The next frontier: Washington grapples with its latest space oddity
Isaac Asimov famously declared that he didn’t believe in "flying saucers." Asimov countered that he believed in "evidence" and "observation."
"I’ll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there’s evidence for it," Asimov said. "The wilder and more ridiculous something is however, the firmer and more solid the evidence should be."
The Trump administration released another batch of UFO files recently. This is part of making good on a promise to release videos and documents related to UAP, unidentified aerial phenomena. Bipartisan lawmakers pressed President Donald Trump to make good on this promise back in March. This release is the second group of material publicized by the government.
And what’s in it?
NEW UFO FILES REVEAL STARTLING REPORTS
A space oddity. Some 57 years in the making.
"They thought it was something, you know, penetrating the spacecraft, if you know what I mean," said Apollo 12 Command Module 12 pilot about what he and his colleagues saw in outer space in late 1969. That’s one snippet of audio which is now public.
The baffled astronauts tried to unravel a cosmic conundrum when they spotted weird beams of light bouncing around their spacecraft more than half a century ago.
"The streaks I saw were ones that I saw on the horizontal," said Apollo 12 Lunar Module Pilot Alan Bean. "The horizontal streaks were always a little bit above the center."
These were clips of audiotape the government recently dumped. Tales from tape never heard before about what some of humankind’s first space explorers experienced and observed when they slipped the surly bonds of Earth.
The president pledged to publicize as much unexplained material as possible.
"It's been in the minds of people for a long time," said President Trump in late April. "And I think some of it's going to be very interesting to people."
It’s a document dump that is out of this world. But it’s hard to quantify and understand exactly what it all means. Let alone if it provides "evidence," as Asimov would say, "which explains something, which to some, could be "ridiculous."
No one knows exactly what these videos and documents reveal. Especially when it comes to demonstrating that UFOs exist or that there are visitors to Earth from another planet.
But that doesn’t mean that the information isn’t remarkable.
EX-PENTAGON OFFICIAL SAYS UAP FILES REVEAL 'TREASURE TROVE' OF INTELLIGENCE DATING BACK TO THE 1940S
"Virtually speechless!" is how one military pilot characterized strange "orange orbs" which materialized near his helicopter during a flight last year.
Then there was a stationary pill-shaped object in the Middle East zipping off at ludicrous speed.
Then there was a celestial trinity of objects synchronously hovering over water in Iran.
One lawmaker who has long called for UAP transparency isn’t starstruck at the releases. Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., was skeptical before the Pentagon put out the latest tranche of information.
"The stuff they're dropping right now is just Deep State classic," said Burchett. "They won't show us some of the stuff that we've seen. They're going to show stuff that is easily identifiable."
But this information is far from easy to identify, quantify or even understand. The government can explain some weird sightings. At a 2022 House hearing on UAP, the Pentagon demonstrated how light refracting through certain military visual aids created an optical illusion. But the stories are legion about what can’t be explained or defined. The difference now is that Congress mandated the Pentagon create an office to document and study UAP.
And the government either can’t – or doesn’t want to explain a lot of what’s out there.
"We have been stonewalled. We have been blocked. We have had witnesses intimidated," said Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., on Fox. She asserted that former workers at the Pentagon UAP office were even "attacking" some witnesses and whistleblowers who have come forward.
But here’s the other challenge: understanding exactly what documents and videos the government has in its possession.
"This is not an easy thing to do. There's not one huge repository of all of these documents and videos and photos," said Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., on Fox.
Burlison is now suggesting the government "reverse engineer" what they find at certain "crash locations" or where people have discovered weird physical material here on terra firma.
"The White House and the DNI (Director of National Intelligence) is now looking at places to go investigate," said Burlison on Fox.
So people sift through the files in a quest to unearth evidence that is definitely un-Earth. But more information often yields more questions. And that’s to say nothing of the other-worldly expectations set the pending release of files and information. The bar is high. And while the release of information is intriguing, no one quite knows what it all means.
If you wanted proof of ET or revelations of a government conspiracy, you’re better off watching an old VHS tape.
We just don’t know what these files mean. And, in many cases, even are.
The document dump isn’t a nothing-burger. But a something-burger. Still, that doesn’t sate the appetite for those who are on a quest for the truth. And it likely just angers those who are convinced the government has something to hide.
TRUMP ADMIN RELEASES HIGHLY ANTICIPATED FILES DOCUMENTING UFOS, 'EXTRATERRESTRIAL LIFE'
On Fox, Burlison said he "personally" experienced "frustration" about declassifying information. But Burlison cautioned the Trump Administration against holding material back.
"I’ve seen those kind of videos," said Burlison. "I’m telling the administration through you at this moment that if they don’t release those, then I have the capabilities of getting those videos released."
In the meantime, people are sorting through the recently released material, trying to decode it.
"There's a whole bunch of big ones out my window now. It's just bright. Looks like the Fourth of July out around the window," exclaimed one astronaut in a just released soundbite.
So we’re accumulating a lot of "evidence" and "observation." Kind of what Isaac Asimov was looking for. But signs of life from other worlds? Not necessarily. This is why the Pentagon says there’s no evidence that the videos reveal something from outer space. But the military concedes that it can’t explain everything.
So the evidence will pile up.
Figuring out what it means is not the final frontier. But the next frontier.