Somewhere in the Skies - A NASA Oceanographer and UAP (w/ Dr. Paula Bontempi)

Episode Date: July 23, 2023

On episode 327 of SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES, we are joined by Oceanographer and former NASA Deputy Director of Earth Sciences, Dr. Paula Bontempi. Dr. Bontempi spent over 16 years as the program manager for Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry at NASA Headquarters, as well as the Lead for NASA’s Carbon Cycle and Ecosystems Focus Area before becoming the Earth Science Division’s Acting Deputy Director in 2019. She is currently the Dean of the Graduate School of Oceanography at the University of Rhode Island. Dr. Bontempi is also a part of the NASA independent UAP Study team. Today, she discusses the recent NASA UAP public meeting, what the expect with the upcoming public UAP report, and the importance and role of our oceans in the study of UAP and beyond. Follow Dr. Paula Bontempi on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/drpaulabontempi VOTE for us in the People's Choice Podcast Awards: www.podcastawards.com Join us at ANOMACON 2023: www.anomacon.com Order Ryan’s new book: https://a.co/d/4KNQnM4 Patreon: www.patreon.com/somewhereskies Website: www.somewhereintheskies.com YouTube Channel: CLICK HERE Book your Cameo video with Ryan at: https://bit.ly/3kwz3DO Official Store: CLICK HERE Buy Somewhere in the Skies coffee: https://bit.ly/3rmXuap Order Ryan’s older book: https://amzn.to/3PmydYC Email Ryan directly at: [e-mail] Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryansprague51 Twitter: @SomewhereSkies Instagram: @SomewhereSkiesPod Read Ryan’s Articles by CLICKING HERE Opening Theme Song, "Ephemeral Reign" by Per Kiilstofte Copyright © 2023 Ryan Sprague. All rights reserved. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/somewhere-in-the-skies. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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discover your favorite oat at Planet Oat.com. This is somewhere in the sky. with Ryan Sprague. Welcome to Somewhere in the Skies. I'm your host, Ryan Sprague. And I just wanted to drop in with some exciting news. We've recently been nominated for the 2023 People's Choice Podcast Awards. We were nominated in the category of storytelling and drama

for our audio documentary and case history episodes. Voting is now open. So please do me a huge favor and head on over to podcastawards.com. and be sure to register and then vote for somewhere in the skies in the storytelling and drama category. It takes just a few moments but would make a world of difference for somewhere in the skies. Again, vote for somewhere in the skies at podcastawards.com. Thank you so much for your support. Today, our guest is Dr. Paula Bentempe.

Paula is an oceanographer who has led the use of satellites in marine science during her positions in NASA and as the Dean of the Graduate School of Oceanography at the University of Rhode Island. Dr. Bentempe spent over 16 years as the program manager for ocean biology and biogeochemistry at NASA headquarters, as well as the lead for NASA's carbon cycle and ecosystems focus area, and NASA's carbon cycle science research lead before becoming the Earth Science Division's acting deputy director in 2019. She's also taught the Earth Science module for NASA's astronaut training class over the last several years. In 2019, she was named a fellow of the Oceanography Society and was awarded both the Ocean Sciences Award from the American Geophysical Union and the NASA

Exceptional Service Medal. She most recently was selected as a member of the NASA U.A.B.S. study team and took part in the recent panel and contributed to the upcoming public UAP report. Today, she joins us to talk all about the NASA UAP panel, what to expect from the report, and then we discuss the mysteries that lay not just somewhere in our skies, but in the depths of our oceans as well. Here's our interview with Dr. Paula Pentempi. Paula, thank you so much for joining me today on some somewhere in the skies.

My pleasure. So I think a lot of our viewers are people who are really into UFOs. They may recognize you from the recent UAP panel that NASA did, that they live stream, this four-hour event. I was glued to my screen, watching every moment of this and jotting down every name of every panel member and kind of looking into what they've done, their experience. experience, kind of their specialties and why they were chosen for this panel. And you really stuck out, I think, to a lot of people primarily because of your knowledge and your expertise in oceanography,

which was very unique and refreshing, I think, for people who are kind of used to train in their eyes on the skies. I mean, look at the name of my podcast. But yeah, yeah, so I was so happy that you are willing to come on here today and speak with us. Sure. No, thank you for the opportunity. It's my pleasure. Always happy to talk to, you know, the public in any capacity. And yes, no doubt when I was assigned to the panel and the request for my, you know, you know, participation came in, I was like, hmm, you know, I looked at who else was on the panel and thought, you know, you use the word stick out. I mean, social media was lit up like, what is the purpose of an oceanographer on this panel?

And I kind of also had the same question. But I had spent 18 years at NASA headquarters and had just left two years prior. So, you know, it was an interesting topic. And I was game for seeing, you know, what everything was about. Awesome. Well, I'm so happy you did. I do want to kind of dig into the panel angle to all of this in just a bit. But if you don't mind, I'd love to rewind.

and kind of get an idea of who you are. What kind of got you interested in our oceans and what eventually made you want to become an oceanographer, the origin story, as we call it. Yeah, no, I appreciate the question. So it's pretty simple. Apparently the story goes when I was like four. I said to my parents one day that I wanted to study the ocean,

and they were like, you know, I remember my dad having this really big smile and my mom being really angry. And I, you know, I just remember, you know, that kind of thing. And it's just something I knew I wanted to do. And I later found out, you know, that my father's family were commercial fishermen in Italy and emigrated to the U.S. You know, in the hopes of a better life when several of the relatives had died at sea. And I think that was the root of why my mom was so upset is that that calling was just part of who I was.

and the rest is history. I went to undergrad and graduate school twice for advanced degrees in ocean science. And the funny part about the NASA link is that I was studying phytoplankton ecology and their very tiny plant-like single-celled algae that live in the ocean. They're the bottom of the food chain. And I loved studying them for my master's degree. And I went into satellite oceanography, quite frankly, because I thought the whole thing was BS. identifying phytoplankton and looking at them through a microscope.

How could you possibly do this from space? And the rest is history, and it's my fault. Because I joined NASA headquarters in 2003, and I stayed there for 18 years until I went back to academia. So I've always had a jaw to the ocean. I've always had an interest in how the ocean is part of the Earth system. And definitely my time at NASA headquarters made me not only a better Earth scientist, but to think about oceans across the solar system.

You know, what's the purpose of our oceans on the earth? How could that be an analog for studying oceans that we might discover on other worlds, the life within it, potentially, et cetera. So it's all linked and it's all very exciting and all new frontiers of exploration. Oh, that's fascinating. You know, we're learning more and more each day, you know, things like these exoplanes. or the moons of planets within even our own solar system, possibly having oceans or signs of previous oceans.

So I love that link that, you know, you're kind of looking at biological life in our own oceans and what that could possibly tell us about the possibility. I like to make that clear to people, the possibility of life on other planets in terms of how we kind of structure that here on Earth, right? Yeah. I mean, the question that people always ask, right, is have we discovered life elsewhere? And we haven't yet. The universe is a really big place, right? In my mind, and this is just, you know, Palo Ban Tempe human thinking about it, it would be really depressing if we were the only organisms out there. And Earth were the only planet with any life whatsoever. But what I love is the advances in technology that people develop. like in James Webb Space Telescope, building on Hubble Space Telescope's history,

to peer really far into our universe and beyond, the opportunities for people to explore all the edges of everything that we know to exist, you know, all the opportunity for industry and philanthropy and nonprofits to get together, all of the agencies of the world to get together and really think about where there are opportunities for new technology and innovation, And this is what gets students really excited, right? Like, we want to inspire the next generation of explorers. So how do we do that?

We show them things we never thought existed. And then they're bitten. And they just want to explore as well. So, you know, those are the links that I think are really incredible and certainly want to be opportunities for everybody. Right, right. Well, I guess that kind of brings us up to today. I'd love to hear a little bit more about your time at NASA in terms of those 18 years spent there and kind of what you did there. So I guess, yeah, before we get to the panel, I know that's what everyone wants to hear about.

But I'm more fascinated about that link that you mentioned. So what did like a typical day-to-day look like when you were working at NASA? And I don't know if I even asked, what was your actual position there? Yeah, so I was hired as the program manager for ocean biology and biogeochemistry. And that's all the biology and the chemistry linked to the biology and ecology of the ocean. And I sat in the, then we were codes, but now it is called the Earth Science Division. and the Earth Science Division was about 72 people who managed all of the research associated with Earth science and then all of the satellite missions, the Earth observing satellite missions,

that were current and in development or formulation associated with looking at different aspects of the Earth. So that could be the land, the ocean, the atmosphere, ice, etc. So going back in time, one of the big discoveries I think that everybody knows that's associated with the NASA Earth Science Division now is the hole in the ozone layer from the 70s and 80s. That is definitely something that was, you know, generated by NASA fieldwork, using aircraft to look at what was happening in the atmosphere. And so we also added an aspect in Earth science that's called Applied Sciences, which is taking the basic research, the discoveries that happen in the research programs

and transitioning it into operations or management, meaning can it be used for active management of aquatic resources, atmospheric resources, treasurer resources, in support of sister federal agencies that do that kind of work and lead into new policy potentially. So it's sort of management and policy relevant science. So it was building satellite missions. It was funding research. It was high risk, high yield.

It was developing new observational technologies, institute and remote. And it was just fun, really inspirational. That's awesome. That's so good to hear. So I guess, okay, let's do it. Let's get to the mood of it. The UAP panel, this live stream that I know hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people watched. What do you feel was your key takeaways from the panel?

Well, I know we still have the pending report that's going to come out. I'd love to touch on a little bit later, if there is anything you can share. But yeah, what are sort of your key takeaways from the panel? So I'll tell you, one of the things that really struck me going into it is we would have this conversation around data. Do we have enough data? Do we have enough information? They gave us a couple of test cases to look at. All of them are public.

the USS Nimitz event, things like that. And we heard firsthand accounts from people who had witnessed something. Okay. And could we confirm it was an unidentified anomalous phenomenon? Or was it something that we were like, oh, if you look at this information and that information and put it together, we can tell you that it isn't something traveling over the surface of the ocean at, you know, Mach 20. It's actually, you know, a artifact of, the camera that you're using to look at it plus what your eye limitations are. So we did explore a little bit like that. And I think one of the panelists, Josh Sumeter, gave an example at the panel of the parallax error,

that one used in and to go fast anomaly. So that was a really interesting thing. But what struck me is everybody said, oh, we don't have enough data. We don't have enough data. And I'm sitting there thinking, oh, my God, we have a ton of data through NASA. you know, what are they talking about? We'd have these big debates. And the key part was we don't have enough of the right data.

Okay, we don't have enough information. We have a lot of information about the Earth system. We have a lot of information about certain things associated with space, but we don't have the right information to examine and understand all of the reported, unidentified anomalous phenomena out there. So one of the panel's charges was, well, what do we need? where is the opportunity? What should we do? So more and higher quality data dedicated to UAP was definitely one of the big takeaways. The other big takeaway for me was the stigma associated

with reporting. Now, if one thing has happened, especially in the United States of America, if not worldwide, it's just you witness something at work, you witness something every day, and it could be an event of harassment of some sort, a crime, and you go, oh, my God, what do I do with this information? I'm scared. Well, it's times a million when it comes to reporting UAP, right? Because people say, oh, my God, people are going to think I'm crazy. I'm going to lose my job.

I'm going to lose my family. They're going to think I'm nuts, you know, and that's something that we have to work on. So how do we remove that stigma for reporting? That was the other big thing we talked about. Yeah, yeah, I think those were two wonderful takeaways. The destigmatization, I can't even say the word, Paul. No, I'm with you.

You have to buy you. De-stigmatizing. Yeah, I know. This topic, you know, I've been interested in UFOs for more than half my life. And that was one of the biggest challenges that I've struggled with my entire life is, who do I talk to about this? my father and I saw something when we were younger and he kind of just stamped it down and decided not to pursue trying to figure out what it was where clearly my life went a completely different way. But it was hard. It was lonely. I tell friends and they'd make fun of me. But now it seems we're living in a world where NASA is doing a panel on UAP. The Department of Defense has opened a, office to investigate this and is now working with NASA. And this topic seems to be more widely

accepted gradually. We're kind of seeing that stigma, I think, shed. And it's wonderful for people like me and, you know, the hundreds and thousands of people all over the world who've seen things they can't explain. But like you said, what do you do with that? Who do you turn to? So yeah, it's, it's great. So the who do you turn to, right? I mean, that is something we spent a lot of time discussing. If you're a commercial airline pilot or even just a private airline pilot, right? You have your own plane. You like to fly. You see something. What do you do with that? And you go, well, if I call the FAA and report it in the United States, you know, are they going to pull my license right away? Right. And so how to destigmatize that? If you go across social media, you know, you can start to sort of crowdsource a little bit when events happened, right? You can see clusters of people saying, my God, did you see that over Cincinnati, Ohio, you know, today? Not that that something happened there, but, you know, and people start to talk about it. So I think, like, social media has facilitated people who have seen something and want to report something in groups. At least there's

that bit of support there. And that's important, right? And what happens next is really up to a number of different national and international agencies. Where do you go to report an event? What might that look like? Should there be a website? Because my inbox, like all the other panelists, is just filled with people who have witnessed something and want to share their photos, their experience, et cetera.

They want to give that experience to somebody and be told it's okay, we'll look into it, right? And making that connection for somebody, if that is something that, you know, the United States, federal government, the international governments together can do, I think that will be an important step. Absolutely. Well, and you all stated, I think, very eloquently, the right data that we need to continue to try to understand these UAP and the challenges that you've all faced.

So that's kind of, you know, I feel like this panel was more of showing what the challenges are in terms of what you're trying to do. and now it's a matter of what will this report be that comes out, you know, hopefully later this summer. So I guess my next question would be, I guess a two-prong question. What did you make of the DOD's involvement with your panel with the head of Arrow, Sean Kirkpatrick? And I guess on the flip side, now what happens? What happens next and kind of what is the team doing to distribute this eventual report? Good questions. So Sean Kirkpatrick is a great guy.

He was very transparent and open with us. And he's got a very challenging job, as you can imagine. And so, you know, he gave a commentary at the May meeting, the public meeting for the independent study team that was very clear. you know, there have been over 800 UAP reported and they're able to use existing data to understand all but maybe two to five percent of them. And that two to five percent, the question becomes, what data do we need to actually really examine those? Because there are lots of things that go into reports, right? Like everyone knows when they've seen something odd. They're like, did I see something? Or am I just tired? You know, so the human eye, the brain,

when we're tired, when we're under stress, you know, can make a lot of funny things seem very real, right? That could be explainable by existing data or natural data in the natural environment. So that is one thing I think that the panel discussed is, you know, for that two to five percent, what do we need to look at? Where are the opportunities? What should we be collecting? Where should we be looking? Where are we not looking that we already have data?

So we did discuss that quite a bit. And forgive me, Ryan, remind me of the second part of your question. Of course. No, not at all. What I guess kind of, I'm actually going to edit the question. What does the process look like now for the team to present? Yeah, the next steps for this eventual report. And I guess off of that, your involvement.

Like what are you kind of bringing to? the eventual report. So right now the team is in the last pieces of debating, you know, the final wording, right? We're looking at our recommendations. We're looking at our findings. We're making sure that they are clear, understandable, and implementable that there aren't any, you know, potentially unfunded mandates in there, right? Where the United States will tell NASA or some other, you know, agency or division, you must go do this without the funds to actually do it properly, you know, that kind of thing. And that does happen in governments across the world all the time, right? You receive direction to go and do something, but there's really not enough money to do it

properly. And the scientists and engineers and personnel associated with the independent study team are really focused on just making sure we've heard, you know, from the public, we've heard the information that we have from the experts that we have. We've held this public meeting. We've gotten feedback and we want to make sure we address as much of it as possible. What happens with the independent study team, the next steps, is really up to NASA and the United States government, right? Do they want to, I'm making stuff up now, speculating.

Do they want to keep this on as experts for the future as NASA and the U.S. government go forward and try and implement? a UAP-type program for reporting and study, do they disband us and we're done, and they think about next steps for the future based on the report. For me, as an oceanographer, you know, about six or seven months into the UAP independent study team process, the National Defense Authorization Act redefined the A from aerial to anomalous. And that means they're not just looking at what's in the atmosphere, but they're looking at what might be under the ocean and what might be in space, right?

So we didn't have enough time when that pivoted to really look at anomalous phenomena, everything that might have happened under the ocean, everything in space. So maybe there's a next step there for the panelists or for a new panel to actually examine that. But we tried to address everything as best as we can and keep the right. report short. You know, I don't think it'll be 400 pages long. It'll be actually, you know, readable and implementable in the recommendations is our hope. Awesome. Well, that's exciting to think, you know, that simple switch of one word broadens the entire, you know, scope of what you will be looking at. So I look forward to hopefully your involvement actually increasing on a lot of

that as this moves forward to, right? Yeah. Yeah. I have a really funny story about that. If you have a second, I'll tell it to you. Yeah, please. The Summer in the Sky's podcast is free to listen to every week. But if you would like to help support the show, we have a very active Patreon page where you give what you think the show is worth. In return, you'll get early access to the main show, bonus episodes, and priority to ask our guests your listener questions. Your support truly makes the show continue and grow.

So to learn more and to join, visit patreon.com slash somewhere skies. I was, you know, we really, you know, did not talk to, you know, there were many things. There was nothing that wasn't transparent about this panel. But, you know, I definitely learned a lot of information that as a oceanographer and a scientist, I would go home and I would be like, you know, my husband would be like, what's the most interesting thing? You heard it at this meeting today, sweetie, you know, and I was like, oh, well, I don't know. I really have a lot to digest. I have to think about it.

talking with a friend of mine who's also an optical oceanographer, right? So looking at the transmission of light under the ocean and what we can see in detail from space and things like that. And she and I were chatting. And I said, you know, what if there are reports, UAP reports from under the ocean? And she goes, well, think about it this way. The ocean is a really big place, right? So if you integrate vertically, it's 96% of the available living space on our planet. And just at the surface to cover 71% of the Earth's surface. And she goes, do you actually think that if there is a person or a craft that encounters a UAP under the ocean that that's random? And I was like, I don't know. I never thought about it. And she goes, you don't think that would be intentional? And I was like,

I don't know. You know, I've never thought about it. So it is funny to think about like how big the ocean on our Earth is and if people are encountering things and reporting them, you know, let's say they're a like a submarine pilot or something like that, right? And they see this odd thing. Would they report it? It's the same kind of stigma as it would be if an airline pilot saw something. So, but that begs the question, you know, she's always said this, we've always talked about this and I'm like, I don't know. I've never thought about whether, you know, a chance encounter is really random or whether that's intentional by whatever's encountered. And it makes you a little like, hmm, that can't be, can it?

And when I tell that story to other people, other scientists, you know, some are just like, fuck, you guys are so funny. You know, and others are like, I don't know, it's a good question. Like the ocean is a huge place. What would it take to have a random encounter in the ocean? Has anybody ever thought about that? I was like, I don't know. So, yeah.

Yeah, it's not. It's kind of, it's kind of, I'm sure. sure you think about this all the time, but for me, it was kind of mind-blowing. I hadn't thought about our home planet like that, you know. Right. Well, it is mind-blowing to me even still, because again, you know, as a UFO researcher, again, we're so trained on the skies and what's happening around us. And we don't necessarily think of UFOs happening below us in terms of our oceans. And I know, you know, the cliché is we know so little about our oceans as much as we do outer space.

And I do want to touch on that whole other angle to all of this as well, Paula, in terms of the mysteries of the ocean. But it does blow my mind to also think, yeah, if there was some sort of encounter with anomalous phenomena under the surface of the ocean, astronomically, statistically, huge in terms of was it happenstance or was it on purpose? You truly do have to wonder. So, man, yeah, that blew my mind when you said it too, to be completely honest. I mean, NASA's, you know, mission is to explore, right, and discover and research. And that may be the furthest reaches of the universe or that may be our home planet where that unknown is. So they are squarely in their mission.

You know, I think a lot of people don't know that NASA studies the Earth. And I hope, you know, more do after this podcast. But I certainly have always gotten the question when I travel. You know, people say, you're an oceanographer and you used to work for NASA. And they look at you like you have six heads, right? And you go, yes, let me explain why, you know, and what we do. And how we work with our other sister agencies in the U.S. and across the earth in other space agencies.

And, you know, if we can take the time to educate people as to the full breadth of NASA's mission and that link to the unknown and new technology and science and honestly, the rigor that is required to do the research that they do, I mean, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and what that data is to substantiate, forgive me, now I can't talk, those extraordinary claims, I think, is important. And that was part of what we looked at. Well, kind of to wrap up the NASA UAP panel portion of this, Paula, there are a lot of people, especially in the UFO community, quote unquote, who kind of have always looked at NASA as an enemy

that they're covering up these, you know, these photos and these videos of spaceships from other planets coming into our, you know, our solar system and into our atmosphere and, you know, images have been scrubbed and they're keeping the data from us. And in the panel, you guys did touch on this, actually. What is your take on kind of that whole conspiratorial aspect to NASA's involvement with the UAP? And maybe sort of demystify that for us, if you don't mind. Yeah, I can try. So I appreciate that question.

I have never, in my 18 years at the agency, I have never, felt like we weren't being transparent about something. As I said, you know, the scientific rigor that NASA puts their findings through, through the peer review and otherwise are absolutely enormous. So if they're going to go public with something and they go, like all of the data that are collected by all of the instruments that taxpayers pay for is public. There's no embargo period, everything is freely available. You know, you and I could log in tomorrow to one of the NASA databases and download the exact same thing and use it for completely different purposes. And that's one really key part is the free and open data access. The other is, you know,

the public affairs component of NASA is very, very good about telling stories. Discoveries, ideas, high-risk, high-yield science, technology development. Like, I have never encountered somebody saying, we're not going to show this or we need to change this, not in my career. And I think at the panel meeting in May, Scott Kelly told a story. Somebody asked that question, and I think he answered it and said, never in his experience as an astronaut. You know, had he ever been directed or experienced someone who said, you know, no, no,

you can't show this photo, you can't show that, you know. So I understand, you know, that some people may have a reason for having those conspiracy theories or those ideas that that's happened. But I cannot say that that's ever happened in my time. That's fair enough. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to say, I take your word on that.

Well, okay. Moving away from the UFO panel, again, like we mentioned earlier, the oceans are, so mysterious. And I was actually having this conversation with a fellow UFO researcher recently about the oceans and how undiscovered they are. So I guess my question would be, in all of your time, you know, as an oceanographer, as working with Earth science, have you ever come across any sort of unexplained phenomena when, within our oceans? Or, or what are some of the more mysterious things you've encountered in our oceans? Yeah.

So the ocean is a big place, right? And one of the most fascinating things to me is when someone says, oh, no one has seen ever gotten video footage of a giant squid, right, live. And then maybe 10 years ago or so, all of a sudden, a group of researchers were diving in a submersible. and they appeared a giant squid, which were like these mythical things that wound up in stories, and people were pretty sure they existed, but nobody had ever encountered one, right? And that kind of ties back to the earlier story about, like, is it chance? You know, is it random?

What were the conditions that brought them together? But the bottom line is that there are always new discoveries to be made when we explore our oceans. It is, you know, largely unexplored compared to, you know, mapping the surface of certain heavenly bodies like the moon. Certainly, I don't think we've gone drilled deep into the moon to explore what's on its interior. But the oceans itself, like exploring down deep is such a challenge. And I think the life, I think what's happening down there physically, I think the sea floor, there's a lot of discoveries waiting to be made. made. Plus, I think that, you know, from the moment we're born, we're touching things to see if they're hot or cold or smooth or rough. And we're just, it's in our nature to just reach out and

want to see what's out there in the world. And I don't think the ocean is any different. So people are really fascinated by this. I'd say the other piece of that is, you know, and I don't know whether this is okay to bring it up, but the world is changing. The climate is changing of our Earth system. everybody around me knows it, they see it, they knock on my door and say, you know, Paula, I don't see nearly as many honeybees or monarch butterflies or things I used to see in the neighborhood. You know, in the month of June, what do you think is happening? It's awfully warm too. It's never this warm in the state of Rhode Island, you know, and I'm like, well, you know, one data point doesn't point to anything in one particular day, but when you look at something over time, you can see how our earth is changing. And one of the key parts about the deep ocean is that it's very difficult to get to. So there could be lots of changes happening down there. You know, what's normal, what's regular, what's something anomalous.

We don't know enough about our home planet yet to really describe that or understand it. So there are a lot of discoveries waiting to be made here as well as abroad. Absolutely. You know, the Earth seems to be screaming to us that, Things need to change. So I'm definitely with you on that. And I think you're right. Kind of zooming out and looking at the bigger picture. You know, I live, breathe, sleep, UFOs. That's my entire life. But it's conversations like this speaking to you where I'm like, okay, we can talk UFOs, but we can also link that to the bigger picture, the bigger questions. What is this Earth? What is this planet that we've, you know, evolved on? And where did we come from? Where are we going? There's so many big profound questions that I think can come from something like this.

You know, the question of, are we alone or not? When we're still asking that same question on our own planet, are we even alone? Have we discovered all there is to discover on our own planet? And I think I would hope and assume you agree that, no, we have not. Yeah, no, we haven't. And that's the really fun part. like, um, thinking about all the, like if everybody out there just sat down and listed all the places

they wanted to travel to, right? You know, what would be on your top three list where you're like, I've always wanted to go here. You have to ask yourself why. And when I talk to people, it's almost always like, oh, I would love to see, you know, K2. I would, I would love to see Mount Everest. I would love to see the Great Wall of China. You know, something is always like this unknown, discovery, this unknown world that people just want to experience. And there's a lot of that under the ocean. You know, you go to a conference with 3,000 oceanographers and they're talking about these unbelievable nuances that they've discovered in the ocean's chemistry, the ocean's biology, the ocean's ecology. We have things like marine heat waves occurring. What does that do, you know, to what's

happening to all the living parts of the ocean? Sea level rise, whole government. are dedicating their lives to can we build sustainable structures that are natural? So the intersection of the natural and the built environment is not so stark and impactful in the sense of damage we're doing to the environment. That's even more or greater than we would have otherwise. And so it's an interesting question depending on whether you're an engineer, a scientist, the health professional, you know, whether you're just a person who's like, I love living on the water. What can I do to protect my property? You know, how can I garden more efficiently so I don't have an impact on our planet? And these are the large numbers of questions I get all the time as people

are like, what can I do? You know, this is what I'm interested in. Can you connect me with opportunity? You know, and finding someone's passion and matching them to something that they can do to sort of explore new dimensions of their passion, that's very fun. Absolutely. I think kind of harnessing people's curiosity and interests can really benefit everyone. And I think that's pretty cool. Well, I guess that's to kind of wrap things up. What can people do, both in terms of when it comes to this UFO panel, you know, you stress that this is for the public. NASA is being transparent. This is an independent study. This isn't going to be put. in a file cabinet back in the Department of Defense's office. Yeah, right? In the covenant at the end of readers of the last arc. Yeah.

No, I hope not. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So what role does the public play, I guess, in terms of that? So to me, like, citizen science is a huge thing, especially when it comes to UAPs, right? You know, there was that tagline, if you see something, say something. And somehow the government has to normalize that, right? Show people that there's a pathway for reporting where there isn't a stigma.

Also, as I said, I think social media is one place where people can witness something collectively that they don't understand and start talking about it. So scientists out there, budding scientists, the public, students, you know, K through 12, all of them, you know, have a role to play. If you can take a photo of something, if you can describe it, if you can think about it, if you can examine it with your telescope, if you're a budding astronomer, I think that the one recommendation that the panel made was that there is a pathway somehow for reporting things like this and people can start to normalize that.

That will absolutely lead to some new discoveries, which is the other really cool part, right? How many times do we hear about amateur astronomers discovering new stars or new bodies that are orbiting out there in space? And I think that, you know, keep exploring is how I feel about it. And I think the public should feel like they have a real role in that. Absolutely. You know, I was so invigorated when I think it was yesterday. We discovered that perseverance on Mars was going to be bringing back possible organic materials. So I guess kind of putting you on the spot here, Paula.

What did you make of that news? I know there's still a lot to be discussed and deciphered with all of that. But yeah, any thoughts on this kind of breaking news on Mars perseverance? I mean, for me, I just think that's awesome. That is awesome. Like, I hope, you know, I'm sure all the scientists have thought about, okay, if we really do bring back organic material, you know, how do we make sure that we don't possibly contaminate, you know,

the earth with organics that weren't meant to be here. And certainly transporting material back. I mean, this is, like, let's think about that. That is mind-blowing that we are able to send technology to another planet, sample it, and bring it home. Like, talk about sliding pieces of the puzzle of what's out there, where we come from, what might be on another body. could we one day travel there? You know, that is like, talk about head exploding. That is the absolute frontier of exploring the unknown, you know, and that is the thing that, that is how we generate new scientists and engineers and our students.

They go, that, I want to do that. Like, I remember the first time I taught the astronaut training class, I was chatting with some of the junior astronauts and they, the core members, and they were like, I want to cross-country ski from one pole of Mars to the other. And I was like, awesome. You know, I was like, you're nuts. I love it. That's awesome. So that kind of opportunity to sample organics, bring them home, study them, understand Mars, understand our solar system, our planets, potentially even our Earth. That's amazing. Picture this. Me, Reese Witherspoon, in London, ordering fish and chips so often they might start wrapping me in paper.

traveling with my Wells Fargo autographed journey card, so I earn rewards wherever I book travel, five times points with hotels, four times with airlines, three times on restaurants and other travel, and one point on other purchases. Imagine getting rewarded for eating a toad in the hole. Wait, what is a toad in a hole? Visit Wells Fargo.com slash autograph journey. Terms apply. Absolutely. Frontier. That's kind of where I want to leave things, Paula. What are you most excited about with the future of oceanography, of our continued exploration of both space and our oceans. What comes next, both for you personally, as a oceanographer, as a professor, what comes next for you? And what do you think comes next for the entire scientific community in terms of our oceans?

So I'm a satellite girl, right? So for me, NASA is about to launch a mission called PACE, the plankton, aerosol, cloud, and ocean ecosystem mission that will launch in January of next year. That's a 20-year labor of love by me and many, many other people, hundreds of other people, and they are phenomenal. And that will be the first time we will have what's called hyperspectral views of not only our oceans, but our atmosphere simultaneously. and we'll be able to look at down to almost a cellular level, like what's going on in the ocean ecologically. And that's going to be amazing for understanding how our ocean ecosystem actually functions, and that will lead to supporting information for things like major fisheries and seafood security, as well as understanding things like algal blooms and the role that they play

in the ocean. So I'm excited about that. If I wanted to be really pedantic, I would say the next thing would be a blue lightar, actually a laser maximized for ocean observations. That penetrates the ocean down to three optical depths. That's a really fancy way of saying a whole lot deeper than we can get with traditional ocean observing satellites from space. Very exciting to see what's happening really deep in the ocean from space and maybe have that view every couple of days, which would be incredible. The other thing is, now you've got me on a roll, right? I think Earth data are exploding. We are gathering so much information about what's happening in our Earth system

and to actually have the modeling and analysis capability in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and just overall, you know, high performance computing. I think it's going to be really important. So there are all sorts of frontiers out there that, you know, we should be pushing that will give us information about bringing all those aspects of our Earth system and our planets for that matter together and looking at things holistically. And again, you know, the Earth is an analog for life elsewhere, oceans potentially elsewhere. And so there is relevance on a larger scale. And the last thing I'll just say, you know, with that, with regard to that is, you know, think about your body. My guess is a lot of people probably wear Apple watches or rings, you know, all sorts of things.

things that they look at a thousand times a day. And the number one thing people use their smartphones for, if I believe a quick internet search, is to track their fitness and their health. And if you could gather all that information about yourself every day simultaneously and make sure that you were doing everything to make sure you were healthy, you do it. And we need to look at the earth the same way, holistically like that. So in that sense, for me, sustainability is really important. You know, I'm sort of an infrastructure person too. I'm looking across my campus going, how do I convert all of my vehicles to more sustainable fuels? Do I make them all electric? How do I convert my buildings to carbon neutral or carbon negative? You mentioned you live in Edinburgh.

I was just in Glasgow and I listened to a presentation about how they're making Glasgow and the surrounding area carbon negative. And I was riveted. I'm like, tell me. and they're doing it by harnessing the river that goes through the center of the city, you know, without like altering anything, changing anything, you know, making sure the natural environment is allowed to be the natural environment and just harnessing the natural power. I'm obsessed with that, right? Like, how can I do that at home?

How can I do that where I work? So hopefully that's not too long an answer, Ryan, but there are a lot of really exciting frontiers out there. I love it. Yeah, I'm very proud of Scotland. And they're also doing this reforestation project as well. So they're doing things right. And I love this idea of like we focus so much on ourselves,

our own health, our own sustainability, when we're forgetting about the ground below us, the water below us, the skies above us. So I love that. I love the passion you have for all these projects. And that's very exciting that there's a space mission that you're going to eventually be involved with. I can't wait to see what comes with that as well.

Well, Paula, is there anywhere where our budding oceanographers or NASA enthusiasts can possibly reach you if they've seen anything or want to learn more about the work you do? Sure. I mean, you know, I am absolutely fine making, you know, my email, you know, available. It's no problem. can reach out. Lots of people have already. I can't respond to everybody simultaneously. I try very hard to do it. And I think, you know, the one thing for the citizen scientists out there, especially related to UAP, I think as this report is received by the public and NASA and

implemented, you know, I know the panelists from the FAA are working a lot with their management. If you're a commercial pilot or, you know, a private pilot and you see something, they're trying to make it more mainstream how one would go about reporting. So I would just say, hang in there. You know, I think you'll have your time and your due. If I can connect anybody with anything, I am certainly willing to do that.

I am not a UFO expert myself, but certainly, you know, if there are resources to connect people to, and I can do that, I'm happy to try. Awesome. Thank you. Yes. And for any of our, viewers, listeners, if you want to reach out to Paula, I can even be a middleman for that if you want to give me your email address, Paula, after this. But this was so fascinating. I knew going

into this, like I came for the UFOs, but I stayed for the oceanography because I feel like I just had like a crash course so much. So it was very refreshing to not talk about, you know, Roswell UFO crashes or, you know, these historical cases of UFOs, those are fine. We're looking at what's going on now. We're looking at what's going to happen in the future with both the UFOs and our world around us. So, no, I have to thank you for this refreshing conversation on the show. It was truly something special. So thank you. Thank you for joining me on Somewhere in the Skies. It's my pleasure. And thank you for the opportunity. It was fun. Somewhere in the Skies is produced by Third Kind Productions in association with the Entertainment One Podcast Network.