems," said Gough in a statement, "and does not impinge on any subsequent investigations of military air space incursions by unidentified aerial phenomena."

In 2017, one of the pilots who saw one of the unidentified objects in 2004 told CNN that it moved in ways he couldn't explain.

"As I got close to it ... it rapidly accelerated to the south, and disappeared in less than two seconds," said retired US Navy pilot David Fravor. "This was extremely abrupt, like a ping-pong ball, bouncing off a wall. It would hit and go the other way."

Here's what prompted the US intelligence's UFO report

From CNN's Harmeet Kaur

When former President Trump signed  the $2.3 trillion coronavirus relief and government funding bill into law in December, so began the 180-day countdown for US intelligence agencies to tell Congress  what they know about UFOs .

No, really.

The director of National Intelligence and the secretary of defense were requested to provide the congressional intelligence and armed services committees with an unclassified report about "unidentified aerial phenomena."

It's a stipulation that was tucked into the "committee comment" section of the  Intelligence Authorization Act  for Fiscal Year 2021, which was contained in the massive spending bill.

That report needed to contain detailed analyses of UFO data and intelligence collected by the Office of Naval Intelligence, the  Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force  and the FBI, according to the Senate intelligence committee's directive.

It also should describe in detail "an interagency process for ensuring timely data collection and centralized analysis of all unidentified aerial phenomena reporting for the Federal Government" and designate an official responsible for that process.

Finally, the report should identify any potential national security threats posed by UFOs and assess whether any of the nation's adversaries could be behind such activity, the committee said.

The submitted report should be unclassified, the committee said, though it can contain a classified annex.

Read the US intelligence community's unclassified report on UFOs

The US intelligence community on Friday  released its long-awaited report  on what it knows about a series of mysterious flying objects that have been seen moving through restricted military airspace over the last several decades.

Read the report below:

READ: US intelligence community's unclassified report on UFOs

Congress has long been interested in ufos.

The Pentagon  released three short videos  in April of 2020 showing "unidentified aerial phenomena" — clips that the US Navy had  previously confirmed  were real.

The videos, one from 2004 and the other two from 2015, show what appear to be unidentified flying objects rapidly moving while recorded by infrared cameras. Two of the videos contain service members reacting in awe at how quickly the objects are moving. One voice speculates that it could be a drone.

It's still unclear what the objects are, and there's no consensus on their origin. Some believe they may be drones potentially operated by earthly adversaries seeking to gather intelligence, rather than the extraterrestrials we normally equate with UFOs.

In August 2020, the Pentagon  announced  that it was forming a task force to investigate.

Members of Congress and Pentagon officials have long been concerned about the appearance of the unidentified aircraft that have flown over US military bases. The Senate Intelligence Committee voted last June to have the Pentagon and intelligence community provide a public analysis of the encounters.

But it's not the first time the Pentagon has looked into aerial encounters with unknown objects. The Pentagon  previously studied recordings  of such incidents as part of a since-shuttered classified program launched at the behest of former Democratic Sen. Harry Reid.

That program was launched in 2007 and ended in 2012, according to the Pentagon, because they assessed that there were higher priorities that needed funding.

The former head of the program  Luis Elizondo told CNN  in 2017 that he personally believes "there is very compelling evidence that we may not be alone."

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A Smithsonian magazine special report

How Would You React If We Discovered Alien Life?

Experts weigh in on what the detection of other life forms might mean to the human race

David Levine

For more than a century, from George Melies’ A Trip to the Moon to Stephen Spielberg’s E.T. and Close Encounters to this summer’s blockbuster sequel to Independence Day , mass media, and the general public, have pondered what will happen if we ever came into contact with extraterrestrial life forms. Carl Sagan’s book Contact , and Jodie Foster’s movie of the same name, explores one possible scenario in which a Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) scientist (played by Foster) discovers a signal repeating a sequence of prime numbers originating from star system Vega, the 5th brightest star visible from Earth. Even if Contact ’s version of an alien encounter is more likely than that presented in Spielberg’s E.T ., the possibilities are worth pondering.

And yet experts believe that the odds of receiving a radio transmission composed of prime numbers or encountering intelligent extraterrestrial life in the near future are "astronomical." even with Hillary Clinton's promise that if elected President, she would open up the “X-files” ( Area 51 ).

But the odds may be increasing due to continuing advances in technology and money. At a press conference held in April in New York City, Russian billionaire and Breakthrough Prize co-founder Yuri Milner , along with famed physicist Stephen Hawking , announced Breakthrough Starshot , a 20-year voyage to the Alpha Centauri star system. Should the existence of planets in the Alpha Centauri system be confirmed, Starshot could provide us with the best measurements of an exoplanet atmosphere we could ever hope to get this century. Milner will spend $100 million dollars to fund the project. Facebook's founder and CEO, Mark Zuckenberg, is on the project’s board of directors.

The goal of NASA's Kepler Mission was to find terrestrial planets in the habitable zone of stars both near and far where liquid water and possibly life might exist. To date, Kepler has confirmed the existence of 2,337 exoplanets, including 1,284 new planets announced as of this writing. In a press release issued by NASA, chief scientist Ellen Stofan , said, "This announcement more than doubles the number of confirmed planets from Kepler. This gives us hope that somewhere out there, around a star much like ours, we can eventually discover another Earth."

But what  would  happen if we discovered life beyond Earth?

Christof Koch , president and chief scientific officer of the  Allen Institute for Brain Science , believes most people will be excited to learn that there is intelligent life out there. "For some 'contact" would be a wish come true and fill us with awe. But for others it would raise concerns. One can't assume that alien cultures are by definition benevolent," Koch says. "If we look at the history of our world, lesser civilizations were often destroyed by more advanced ones. Would the same happen to us if we encountered an advanced alien civilization?" Hawking has warned against sending messages out into space for this very reason.

Koch has devoted his life to defining what consciousness is whether it be the internet, robots, animals, etc. Since it is doubtful that our first contact will be with humans from another planet it is important for us to understand what consciousness is so we can better understand what we do discover as we explore space. "The first discovery would probably be bacteria which might excite some scientists but not the general public. Another scenario might be a radio signal whose origin would be questioned. Was it a deliberate signal sent to us or is it random noise that can be explained scientifically? I am not holding my breath for a signal that includes prime numbers," Koch says.

Mary A. Voytek  is the senior scientist and head of  NASA's Astrobiology Program  who started  Nexus for Exoplanet System Science  to search for life on exoplanets. She notes that NASA scientists are currently looking at the most extreme conditions on Earth to better understand what conditions can support life throughout the universe.  "If we can determine what makes a habitable planet on Earth it will help guide us to look for conditions in the universe” she says.

Voytek notes that NASA acknowledges that the discovery of life has significance beyond science: "In order to fully understand the societal implications, we must talk to the experts-scholars in sociology and the humanities as well as theologians."

"When I give lectures about my work ,most people are excited about the possibility of the discovery of extraterrestrial life," Voytek says. "This is nothing new… The ancient Greek atomists in the fourth century B.C. wrote about it. There is a quote by Democritus that I like to cite. ‘To consider the Earth as the only populated world in infinite space is as absurd as to assert that in an entire field sown with millet only one grain will grow.’"

Douglas Vakoch , president of  Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence  (METI) has devoted much of his career with SETI to exploring what would happen on first contact and how we could even initiate it through interstellar messages. He says the  majority of people believe that intelligent life  is widespread in the cosmos.

He agrees that a discovery of something like a radio signal would result in arguments, as well as a fading lack of interest due to time. "It could take decades or even hundreds of years for us to get a response from a signal we send out. For people who are used to instant communication, this will be frustrating,” Vakoch says.

Others think we’ll have a more dramatic experience.  Susan Schneider , a professor of philosophy and cognitive science at the  University of Connecticut  and a fellow of the  Center for Theological Inquiry , believes that if we do find intelligent life, it will be most likely be in the form of super-intelligent artificial intelligence. "For some people this would be hard to accept. Discovering a civilization that is no longer biological would be scary for us," But Schneider is optimistic that most people will find the discovery of benevolent intelligent life exciting. "People are excited by the unknown. And the discovery of a new civilization might have many potential benefits. Perhaps an advanced civilization will share their knowledge with us," Schneider says.

The Catholic Church has come a long way since the days of Galileo. Pope Francis made headlines when  he said he would baptize Martians . Many were surprised at the Pope's remarks, but the Vatican has been positive about aliens for many years.  Father Jose Gabriel Funes , a priest and an astronomer, views aliens as brothers and said the Church has no problem with the idea of intelligent life in the cosmos. Jesuit  Brother Guy Consolmagno  is the first clergyman to win the  Carl Sagan Medal  and the current president of the  Vatican Observatory Foundation . In a 2014 article in the  Christian Post , Consolmagno said "the general public will not be too surprised when life on other planets is eventually discovered, and will react in much the same way it did when news broke in the '90s that there are other planets orbiting far off stars."

A similar view is held by Orthodox Jews. In an e-mail to me,  Rabbi Ben Tzion Krasnianski , director of  Chabad of the Upper East Side  of Manhattan, wrote, "Jews believe in other life forms. The universe is populated with infinite amount of them. They are not physical, however, rather they are angels who are spiritual conscious beings that are beyond anything we could imagine. The Talmud says one angel's mind is the equivalent of a third of the world's population's intelligence combined. For us it's no surprise that we are not alone in the larger universe."

Vakoch said people must keep in mind that we are only at the beginning of exploration. "We have just started looking. It has only been a few hundred years that we’ve been a technologically advanced society. That's a very small amount of time in our universe." 

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Examples of 'alien' in a sentence

Examples from collins dictionaries, examples from the collins corpus.

Quick word challenge

Quiz Review

Score: 0 / 5

All ENGLISH words that begin with 'A'

Where are all the aliens? (writing an essay)

• Global Issues
• Exam Tasks (FCE/CAE/CPE...)
• Future Is Here
• Writing Skills

Writing an essay

PRE-CLASS VIDEO

IN-CLASS VIDEO

LESSON OVERVIEW

In this lesson,students discuss alien life and the possible first contact scenario and write an essay about different aspects of space exploration. The lesson also includes two videos about extraterrestrials. 

This is a Flipped Classroom lesson plan. In a nutshell, it means that the first part of the lesson needs to be done by students at home. Learn more about flipped classroom and how we implement it in these lesson plans in our post.

PRE-CLASS ACTIVITIES

Vocabulary & video.

The pre-class part of the lesson starts with the viewing of a short video. In the video, a NASA scientist discusses if aliens exist. Students’ task is to check if their predictions regarding her answer were correct. Students also do a space exploration vocabulary task in which they complete eight gaps with words in the box (e.g. habitable, launched, microbial ). After that, they watch the video again and decide which of the topics mentioned in the sentences the scientist in the video talks about. Finally, they decide how to describe different planets (e.g. gas giant, terrestrial planet, the Blue Planet ). The vocabulary presented in this part will help students write an essay at the end of the lesson.

IN-CLASS ACTIVITIES

The in-class part of the lesson starts with a revision of the vocabulary studied at home. Students need to complete five questions which refer to space exploration, theories about alien life on Earth, and Mars. They discuss the questions in groups and move on to the next task. Here, they need to choose the best word (e.g. radiation, expand, overheat ) for each of the seven sentences. While watching a video, they complete three hypotheses as to why we haven’t found intelligent alien life yet. They do it using provided words and phrases (e.g. release oxygen, stabilize the climate ). Then, they discuss the theories from the video and share their views on the possibility of humans finding alien life elsewhere in the universe. After that, students read a first contact scenario , and in groups decide what message they would send to the extraterrestrials and other steps they would take. Finally, students write an essay (200-260 words) discussing two aspects of space exploration. The task is structured like the first section of the Cambridge CAE writing part.

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The Alien Report

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The Alien Report streaming: where to watch online?

You can buy "The Alien Report" on Apple TV, Google Play Movies, YouTube as download or rent it on Apple TV, Google Play Movies, YouTube online.

A life-long alien abductee figures out a clever way to record his alien encounters using a micro camera, and shares high-res video of telepathic beings, human hybrids and more.

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The Alien Report

A clever young man uses tiny, hidden micro-cameras sharing 'in-your-face' encounter video of telepathic beings, human hybrids and the unusual MIB (Men In Black). Based on the real UFO phenom... Read all A clever young man uses tiny, hidden micro-cameras sharing 'in-your-face' encounter video of telepathic beings, human hybrids and the unusual MIB (Men In Black). Based on the real UFO phenomena, The Alien Report is part one of a trilogy. A clever young man uses tiny, hidden micro-cameras sharing 'in-your-face' encounter video of telepathic beings, human hybrids and the unusual MIB (Men In Black). Based on the real UFO phenomena, The Alien Report is part one of a trilogy.

• Patrick L. Donnelly
• Emily Bramer
• Braxton Hale
• Whitney Masters
• 1 User review
• 7 Critic reviews
• 6 wins & 1 nomination

• Narrator (The Abductee)

• Telepathic Being

• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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• Trivia The Alien Report is based on real UFO research. What you see throughout the movie is inspired by drawings, 1st-hand accounts and descriptions of alien encounters from people who claim to have seen and interacted with these telepathic beings, human hybrids and the elusive 'Men-In-Black".

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• Runtime 1 hour 21 minutes

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Definition of alien adjective from the Oxford Advanced American Dictionary

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Find the answers with Practical English Usage online, your indispensable guide to problems in English.

• 3 ( disapproving ) not usual or acceptable alien to somebody/something The idea is alien to our religion. A referendum is alien to the party's concept of democracy. Cruelty was alien to him.
• 4 connected with creatures from another world alien beings from outer space

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The Alien Report

A life-long alien abductee figures out a clever way to record his alien encounters using a micro camera, and shares high-res video of telepathic beings, human hybrids and more.

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Movie Score

October 23, 2022,

Patrick Donnelly

Braxton Hale, Emily Bramer, Whitney Masters, Aldo Reyes, Claudine Tambuatco, Elvis Thao

Drama, Science Fiction

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