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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Firebird" data-source="post: 9718309" data-attributes="member: 7015803">There have been <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/07/27/1190390376/ufo-hearing-non-human-biologics-uaps" target="_blank">direct statements</a> to this effect. The reporting in the last decade, starting in 2017 or so, revealed there were programs whose existence was secretive, in part to avoid <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/politics/pentagon-program-ufo-harry-reid.html" target="_blank">public debate</a>. Some of the videos have <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000006525294/ufo-video-navy.html" target="_blank">been released</a> but there is likely more. A number of high ranking officials have made statements to the effect that there is something going on, and it needs to be seriously investigated. (Including former CIA head John Brennan.)You can find alternative explanations online for, I believe, all of these. Perhaps another angle is that leaking 'UFOs are plausible' will make other countries waste their resources on fruitless UFO programs.---Elsewhere, Avi Loeb at Harvard has been suggesting aliens should be studied in more detail. He put out a <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.12213" target="_blank">paper </a>recently about another potentially alien object. The text hedges quite a bit more than the reporting might suggest.It is true that the majority of UFO reports are nonsense. But out of a desire to oppose these, there is also a massive stigma against investigating aliens seriously. Loeb can get away with it because he has a 10x platinum research record. I know personally other scientists, some with quite strong records themselves, who do not think the scientific method can be employed appropriately to this question (also ghosts) given the stigma surrounding it. That seems correct to me.The astrobiology community is spending billions of dollars searching for current or past life in the Solar System. That was a major influence behind Perseverance, and it is why Jezero crater was chosen as landing site. It is why the Europa Clipper and DAVINCI and Dragonfly were funded. The jury is very much out on the abundance of alien life. If life developed twice in the solar system, it would radically alter our views. Very, very little is known about this subject.---Ghosts are similar. The majority of claims are probably wrong. It is easy to to conjecture things when nothing is there. At the same time, it is oh so easy to be dismissive on these grounds. There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio..." </blockquote>

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