UFOs & UAPs

I was introduced to the topic of UFOs (now called UAPs: Unidentified Aerial/Anomalous  Phenomenon by some) by a teacher I had at Ventura College in  the mid 90s. He casually said something about aliens coming here as if it's just a known thing. After class I asked him about it and asked for a book to read on the subject.  I was pretty incredulous about the whole idea at this point, but my teacher just seemed so confident about the subject and this is how it started. Here are some of the better sources in my opinion. There is a lot of stuff out there, these are just some of my favorites.  Also, scroll down for general commentary and more: 

Commentary:  

Over the years reading about UFOs (now being called UAPs by many) I have read and heard a lot of questions and arguments such as: how could the government keep this a secret so long? Why would aliens want to visit us and so on. I want to spend some time giving what I think are plausible answers to many of these questions. However, no matter if you think the answers or ideas are good or not, it doesn't change what Cmd. Fravor and his wingperson saw, it doesn't change all the sightings and seemingly impossible maneuvers, it doesn't change the leaks and spills from whistleblowers. Just because we might not understand a phenomenon, doesn't mean it isn't happening.  Monkeys in the jungle probably can't comprehend what humans are walking around doing, let's say an ecological survey, but it doesn't change that we are there and have reasons the monkeys could never even guess at or comprehend: maybe we're the monkeys?

So here's some of the stuff I hear a lot and my answers:

"There's no way to go faster than the speed of light, aliens could never come here.. it's too far."  Answer: There was a time when people thought flying was only for birds, and the technology of today would be complete magic to someone from 1000 or even fewer years ago.  An alien society could easily be thousands or even millions of years ahead of us technologically and it's ability to travel would be as mystical and impossible to us today as a helicopter would have been to the Egyptians. It's not like we broke the laws of physics in the last 1000 years, we just understand them better and have newer and more complete ideas, science, and technology about how to work with them. Quantum stuff is a good example. Entanglement and non-locality are mind bending and don't make sense, but it doesn't change the data. It's somewhat arrogant to think that we KNOW what can and can't be done with physics and technology.  This argument about science and technology covers any of the other questions people might skeptically ask such as, "how could any craft going that fast and doing such maneuvers not crush the pilots?" or "how could they get that much energy and store it?"  

"The government could never keep secrets like this for this long (there would be leaks)." They haven't kept it secret, there's been a bunch of leaks. This is why there a bunch of UFO books with reports from former government officials saying what they saw or know. There are released documents, and anonymous and open reporting.  Of course there are a bunch of UFO books and people attracted to the phenomenon who are "out there" and make the whole thing look bad and get a lot of attention for their bizarre claims, beliefs and activity, but that's true for any group. There are both Republicans and Democrats that are quite fringe and get an outsized amount of attention and make the other side think these extremists represent the party. They same is true for religions and other groups as well. Back the the point. There are leakers, and released information, but the "crazy people" make the whole things look silly and they get too much attention. Also, I think it's pretty clear there has been a culture of disinformation and suppression among the military at various levels to suppress reporting's and disclosure. Still, there have been leaks.  Check out the books I recommend.

"Why would aliens want to visit us? Where so silly/unevolved/etc...?" Any species that can travel interstellar distances is probably very scientific. We have scientists that spend their whole careers looking at things like sea sponges, or types of flies. I would think they would find us and our planet full of biodiversity interesting, at least a subsection of them. This brings us a possible answer to the next question I hear...

"Why wouldn't they just announce their presence?" It could be that they know the best way to study us is by not showing themselves. In science "reactivity" is when the presence of researchers influence the study.  It could be that to better study what we are really like, they don't want to make contact. It could be they are not even very interested in us: maybe they are more interested in our bacteria, or animal life, etc... I don't announce myself to the bugs in my backyard when I walk out there., and maybe that's how they see us, not worthy of open contact. Some have suggested that to announce their presence they would end up giving us tech (in a direct or round about way) that would be too dangerous for us to have given our nature.  Some have suggested they come to our planet to "fuel up" using sea water for hydrogen. Maybe it's something like that, they just fly in to get stuff and leave? Again, we may now know the answer: but it's doens't change the data. 

"Why hasn't NASA, etc... seen them yet?" Space is really big and we've seen very little of it. More so, don't have the resolution to see planets well. Even more the edge of our galaxy is 950,000 light years way. So any signal sent out that we could detect from the edge, for example, would have to be at least 950,000 years old. Maybe they sent signals that haven't gotten to us, but in the following years have found ways to make wormhole or gravity drive engines.  Speaking of gravity drives many people think this is the means "they" use to travel and they make pockets of gravity that bend space time. Regardless, it doesn't seem that that their technology requires them to straight line travel through space to our planet. This answer now moves on to the answer for the first question: maybe it's simply tech we don't understand, like some type of cloaking tech, jump drive, etc...? Regardless, we see them here. Just because we don't see them travel in space, doesn't disqualify the sightings by qualified people and the leaked knowledge. 

"If they come here, they will destroy us." (or some version of fearful stuff) If they wanted to they already  surly could have.  However, for them to get so advanced and still be alive suggests they have something of a peaceful nature or peaceful desires (at least with themselves). Otherwise the technology they have would probably have been used at one point to wipe themselves out (as we might do to ourselves). However, they could be quite malevolent to us and/or see us as without any semblance  of what we would call morality. Maybe they think of us just as resource: they way we've thought of other sentient, but less intelligent animals such as livestock? Nonetheless, if they wanted to simply wipe us out, unless they're waiting for something, they probably already could have.

"If elements of the government suspect or know that non-human intelligence has visited us, why wouldn't they tell us?" This one has a variety of possible answers. The main answer is, we don't know why for sure, but it doesn't change the data. We don't have to know someone's motives to know they are doing it. People often wonder things like "why would that guy do that?" or "why did he not like me?" and all types of other situations in which we simply don't know the reason a person, or a group did something. I will present in the next section, "Best Guesses," what some researchers have said. 

Best Guesses And Bigger Picture Ideas From Years of Reading UFO Stuff

Anytime you think about UFOs and talk to someone there seems to be layers. For example the first layer is the concept that could there be life elsewhere in the universe, most people are with you at this step.  The next steep is agreeing that it could be intelligent. Often most people concede this right away as well. Next, is to establish there are indeed Unidentified Fly Objects (or Unidentified Aerial/Anomalous Phenomena) UFOs or UAPs. This is also pretty clear. After that is probably to demonstrate that the witnesses in quite a few cases (read hundreds) are highly qualified, sometimes have seemingly nothing to gain (and sometimes clearly things to lose: mostly military here), and  that in many instances there are multiple witnesses  and/or radar or other technical readings of such objects. That these witnesses would not be easily mistaken by the glare off a windshield, the planet Venus, a plane, etc... The next step is looking at what they see: metallic appearing objects with no obvious signs of propulsion, no wings, no control surfaces, and can perform maneuvers that nothing anyone has ever seen a known technology able to do be vast margins (example going from 0 to Mach 2 in under a second, or making a 90 right turns while traveling at such speed). Furthermore, they are clearly intelligently controlled. Finally, they resemble nothing any country has ever been shown to have on the ground, in the air or anywhere. Technology can move pretty quick, but no other country could have developed something like this. After this step the next part is considering that it's an off-world intelligence. And to keep the options open that could mean: interstellar, trans -dimensional, or some such thing we couldn't even being to imagine. I am pretty much 99% here. 

The next steps are reserved generally for UFO enthusiasts, people who like to listen the UFO people speak, conspiracy junkies, and the maybe an increasing number of open minded (some of which, admittedly are too open-minded) people who are reading more recent articles and watching more recent videos from my first section. I would say knowing which one of those a person is, or you yourself are, depends on how much knowledge has been accumulated and how well they can synthesize it all. So, the next step is believing part of our government (probably in conjunction with some private industry) knows Aliens (whatever they are) have been coming here.  The  book "Above Top Secret" has good stuff on this. But you can also look to  David Grucsh, Christopher Mellon, Lue Elizondo,   the book "UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record," the whole story about the Roswell incident, Bob Lazar's story, Stanford Professor Garry Nolan, Nobel Prize Nominee Dr. Hal Puthoff, Dr. Eric Davis, who testified we have recovered materials to Congress, and Ret. Rear Admiral and Ph.D. Oceanographer Timothy Gallaudet who believes elements of the government know we're not alone as well as Colonel Karl E. Nell  .. If only 1 of these people or incidents is accurate it means that elements of the government know aliens exist and probably they have recovered materials and or craft. Also, if only 1 of these people are correct, it probably means that others are, to some extent, also correct: a type of convergence of people saying similar things. An interesting, example of this is that both Former Canadian Minster of National Defense Paul Hellyer and Retired brigadier general from Israeli, Haim Eshed, who was also the former chair of the Space Committee, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics and winner of the highest civilians honors you can get in Israel (the Chief of Staff Citation and the Israel Defense Prize), both who have come out and talked about UFOs and a "Galactic Federation" of Aliens. If only 1 highly decorated and "in-the-know" person mentioned the Galactic Federation it might seem they're losing their mind, but there are two guys doing so. This point about convergence of claims is important, and I am going to get to that, in particular with the case of Bob Lazar in the next paragraph. If you're feeling overwhelmed by all these names, I would start with Lue Elizondo, Christopher Mellon, and Eric Davis' testimony. I am 90% sure that elements in our government know for sure there is an non-terrestrial intelligence visiting us and that they have crafts and/or parts of their crafts in their possession. 

About Convergence and Bob Lazar. Lazar came out in 1989 and claimed to have worked at a base near Area 51 called S-4. While there he said he was briefed a little on the program but was then given his job trying to understand and reverse engineer the propulsion mechanism of recovered UFOs, of which he said there were many. He claimed he was told the aliens came from Zeta Reticuli, that they used an element number 115 (which wasn't on the period table at that time), that the aliens used craft that use a "gravity drive" to bend space-time to travel very very fast without the penalties of inertia. He claimed they have gravity emitters on the bottom of the craft and that when they really want to go fast they travel on their side. Over 20 years late we now have videos of saucers from all over the world rotating onto their side while flying high and/or fast (though not always), Element 115 has since been made (for a very short period of time), though Lazar says it's not the isotope the aliens used, and other whistleblowers have said we have worked to try to reserve engineer the multiple craft we have. I find it unlikely that as videos from around the world have come out (and of course some videos could be and are fake) they all thought to align their fakes with Lazar and show disks traveling on their side (the "Gimbal" video is a good example of this, but there's other videos as well). I am trying to say that I don't think people all over the world knew what Lazar said about how the craft fly and tailored their videos to match. Lazar has also passed multiple lie detector tests about his claims. There is stuff to doubt about Lazar and his life hasn't been perfect, but his story is consistent and more and more is being collaborated in a round about way. 

There are other places to go if you want to speculate further: (and weirder) there are the Cattle Mutilations, the ideas of being visited by different species (and the fact they all seem to speak to use telepathically), alien abductions (thought this isn't as weird to most UFO folks especially since the -now deceased -head of the Harvard Department of Psychiatry, John Mack believed in it after interviewing many of them first as a skeptic), and other elements of the phenomena that are even more fringe of which I just notice and move on. 

Finally, I wanted to relate some ideas about why elements and government are not being transparent with what they know. I will give a range of theories and guesses people have made from some that seem "more" reasonable, to some that seem quite out there. 1: The government(s) are scared of mass panic and society collapse. They are the best interest of civilization in mind and just want us to maybe slowly find out, if at all. Some people think this slow revel of the truth is happening right now. An extra thing to mention is that some UFO people think that perhaps some of the people don't want to let out the truth because they have been willfully hiding something that can get them into trouble with congress and the government and the people as it wasn't their info to hide. 2: The government is trying to horde the technology for the military. Whistleblower, David Grusch says there is an "arms race" between the U.S. and allies, China, and Russia to see who can figure out the technology first. Letting it out would end up causing citizens to demand full transparency and the monopolization of the technology would no longer be possible. 3: Another take on this is held by UFO researcher, Dr. Steven Greer. He thinks the governments don't want the technology to get into the hands of regular people as we would then have virtually free and unlimited energy and the big companies that run the government suppress the technology for the reasons of profit and control. 4: Another reason is that aliens have been abducting people and once people find out that aliens are real, it won't be a big step to figure out abductions are real too and that the governments not only knew this was going on, but can do nothing to stop it and chaos, and fear will reign. Some people (this if far out there) think there has been an agreement with the aliens to trade elements of their technology with us with us allowing them to adduct a certain number of people per year or whatever. Even further "out there", some think the aliens haven't held up their end of the deal. Off the top of my head those are the main guesses/theories/conspiracies about why the government(s) haven't been transparent with citizens that elements within them know that, indeed, aliens (non-human intelligence of some sort at least) has been visiting. Of course there is always the idea that the government is so disorganized they really don't know what they're up to or how to do it or know what they know.....?  An interesting and maybe bigger question might be: why haven't the aliens openly contacted us?

What Might Disclosure Bring: Hopes and Fears

Someday if this stuff is true, there might be disclosure from the powers that be that indeed Non-Human Intelligence has been visiting us. Maybe this revelation will be on their own initiative, maybe forced by public demand, maybe it will be the aliens that revel themselves. In any instance of world-wide realization of Non-Human Intelligence (alien) life existing there are various hopes and fears that many people, including myself, have. 

In the past I have been optimistic about society learning about the existence of aliens. My thoughts have been that it would make us feel more like brothers and sisters and as one on our planet. It would give us insight into the nature of reality, the universe and settle and reframe many philosophical and religious debates. I have hoped it would make us a more scientific, and a less religious and nationalistic people.  Furthermore, I would hope it would make us more hopeful for a peaceful future as the aliens clearly must have found a way to live longer than we've been around and with much greater technology without blowing themselves up or some other human induced doomsday. Finally, it might be that they share with us technology that helps us live better, but maybe even better, social reforms that allow us to live better (better ways to govern, learn, and otherwise organize society).  In the end, even if things go well overall, there will be some of the issues from below at levels that don't significantly impact society. 

There is a term that is being used more recently called "Catastrophic Disclosure," that conveys many concerns and fears about the world-wide knowledge of aliens coming to light.  One of these concerns is a phenomenal distrust of government resulting in government being either ineffective, or in attempt to keep order, overreaching.  There is the fear that too big of a critical mass of people would turn to fear and push the government to militarize at all costs with social services and freedoms falling by the wayside.; even worse might be actively trying to war on aliens, that far outpace us technologically, such that we create or escalate tensions or hostilities. Another concern is the retreat of  too many people to fanatical interpretations religion that may at the least set society back, or possibly be disruptive through wars and terror.  Of course, the worst thing would be if there is some information released that cause devastating reactions from or about the aliens themselves, but that's pretty out there.  An example of this is the abuduction phenomenon. If it comes out that yes, there are aliens, but yes

More Seemingly Good To Decent Stuff To Look At, Weigh, Consider, and To Back Up Some Of the Above

Vidoes:

I'll start with videos (of course the internet if FULL of videos and many others are good as well - and many are terrible- and move on to photos, books, and articles:

Photos: 

Lue Elizondo Claims there are 4k videos and photos that the Department of Defense hasn't released yet, but still there are not that many great photos, however, more are coming out now as we have more people with better equipment running around on planet earth.  

Articles:

Books: 

Some are Foundational and Historical Classics, Some are Just Good, Some are Both

Things That Give the Experience a Bad Name

There are many things that give the notion of belief in UFOs a bad name. However, some are easier to detect than others. It's easy to see some stuff on YouTube as sensationalistic, but other people and things are much harder unless you have back ground knowledge it would be easy to think they are a good, reputable source.  Note: some people would put Bob Lazar in this category.