Somewhere in the Skies - UFOs and Science | A Somewhere in the Skies Megasode!

Episode Date: July 27, 2024

In this collection of popular interviews from the archives of Somewhere in the Skies podcast, we are joined by the following guests to discuss UFOs through the rigorous lens of science. Dr. Adam Frank - Physicist & Astronomer Dr. Beatriz Villarroel - Astronomer Mick West - Science Writer & Author Dr. Paula Bontempi - NASA Oceanographer Dr. Chris Cogswell - Chemical Engineer & Podcast Host Chuck Zukowski - UFO Investigator Patreon: www.patreon.com/somewhereskies PayPal: [e-mail] Website: www.somewhereintheskies.com Store: http://tee.pub/lic/ULZAy7IY12U YouTube Channel: CLICK HERE Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/somewhereskies/videos Order Ryan’s new book: https://a.co/d/4KNQnM4 Order Ryan’s older book: https://amzn.to/3PmydYC Twitter: @SomewhereSkies Read Ryan’s Articles by CLICKING HERE Opening Theme Song, "Ephemeral Reign" by Per Kiilstofte Produced by LIONSGATE Copyright © 2024. 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

Welcome to Anama Khan. Anama Khan is a virtual conference on everything anomalous, live streaming on YouTube, Twitter X, and on Twitch. Join us on September 1st and 2nd, as over two dozen speakers give presentations on everything from UFOs and aliens to ghosts and the paranormal, from Bigfoot and Lake Monsters to witchcraft and the occult. It's all happening at Anamacan.

And most importantly, it's completely free. To learn more about our speakers in the event, visit anamacan.com. We'll see you on September 1st and 2nd for Anamacan. Today on Somewhere in the Skies, we are joined by astrophysicist, Adam Frank, to discuss the Little Book of Aliens. This is Somewhere in the Skies with Ryan Sprague. Adam, welcome to Somewhere in the Skies. It's my pleasure to be here.

Pleasure is all mine, man. I had the amazing opportunity to read a advanced copy of your new book, the little book of aliens, and I knew I had to talk to you, man, because not only do you cover one of our obvious favorite topics here at somewhere in the skies, but you cover it in a very hopeful, optimistic, but most importantly, scientific way. So that's really what I want to break down with you tonight is what are aliens, what could aliens be if we do eventually somehow make content? You know, there's many people on this planet who believe we have already. That's not really what this conversation is about today.

I really want to dig into a lot of what you believe, as an astrophysicist, I might add, what these alien intelligences could be, how they could possibly get here, how we can search for them, all of that. But obvious question, before we even get to all of that. origin story time. How did you get interested in astrophysics? And yeah, if you don't mind, give us a little bit of, I guess, your resume, if that's cool. So I got started in astrophysics as a five-year-old. I found my dad's, I have this really clear memory of this. I found my dad's, or wandered into my dad's library.

And he was a big science fiction fan. He was a writer. And he had those pulp 1960s science fiction. fiction magazines like Isaac Asmanoff's, you know, amazing stories. And I remember looking at the covers of those things, you know, like, and they had pictures of like guys bouncing around on alien planets and Michelin Tireman space suits and rocket ships, you know, with flame blasting out the back and bug-eyed monsters. And that was, that was it. I was done. Like that was, I've never wanted to do anything other in my life than be an astrophysicist and study the stars.

So that was the beginning. And then my dad also started. to put in science fiction in my hands early on. I remember him giving me like when I was 10 or 11, the big book of the golden age of science fiction, which was Asimov and Heinlein and those people. And then Dune gave me Dune. So I grew up with science fiction ideas. I still am. You know, as a kid, I watched every science fiction show there was. And back in those days, there wasn't much. So as you can see here, you know, Star Trek, back in the mid-70s when I was coming up, the Star Trek, the show, the reruns would be on at 4 o'clock and 7 o'clock. So I watched every episode of those first three seasons of Star Trek like 30 times. So yeah, so I grew up with this,

you know, real passion for space. And then I learned that, you know, I had some facility with mathematics, you know, in physics. I really fell in love with mathematics and physics. So I went to school to study physics. I became a physics major. Then went to graduate school, also in physics, because it was really theoretical physics that really, that was the way, that was the approach I wanted to take. I knew I was bad with machinery, right? So you never wanted to put me in front of a telescope. And I always had a strong interest in life in the universe, what we now call astrobiology. But back in the day, there wasn't much going on there. There was just SETI, essentially. And SETI was still kind of marginal. So I pursued, I became a computational fluid dynamist. I studied things like how stars form

out of clouds of gas, how they get torn apart. And all through, you know, so that was most of my career. I ended up at the University of Rochester where I ran a research group that does this. I'm a professor there. But I always had that interest in life in the universe. And then, you know, starting in the 1990s, astrobiology, as for reasons we'll talk about, starts to grow again. And I jumped on board.

By the mid-2000s, I started doing, I turned my research group to studying exoplanets, the atmospheres of exoplanets, and then dove all the way in, started to really get involved in astrobiology. And now, again, this is something we can talk about, but in 2019, a group of us applied for a grant to NASA to study what are called techno signatures. And we got the first grant.

NASA, again, we'll talk about this, NASA really was not giving any grants. Lots of money to study dumb life, you know, microbes or what we call biosignatures on alien planets, but not much money to study. intelligent life. And our grant was really one of the first ones ever, or at least in a very long time, that NASA gave to study the possibility of finding technological life, technological civilizations. And so since then, our group has done really, I think, really amazing, interesting work,

pushing the boundaries on that problem. That's amazing. And yes, I do want to touch on techno signatures a little later, because I think that is really, you know, the advent of a new way of searching for this intelligent life out there, which I think is very exciting. You've got a lot of different groups trying to tackle that approach right now. So first of all, congratulations. That's amazing that your group was one of the first. And the fact that NASA is finally getting so much more proactive with this topic of searching for life. They're also apparently searching for UFOs.

So that's kind of what I want to touch out first here with you, Adam. You do start the book, actually, with some chapters that do concern the topic of UFOs or UAP is there now sort of calling them. So that's my first question for you. In terms of the book, what made you want to start the book talking about UFOs? And what are some of your thoughts on the topic of UFOs, especially in the last few years when it's really become more mainstream than ever? Yeah. What do you make of all that? And what made you want to decide to start the book with that?

Well, you know, one of the, the book is about, about, you know, it's the little book of aliens, right? So it's all about aliens. It's about our conception of aliens. It's about the history of our searching for aliens. And, you know, the main reason I want to have that pull back and have that background is because from the scientific point of view, we are at the cusp of finding alien life, whether it's intelligent life or microbial life. You know, the profound explosions in the science of astrobiology mean that you really need to look at the big picture. And, you know, UFOs have been a big part of the popular conception of a life in the universe. And so I wanted to run through that history. I also wanted to explain to people why, as a scientist, like how scientists view the subject. And the history has a lot to do with it.

So, you know, I am very skeptical that UFOs have anything to do with alien life, you know, life in the universe. And we can talk more about this. But certainly, when you look at the history, you can see. how much of our popular conceptions were driven by the presence, you know, by the, what goes on in the UFO community. I talk about the government reports. And, you know, certainly because the government, though, you know, those, though that long history of government reports, which has a lot to do, I think, with shaping where we are now, you can see because

it was the Cold War, the government was certainly less than transparent about what it was doing with UFOs. The government was very happy to use UFOs as part of its cold war. subterfuge. You know, this was, this was a battle to the death with the USSR with the Soviet Union. And so, you know, the government was certainly willing to, you know, to use misinformation when it came to UFOs. So I wanted to cover that stuff as well. I wanted to give people the history of those reports, but also understand, yeah, sort of what was going on with them. And then finally, we get to the modern era with UAPs. And I really wanted to track through what was going on with the UAP. So people had a firm understanding of where we are now,

especially when it comes to, you know, things like the NASA panel, which I'm all four. Again, I'm skeptical of the fact that I don't think UFOs and UFPs have anything to do with the alien life. But, you know, I'm a scientist. And if we can collect the kind of data that scientists require in order to judge. So, you know, the thing about this is scientists have We're brutal with each other. We're really mean to each other about when it comes to the link between data, some data, and a conclusion, you know, a claim, right? We are very, very mean to each other. And, you know, if you've ever stood in front of the hardest thing as a scientist is to have to stand in front of like, you know, a bunch of people who are much smarter than you and argue that you have a piece of data that is linked to a conclusion as they shred every possible, you know, nook and cranny and nuance in that link.

So the good thing about, I think, with the NASA panel, which is, you know, the NASA panel and the Galileo project and such is that now, you know, we can begin the process of collecting the data that we need to try and link to just figure out at all what these things are about. So, you know, I think it's good that the pilots now feel free. You know, there's not the stigma to talk about it. Because that way, you know, that's the first step to collecting data. But as I say, you know, one of the things I wanted to cover in the book is how, science goes about its business. So people can understand how science will link a piece of data to a, you know, or a collection of data to a conclusion. Because listen, if somebody comes and tells me a story that they saw something in this guy, I'm not going to tell them they didn't. I wasn't there, right? But science is about public knowledge, right? It's about knowledge, you know, 400 or so years ago, we came up, human beings came up with this amazing way of interrogating nature, of getting into a dialogue with nature, whereby we can pull. pull out conclusions that we can all go, oh yeah, yeah, that's right.

You know, gravity, the acceleration due to gravity is 9.8 meters per second square. Anybody can test that, right? And so that is what we're looking for. If we want to understand what, you know, UFOs or UIPs are, we need to build that same kind of process, which will require probably building new instruments and having a rational search strategy and having a rational, well-crafted way of. of sorting through the enormous amounts of data you're going to get from that. So that's why I wanted people to understand.

I wanted people to sort of see the history. See it as scientists, see it. And see, you know, from the scientific perspective, what would you actually need to have data to go one way or the other? Like, as a scientist, if the data is good enough, I'll go in whichever direction the data is going to go, right? And I would hope that would be the true for UFO. People are really excited about UFOs as well. If the data really doesn't point to, you know, if you don't, if you can show that things aren't, moving at Mach 5th, Mach 500 and making right-hand turns.

If the data doesn't support that, then, okay, you know, it's something else. And no matter what would I really want people in the UFO community to understand, though, is that, you know, the stuff on the science end, the stuff I'm going to talk about with techno signatures and biotechnology is super exciting. Like, you know, we're a poised to be able to find the possibility of alien life, whether it's intelligent civilizations or microbial life. To me, it's the same. They're both equally mind-blowing.

that we're on the edge of doing that. Like if you're alive today, there's a good shot that there's going to be data relevant to that question coming down the pike in your lifetime. That's amazing. That gives me so much hope that we might live to see that day where many people in the past haven't. And what I think is really cool too, Adam, is not only do you cover the history of the UFO topic, but you also cover the history of those who did ask that big question, are we alone?

You know, you bring up such things as the Fermi paradox. You bring up the Drake equation. These are big buzzwords that us in the UFO field either love or hate, depending on where you lay in the grand scheme of belief, I guess. But yeah, could you maybe run us through a little bit of that, the history of our search for alien life throughout the years? And how that can kind of, I guess, propel us forward as we continue to look for new ways. Yeah, what's really amazing is this question is ancient, right?

As I talk about in the book, you know, you can see the Greeks, the ancient Greeks, like Aristotle and Democritus, you know, in a steel cage death match, you know, arguing over whether or not, you know, the Earth is special or whether, you know, there's planets with life throughout the universe. And so this question, people have been arguing about for 2,500 years, but it was only the 1950s, really, that there was this amazing decade, 1950 to 1960, when so much of the foundational science, The foundational questions were asked.

So like the Fermi paradox was this idea that Enrico Fermi, you know, the paradox itself is just from, you know, a lunch conversation that he was having with colleagues at Los Alamos. But the basic question that Fermi recognized early on was, well, you know, why isn't the universe full of detectable aliens? Why aren't they here? Or why haven't we found signals of, you know, of intelligent civilization? because what Fermi realized, like in a split second, was that if there even one star-faring civilization, even if it was, you know, even if the speed of light really is a speed limit,

then even, you know, if they're moving at a tenth of the speed of light, in a timescale very short compared to the history of the galaxy, they could reach every star system in the galaxy. So, you know, his question was, why aren't they here? And another, you know, so that's what I call the direct Fermi paradox. The indirect Fermi paradox is something that's also called the great silence, which is, well, we've looked, but why haven't we found any? So, of course,

if you're a UFO fan, you're going to argue that they are already here. If you're an astronomer like myself, you're going to focus on the indirect Fermi paradoxes, which is why haven't we heard anything. But of course, the answer to that one, that one's got a real clear answer, which is we haven't looked. People have this idea that like, oh, every night astronomers, you know, take their radio telescopes, you know, like Jody Foster in contact and listen for, you know, signals of alien civilizations. And nothing could be further from the truth. There's never been any money in SETI. And part of that is because SETI got pinged with some of the more wackiness that happens in the UFO community. And they, you know, NASA wouldn't fund SETI because Congress kept burning them for it.

So there's never been a whole lot of SETI done. In fact, actually, if you look at all the SETI searches that have ever been done, you know, and compare it to like the ocean. Like if the ocean, is all of the stars we need to search for alien life. So far, we've looked at a hot tub worth of water, right? And if you looked at a hot tub worth of water and didn't find any fish in it, would you then go, well, there's no fish in the ocean? So the Fermi paradox is one of these foundational ideas, which still today we deal with. And then there's the Drake equation, right?

So Frank Drake, so the 1950s begin with Fermi, and they end with Frank Drake doing his the first really astrobiology search of any kind, the first astrobiology experiment. ever taken, which was Project Osma, where he convinced his colleagues at the radio observatory to let him use this new instrument and look for, he looked at two stars looking for signals of alien life. He didn't find any, but that launched the, that launched the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. It was the first time anybody at any, anywhere, had ever done a search for life elsewhere other than the Earth. And then in 61, you can have this very important conference on intercellar communications. It's actually, it's a workshop. There's seven guys at it.

But including a young Carl Sagan. And that's where the Drake equation comes up. Drake was trying to formulate an agenda for this meeting, the first ever meeting on, you know, communications with extraterrestrial civilizations or finding extraterrestrial civilizations. And he needed an agenda. And he broke the problem up into like these seven different pieces. And he wrote them down as an equation. whose solution would be the total number of intelligent technological civilizations in the universe.

And the way he broke that problem up, first asked how many stars are there, and then how many stars have planets, and then how many planets are in the right place for life to form, how many planets where life can form, does it actually form, Bing, Bing, Bing, all the way down. He broke the problem up into these seven pieces, which still today are foundational. we still use that background in how we organize the astronaut a lot of astrobiological sort of thinking so that that first decade is important for everybody for people who are into UFOs for people who are into just astro the scientists are into astrobiology that's when a lot of the core ideas were laid down that we're still working with today because in science science is very conservative i just wanted to put this in you never give up on a good idea right so that's why those ideas are still around today Interesting. Well, on the spot, I want to ask you, Adam, within sort of those time periods, you also had this thing called the wow signal. What do you make of that personally? As an astrophysicist, as an astronomer, that was one of the one moments where I think a lot of those people who really want to believe that we got a signal, that we got a signal, supposedly. What do you make of the wow signal? I'm not wild about the web. I'm not wow about the wow.

Because it was one-off. Like, you know, it happened once. I mean, the exciting thing about it was it looked exactly like what you'd expect it to look like if it was a signal. But, you know, a one-off, you can't do anything with a one-off, like in science, right? So, you know, and the people have gone back and they've looked at that source and, you know, that location on the sky again and again and again, and they've never found anything else. And so you just, you can't do anything with that. Whereas the new stuff that we're developing now, the techno signatures, which is, based on entirely different approaches to the problem, that won't be a problem. If we find a techno

signature in the way that we think we're going to, you know, the way what we're planning, you'll be able to go back and look again and again and again. It should always be there, right? Because we're not looking for sort of like radio beacons that somebody's like pointing at us to say, hey, we're here. We're going to be looking for the indirect signatures of biological or technological activity. So, you know, just like, you know, civilizations or biospheres going about their business. So that's why the wow signal, you know, if it's only a one-off, I can't do anything with it. I can be like, whoa, that's really cool, but then I'm stuck, you know, with arguing over whether that one thing that happened was, you know, the cool thing about science is that every,

somebody said this to me one time. In science, a good theory or a good result is like putting a quarter in and getting a dollar back out, right? It takes you, it leads to the next question that you can try and answer. The wow signal, you put a quarter in. water in and you got nothing back, right? Because it was just nowhere to go. Okay, we went back and looked and we didn't see anything. So, you know, it was exciting, but it just, it was a dead end. I hate when that happens. I hate when you don't get your money back. Such a good point. Where's my candy bar? Yep, yep. That's when you tip it over. That's when you tip it over. Well, you also cover, Adam, sort of these hypotheticals about how life, if it is out there. How. How?

it could possibly get to, let's say, our solar system. And these are big questions. And these are big questions that a lot of skeptics often will put in front of UFO people and say, there's no way. There's no way that they would be able to travel these vast distances. So you do tackle this issue in the book of how could an advanced civilization possibly get here? Is that something you can briefly touch on for us? Yeah, yeah, because what I wanted people to see is like,

know, of course when we talk about, you know, alien civilizations or civilizations have been around a lot more, we don't know what science they have, right? And so, but you also can't to sort of wave your hand and use that as an excuse to say anything's possible. Because the thing is, we do know a lot of physics, right? And any physics that the aliens have has to sit on top of the physics that we do know, right? So, for example, the second law of thermodynamics, right, which says that if you use energy, you're always going to generate some heat or generate some waste. That law, I mean, we, have not seen anything that would ever tell us that that law is going to be overcome, right? So anything that the aliens do is going to have to sit on top of the second law.

So that means you've got to do some work. If you want to extrapolate the, you know, the science that we have now, you got to do some work to connect it to the science that we do have because we've got some pretty amazing science. Like we've done for a bunch of hairless monkeys, we've done pretty well, you know. So, okay, so that when we run down the list of ways in which you could cross the mind-melting distances between the stars. I think, Rick, really, everybody should spend a little bit of time working out with those numbers, like how far away the stars are. I mean, it's really, it's hard to sort of get in your gut just how distance the stars are. So, you know, the first, so we can start

with stuff that we totally know and work upward. So one way is, is hibernation, right? You know, if the speed, so we believe every, there's nothing that tells us that you can get around the fact that the speed of light is a constant and nothing can go faster than it. Right? That for the physics we understand, that's the way it is. So if you're going to go slower than the speed of light or as close to the speed of light as you can, then the stars are pretty far away. If a star is 100 light years away, it's 100 years to get there, right?

So, but you know, you can do maybe hibernate. If your biology doesn't allow, you know, if you only have a 70 year, 80 year lifespan, then you can hibernate if that's possible. You could also do century ships where like, you know, you have ships. where like one human generation after the other is born and lived and die. And it's the great, great grandkids that arrive there. You know, those are pretty expensive and hard to do, you know, I mean, and also if you're going to do that, you're, you know, it's slow, right?

So one of the weird things about having the speed of light be a limit means that interstellar civilizations may not be possible, right? If it takes 200 years, 200 year, light years is the name. next door for us, right? That is 200 light years away is still the block, you know, on the block. And if it takes 200 years to get somewhere, you know, and your typical lifespan is 80 or 90 years, then like, how do you have diplomacy? How do you have, you don't really, it'd be hard to have a coherent, stellar civilization, right? Okay, so you go past that. Then you start to get into things like, well, okay, what about a warp drive, right? Because Einstein's theory of relativity does allow

for this idea of bending space time so that, you know, if you don't want to actually go from point A to point B, can you bring point A and B together and kind of hop through space, you know, hop through curved space via like a wormhole or a warp drive? And I cover these possibilities. And like with warp drives, there is a solution to the general relativistic equations, the Akubre drive, as they call it, that actually does, you know, because here's the interesting thing. Nothing can travel through space faster than the speed of light. But space itself or space time itself can move it at whatever speed it wants. So the accubre drive is this idea that you could create a warp bubble that sort of bends itself through space that sort of propels. It's a bubble of space time that is moving through space time at whatever speed you want. So, you know, the ideas of general relativity give you some ways of maybe thinking about how you could have it. But here's the problem. The only way any of this works is you have to have what's called exotic matter to be able to to bend space in time this way, and it doesn't exist, right? Exotic matters basically, you take the,

you know, it's something, you got these equations, you say like, oh, if I just had a term that, you know, had a minus sign right here, and I could make all this work. And that's literally what we do when we play with those equations. But there's, there's no evidence for exotic matter. It's literally just something we dreamed up, you know, and put into the equations. So, you know, that's the problem with exotic matter. Now, you know, maybe some super advanced civilization has come across that. I don't know. But that's, you know, that's the problem with exotic matter. And then you get to quantum mechanics, right? And quantum mechanics is just so weird that who knows what's hiding in it, you know, but that's really, then we're pulling stuff kind of out of our butt. So that those are

kind of, you know, the possibilities. Now, I know that there are some people, UFO people, who really are into extra dimensions. And I have a whole chapter on extra dimensions, on what extra dimensions mean scientifically. Because it's one of the most beautiful and coolest ideas in mathematical physics, the idea of being able to like, you know, do the mathematics for objects that have more than three dimensions, more than three spatial dimensions. And it's just, I love it. I love talking about it. I love thinking about it. But the problem is there is zero evidence, zero, I mean really zero, because people have looked, that there's any more than three dimensions of space. You know, you can go forward and back, you can go right and left, and you can go up

and down. And that's pretty much it. So, you know, from that scientific point of view, there's just, you know, because people, there was ideas like string theory, which was playing with the idea of extra dimensions, but those ideas just didn't work out. They have not played out. I mean, to me, string theory is really is kind of a dead end. So, you know, so I examine all those possibilities. Well, you know, who knows, you know, again, where we'll go. But if you're, you know, if you're trying to take, take a ladder, you know, and begin with the physics we know, and I think that's really important because if not, you're just making up science fiction stories. that's what you've got to work with.

Interesting. Yeah, yeah. It's always that frustrating, I guess, conundrum of like our own limitations as human beings, our own physics, our own logic in terms of all this. But hey, like we, like you said, we work with what we have to try to ask those bigger questions. And then you just hope that they converge. Well, okay, so we cover how they could possibly get here, Adam. in terms of us going out and looking for it, you do cover that as well, the different ways throughout

history and now how we are searching for that. And we've been saying it throughout this whole conversation, techno signatures. It's kind of the big buzzword nowadays with a lot of search for alien life. So let's go there, man. Would you mind kind of breaking down what techno signatures truly represent because I don't think a lot of people really understand what that term means as opposed to biosignatures. And then on top of all of that, second prong question, exoplanets, a place where we could search for techno signatures. So yeah, would you mind maybe break in all that down for us a little bit?

It would be my pleasure. I love talking about this stuff. 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 lot. 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. You know, what's amazing is like, so when I was in graduate

at school in the late 80s and early 90s. Like, you know, astrobiology just wasn't a subject. Like, SETI was kind of marginalized, you know. You know, the Viking landers in 76 had landed on Mars. There was a little biology of the experiment that hadn't really gone anywhere. So, you know, it was kind of like there was nowhere to go. And then two amazing things happened. One was we found this rock from Mars in Antarctica.

It was literally a chunk of Mars that had been blown into space. and it appeared to have what looked like maybe some evidence of fossil life. That turned out not to be true, but it got us starting. It propelled us to start looking at Mars again and thinking about the whole idea of looking for life in microbial life in the solar system.

And then in 1995, the really big thing is we discovered for the first time, the first planet orbiting another star, an exoplanet. This is also a question that goes back to 2,500, It goes back 2,500 years. People have been arguing about, I can't tell you how many scientific careers over history were ruined by someone saying,

I discovered an exoplanet, right? And then it was turned out to not to be true, and that guy's, you know, or girl's career was ended. But so in 1995, we had our first conclusive proof of a planet orbiting another star. And then, you know, within 10, 20 years, or 10, 15 years, we had a census. We knew that every star in the sky

hosted a family of worlds. And we knew that one out of five of those had a star, or had a planet in the right place, at least of the sun-like ones, had a planet in the right place for life to form, where liquid water could be on the surface. So this exoplanet revolution just blew the doors off of everything. Suddenly, we knew exactly where to look for life, right?

And the original seti, that's not the way it was. You just sort of pointed things at sun-like stars and hoped for the best, right? So the exoplanet revolution was one of the most important parts of this new age of astrobiology. The second thing that happened was the development of what we'll call this technique, this amazing technique called atmospheric characterization. And what it meant was our telescopes had gotten so powerful and the instruments we put on our telescopes had gotten so powerful that we could see into the atmospheres of these worlds that are 10, 20, 100 light years away. and we could sniff out, so to speak, the composition of that atmosphere. We could tell what chemical compounds were in that atmosphere. Now, why is that important?

That has to do with another astrobiological revolution, which was learning Earth's full history, seeing the full, you know, 3.8 billion year history of Earth and life together. Because one of the things we've learned from that is that Earth has been many planets, you know, many different kinds of planets across that time. and life has been the driving force for a lot of those. For example, oxygen. The only reason, you know, I can take a nice big breath of oxygen is because life put the oxygen in the atmosphere. Before, you know, about two billion years ago, before like a new form of photosynthesis was invented by microbes, the Earth's Earth had life and it had no oxygen in it.

So the presence of oxygen in the atmosphere of Earth is a biosignor. biosignature. Someone looking at Earth from light years away could look at our planet, see that there's oxygen in the atmosphere, and deduce like that planet has a biosphere. So this process of atmosphere characterization where you can see how life has changed a planet, changed the atmosphere, was the beginning of this great revolution that we now started to figure out how to search for biosignatures, all kinds of biosignatures. oxygen was the first one, but now we're getting very, very sophisticated in thinking about how to do it. We don't have to rely on Earth's history, right?

We're starting to think a lot about agnostic signatures of life where, you know, could be a completely different biochemistry, but we'd still be able to tell that that planet had something going on with it that was not, that could only happen because of life. And then along the same time, while this is happening in the 2000s and 2010s, Jill Tarter, the great hero of SETI, right? This woman who, you know, has been at the forefront of SETI for decades, said, look, if you're going to search for biosignatures, if NASA's going to fund, and it was, a lot of research in biosignatures,

how could you avoid also thinking about techno signatures, right? How can you not think about the possibility of looking for, you know, the presence of industrial chemicals in the atmosphere, right? You know, what about city lights? What about, you know, there's all this whole range of things that you could look for in the exact same way that you're going to look for biosignatures that will tell you there's a civilization there, harvesting energy and doing work in the service of the civilization. So that was where, that's where the term techno signatures came from. And then it was in 2018 that actually this is, I talk about this in the book, this conference. Someone in Congress said, you need to spend $10 million, told NASA, you need to spend $10 million on techno signatures.

And NASA was like, what? It's like, okay. So they had to have a meeting. They called us together. They called a bunch of us together who were interested in this to have a meeting to say, okay, look, if they give us this money, which in the end, they didn't. What would we do with it? So we had this amazing three-day meeting in Houston at the lunar science, very storied NASA facility to talk about this.

And it was the most amazing, exciting meeting I have ever been at in my entire life. Right? Everybody's got crazy ideas, but also trying to systematize for the first time, the crazy ideas. And out of that came, a bunch of us decided to put in this proposal to NASA to, you know, say, look, all right, we want to look for atmospheric techno signatures. We want to design a study. We're not going to look yet.

We're going to do the theoretical research to tell observers, what they should look for if they're looking for technosignatures from planets. And that was the beginning. And so now what people really need to understand is already with the JWST, the James Webb Space Telescope, it's at the hairy edge, but it's possible that the JWST could detect both biosignatures or techno signatures. We did a paper where we showed that chloroflorocarbons, right, this chemical that, you know, we pumped into the atmosphere, kind of by mistake.

But you could detect that with the JWST from like 10 light years away. So game on, man, right now, you know, and going into the future with the better telescopes we're going to build, we have the capacity, or we're going to have the capacity to find alien life where it lives on alien planets. Wow. You know, and I feel like that, Adam, it's like the only positive to come out of any sort of pollution is the possibility. that it could lead us to finally finding some sort of alien life. Or them finding us, let's be completely honest. Right.

We've had, yeah. And the thing is about the pollution. You know, CFCs, right, we did that by mistake. But, you know, there's lots of reasons, and we have a paper that we're working on right now, that you might purposely put chemicals into your atmosphere. So, for example, chloro-fluorocarbons, they're bad for the ozone. But if you wanted to turn Mars into a habitable world, which we do, eventually we may try. CFCs are great.

They are very, they're chemically inert, but they're great greenhouse gases. So that means that like, yeah, if you could pump Mars's atmosphere up with CFCs, you could raise the temperature to the point where like it would be warm enough to wander around with just like an air mask on. So, you know, absolutely these different kinds of chemicals, you might have reasons. But it's not just, it's not just chemicals. City lights. There was a paper that showed that you could, for a world that had larger amounts of artificial

illumination, you would be able to see that in the light from the, you know, from the planet. You'd be able to see that there was artificial illumination. You'd be able to see the possibilities that they were using, that a civilization was using solar panels of any form. The reflected light would actually carry the signature of the solar panels. So the list goes on and on and on. And that's what we're developing. That's what our job is, is to carry out these studies to explore different kinds of techno signatures because starting now, you know, we can start looking for them. I love it.

I love that. It's amazing. Well, it is. I, I, I, I can, I can hear the passion in your voice at him. I would, what I would have given to be a fly on a wall at that conference, by the way. I can't even imagine. Nobody got any sleep. I was going to say how hard you guys probably party.

Yeah. A lot of beer. I mean, it's just, I got, you know, the, you know, sometimes people in the UFO community can say like, oh, scientists are closed-minded or whatever. you had to be at this meeting to hear some of the ideas that were getting batted around. We were talking about billion-year-old civilizations and how they evolve. Like, what happens to a civilization after, you know, 100,000 years, a million years of continuous evolution?

Does it stay hold? Does it break up? What kinds of, you know, what kinds of technology might they evolve? You know, if you become, if you, you know, become AI or if AI takes over, what does that look like? I mean, there were some really cool ideas that were getting bounced around. that's well and that's kind of um what you cover in sort of the remaining chapters of the book again without giving away too much i i cannot recommend this book enough i'm just going to say that flat out oh great thank you of course of course you you cover everything from um how we may like

communicate with aliens if we do make contact um and you cover things as like the ethics of making contact and what that would look like too. And kind of the possibility of everything, even ancient aliens, like you said, you guys theorized about a billion year old civilization somewhere or, you know, in ancient aliens is a big thing in the world today. No matter what you think of it or how controversial it is, it's out there. The theory is out there. So could you maybe break down that last chapter of the book for us? This was by far my favorite chapter of the book in terms of, yeah, how would we communicate with something? Let's say it is AI, or it's so, forgive the pun, alien to us that we don't know how we could

possibly communicate with it. Yeah, maybe break down that last chapter for us a little bit if you don't might. Yeah, that chapter was super fun to write too, because really what I wanted to explore was how aliens will aliens be or how alien will aliens be? And the answer is very. Right? That's really the thing. You know, what's cool about about this subject is you've got to push your imagination to the edge, right? But still bounded with science, right? So science is really constrained imagination, right? You can go to whatever heights you want, but you got to use like the laws of physics and chemistry and Darwinian evolution, which we think is going to be pretty universal to somehow bound your thinking. So you don't just fall off into writing science fiction novels, right? We want to somehow, ground ourselves so that we can kind of systematically explore the options. So one of the first things I talked about was alien minds, right? Because alien minds are really, you know, what the, what is the cognitive structure of a mind that has evolved under entirely different kinds of evolutionary backgrounds going to be like.

You know, so there's this great, and when it comes to communication, right, you know, people, there's this great idea from Carl Sagan that, oh, we'll teach them our math, right? It's been the whole foundation, like in the movie Contact, you know, we're, you know, we'll meet aliens and then we'll teach them like, oh, look, this is how we do one plus one and that equals two and we'll show them the symbols. And then we'll work our way up to pie in the circumference of a circle. And then, you know, after a while, you know, we'll all be friends. You know, we'll all be, you know, sharing our favorite Netflix shows. Yeah. But really, that idea may not, I mean, maybe it'll work, but it may not work at all because it assumes that our math, the way we structure think about math is, you know, universal. And that's, it's entirely possible. That's not true. That really are the way, we invented our math in a way that our brains, which grew up on the, you know, the, the, the, planes of Africa were useful for. Imagine, as I said, imagine a species that does, that is, that is what we would call like a liquid brain, a liquid body, like, you know, amoeba. They have, you know,

if they want to grab something, they kind of reach a pseudopod out, like, you know, grab something and pull it back. They don't have digits. Would they even have. integers. Would the idea of one, two, and three make any sense to them, right? So, so that's a really interesting possibility. And there's that, you know, there's that great movie Arrival, which maybe some people have seen. Yes. Where I love, I think it's what, that's one of my favorite, it's like really smart. I mean, I love, you know, I love Star Wars and Star Trek, you know, give me all the laser blasters you can give me. But Arrival was like one of these really quiet, thoughtful movies about aliens. And so they send in, like, you know, these, these heptopods arrive, and they send in a

Carl Sagan kind of physicist guy and then a linguist, right? And the Carl Sagan guy goes in and, you know, tries to do the Carl Sagan thing with math and spectacularly fails immediately. And it's the linguist who understands that language has to do with like the whole embodied experience. It's not abstract. It's actually very much about being in a body and having experience. She's the one who makes contact. And then realizes that their whole, experience is entirely different. Like they are, they move, they live simultaneously in the past, present, and future. And I really thought about that a lot, how, you know, maybe it's biology that determines physics, not the other way around in some sense. It's like that's, it determines

what parts of the big book of physics are actually accessible to you. So that's a great idea. And then the ethics part was really, I wanted to talk a little bit about, I mean, we talked about, I talked a lot about just the, you know, ethics of what kind of, what kind of, you know, ethics might, you know, different, depending on your evolutionary background, you might have. But I really wanted to cover the idea of many messaging extraterrestrial intelligence. We're like, you know, a few times people have pointed giant telescopes and sent some kind of message to a distant star. And that's been very controversial because, you know, as anybody who's read the three body problem, you know, maybe you don't want to do that, right? Maybe you don't want to stick your head above the grass and be like, hey, I'm here.

I'm tasty. you know, come on over. And I kind of, I'm kind of in that thing. I think like we just don't know what's out there, right? And it's, it's, it's, I don't think it's a good idea, just assume that because civilizations will be older, that, you know, that may be older than us, that they're suddenly like wearing togas, you know, and meditating, right? You know, who knows what.

And this is, you know, I love science fiction. As I said, I read lots of science fiction. This is a theme that shows up in a lot of really good science fiction stories about this idea of, you know, the dark forest or, One idea, it's a book, I've forgotten the name, but the idea that there are wolves between the stars, you know. And so you've got to be careful. So that's why that was kind of part. And there's a lot more in that chapter about ethics.

And then finally, the ancient alien, I think for us, ancient aliens meant something different, where we did a paper with David Kipping from the Columbia. And it was a very sort of detailed theoretical paper to ask this question, if we find aliens, if we find signals of aliens, not necessarily communications, but we just find evidence for a civilization. Would we expect it to be younger, older, younger, our age, or older? And by, you know, by our age,

we're talking anything within, you know, a few thousand years, right? So we're doing the science thing of being very sort of order of magnitude, as we call it. And the result of these calculations using what's called Bayesian probability, you know, David was very good. David's a real master, Kung Fu master, with this kind of thing. And the conclusion was that it'll be older, quite possibly much older.

So, you know, that's where the ancient aliens comes from for us is that if we make contact with a civilization or find a civilization, it will probably be quite a bit older than us. And what does that imply? How can you think systematically, right? How can you lay, again, because this is what science does. We don't just want to write a science fiction story.

We want to somehow lay out in a systematic way the possibilities for civilizations that have been around and contiguous, you know, or continuous for a million years. What is it? You know, we've been around as a technological civilization for a century, maybe two, depending on how you define it. What does a million years look like? Like, what do you become?

You know? Yeah. So, super cool. Yeah, absolutely. It really does. And that's what I love about this question of alien is it tells us so much. much more, I think, about ourselves than actually the aliens. It really does put that mirror back on us. Be like, hmm, what could we be? What could we aspire to be? Or it could be a warning, a cautionary tale.

Exactly. Both of those, right? I think that's the importance of looking is that, you know, if we did find a civilization and it would probably be older than us, that would be enormous comfort, right? Because as if right now, you know, we've got all these problems in the world, climate change and, you know, the rise of AI and, you know, whatever, just our, nuclear war is still clearly hovering over us. You know, does, so the question is, does any civilization make it? Is it, does the, does the universe do long-lived technological civilizations? That's an open question. So to find just one civilization, it doesn't matter whether we talk to them or not, just to know that like, oh, yeah, okay, yeah, sure, this is something the universe does. Yeah, that would be good.

Absolutely. I hope. Yeah, that would be very good. Very comforting, like you said. Well, last question for you, Adam. what do you hope people will take away from the book? What's like the big thing you hope that this will contribute to the question? Are we alone?

And if not, where do we go from there? Right. The main thing I want people to take away is excitement. Like, you know, people should be pumped. This is amazing. We live, I mean, really, how often, how many generations, you know, how many people get to be around when a 2,500-year-old question gets answered, right? Now, you know, I don't know, I can't tell you for sure it's going to get answered.

I can't tell you for sure what the answer is going to be. But here's the thing I can be sure of over the next 10, 20, 30 years. You know, and science is always about a long game. You know, you can't learn something amazing unless you put the time into it. But the thing I can tell you is we're going to have data. For the first time, we're going to have actual hard data related to the question, as opposed to just yelling at each other's opinions, man, you know, about it. So this is, I want people to see like, wow,

man, this is amazing. We're about to find out. And then I want them to really start to, you know, to understand. I want them to be ready so that whether it's UFOs or science, you know, astronomical science, when someone says, we found it, I want them to be ready with their skeptical hats on, but also their, you know, their background that the book gives them to be able to know how to evaluate that claim, right? And then be ready to think about it. And then if that claim is true, what the consequences of that claim are. I love it. I love it. Be ready, guys, be ready October 24th when the book releases. It's the little book of aliens by Adam Frank. And Adam, first of all, thank you. Thank you for being so open to coming on a UFO podcast first and foremost. I think it's very important to have these conversations. When you deal with such a speculative theory-based conversation like I do as a. UFO podcast to get on the ground and think objectively about, oh yeah, who could be piloting

these possible aerial phenomena, or at least behind them. I think it's important to really step back and look at these questions, because like I said, no matter what UFOs are or aren't, or no matter what aliens are or aren't, it tells us so much more about where we've been, where we're going. and I think that's what I really took away from your book is hope. There's so much hope and it was so accessible. Like I said, guys, October 24th is when the book comes out. I cannot recommend it enough. Where and when can we get the book?

I said when, but where can we find it, Adam? Well, you can already pre-order at your favorite pre-ordering book, you know, Amazon or the Hartford, or Harper Collins, excuse me, Harper-Collins, you know, pretty much anywhere that you can pre-order books. So it's available now. Of course, it'll be delivered on the 24th. So yeah, that's what I encourage people to pre-order. Get yours now. So, yeah, and I hope they enjoy it. I hope they, you know, that it's, I wrote the book in a way that was really meant to be fun, you know, even if you don't usually read science books, science-based books. You know, I'm from Jersey. You know, New York Mets here. You know, from

tri-state ethnic. And I kind of just, in this book, I've written a lot of science, popular science books, but this one I just let loose with, you know, as if, you know, I was just having a conversation with my buds, you know, and that's kind of the way I did it because that was fun. That was actually the most fun for me. Yeah, yeah, it was. Like I said, it did feel unlike any other book I've really read on this topic in a very long time. So again, I got to thank you for that, Adam. And once more, I got to thank you for coming on somewhere in the skies today. I really enjoyed this. This was a great conversation. Thank you. Welcome to Anama Khan. Anamacan is a virtual conference. on everything anomalous, live streaming on YouTube, Twitter X, and on Twitch.

Join us on September 1st and 2nd as over two dozen speakers give presentations on everything from UFOs and aliens to ghosts and the paranormal, from Bigfoot and Lake Monsters to witchcraft and the occult. It's all happening at Anamakan, and most importantly, it's completely free. To learn more about our speakers and the event, visit Anamakan.com. We'll see you on September 1st and 2nd for Anama Khan. Hey guys, Ryan here. The Summer in the Sky's podcast is a labor of love every week.

And with that comes many different costs to keep the show running. That's where our Patreon campaign comes in. You give what you think the show is worth. There's different rewards available all the time, including shoutouts on the show, early editions of main episodes, bonus episodes and content, and very soon monthly patron hangouts, where we sit back and chat all things UFOs. So I hope you'll consider becoming a Patreon subscriber today.

To learn more and to join, visit patreon.com slash somewhere skies. Thank you for your support and keep looking out. Today on the show, astrophysicist principal investigator of Vasco and winner of the L'Oreal Prize for Women in Science, Beatrice Villaroyle. My team is searching for objects that have vanished or appeared during 70 years on our night sky. This includes a number of exotic astrophysical phenomena, including stars that collapse directly into black holes. It also includes possible signatures of ET. Our research is basic research, which means that it contributes to human knowledge and aims to answer some of the most profound questions.

For example, are we alone here? This is Somewhere in the Skies with Ryan's bread. Beatrice, thank you so much for joining us today on Somewhere in the Skies. It's a pleasure. Yeah, we're really excited to talk to you when Chrissy and I first heard about your work, and we saw that you were the winner of the 2021 L'Ooneoneoneonezco for Women in Science Award. We were like, yes, this is someone we have to talk to you, not only because of the amazing work you've done, but highlighting the work of women in science, which is an issue a lot of the times when it comes to who's at the forefront of talking.

about these things. And we were super excited. So yeah, Chrissy, if you don't mind, I'd love to start and ask Beatrice the obvious question, like how she got interested in all this stuff. So Beatrice, how did you first get interested in astrophysics? And what made you want to take that journey? Actually, it wasn't a clear thing for me. I always liked a lot of things. I have always been very passionate about music. Since I was a kid, I really loved playing violin a lot. I still love playing violin. At the same time, I was quite intrigued by science, and I was, as a teenager, I was particularly interested in molecular biology, and I thought that it was so cool, like how DNA becomes a protein and all these things. However, with time, I discovered, like, that

there were many questions in astrophysics that intrigued me as well. And I mean, and since I was a kid, I was always kind of a nerd. I loved Star Wars and all these things. And so astronomy has kind of been very natural for me, like a choice. Right. Well, you're talking to two Star Wars fans here as well. So you're in good company. You're in good company.

I love that. I love hearing the origin story of how people get interested in what they do. Chrissy, do you want to take it from here? Yeah, you said music. You brought up the music part. Have you been able to bring bridge music and your passion for it into the work that you're doing in science? Have there been any intersections of that? Actually, I was organizing for several years as chamber music concerts at my alma mater, where I did my PhD.

During those years, I was doing my PhD studies. I also organized this concert and sometimes played on them. So I did that. It has been very important for me to kind of keep the music alive. I can't function unless I both have music and science at the same time. Yeah, and you have two research fields. Can you break them down a little bit for us and what they consist of? So one of the things I like working with is active galactic nuclei. I think many might have heard of quasars, and they know that quasars are like extremely luminous galaxy cores that you can find. And these kind of quasars, I've been very, very interested in trying to understand the physics and of them and so on.

And the second thing I were interested in is searching for vanishing stars because this is a field that is pretty untouched and that I always been, or not always, but that I have been very excited about in the last years. Yeah, the Vanishing Stars aspect of this is what I'm really interested in hearing about and how this will eventually relate to, you know, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence and whatnot. But I actually heard you in an interview talk about how you first got interested in the idea of vanishing stars. And I loved how endearing the story was.

Would you mind sharing that with us? Sure. I can tell the story. I actually also posted it on my blog on the 11th of February on the International Day for Women and Girls in Science. So I was younger. I think either I was in my undergrad years or I was a PhD student. I don't remember exactly, unfortunately, when it was. I used to write some kind of fables and short stories,

and whenever I had something I wanted to tell you, you should type it down for myself. I usually never share these stories or very seldom I share it with someone. And so I was writing this kind of fable about a sad quasar. And I kind of wrote it. And then I, towards the end, I sent him through a wormhole. And then I kind of started wondering, has anyone ever seen an object just vanishing from the sky?

Has nothing to do with science? Absolutely nothing with science. It was just, well, me. a younger version of myself typing up these fables and stories. And that's kind of how I got the idea. I got stuck with it. And then I wanted to check it. The problem was that I didn't have any tools.

I didn't have the means. I didn't know which surveys I could use. And so I postponed it. And in the final year of my PhD studies, I knew how I could do it. And I tried, and I tried it with like 1% of the database that I had access to because it was a too big effort.

And that's kind of how Vasco project was born. It turns out to be super difficult to check technically. Interesting. I see that's so cool how like your curiosity as a kid would ultimately lead to like this huge project that you undertook. I love hearing stories like that. We always hear like science fiction, you know, inspires a lot of scientists until they can make it science fact.

When I heard that story, I was like, I have to ask her about that. But the Vasco Project, I love to hear how you started this. What exactly it is. And yeah, would you mind telling us a little more about that? So the Vasco Project is the vanishing and appearing sources during a Central of Observations project. It's a project where we're looking for vanishing objects, anything that vanishes from the sky. And the hope is to find something that was there. always was there and one day it just vanishes. Of course we don't know if these objects exist

at all. We only know that there are not many studies that have dedicated to look for them because people just assume that it kind of doesn't happen. If you have a star that dies, either it's going to go supernova or it's going to transform into a white dwarf which will take billion of years if it transforms into this white dwarf. So you have these two modes for a star to die, but there is nothing that says that it's going to just vanish. So now there is actually a hypothesis that some stars might collapse directly into a black hole in so-called failed supernovae. But this is a hypothesis. Nobody knows if this failed supernova ever happen. So there's obviously a science case also. So the Vasco project is therefore looking for these kind of vanishing objects.

In the Vasco project there is also a connection to like SETI research because this is an example of a so-called impossible effects and we proposed in a paper in 2016 that you can look for things that are impossible, let's say a star that vanishes or a galaxy that vanishes to take it even more absurd, because these kind of impossible effects would be a sign of something that would look like magic to us. And we know from Arthur C. Clark's laws that anything that looks like magic can just be a very, very advanced technology. I'm not sure if I said it exactly as it was written there, but something in this... Close enough.

Okay, sufficiently advanced technology could look like magic. Right. We do hear that a lot in the UFO research community. You know, what may look impossible to us? And even some of our most advanced, you know, fighter pilots saying that what they saw, what they chased these anomalies in the sky performed unlike anything they'd ever seen. And yeah, that's going to look like magic to us until we understand the technology being displayed in what these anomalies might be. So I find that fascinating as well. before Chrissy takes it over from here

with the Vasco project, I love to know have you found any of these anomalies or anything really compelling in the research that you've done that would lead you to think, yeah, yeah, I think we're on the right track. I think we found something that is very compelling but could also have a very mundane and boring cause

and we don't know which one it is right now if it's the exciting cause or the boring cause. So last year we published a paper in scientific report where we see nine sources of light that appear and vanish within half an hour or like or something of that order of magnitude within the exposure time of the photographic plates. So this plate is from 1950 and you have this star looking things that are there. If you look at a plate that was taking half an hour earlier, they are not there. you take a look at the same region of the sky six days later and they are not there. So we have tried to identify the cause. We try to look for all kind of astrophysical effects that could cause that.

And it seemed to too many of these transients in us too small image of the sky to be anything that we know, like any astrophysical phenomenon that we are aware of. So we did all those checks, all known astrophysics gone. So then we started looking at all kind of instrumental issues. We have been thinking, for example, double exposure and so on, and we haven't found anything that shows or proves us that this is something instrumental either, which of course means it still can be instrumental. For example, maybe there is some type of rare contamination or something like that

that would look exactly like stars. So we've been thinking if it could be, for example, some, well, some maybe a nuclear fallout or something like that. And something boring. We have also been wondering if it could be something more exciting because it doesn't have to be instrumental effects, even if we know that most of the times it is still the boring explanation that wins over time.

And this kind of more exciting idea has been that maybe what we see could be some kind of solar reflection, so like reflections of objects that are in high orbit around Earth and that objects that are very reflective and flat. Because if you would actually use the same instrumentation and have a look at images today, you have so much of space that is that you can actually see transients that that kind of appear and vanish in a small image. This is kind of one of the things that you see when you have this base debris, you see lots of glins here and there. However, this image is from 1950, seven years before Spook, Nikon. So that's the more exciting

hypothesis, but one should always start with the most boring explanation and maybe go from there. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, I wouldn't say that nuclear fallout is boring. But I hope it's the other answer. I honestly do. Well, Chrissy, I love if you took it from here. I know we have some other questions relating to Vasco and whatnot. Yeah, please. I just, I think even if it's mundane, it's still exciting. Like all the research that you're doing is wonderful and exciting overall. I wonder, like, does your work cross over into cosmology and has it? And if so, how does it cross over into it?

My work is not crossing over to cosmology right now. The work I do with AGN sometimes has some implications for cosmology, possibly, or some of it might have had. All the objects I work with are fairly close to me or to us. So it doesn't really dive into cosmology as such. Well, you did mention instruments, Beatrice. I'd love to know where do you work out of when you're doing this? What type of instruments are you using? Is this like an observatory in Sweden that you use?

Or how does that work? It's much simpler for me in this sense. I don't work with the instruments directly myself. I use public data from like surveys that have been done by all astronomers. For example, I use images from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. I use images from the Palomar Sky Survey, these images that we're taken in the 50s and 60s and so on. That actually bleeds into my next question then.

Citizen science, you know, how can people, you know, who amateur astronomers or people like that, how can they actually be a part of the research, I guess, is my question. How far have you gone into the citizen science realm? So we have actually made a citizen science project, and it has been developed by the Uppsala University's IT department, where they have a design, a very wonderful web page that is also gamified, so that this should be a little bit more fun for the users,

where a citizen scientist can go there and compare two images of the sky, one from 1950, and one from, let's say, five or ten years ago and can see if a star that was there has vanished in the new image. So the citizen science can go there and make any comments she or he finds important. And well, simply participate in the project. It's open for everyone. And the citizen science project is very fun for me to work with as well. We are working in particular with some institute. in Algeria and in Nigeria and with amateur associations in Algeria.

And it's super fun because we have a very good collaboration there. I love that. The whole citizen science thing really, I think, brings the world together. You know, it seems like there's a lot of division in the world going on right now. But I love that coming back to these topics of, you know, space exploration. and even UFOs, it actually like bridges that gap and we can all like come together and share our information. So yeah, I think that's awesome.

That's why I love citizen science. Citizen archaeology, I'm part of an amateur project there where I go over Google map images for hours on end to see if, you know, I'm finding the same things as other people. So I finally, my dream has come true and I'm sort of in Indiana Jones. So that's fun for me that I can have some place in the scientific world. So, Chrissy, please take it from there. Yeah, I think that's wonderful. It's fabulous.

You're based in Sweden from what I know. And I'm going to just go into the UFO question. I've talked to some people in Clubhouse, which is a great app. And you get to talk to people internationally in real time. And a friend now that's in the Clubhouse is from Sweden. And he said that the conversation around UFOs is not really big in Sweden. Do you know why that might be? You know, they say it's kind of like people are really mum about it.

It's not very much of a conversation now. Or maybe that's changing. I don't recall many conversations about UFOs with anyone of my Swedish colleagues or Swedish friends. I think there's a very different approach or attitude to UFOs in the United States and in Sweden. And I think like if a sweet sees something weird on the sky, she or he will most likely first say, well, maybe it's a helicopter or maybe it's a weird airplane and the interpretation will always be,

will maybe always be the most boring explanation first. Maybe, I can imagine that. I love to kind of play off of that, Beatrice. The idea of UFOs, a lot of people do believe that these are craft or these are some sort of intelligence that might be extraterrestrial in origin. So in the research and work you've done, has there ever been any compelling data that would lead you to believe that there might be extraterrestrial intelligence out there, interstellar even. Yeah, what do you think about the whole idea of these UFOs, people seeing on Earth,

could be piloted or in control by some sort of, I guess, E.T. I think I am a UFO agnostic in the sense that I actually don't know at all what I think about. It is like, depending on if you ask me in the morning or in the evening, you might get a different answer. See here. So that's kind of my initial impression on UFOs. I think that people's experiences are almost always real,

like in 99% of the cases. On the other hand, I don't know if I would attribute them to anything supernatural. That's exactly what I hope to find out if there's something, let's say, if there's something like extraterrestrial behind this kind of. of sightings. That's something I think it would be super cool if I had a chance to find out during my lifetime as a researcher. On the other hand, I think there is a very wonderful opportunity for astronomers to study anomalies on the sky now, especially if there is some kind of support for that EU up sightings might be real sightings of something anomalous. I think it brings a

wonderful opportunity for projects like the Galileo project. And I think what shouldn't miss out on this beautiful opportunity to learn more about the universe. But so far, I must say, I haven't seen anything that has convinced me in science that there is, that the, that the youth, sorry, that EIT has been here. But there are things that, some indications that one might see published in scientific literature, and that says that the question is justified to pose and that we should be looking, maybe more like that. I love that.

At least you're willing to ask the question because I feel like for so long, many in the scientific community weren't willing to do that. And we do see individuals, you know, kind of putting, let's be honest, their reputation on the line and saying, we need to ask this question. That is part of the scientific method. You have people like Avi Loeb with the Galilee,

project. You have your project with Vasco and searching for dying stars and what that could mean. So I guess, kind of playing off of that, I'd love to know, SETI, is this a organization that you've ever worked with? And what do you think about their idea of searching for extraterrestrial intelligence through such things as radio waves? Do you think there are more beneficial ways that we could be trying to search for ET intelligence or even communicate with them other than just radio signals? I think looking for radio signals is a fantastic first idea to explore, and Ron has been doing it since the 1960s.

And I think there's a very wide parameter space one can look into, and I think it's great that they are doing these searches in California. I think, however, that one can also try different methods I think, for example, expanding searches in the optical, expanding searches with other methods, for example, like doing more space archaeology in the solar system, because there are so many different ways one can look for ET. And if one is willing to look for life far, far, far away,

I don't see why we shouldn't be looking for extraterrestrial, much closer to other science of extraterrestrial life. much closer to, yeah, where we are. If the UFOs really are caused by extraterrestrials, it means that it's a low-lying fruit or low-hanging fruit for a scientist to sort out. Yeah, did you by chance get to read the UFO report that was released? There was a preliminary report, right, on June 25th of last year.

What was your perspective from it in your, you know, your scientific perspective of it and your thoughts and feelings around it. I have been thinking about that report quite a lot, and I've been changing my opinion back and forth about it as well, depending on if you ask me in the morning or in the evening. I found it very interesting. I liked the fine wording it used. I am still skeptical to it because these data is not public.

It's not published. It's a report. it's not like scientists can go there and have a look at the data and play with it themselves. You just need to trust whoever who wrote the report that the analysis was currently done. So I'm both skeptical to it at the same time as I find it as a good enough reason to actually do this research for those who are interested. I think we need to remove the stigma from a UFO research. And I think that's kind of what the US government is trying to do

to get their active military involved. to report these UFOs when in the past they haven't done that. But I think you're right. I think the next big step is, well, that data in the reports, where does that go next? And I obviously believe it should be going to the scientific community, the ones who can actually explain these things. I think in the report, they looked at 144 UFO reports, and they explained one, one as a balloon. But what about the 143 others?

Could they be explained by citizen science? Could they be explained by our top leading scientists throughout the world, possibly? But that information is classified, and we will probably never know what's in it. So how do we study something when we don't have the data to study it? That's the, I think, the conundrum and the frustration by many in the science world and in the UFO community of, hey, look, we could help you. we will probably be wrong, but we could at least ask questions that you're not. So, I mean, that's my personal opinion on the report.

But people have heard my opinion enough. Yeah, I think it's actually a really, it's a great comment that you said. Like, how are we really able to fact check it? It's just somebody who wrote it and now we have to take it as fact. I think that's great. Why? You know, we should be able to ask more questions. And hopefully in the next coming months, you know, in years that when we're,

more reports come out, they start giving us better data. Because I think you're right, the scientific community is going to ask for it. And I'm happy that, I think, I'm really happy you made that comment. One thing that we are going to do or that we are trying to do now with the Basco project is that, so we are trying to test for this hypothesis of that there might be something artificial in high orbits around the Earth before the first satellite was launched. And this turns out to be quite easy to do if you use old photographic material from, let's say, from the 50s or if you would have material that is even older. Because what you can look for is several blints that fall upon a line, because if you have something that is very reflective and it's far away from the earth and it maybe rotates or spins around its axis, it's going to give off a few glints.

And that's kind of what we see today also with satellites. And you can look for these things. And you can look for this in all photographic plate material. And if you have a single piece, it should show up in these images. And that's one thing we can do. Then we don't deal with any human report, not with any classified data. We deal with public data, data that is already out there, digitized there, that any person can get access to citizens, scientists can help to look through it.

and if there's a single sign of ET or a single piece of metal in the wrong place at the wrong time, we should be able to see it. So, you know, being a female in science, how has the landscape changed is like a female perspective from like over the years from when you maybe first started to where it has now? How has it changed for women in science? I think it's steadily progressing and becoming better and better. I cannot imagine how difficult it must have been, let's say, 50 years ago or 30 years ago. But I think it's always progressing. And the conditions today are, I think, pretty good. It can still be better, of course.

And I still think there is some work to do to make it better. Yeah. And Luriel is working, like right now, like you're working with them and women in science. How did that all come about working with L'Oreal? And we watched the video that's come out that they did, the little bio piece on you, which is really lovely and wonderful. How did that all start? And to be honest, that was one of the first times I've heard

that L'Oreal's been doing that as a larger beauty brand. So, you know, kudos to them, a little bit of a plug. But kudos to L'Oreal for that. But yeah, how did that all start? Do you like stories of the strange, the weird, and the unexplained? Then we want you to check out Jim Herald's campfire. The concept is pretty simple. Jim talks to regular people

about strange stuff that happens to them. And yes, that includes UFOs, along with cryptids, ghosts, and head scratchers. He doesn't exaggerate or play a lot of spooky music, kind of like I'm doing right now. The stories speak for themselves. One's like a ghost story involving serial killer, Ted Bundy, or the young man who encountered an eight-legged demon.

Then there's the story of an alien abduction by what could be considered a reptilian. Now, not all the stories are horrifying. Some are actually pretty heartwarming, like a visit from a past loved one or a peaceful near-death experience. Regardless, these are true and fascinating stories told by ordinary people

who've had extraordinary experiences. Tune in to Jim Harold's Campfire on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to somewhere in the skies. And remember, stay spooky. So I got the price last year and I was like super, super happy when I got it because this is a price that you can apply for. And I had sent in my application and I thought, I have no chance. Like I just applied like for fun. I did the best of course with application. And then when I like got the letter, I was super shocked and super happy.

I couldn't believe it, that they got the price. And so then, well, of course, we got to know the organizers of the prize, and it was great, because we were invited for a virtual ceremony, because it was during the time of the pandemics, which means that they couldn't have the normal ceremony where 100 people are usually there, and having dinners and all these fancy things like having beautiful dresses. I like these kind of things like ceremonies. Anyway, we had a virtual ceremony instead, so they were filming, and it was super cool because they also took very nice photos

with a professional photographer. I thought it was super fun, everything. Yeah, I can imagine. And even to keep on the topic of women in science, do you have any advice for women, you know, young women that want to get into this topic and are curious, or interested in science. Do you have any advice of how they can start their career in that field? My most important lesson has been to trust the gut feeling.

Don't listen to senior scientists. Trust your gut feeling. If you feel that something is interesting, you follow that, even if the other one say that this is boring or uninteresting or something like that. I'm worried sometimes that maybe the longer we are in science, the more we kind of gaslight this inner, gut feeling we have. We always self-gaslight us. I say maybe this is not so important or so. No, I think one should just trust it and follow this intuition towards

what you want to work with. That's my advice. Yeah, the questions you're asking in the projects you're involved with are some of the most profound questions we can ask of humanity. Is there life out there? What is out there? What comes next? I find it so inspiring. I remember hearing, you know,

someone like the character of Dana Scully in the X-Piles television show. There we go. See? After her character came on television, they said that women got involved in the scientific world, almost it shot up like 68%. And that she was the inspiration and reason that a lot of women got into science. So it's good to hear that she had an impression.

on you as well. I can't even imagine what that feels like. And that you're probably doing that for younger women as well who want to get interested in this. It's very cool. And this is what we have to do, create better role models, like interesting role models that the younger generation can be inspired by. Yeah, science is, you know, hopefully becoming cool again in many ways. And women are getting excited about it and they want to join in the community and learn more and research. I think it's It's fabulous. You know, hopefully we'll see more in the years to come. I think so. Well, what's to come? That's what I'd love to ask for us to kind of wrap things up.

Two questions for you. And the big, the first one's kind of big. Say there is an extraterrestrial intelligence out there somewhere or just something non-human that will possibly make contact with Earth or has made contact. What do you want that to be? Do you want it to be alien? Do you want it to be interdimensional? Do you want it to be humans from the future coming back and visiting us? Is there any true answer to this UFO question that you personally want?

Yes. I would wish it to be some aliens with a very, strong interest into art that will compose a lot of beautiful music and share all these arts with us so that we could get enriched culturally. Like, for example,

we have all these wonderful composers all over the world today, but imagine if we could get a factor 100 more music coming to us to listen to me. That's what I would like. I love that. More art is definitely what we need. And who's to say some of these composers aren't aliens? I mean, some of the things they do are. Yeah. So what comes next, Beatrice? I know the Vasco project is ongoing. I know you're doing some work with other organizations and whatnot. So what comes next for you and your endeavors in the scientific. typical world. So we are now trying to wrap up the first phase of the citizen science project.

We have more than 250,000s of classifications, and we're working on vetting the most interesting candidates. And also, we are now actually doing the analysis in the searches for these glints along a line. We published one week ago a paper in Act Astronautica that describes how you can do this such as now we're actually carrying them out and analyzing the results. So that is the first thing that comes to me, trying to see, is there a single piece of metal in orbit around the Earth before Sputnikorn? Interesting. Would that sort of fall into the realm of technosignatures,

some sort of technology that is not from here or originated on Earth? Would that be considered something technosignature-esque? Yes, it would be a techno signature, but right in our own backyard. It would be, let's say, if E.T. through some space trash on the way to the Earth, then we would see that. Give us all your trash aliens. Right, right. We will study until the end of time. Exactly. We'll be in museums forever.

Yeah. So I'm excited. It's a bit of the projects. So let's see if it gives us any. consistent results or so. And I think even leaving with the concept of space trash is like, I think it's awesome. And I'd love the whole fact. Like you look at like, yeah, like alien artifacts and things to that.

So I'm just glad that we're, you know, we're looking in all different areas. So it's exciting. It's very exciting. Beatrice, there's so much for me to go think about right now after this conversation. And that's what it's about. It's about making people think and keeping that curiosity going. and that's what's honestly going to unravel the answers to the questions we've had for all of human history. So I personally want to thank you for taking the time to talk to us today.

And thank you for joining us somewhere in the skies. Thank you for inviting me. I'm very happy you did. And I want to contribute to the stigmatizing the UFO topic. This episode is brought to you by Netflix. Most valuable promotions in Netflix are hoping. hosting a blockbuster triple headliner Saturday, May 16th. Rhonda Rousey returns to face fellow woman's MMA pioneer Gina Carano in the main event.

Plus co-main's Nate Diaz versus Mike Perry. And the best heavyweight in the world, Frances Ngano versus Felipe Lins. Watch Rhonda Rousey versus Gina Carrano, live only on Netflix. Saturday, May 16th at 9 p.m. Eastern Center time, 6 p.m. Pacific time. 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. This is Somewhere in the Skies with Ryan Sprague. Welcome to Somewhere in the Skies. And today we have a very special interview with one of the most controversial people in the UFO field, community, whatever you want to call it. And controversial for all the right reasons, which we will definitely talk about. So we have a ton of listener questions for him. And I have a bunch of my own.

So I'm not going to waste any more time. I am going to welcome Mick West. Mick, how are you? I'm glad to be here. I'm doing good. Glad to be here. Thank you for having me. My pleasure.

I can't believe we haven't made it happen earlier, but I'm happy we're doing it now because you and I were talking off air. It seems that kind of the UFO fervor has died down lately. And maybe that was to be expected after this report came out. But yeah, how do you feel about what's going on right now in terms of that? Yeah, it has died down. And it's interesting. I was looking a while ago at the Google trend for searches for UFO.

And he actually peaked a little bit before the report came out with the media coverage, 60 Minutes in particular, was like the kind of high point. And the report itself, I think, perhaps let people down, and it wasn't quite as exciting as people were anticipating. And when it did actually come out, you know, it's not a nothing burger, but it's not the kind of like the big reveal that everybody was hoping for. So I think there's a little bit of kind of a rebound effect from the anticipation. and then the letdown and people are kind of recalibrating their expectations.

And a lot of people are just, I think, kind of lost interest, you know, the people who are kind of like the people who were brought in by the media attention and they thought that there was something like amazing about to happen and then it didn't. And we're moving on. That doesn't really mean any interesting new videos for me to look at either. So I've got kind of losing interest for myself. Yeah. I know I sent you a couple of videos a few weeks ago.

think it was from out in Hawaii, which is a case I'm still working on. But I got to thank you for taking a look at those. And hopefully I could share them with the public soon because I got your opinion and a few others as well. And that'll be interesting. And that's kind of what I want to talk to you about today. You know, that anticipation and that expectation that a lot of the people in the UFO field, I guess crave or kind of feed off of. And, then there's the stark reality to the topic, to the issue, to the way the government is looking at it. So you did mention the UAP report had a little bit of interesting things in there. Would you mind maybe touching on what you personally found of any interest or compelling about it?

Well, for me personally, there was kind of a funny thing that was interesting, which was that the first explanation that they listed, you know, they, categorize things into five possible explanations for these UAPs. The first one was birds and balloons and other airborne clutter like drones and things. And I thought that was kind of funny because people have been mocking me for suggesting things like balloons and even birds. It's become like a bit of a meme that everything is a bird or balloon. And then along comes the Navy and they're like, yeah, a lot of this is airborne clutter

and things like birds, balloons and drones. And I just went, yes. when that's happened. But the interesting things are that there are cases that they haven't been able to identify that seem to display unusual movement, unusual aerodynamic behavior. And they list a couple of things like very high velocity

and very high accelerations. Now, those things, if they're actually craft in the sky that are doing that would be very interesting. And I would be very interested to see what that data actually was. Excuse me, that led them to that conclusion that these things might actually exist. But within the report itself, they go on to say, actually, they start out saying that these things might be censor error, they might be observer misperception. Now, then you've got this kind of interesting way, like the report kind of devise things

up into, divides things up into different categories and then it divides them up into different categories in other

ways. And you can't tell which way these categories overlap. So they will say things like

a lot of these sensors, a lot of these things were physical objects because they were picked up by more than

one sensor. And then they say things like some of these objects displayed unusual aerodynamic behavior,

aerodynamic behavior. But we don't know if the ones that displayed unusual aerodynamic behavior were the same ones that were picked up on multiple sensors. Because that's, that for me, would be the interesting thing. If you could actually pick up something that's displaying unusual aerodynamic behavior on multiple sensors, and that behavior is detected on multiple sensors, like you've got a video of something that looks like it's moving really fast. And then you've also got radar data that shows that thing moving really fast at the same time and the same location. irrefutably the same object, that will be really interesting for me, but we don't know if that actually happened. Right. Yeah, that triangulation of data from different, like you mentioned,

whether sensors, angles, radar, whatnot, is essential. And you're right. I think, you know, the one word we can say about this assessment, preliminary assessment, apparently, is that it is ambiguous. And, you know, for a good reason, I think that leaves them off the hook for a lot of things as well. But that leads to issues in itself, which I do want to talk to you about a little bit later in terms of, you know, what that ambiguity does to the public in terms of the world we live in today with conspiracy theory. But I am getting ahead of myself, Mick, for any of my listeners or viewers who don't know the Mick West origin story, you know, the comic book bitten by the spider sort of thing, how did you get involved? How did you get involved?

involved with all this. I know you've talked about it a bunch, but how do you get involved with this, interested in UFOs? How did you eventually create Metabug? Yeah, if you don't mind, giving us the... Sure, sure. My potted history. Well, you see, back there, I have a skateboard, which is a Tony Hawk skateboard. That was given to me when we finished the first Tony Hawk Pro Skater video game. I was one of the programmers on that. It was one of the co-founders in Eversoft. So that's my background is that I used to be. a video game programmer. And after, you know, we were fairly successful with doing the Tony Hawk Pro Skater series,

I kind of took early retirement from the video game industry and just started doing things that I found interesting. And something I've always been interested in is, you know, essentially like things like pseudoscience, things where people are making claims, things like perhaps the supernatural, all perhaps things like UFOs and things like conspiracy theories and then investigating those things. And that's just something I was interested in as a young person back, you know, in the 1970s and 1980s and didn't get much time to indulge that whilst I was working. And kind of when I went into semi-retirement, I just started looking at these types of things. I got interested in

looking at the chemtrails conspiracy theory, which is a conspiracy theory that the government is spraying stuff from the backs of airplanes, and that's why we see these long white trails behind them. And I read a blog about that. That's evolved into another site called Metabunk, which is just about discussing all kinds of things like conspiracy theories and pseudoscience and investigating sightings in the sky. And I did that for a while, and I wrote a book, which as you can see on the shelf there, escaping the rabbit hole, which is about how to talk to people who are kind of trapped in conspiracy theory thinking and how to help them out of it. And yeah, over the last few years, because of my interest in things like chemtrails,

I got quite good at identifying airplanes and identifying like what something is in the sky. And it's just kind of a skill that I developed over time. And that naturally lent itself to UFOs. And it was never really a UFO guy until maybe like three or four years ago about the end of 2017. I occasionally look at them. But then I got interested in, first of all, this Chilean Navy case, which was kind of a similar case to the US Navy cases where they had this video of a strange object. And I helped figure out what this object actually was.

And then these newer cases came along. And they were very interesting. The US Navy cases, the gimbal, the GoFast and the Nimitz encounter, the Tick-Tac. And they were getting a lot of attention. And you've got these interesting little videos that you can analyze. And I've always been someone who's been really interested. in taking a video or taking a photo and then trying to figure out what it actually shows.

So I use the 3D geometry skills that I learned while doing video game programming because you have to take, with video game programming, you have to be able to do the transforms to turn 3D into 2D, and it's just the opposite type of thing when you're turning a 2D image into a 3D image. I try to figure out where things are in space.

So I just got really interested in doing that and it's just kind of grown over the years. I think in a way it kind of sucked me in because I am very interested in analyzing these videos and so I became a little bit well known as the guy who looked at the videos and came up with his alternative explanations which I do do along with other people.

And then people asked me questions about other things and initially I'm not really that interested. I'm not really a UFO guy. video analyst guy. But, you know, people keep asking. And so I come up with answers and I start talking about the broader issues like, you know, are UFOs, aliens and things like that. And I give my opinions there. And it's just kind of, you know, it's just become this little interesting hobby. Although, like I say, like you said at this start, it's starting to die down. So I'm actually starting to kind of wean myself off UFOs to a degree and get back to the stuff

I used to do on Medibunk, which is looking into conspiracy theories. I was going to ask what comes next, you know, when UFOs go on the shelf, because this happens in the UFO field. This topic goes, you know, kind of explodes into the mainstream when like a big seminal case happens or maybe a mass UFO sighting or, you know, a soundbite in the New York Times or whatnot. And then it kind of goes away. And I think, you know, this is the longest, I would say, prolonged amount of time UFOs have

sort of been in the mainstream for. almost two years now. I mean, it's just grown exponentially in terms of those interested in it and becoming members of the quote-unquote community. But yeah, what sort of are you looking at now since we're kind of, you know, taking a little breather with UFOs? Well, I think the good news is that people are always going to see strange things in the sky. Right. Just because of the nature of things. If there were no aliens and there was no magic technology, you know, as assume there isn't for a second. People are still going to see things in the sky that they don't understand and they need explaining or investigating or possible things hypothesized. So that area is still

going to remain. But these big stories about UFOs seem to have kind of been pushed back or just not pushed back, I guess, died away because nothing new has come along. We had before this drip, drip, drip of new videos being released. But that hasn't happened for a while. But that hasn't happened for a while. So maybe it would ramp up. But if I'm not looking at UFOs, which I will still look at them, I look at conspiracy theories. And right now there's a whole bunch of very significant conspiracy theories that I almost feel bad that I spent time looking at UFOs because there are these other issues that are out there. I mean, one in particular is the anti-vaccine conspiracy theory, people thinking that there is some kind of conspiracy by big farmer to push vaccines,

even though they don't work and they're dangerous. And then some people go more extreme than that, and they think that the vaccines are deliberately toxic or that they have little microchips in them or something like that, or that the coronavirus is a hoax. So I think there's a very important issues to address. Before I was doing UFOs this year, I was very interested. looking at the election conspiracy fraud type election

election fraud or voter fraud like conspiracy theories there was lots of people thinking that the election was stolen by by Biden and that Trump actually legitimately won but yeah obviously from my perspective he didn't and I think it's very important to kind of help people see what the real facts are in that case as well because I think that's something that's very destructive to you know the very fabric of our country.

We have this very polarized beliefs. And it's interesting, the older conspiracy theories, like hemtrails and 9-11, and things that have been around for a long time that I used to think were like, this is what a conspiracy theory is, they've almost faded away to nothing when you compare them to these newer conspiracy theories,

like QAnon, the anti-eons, the anti-vaccine stuff, the voter fraud stuff, it's all kind of melded together into one kind of huge meta-conspiracy where the deep state is trying to impose some kind of communist rule over the world. And things like Kemptrails and 9-11 and even the UFO thing, which has, you know,

it's been a conspiracy theory to some degree for a long time, have been, you know, they don't seem very big or important anymore. that's a good point you know i i feel like there was when i first got involved with the ufo topic i was 13 and you know i was on aOL in the chat rooms in the forums perinette all that stuff and it just seemed so innocent back then you know who shot jfk or you know stuff like that and you're right and you know i've got this conspiracy board in my background as kind of a i i not i guess a parody of that whole idea of connecting everything together And you're right. Q&N has become this like amalgamation of everything. And it's become like you said, real and dangerous. You look at the riots. Excuse me. You know what happened at the, you know, at Congress and everything, or the capital, excuse me. And it's become real and it's become dangerous. And I, I love to get your thoughts on that. You know, the danger of conspiracy theory other than just, you know, an insurrection. Like these things have dressed.

consequences for everybody, you know? Yeah, very much so. And I think the most immediate consequence that you can see with conspiracy theory is, is when it comes to health, a lot of people are very suspicious of conventional health care. And so they seek out other forms of health care. People don't get the vaccine, the coronavirus vaccine, largely because of disinformation. that they've read. They read things like that more people die because of the vaccine than die of coronavirus. And they believe these things because they kind of resonate with something in their minds

because they've become kind of accustomed to distrusting government. And even if you make very extreme case, very extreme statements like that, you know, claiming that more people die of the vaccine. You know, this is people saying, you know, I got injected with a vaccine and, you know, the somebody died because they were injected with the vaccine. It's kind of a ridiculous statement, but people believe it because if you've, if you started to believe things like, you know, in the olden days, like the 9-11 being an inside job, if you could believe the government could actually do that, then it's a very short step. It's almost like not a step at all to believe that the government would be covering up some kind of huge,

I don't know, population control experiment or something like that or some kind of, you know, they want to usher us all into COVID camps type thing. And then obviously you're not going to get this vaccine because you think that the government is trying to poison you and you end up, yes, a bunch of these people, you've seen that some of the more ardent opponents of the vaccine, the conspiracy theorists, are getting COVID and dying. And probably most of them, them would have been fine had they got the vaccine. So it's it's not just harmful. It's killing people. People are dying. If you take that not just of those individual stories, you look at the entire country and the entire world and you think how many people have been affected by this

belief that vaccines are harmful. This conspiracy theory essentially because it would have to be a conspiracy to cover up, you know, this thing Fauci would have to be on it. the president would have to be in it. Even Trump would have to be in it because he says you should take the vaccine now. The effect of that is going to be maybe something like tens or 100,000 deaths because of essentially a conspiracy theory. And not just old people who are going to die in a few years anyway, which I wouldn't say it's a good thing because I didn't want my elderly relatives to die years earlier than they should.

But younger people as well, you know, people in the 50s and people in their 40s and even like teenagers. They're getting affected by conspiracy theories and they're dying or they're becoming very ill. I mean, coronavirus has effects that last, you know, still, still, you have this long COVID thing where people have breathing issues or they have brain fog that last for a long time. And these are very, very real effects of conspiracy theories. And then of course you've got the broader distrust of government and then people storming the capital, and the breakdown of civil society and the polarisation of people into groups where they shouted each other rather than talk with each other. And that's part of the reason why I do what I do is that I see these harmful effects of conspiracy theories. And I think the more that can be done to lead people away from disinformation and lead them towards good information,

the better because these these harms are real and we should do something about them. Right. And, you know, I want to connect that to the UFO conspiracy in just a second. But I'd love to ask you this. When you first got involved in debunking and, you know, trying to sort of stamp down these things before they spin off their access and out of control, did you ever see where we are right now happening, where conspiracy theory would.

become this big a world leader would not only promote some of these but go on to you know inevitably cause a lot of damage in this country in other countries there's conspiracies going on right now with biding too but um yeah did you ever foresee any of this no i i kind of thought it would stay as it was and that these conspiracy theories would be a fringe that was embraced by you know five to 10 percent of the population and perhaps more mainstream conspiracy theories like who shot JFK would have more of an adherence. But, yeah, I think what happened was very surprising to me. Something that always happens to me with conspiracy theories is the first time I hear about

them, I think, oh, that's ridiculous. No one could ever believe that. And then I see more people talking about it. And I guess, you know, it's just, it's not going to, nothing much will come of it. And it's just so ridiculous. I'm not going to allow people to talk about it on the forum. And that's the way 9-11 started. for me. Even though that's a mainstream conspiracy theory, I was into chemtrails at the time.

And I thought, this 9-11 stuff is just nonsense. So I don't want to talk about that. But eventually I did. And then I started Metabunk and then people started bringing up Flat Earth. And I thought, that's just so insanely ridiculous. I'm not going to allow any discussion of flat Earth on Metabunk. And of course, now I have a huge Flat Earth subforum on there because people kept talking about it. And then QAnonon comes along. And this ridiculous story about how, how there's a secret person in government who's leaking information to an army of anons via H-Cham, which made no sense whatsoever. And it just seemed obviously ridiculous, you know, kind of an extension of Pizza Gate,

which was also ridiculous. And so I wasn't repaying much attention. And then it became the biggest and most consequential conspiracy theory in modern times. it really took off way beyond my expectation. So no, I did not expect it. It's unbelievable. It really is. Well, I mean, zooming in on the UFO thing,

what do you find most dangerous within the UFO circle when it comes to conspiracy theory? It's not. I've always said UFOology and the UFO conspiracy theory is mostly harmless because it's not you know it's not like you believe in UFOs and you know

whatever you start thinking that the government is trying to poison you but I do think that if you were a believer in the UFO conspiracy theory which would be that the government is covering up knowledge of UFOs it kind of leads to a distrust of

the government so if you look at you know the history of UFOs it really the modern era of UFOs dates back to 1947, 1948 in 1947 was the first flying saucer incident, 19848 was Roswell and in those years the UFO scene was essentially born

and matured almost to the state it is today in the course of like a year we immediately got people saying what are these flying saucers what is the government trying to hide, does the government have evidence of it, what's being covered up. So if you believe that UFOs have been visiting us since the 1940s, then the government would have to know about it. There's no way it can be just some kind of accidents

that the government's just so inept that they don't have any evidence. They would have to have evidence if all these actual incidents were true. Going back to Roswell, a lot of people think that Roswell actually was a crash alien, spacecraft or some kind of craft. There have to be a cover-up, which means that you're essentially suggesting a theory that involves this big conspiracy of the government. And if you believe that, I think it makes it a bit easier for you to believe other conspiracy

theories and conspiracy theories that are more consequential. So if you could believe that the government is hiding contact with aliens or evidence of aliens or something along those lines, from you and has been doing it for 70 years, then it's fairly easy to believe that the government might be covering up something like, does the vaccine work? Or is coronavirus real? Or is global warming man-made or not? And is there anything we can do about it? You can start to distrust the government and distrust science if you believe that there's a huge conspiracy, and not just a huge conspiracy, but a huge and very well-run

conspiracy where you've got this men in black coming around and shutting people up and you've got all these bits of evidence that are hidden away in lockers somewhere and all these sightings somehow never get leaked out from the military.

It just, I think it's not hugely damaging, I would say, but it does lead a little bit in that direction. Yeah, it's sort of the gateway for sure but you know the struggle i have with that make is um i personally don't believe the roswell incident was uh extraterrestrial in origin but what i do believe is there was definitely

a cover up of some kind sure like that's that's basically been proven um but that's hard because one part of me is like i know it wasn't probably aliens at least in my personal research and in investigation, and I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me, but it's hard because there was a cover-up, so then you're like, okay, maybe it wasn't aliens, maybe the quidessential modern UFO era that started with Roswell wasn't aliens, but does that mean that none of it is, or what do we do there? Because they covered something up, so how do we trust that? Yeah, that's the thing, though. I mean, I'm not advocating blind trust in the government. I certainly wouldn't say you trust everything that people in power say because people in power will lie to you

and people in power a lot of them are just doing things for their own personal gain. And right now you've got two political parties and they're saying essentially opposite things. So one or both of them is kind of lying to you when they talk about either present a certain figure in a certain way or they make claims about what's going on at the border or what's going on with the coronavirus relief program and things like that. You know, you've got people who contradict each other. So politicians are kind of lying to you. Maybe you don't know which ones are lying to you, but politicians are generally not your friend. People become politicians, a lot of them, for their own personal reasons. Some of them are very well-meaning. Some of them are idealistic and they want to actually

do good for the country. But either, you know, some of them are not or they become not. and don't trust them. So when you look at something like Roswell, a long time ago, obviously, and it's very difficult to get a real handle on what happened. Yeah, we know that there was a bunch of different stories that came out at the start. So they couldn't all be true.

So what happened there? Was it just mistakes? Or were people lying? And we know that the later story is that the first stories were essentially covers for, or this project mogul where they had these microphones on balloons that they were using to listen for nuclear explosions in the atmosphere because they wanted to detect when Russia was letting off nuclear bombs,

which is a perfectly reasonable thing for them to do and a perfectly reasonable thing for them to keep secret and to have some kind of cover story for. So these things happen. There's secrecy. And this is one of the big issues in UFOology is that a lot of the questions that people ask are unampleasing. because you're asking them about stuff that is hidden behind the military's war of secrecy. And some of the things might get answered after whatever the statute of limitations is for these, these things.

Like, you know, Roswell, more information came out of it about it. But when you ask people about the Nimitz encounter, there's data there that we just don't have access to because it's classified, because it was recorded on classified systems. And we probably never will. by never, I mean never in the foreseeable, you know, decade or two. So, does that raise to a level of being a cover-up or some kind of, is it the government lying to you or the government just like not telling you stuff because it's secret? Right. Big difference, yeah. Yeah, and that itself is opaque. We don't know the reasons for it. And it allows people to read into these things.

the lack of detail in the UAP report. Is that because there's nothing really interesting there? And it's just like video and radio that was recorded using systems that are classified so they're not going to show them to you. Or is it because it shows a close-up of a flying saucer zipping around and diving into the ocean? It's very easy to imagine it might be one or the other. And if your preference, your personal preference is that it is some kind of UFO zipping around and diving into the ocean, yeah, you're probably going to be more likely to believe that's the

type of thing that's being covered up. Whereas my personal experience with UFO investigations is that things generally do not turn out to be very interesting. And I actually anticipate all this secret stuff in the secret annex that has been hidden from us to be pretty boring stuff. You know, stuff that's basically like the gimbal video. It's probably the most interesting video that's actually in there. I don't really think they've got anything more interesting than that. Interesting. Well, yeah, let's fast forward up to that because you bring up a good point of the ambiguity. And in, you know, the New York Times before the report came out, they went so far as to even change the headline of an article to include, you know, possible. We're not ruling out aliens. But then you've got people like Alizando and even, you know, members of the national, excuse me, Navy intelligence and whatnot saying, we're almost. 100% certain. It's not black budget U.S. tech and it's not foreign adversarial tech. And of course, that leaves a huge gap between what it could be and what it's not. And, you know, I know you've spoken to

Zach Saichi, who actually I, you know, we had a good conversation of that's, that's almost irresponsible of the military, of the government to kind of throw that option out there because then And you do get everyone filling in those gaps and you do fuel the conspiracy because of the lack of transparency. Would you agree with that? Yeah, what do you think about that? I think, but that's kind of missing a few things there. Like when you say it's not foreign tech and it's not our own secret tech, you look at the UAP report and the things they listed. And those were, I believe, items three and four.

items one and two in the list. Number one was airspace clutter, things like birds, balloons, drones, and debris like plastic bags. They listed that was the first thing they listed. The second thing they listed is atmospheric effects. Things like inversion layers or ice clouds, things causing radar returns to bounce off

or even visual sightings of little. all white dots in the sky and things like that. And the third thing they list is, I believe, U.S. technology, which might be three or four, I can remember, U.S. technology, like secret programs or maybe SpaceX testing something, something like that. And then they say they don't have enough information, and they have no evidence that that is the case. Then they list foreign adversaries, and they say even less about that. And then the fifth thing they list is other.

But people kind of frame this as if the only options are US technology, foreign technology or other. When they missed out the first two things that were listed, the first thing was airspace clutter. People just seeing things like drones and balloons in the air because there's cluttered airspace. The training ranges off Virginia, wherever they are exactly, Virginia Beach, they have balloons drifting into the airspace. they think that causes an issue. The atmospheric effects, maybe there's, there's,

those things we don't understand yet about the atmosphere that's, perhaps some kind of electrical discharge type thing, something, you know, ball lightning type thing, that happens.

And these are the first two things that they listed. I don't think they listed them just to get them out of the way. I think they listed them first because those were probably the most common, plausible explanations for these things.

So it's not just, you know, three, four, it's one, two, three, four, and five. And you've really got to consider the possibility that most, if not all, of the sightings could fall in the first two categories. Right. Yeah, that's a good point. I think people tend to forget about those first two, for sure.

But again, it just, it frustrates me because then you know that most of the UFO community are going to, they always do. They go to alien. and it's hard because, yeah, I'm in the UFO world 24-7. So it's, you know, I always keep that door open that some of it might be ET tech that's visited us, but we have absolutely no definitive evidence that that's ever occurred. And then you have the whole idea of connecting alien to UFO, and that's a whole issue in itself. Yeah, and the UIP report didn't rule out the possibility of aliens. And that was what the headline.

Yeah, they changed the headline from in the New York Times. The first headline was something like UAP report finds no evidence of aliens. And they changed it to something else like UAP report has multiple and identified craft, cannot rule out the possibility of aliens. Right. Which was, I think, almost just like the editors kind of sexing up the story. They mounted the story to have a more interesting headline. It didn't really change the contents of the story.

The fact that you haven't ruled out aliens is utterly meaningless. If you see a UFO and it's a little white dot and it's zipping around the sky, if it remains unidentified, which obviously all of these cases were, these were the ones that were unidentified, the ones that the cream of the crop, the ones that roast the top, the ones that were not filtered out by being identified, If it's unidentified, it's literally impossible to rule out aliens. How could you possibly rule out aliens?

So it's kind of a meaningless statement to say that we haven't ruled out the possibility of aliens. They didn't raise it as a serious possibility, which I think is significant. I think the reason they didn't raise it as a serious possibility is that there wasn't really anything that pointed towards it. we see things like these supposedly fast-moving objects. They say they could be sensor error and they could be observer misperception. This is something that they say very specifically in the page 2 of the report, the executive summary. They say that it could be sensor error of spoofing or observe a misperception.

Those three things. And those I think, I think, just far more likely explanations than aliens. Now, obviously, we can't rule out aliens. We can't rule out that we're living in the matrix and somebody at the higher level is tweaking with the code to send in UFOs from another simulated dimension either. But why do we need to go to those explanations

if there's no actual evidence for those that suggests that those are the likely things? is it actually more likely that it's aliens than the radar not working right? You look at something like the Nimitz encounter. You know, what's more likely? If you just take the one case, say that Kevin Day saw something drop from 28,000 feet to 500 feet in 0.78 seconds. You know, the stories varies a bit. But, you know, that's roughly that thing.

That's something that would be impossible for any craft that we need. know of. So it's not the current human technology. So it's either, you know, a number of things. It's either somebody, some human has developed some amazing technology or aliens have these amazing technology, you know, come to visitors or, you know, it's some kind of dimensional hologram or something. If you go for the more esoteric Jacques valet type explanations, or the radar just wasn't working. There was some kind of bug in the radar that was causing these glitches. And that's what they originally thought. You know, they thought originally that it was this, this bug in the radar. But then, of course, you layer on these other things. You know,

Frava goes out to look at it and he sees something. Comes back, somebody else goes out, takes a video, sees something. And then the fact that you've got all these things happening at the same time, people start to think, well, you know, it's impossible that that could just be a coincidence. But then the question there really is, is it, is it impossible? Is it really that much of a coincidence that these things would happen? Like people were getting all worked up about seeing UFOs because the radar has been glitchy for a few days, and they go out and they get one crappy video of it and this rather strange sighting of something that Fravor and Dietrich saw.

Is that literally impossible? Or could it be something a bit more mundane? Perhaps the radar wasn't working, and perhaps he came across some tow target balloon or some kind of drone that they were testing, or something else was happening. Yeah. We don't need to say that it has to be aliens

simply because the other explanations seem less likely. I think even if you prefer the aliens thing, you've really got to keep the other explanations on your list as possibilities. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. And I know.

I mean, I think, you know, if you consider yourself a self-proclaimed uphologist or UFO and. investigator. Like your job is to find a conventional prosaic explanation, not to prove little green men are coming here from, you know, Zeta reticuline. Then you start checking off the boxes until you get to that. It's still an unknown, but that doesn't still mean it's alien. But Mick, I did want to, you touched on something really important. And I saw you tweet this recently. Because I know there's been a lot of, you know, anger and, I guess, debate online when it comes to pilots and being,

you know, observability. And like you said, misinterpretation or misidentification. And people get really upset because we do kind of hold pilots and, you know, people in the military or whatnot as the most trained observers out there. And I do want to read this verbatim so I get it Right. You said in the context of observing UFOs, what training do trained observers receive? What do they think they, or yeah, what do they receive? What do you personally think they should receive in terms of that? And do you think, you know, that would help in solving a lot of these cases? Well, the problem here is that pilots are trained to recognize things. So they're trained to recognize things like planes. So they do. they do have training for recognizing planes and judging what its aspect is, which way it's facing relative to you. It's a tail on aspect.

It's a side aspect. Is it head on aspect? Is it going up? Is it going down? That type of thing. But they're trained to do that with planes. I think it'd be very difficult and not particularly useful use of time to train pilots to be UFO observers.

Because that's not really. part of what a pilot does is look for UFOs and record them accurately. The majority of pilots never see a UFO. All the pilots I've talked to have not had a UFO experience. It might seem like there's lots of them, but really if you look at the number of pilots, it's not very many that actually have these UFO experiences. So if our primary purpose here was to solve this UFO conundrum, then I would expect pilots to have courses in recording what they saw visually. But that's kind of a bit silly as well. Why are we relying upon the pilots looking at something

and then writing down what they saw? If we're going to devote resources to this, why don't we get cameras installed in the cockpit so that we can actually take video of these things the pilots saw. We often see, we hear of these things being very close. There was one account, I think it's kind of grown in the telling of this this spherical object that flew between two planes and I think it was as close as like 100 feet or something.

Now, if we had a dash cam in those planes, we would have good footage. So it's kind of a allocation of resources type thing. I don't think the Navy and the Air Force are going to be training people to look at UFOs unless there's something that will come of it. Now let's say we start having more sightings

of say drones from planes because the Chinese are sending in spy drones then maybe then we want to have more specific training on again and looking at what these things are and describing them but yeah drones are fairly easy to recognize it's these these things that that we have have trouble with like i think what i would go back to there is like frayver and dietrich's encounter in what training did david frayver have that allowed him to see exactly how big this thing was and how it was moving and how far away it was. Because my theory there is that he misperceived how far away it was and that gave him this illusion of high speed when he moved. It seemed like he was circling him, but I think it was actually stationary and he was circling it

and it was just because he misperceived the distance. I don't think there's actually specific training there unless you start training for that exact scenario. Like if you see a featureless object, what steps can you take to determine how big it is? That's kind of like, and try to check your assumptions. Maybe you're going to assume that it's the same size as a hornet,

but perhaps it may be a different size, so check that out. But just touching back on your first point there, people get upset when I say perhaps the pilots made a mistake. Well, you know, these pilots are tough people. They're men and women who go into battle and they're shot at and they shoot at other people. They're tough people. You know, they can take it.

I don't think they're going to get their feelings hurt by me. They should be able to have a honest discussion about whether they made a mistake or not. And I think, you know, David Fraver discussed this issue with Lex Friedman about a year ago, I think. And he didn't seem too upset about it. He just kind of mocked the idea somewhat. he wasn't like upset, he wasn't, he wasn't crying because I'd hurt his feelings. I think people are rushing to the defense of pilots as if I'd somehow spat on their grave or something. It's nothing like that. I'm just raising an issue. Could they have made a mistake?

And in some cases, I think, yes, they did make a mistake. And in some fairly specific cases, I point out where I think the mistake actually was. was like Chad Underwood I think he I think he lost lock which had on the wood filmed the Nimitz tic-tac video and I think he lost lock on the object just because he was flipping around through the camera modes and then he didn't regain it because he didn't zoom out at the end and I think he just basically messed up there but you know people will start saying that I'm I don't know is this this terrible insult but no I just think that's what happened and if you disagree with me then that's fine.

But what am I going to do? Like, just defaults to believing every single thing a pilot say is because they're a pilot and I might hurt their feelings? No, hurt feelings have no place in this discussion. Let's just focus on the facts and try to figure out what those facts are. I understand that. Facts don't care about feelings. They never have, never will.

And, you know, I appreciate that you would take the time to speak to people like Alex T. Trick and actually have a conversation. And I know that's kind of, kind of my last personal question for you, Mick, before we do some listener questions, if you don't mind. Dave Fouch, Chris Lito, these guys who have been making these videos lately talking about, you know, how you're wrong about this or that or you weren't there. Like, this is, that's euphology, basically. You weren't there when it happened. You can't tell me what I saw or what I experienced. And I respect that.

Like, no, I wasn't. I wasn't there. I can't say you weren't, you know, that you know there's aliens living in a cave in the Mojave Desert. Like, I wasn't there when you first saw him or this or that. So it makes sense. I get the whole you weren't there. But where do you lay right now in terms of those who kind of respond to what you bring forward on YouTube or whatnot without even reaching out to you? A lot of them weren't there either.

you look at those people there's Dave Falsch who is a guy who repairs Fleer equipment and he has equipment to test and he spent a lot of time in the back parking lot of where he works

I believe taking videos of planes trying to disprove my theories which I think he's totally failed to do and just over the years I mean literally years that I've been interacting with him he basically doesn't

understand the entire theory that I'm putting forward anyway. So it's very difficult to talk to him. The problem is like people think that he's an expert. He's an expert because he works for a company that does these, these FLIR systems and he claims to understand them. So, and because they, they like having experts who disprove what I say, they believe what he has to say. But they don't actually understand it. A lot of the problem I have is that, these issues are complicated. And so I have difficulty explaining them to people. So people don't understand my explanation.

And then someone else comes along and they give another explanation and they say they are an expert. But the listeners often don't understand that explanation either. I often challenge people to say, what is Dave Falch's objection to the rotating glare hypothesis? And when you dig into it, He doesn't really have one. He's just saying, oh, infrared is different to visible light because it's heat and it's not light. And they don't use lenses.

They use mirrors so you wouldn't get glare and narrow field of view so you don't get glare. You know, a bunch of things that are not true and are kind of irrelevant. And it says you couldn't rotate the glare with this derotation mechanism. So there's all these little complicated things that, you know, it sounds good when an expert comes. along but you know he he he doesn't really understand the argument I'm making and this is something an issue I've had over and over again is that people come along and they try to debunk what I'm saying without even understanding it was Lou Elizondo when he came on my podcast we discussed the rotating glare hypothesis he didn't understand it and he

tried to explain to me why I was wrong literally started out right there trying to debunk means no Mick that's not true because you'd have one X one rotating thing here and another rotating and they will both rotate together. And so I told him he didn't understand it and kind of explained it to him. And he did actually listen to me, which was great. But a lot of people won't. They were just steadfastly say, it's impossible for a glare to rotate independently of the object or independently of the horizon, something like that.

And because they don't understand what the actual argument is because it takes some time and effort to get into it. I don't think that David Fraver, has really looked into a lot of the stuff that I've done that he just kind of dismisses out of hand, like the Fleer 1 video zipping off. I don't think he's really looked into the issue of it losing a lot. I don't know if even Chad Underwood has really looked into it in great depth.

And there was another Fleer expert who was on Jeremy Corbell's show, and he was asked a bunch of questions that were completely the wrong questions to ask. He was asked, Does the derotation mechanism rotate the glare independently of the horizon? To which the answer is no. And he correctly answered no and explained why. And people said, oh, then a mix being debunked. But it was the wrong question.

So there's a great difficulty here with experts coming in and giving their opinion without actually understanding what the question actually is and what the issue actually is. And these things can be solved by talking. I sat down and talked to Chris Lato after one of his videos, and we kind of got into some detail, and I think we resolved a few things. But now Chris has gone off and he's done a whole bunch of other videos, and he's got sucked into the SCU's explanation of things, and he thinks the SCU is amazing. And, you know, he's just going off saying Mick's wrong without talking to me. Alpha Check, another guy on Twitter.

he's an egyptologist who's really into using the DCS flight simulator and he's done a bunch of really nice slick videos that explain the links between the FLIR system and the radar system the essay page and how they all linked together and tracking and things like that and says that he's debunked to me but you know again he's never actually talked to me I've been trying to talk to him for quite a while but he he he he's He doesn't seem like he wants to. He just wants to make a video.

But so I think all this arguing via video isn't super productive. It's better to actually have a discussion. And I'd love to have a discussion with, say, David Traver or Chad Underwood. But, you know, they don't want to talk to me. It's tough because I understand. And that's why I respect what you do, Nick, because you're willing to say, I want to talk to you about it. like let's get as much facts and data as we can and um you know it's just their minds are kind of made up at this point which which is kind of um disappointing and you know while i mean i don't agree with you

on everything i can respect that you have an educated opinion on these things uh more than i could ever possibly have so i'm going to be open to that and i think that's the problem is you know again and people are so steadfast in their ways. Or like you said, maybe they just want to put a response video out there because they know it'll get traffic. Everyone has their own intentions and motivations when it comes to these sorts of things. Yeah, that's kind of my personal observation on that.

But yeah, did you want to respond to that? Sorry. No, I mean, I kind of agree with you there. It's people, I think, have different motivations for what they're doing in UIFology. and some people are doing it for clicks. I tend to assume that people are not, and I always approach people as if they just want to have an honest dialogue,

and they want to get to the truth. But if people are kind of deliberately, or perhaps not deliberately, but they're asking the wrong questions of an expert. So Jeremy Corbell does this all the time. Jeremy Corbell won't talk to me. He won't even mention my name. He doesn't want to give me any publicity.

but he he will have an expert on to debunk me. What would be better is if that expert, if you've got an actual FLIR expert, you could talk directly to me. And we could go back and forth and we could hammer out where our actual areas of disagreement are and try to resolve them. And that's something I do in all the interactions I have

with conspiracy theories. It's part of the backbone of my book is this method of getting down to some kind of common ground and then trying to identify the next step up where you actually disagree. So we agree that this video was taken by a Navy jet and that it shows something that's probably a flying craft of some sort off in the distance. We could agree about that. And then we start to disagree about does it lose lock at the end on this video,

whatever it is or is it rotating things like that so you say why why do we have a disagreement here is it you know what's what am i basing my belief my opinion uh on this this rotation or whatever it is on and what are you basing yours on and perhaps perhaps i'm missing something that you could explain to me or perhaps you're missing something that i could explain to you or perhaps we're both missing something or perhaps we're not missing anything but we're just failing to communicate perhaps we're talking past each other in some way. But that's very difficult to do if all you're doing is putting out a video and waiting months before you interact with anybody.

I put out videos because I'm trying to explain what my thoughts are on particular theories. I'm not trying to argue that it's not aliens. I'm trying to say this is what I think this video shows. But if someone disagrees with me, let's talk. let's actually discuss what the reason is that you think that this object didn't lose lock or that you think it's a distinct object rotating. And I'll explain why I think the other thing. And then we'll figure it out.

We'll actually move forward. And it's something that happens us a lot is my arguments change and evolve because they get challenged. That's why I like putting them on Twitter or on Facebook. Some people say, oh, Mickey, you should submit your ideas for peer review publication in a scientific journal, and then I will read it. That's just nonsense. What's the point of doing that? I spend three months getting a paper out and just so somebody can point out an error in it. I just put the idea out now.

Someone can point out the error. I revise it, then put it out again. Another person points out the error, and we have this discussion about what's actually going on. A whole bunch of people can work on it. more errors will be found things will get better it will evolve in increments and improve

but if you just start like formulating your theory into a paper it's just a waste of time you know unless you've actually got some kind of scientific study where you've got testable reproducible results you may as well just stick it on Twitter

and let people at it because it's going to get a lot better that way it will be a lot better argument at the end of it if it goes through the fire of being critiqued by Twitter and Facebook and Metabunk. Yeah. Yeah, you're kind of chiseling away at the sculpture and trying to get the full definitive statue, I guess. That's a weird analogy. But Mick, do you mind if we move to some listener questions I have for you here?

Yes, go for it. Awesome. What's up, guys, Ryan Sprag here, and I'm just dropping in to remind you about our Patreon campaign. Somewhere in the Skies is always free to consume. but it's not free to create. So if you want to help the show on a monthly basis, we have tons of rewards for you in return, including shoutouts on the show and website,

bonus content and episodes, and free merge. Want to be my guest or pick a topic for the show? You can do that too. So if you'd like to learn more and to help support the show, visit patreon.com slash summer skies. Thank you and keep looking up. So Ricardo asks, if you had a chance, to analyze classified material,

would you look at it, even if that implied that you could not publicly acknowledge that this additional information changed or at least challenged your stance on some cases you personally within do? Definitely, yeah. I mean, Lou Elizondo isn't allowed to tell us

about the classified information that he has, but he doesn't seem to have any problem with saying that he believes what he does because of things he has seen. I don't think you can kind of do such a blanket classification that would include me saying, I've seen things that have convinced me that there's something to this phenomena, example, example phrased. Don't take that one out of context.

And so, yeah, I definitely would look at these things. Even if I was unable to discuss the specifics or even the nature of them ever again, then I would know and it would presumably change my approach to everything else if I got some evidence that pointed to a certain outcome. Gotcha. Yeah, I like that. Nug4T on Reddit asks, do you know anything about the AI project that Elizondo and DeLong have talked about in regards to capturing and analyzing UFOs?

Do you happen to know if this requires new legislation in regards of using private domestic video? Yeah. Anything on that? Well, what they want to do is they basically, the big problem we have in UFOology is that we get a shitload of UFO reports and UFO videos. And they're nearly all crap. I mean, let's face it, I mean, 99.99% of them are crap. and there's a small percentage that might not be, but we can't really tell if they're real or not.

But it's difficult to find things in this. So the AI idea is something that has only become possible in recent years, is that we train an AI to find interesting cases or to find anomalies. So we show it cases and then we tell it what these cases are. And then we show it some other cases and it tries to see. you know is this a bird is it a plane is it a balloon can we eliminate it and then it will try to figure out is there actually something unusual going on and you might even just be a kind of a statistical thing like perhaps there's more things going on near nuclear power stations or

something like that but you can train ii to do things like that you can train it to look at videos i don't think there's any issue with using public video i think either it's going to be video that's kind of in the semi-public domain, like YouTube videos and things like that, I don't know if there's a specific thing that says you couldn't download a YouTube video to analyze it. It doesn't seem to make any sense. But, you know, a lot of this stuff is stuff that people submit to online databases like Mufon, that they probably would be given permission for researchers to look at that video. So I think it's a good idea. I doubt it's going to come to anything. I don't think you have a broad enough or an accurate enough collection net right now

to actually get the data. If you had a network of cameras and radar around the country that were recording 24-7, kind of like the Galileo project, maybe you could get some quality data. But I don't think you could really get anything useful if you took like, say, all 120,000 cases that are in the Mufon database right now. I really doubt very much that there's anything even the most advanced AI could pull out of that. It's certainly the way to go. Lots of places can expose you to identity theft. Oh no. That's why LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats to your identity, which is way more than anyone can do on their own. If we find anything suspicious, like new loans or changes to your financial accounts,

we alert you right away all through text, phone, email, or the LifeLock app. Get the alerts that could make all the difference. Save up to 40% your first year at LifeLock.com slash special offer. Terms apply. Right. But you're right. It's challenging when you don't really have a base level to kind of, you know, work off of. So I totally get that.

Well, what do you think about the Galileo project and what Avi Lowe is doing? Is that something you would support? I mean, not like financially or anything. But like is that something you think is worth the time, the effort, the money? You know, it's being funded by Harvard, essentially. And, you know, private donors as well. Yeah, I don't think it is. I think it's mostly private stuff.

And kind of, you know, his discretionary spending that he has. He can do whatever project he likes because he's a ten-year professor. I think, I doubt anything will come of it. I don't think that it's very likely that you would get enough of these high-powered telescopes around the country to find anything of interest based on just the frequency of the sightings of UFOs. I don't really see anything happening other than getting close-up photographs of birds and balloons and planes and drones and plastic bags. and then other things. You will have photos. You will have photos of things

where it's just too far away, even for this, you know, $50,000 telescope or half a million dollar telescope that he wants to use for the project. There's always going to be something that's too far away and you've got these limiting factors

like distance, obviously, but the atmosphere. The atmosphere distorts things. If you're looking from the ground at something that's 20 miles away through the atmosphere, you can't get close enough picture of it because the atmosphere is too wobbly. So I think it's unlikely that anything will come of it.

I don't really mind private individuals spending their own money on something like that. It would be fun. And I think it would be good. If you do get a lot of these cameras out there, what's going to happen is it's just a little bit more evidence of absence from absence of evidence. if UFOs were flying around up there in any kind of frequency we'd be getting photos of them and the absence of evidence kind of indicates that there's not very many of them if any

and I think that's what's going to happen with Project Galileo is people are kind of throwing the money away I think but it will at least get you a bunch of close-up photographs of things and it would be good examples that you can say like this looks like a white blob on my iPhone But with this amazing telescope, we can see it was actually a plane or it was actually a drone or it was actually a solar balloon or whatever it was. Interesting. Yeah. And, you know, I've heard you bring up too that, like, you know, the wonder of magic can be just as powerful as the wonder of science. And, you know, that's, if that's what we get, maybe they capture some amazing weather anomaly that we've never, you know, seen before. And that could be just as exciting and cool. In my opinion. opinion as possibly a craft from another, whatever, interstellar object or whatnot.

Yeah, I mentioned something in another podcast, I think, with UFOJ, about a thing called the Crown Flash, which I encourage anybody to look up on YouTube. Crown Flash is this amazing atmospheric phenomena that looks like aliens having some kind of battle on top of a cloud. But it's just a natural phenomenon, but it's something that was never recorded on a video until about 10 years ago. But there are things in the atmosphere that we don't fully understand.

We don't fully understand how Crown flashes work. We can tell there's some kind of combination of charged particles and ice cloud orientation and stuff like that, but we don't know the exact mechanism. So that there could well be

interesting things that get discovered. Maybe we'll discover there's a lot more, of plastic bags floating around in the sky, then we actually thought that there were, or there are some high-flying birds that are responsible for some of this. But, yeah, I think the likelihood of being able to catch

one of the very elusive UAPs is pretty low. Yeah. Hey, that's why I got into all this, make plastic bags up in the air. I've got plenty of them in the trees here in New York City. It's an interesting environment we have here. Well, on a personal level, Audrey on Facebook wants to know. How is the exposure experience positive and negative attention affected you on a personal level?

Did you ever feel like calling it quits and just walking away from the UFO community, or I guess the conspiracy community overall? Occasionally, but that's not really because of the reaction I get. It's more because it becomes a little stagnated and a little boring. if nothing's really happening in a field, I kind of get a bit bored with it. I happened with chem trails a while back. I believe in like 2010, I think.

I was getting really bored with chem trails. And then this story came along of this, what looked like a missile being shot off the coast of Los Angeles. And it was really interesting. And everybody was really into solving it. And I ended up on CNN explaining it was just a contrail. I remember that. Yeah.

Yeah, a long time together. So, yeah, the reactions I get from people, I don't mind. It's understandable that some people are going to have negative reactions. There are some people who have very strong beliefs that the government is lying to them. And so they think I'm defending the government, which I'm not. They think I'm some kind of government shill that I'm being paid to do this. And I can understand why they're thinking that from their point of view. if they believe that the government is telling you all these lies

and they would have to have these shills to help spread the lies I could see why they would think I would be one of them based on their beliefs I mean they're wrong but I understand it and if someone has had a personal experience with the UFO if they saw like you know a TR3B fly over their their house or their car or whatever or even just a simple light in the sky or a V-shaped in the sky or something like that. And they know what they saw.

They think they know what they saw. And then I come along and I start saying things like, oh, it's easy to misperceive things or misremember things. They get angry at me. And I understand that because I'm saying that they didn't see what they saw and they know they saw what they saw. So I can understand why people would get angry at me. So I've actually got a lot more pushback in terms of emotion.

engagement from the UFO community that I have from the 9-11 and chem trails and flat earth conspiracies. I think because people feel like I'm personally attacking them because they have some kind of personal involvement in this. A lot of people, even if they haven't seen a UFO,

they've been really into it since they were young. And so it's this kind of foundational, almost religious level belief that they have that is very difficult for them to accept that they might have been wrong about it. And so they don't like hearing the things that I am saying. So it's understandable. And I don't mind when people get angry at me. I just, you know, I know that it's coming generally from a place of honesty.

And if they're just being an asshole, then I just block them and move on. So it doesn't really bother me. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting how much emotion plays into this and belief. I think belief is probably the worst word to have in the UFO field because it's nothing but a subjective truth. And once you bring religion into anything, you're going to rile up people's emotions because it's literally the framework in which they've based the whole faith on. So when someone challenges that, I can understand why people get passionate about it.

But like we said earlier, facts don't care about your beliefs or what you feel. That's simply the, that's what it is. Yeah. And to get to those, what the goal here is for me is to get to some kind of shared understanding of the facts. You know, it's fine. If I figure out what something is, but no one believes me, that's kind of pointless. There's two parts to debunking. You know, one is trying to figure out what.

what's actually happening, and then the other part is trying to explain it to people. And the second part is actually kind of 90% of it. Once you figure something out, then you're done. But then you've got a whole world left who hasn't figured it out and doesn't understand your explanation or hasn't heard of your explanation, and you've got to try to communicate it to them. But I think it can be done. People generally do want to know what's actually going on.

it's just tricky to get past these defenses that they put up. And perhaps I'm wrong. And perhaps by then talking to me, you could explain to me why I'm actually wrong. David Fraver come and explain to me why I'm wrong about the gimbal rotation. We'll figure it out. It's not a battle.

It's something that we can get together and mutually try to figure things out. What is the problem with these numbers or whatever it is or this particular interpretation or what am I missing? What are you missing? Yeah, we can work it out. Yeah. And I feel, you know, in this field, everyone proclaims that I just want the truth.

I just want to know the truth behind all this. But then, you know, even if they got that truth, they're not going to like it. They're not going to be satisfied. And I always struggle with that because I feel like so many in this field say, I want the truth about what UFOs are. Yeah. But they don't really. I mean, I shouldn't say that.

That's a sweeping assumption. But you know what I mean? Like, they want the truth, but then when it comes to them, they don't accept it. But the truth is complicated. Yeah. If people say the government should tell us the truth about UFOs, but they're kind of expecting a simple truth,

like UFOs are visiting alien crafts, and we don't think they're dangerous. Yeah. The government comes out and says that. That's the truth that people, are looking for but the truth more likely is that pilots see a whole bunch of different things in the sky and we don't know what they are a lot of the time because there's insufficient information some of them kind of look like their

weird moving objects that probably is the truth the UAP report and the conclusions of the UAP report are that exactly and that is probably the truth that the government has about UFOs. So when you ask, the government needs to tell us the truth about UFOs, the UAP report could be that truth. It probably is the truth. But how do you explain that? How do you persuade people of that when there's all this stuff that's behind this wall of secrecy? Yep, yep, good point.

Well, that kind of bleeds into this next one. Serenity 404 on Reddit asks, do you follow any particular objective methodology process or checklist when you debunk stuff or, let's see here, stuff? Or if you just subjectively freestyle every debunk. And does your approach even accommodate extraordinary conclusions like aliens or stuff like that? They make a good analogy here, too.

I just want to stress this. let's see, like aliens, or if such conclusions are inherently unattainable in your mind, like a maze without an exit, they say. Well, my problem-solving methodology, it came from this book I have on my bookshelf. One second. Yeah. The book is called How to Solve It by G. Polia. And it's this, you know, it's a fairly old book that's from the Open University,

which is this kind of, it's online now, but it used to be a TV university, and it has a checklist in it. It falls open on it, which is how to actually solve problems. How to solve a problem. And it just lists a number of simple steps that you go through. And it's aimed at mathematical problems, but the fundamentals of the methodology remain the same. And one of the most important things is to look at the problem and, see if it reminds you of something else. You know, the biggest part of my methodology for solving UFOs is to recognize things within the data,

you know, the video or the photo, whatever it is. And even if it's just a small part of it, if you can't recognize the whole thing, I say someone posts a jagged V of white dots moving across the sky, I can immediately recognize that as being some high-flying birds because I see high-flying birds all the time here. And I've seen lots of videos of them, and I know exactly what they look like, and I know that that would be the number one explanation.

But if it's, say, just, you know, two white dots moving from the sky, that's something that resembles the other thing, but it's less definitive. But still, you've found something that you've recognized that it's two dots in a kind of a diagonal line moving across could be birds, so that becomes a possibility. Now, mathematical problem solving is nice because there's usually only one answer, and you're just working to unearth this answer,

and it's got all the data's right there on the page, and you don't have to go anywhere. It's a lot messier when you've got UFOs. So one of the biggest parts of my methodology is what I call Orchamic ranking, named after Occam's Razor. Occam's razor is like the explanation with the fewest things that need adding to it is more likely the simpler explanation and the better explanation. And what I do is I try to think of all the possibilities that something might be,

no matter how outrageous seeming. You get a white dot in the sky. What could it be? It could be a fake video. It could be a bird. It could be a UFO. It could be an alien spaceship. It could be a hologram.

It could be a ghost. It could be a fairy. It could be a drone. There's all these possibilities. And then you make a list of these. And then you can sort the list by just applying Occam's razor to any two of these things. And you say at the top of the list, you've got, say, a balloon or a fairy. And you think which one of those is more likely?

It's going to be the balloon. So I'm going to stick the balloon on top and the fairy moves to. down the list and you do what's called a bubble sort where you just keep doing this until the list is in order and it's quite a straightforward system and it just means that you get a good idea of the range of possibilities now when something's unknown it doesn't mean that you don't have any idea what it might be it means that you you're not really narrowing in on one explanation there's there's a bunch of possible explanations but you never want to rule anything out So you always keep things on the list that are a bit less likely.

But usually what will happen is something will bubble to the top. But you've always got to keep revisiting all these other things on the list. And then you get new information. You get new data or you perform experiments. You try to figure out, like, if I held my camera this way, will this white dot in the sky move in the same way that it does in this video? And if it does, then perhaps two things will flip positions in the list, and perhaps they won't.

But as you get more and more data coming in, the list may change. Things may separate out more and then one thing may become much more clearer as the most likely explanation. But it's actually quite rare for you to be able to eliminate things. And I try to shy away from premature elimination of hypotheses and keep everything on the table and then just keep getting more data and seeing how the list changes. And that's basically my methodology, if you kind of ignore all the other stuff, which is stuff from experience. It's difficult for someone to come in who knows nothing at all about analyzing photos and videos

and 3D trajectories and then say, how do you do this? It'd be a very complicated and tedious thing for me to describe. But the basic thing is, let's see, do you recognize things and think of possible explanations, make a list, and when new data comes in, revise the list and never take anything off the list. Interesting. Right. And of course, it's not perfect, but, and UFOs tend to be one of the most rebellious things out there when it comes to that. Yeah.

If you had a very simple methodology that you could apply to every single case, then, you know, we wouldn't be in this situation. We have UFOs because they're in the low. information zone. A UFO is only a UFO because it's ambiguous data. And if you've got something that's ambiguous data, that means there's multiple possible explanations. And it might be that there's an unknown explanation is the most likely thing. Something else is the most likely thing. If you can't figure out, like if we actually had sensor data and video that showed a, I don't know, a 40-foot wide tick-tac moving across the ocean surface, then that would be very difficult for me to explain

with a list of possibilities. And right there, then something else is going to be the number one explanation. What is that something else? It's an advanced technology drone or it's an alien spaceship. Those things will leap to the top. But most of the time, the data is very ambiguous.

We don't have high fidelity, multi-sensor data of something doing, something amazing. We have crappy video of blurry blobs or we have eyewitness accounts from 20 years ago. So there's always going to be these ambiguous

cases where making a list of possibilities is really what you should be doing. Yeah. And I know you've stressed too, like the clear photos of UFOs are the boring ones. It's the ambiguity that excites people most.

And that's tough because, yeah, You want it to be excited. Yeah, but why is, why is that? A clear photo of a UFO should be the exciting one, but, you know, when it's clear, you can identify it. It's not unidentified anymore. Ambiguity is UFOs. It should be, we should rename it ambiguous flying objects, AFOs. Because that's the issue here.

It's not just simply that are unidentified, like it's a plane, I don't know what type of plane it is. We'd no idea what it's. is at all. Is it a flying object? Is it an optical effect? Is it an illusion? Is it really far away and very large or is it closer and is it small? It's ambiguous, ambiguous flying objects and it's they're always going to exist. It's impossible to get rid of ambiguous flying objects because no matter which camera you have, there's always going to be something that's just a little bit further away than the resolvable range of that camera. the Project Galileo is going to return photographs of things that are 20 miles away,

and they're just too far away to see the details. They're going to be, it's going to give you more ambiguous photographs. Yeah. And, you know, I made peace a long time ago, Mick, that I'm probably never going to know what UFOs are, because, like you said, they are ambiguous and they always will be. But, hey, I'm enjoying the journey. It's fun. I've got a few little fun questions.

I could shoot at your rapid, if you don't mind. And before we wrap things up here. So uplifting tweets on Twitter, and I'll actually lump this with the next one. I Jove001 on Twitter. They ask, who's your favorite personality in the UFO Twitter world or community? And what are your favorite UFO books, if there are in? Well, my favorite UFO book is the UFO Handbook by Alan Hendry, which was published in, I think.

1977 and I like it because it's a great in 1979 it's a great kind of investigation of the state of UFOology at the time

and it was written by a guy who was working with Alan Jay Allen was it Jay Alan Hynick director of the Center of UFO Studies

at the Center of UFO Studies and he's a guy who's interviewed a thousand people about the UFOs and there's got loads of really

interesting stuff in it and it's got like checklists for what to do when you see a UFO and all these different individual cases and then all these these IFOs that they have like he has photographs of things that are identified and I find it just very interesting because it's very useful because it covers a lot of really good data

really good information but it's also just fascinating because it's it's timeless even though it was from 1979 what is that that's like over 40 years ago it feels like it could have been written this year it feels like it's a book that's describing the current situation the only real difference is that we have a lot more cameras now that's the one change that we have

but everything else in it seems very very similar so highly recommended book I don't think it's in print anymore hence I've got this crappy old library copy that I bought online somewhere and my favorite people in in UFOIG I think the crowd at the Unidentified Celebrity Review.

There are a lot of fun. Lewis and Michael and Rather and the others. They're put on a good show. But that's going to be interesting itself, isn't it? It's like they put in a good show. It's all great entertainment and everything. Is it actually progressing

the scientific research into UFOology? There's lots of characters in the UFO scene. and you know UFO Jesus Ryan Robbins is a good guy and Ashionic guy I love him

yeah yeah yeah and lots of people like it's a fun community which is a blessing in a curse in a way if you've got a community you kind of get this little bit of group thing I think and you get these

you get cliques and schisms as well where people they form groups and then they start arguing with each other and they break up. And someone does something and they go from one direction. And it becomes more about people than it does about the science, which I think is a bit of a problem. And people start being advocates for one particular interpretation. You know, some people think, what's his name?

That's who I can't remember his name now? The guy in the desert. Bob Lazare. Bob Lazar. So is it a polarize becomes I know I know I'm terrible with names Bob Lazar becomes a polarizing figure And you get the Bob Lazar fans

Versus the people who think Bob Lazar is a hoaxer People and it just becomes You get these arguing over Minutia I mean I saw You know a lot of these podcasts like this one They become like discussing Individuals like like valet and things like that And the background of

Louis Alizondo and we really should be getting into the science the actual nuts and bolts what are these what's the data that we have what does the data show let's do the math and let's let's move on let's be productive and it's become a bit of a show I think which you know it's fine but it's it's not really my scene I like analyzing videos I get that you know and I as someone who's like 240 episodes in or so. I am at least here on someone in the skies trying to make a stride to have a more scientific approach and talk to more scientists because it's so hard, Mick, I've noticed, because you have someone like the late Stanton Friedman, who was a huge

advocate of the ETH hypothesis when it came to the source of UFOs saying skeptics will, when they can't, you know, argue the data. they'll attack the person. But then there's the flip side of that as well, where a lot of this does become just talking about the people instead of the actual data. So where is that middle ground? I'm still trying to find it here on somewhere in the sky. That's an interesting thing. I know Luis is too.

Yeah. There's the issue, the ad homin attacks, ad hominin attacks where you're attacking the person instead of the argument. Big no-no. We should never do it. But there's kind of the opposite of that, where we have this argument. from authority where someone makes a claim because they're an expert or they have a specific type of experience or because they are the ones who were there and saw something. So if someone is making an argument that's saying, I am an expert, therefore this is correct, then you kind of

have to address that issue. Are they actually an expert? If they're not actually presenting a reason why they think it's correct, then I think it does become a valid point that you have to counter. David Fraver said he knew he was right about the Nimitz encounter and what he saw was this object that circled him and flew away rapidly because he had 12 years experience flying planes. But when he was asked, like, how did he determine how far away it was? He just said, you know, it's basically experience. So questioning that assertion, I think, is a valid thing.

You can't just go on the data if other people are making arguments that do not rely on data or do not actually have any logic in them. And they're just saying, oh, I know what I saw. If someone says they know what they saw, it still is a valid point to question that they might not. have seen what they thought they saw. I'm sure that they're being honest. I'm sure their recollection is that they saw this particular thing in a certain way, but their interpretation might not be correct and their memory might not be correct.

And it is a valid thing to go on that. But when you're into deeper things like Lou Elizondo, is it good that he uses a sock puppet account on Twitter or not? Things like that. It's just like, you know, why even talk about that? It just becomes this big drama that, you know, people are talking about the person without even getting close to the actual subject, which is, you know, are these UFOs performing amazing maneuvers? And that's based on the data. Yep.

I think a lot of people get involved in this UFO Twitter sphere because of the drama. Like it gives them something to do for the day. And, yeah, look, we're all creatures. We like drama. There's a reason, you know, theater. exists and a reason we like arguments and everything. But yeah, I think that often clouds the actual discussions being had. And it, like you said, it becomes way more about that. And it shouldn't be. It really shouldn't be. And this goes for any community or subculture. Like, it's, this isn't just

euphology. I don't want people to think we're bashing just the UFO community. This, I'm sure this happens in the skeptic world as well, where you start attacking the person instead of what they're actually bringing forward. Yeah, in the skeptic community, there's a big issue with, you know, stuff like political correctness and gender issues and things like that. And this kind of camps, you know, it's the grumpy old man on one side and saying, well, why can't we have things loud the way they were? And then you've got the younger crowd coming in and saying, you know, you've got to use the right pronouns, things like that. And then people start arguing about that, the issues of gender equity and gender identity within the skeptical community.

And it's kind of like, it's a distraction, but they're raising valid points. But now we're just talking about the social aspect of it and the political aspect of it and what's going on in this organization and how should skeptics present themselves in public and what issue should we address. Whereas, you know, I'm a nuts and bolts guy. I like to look at videos of UFOs and figure out what they are. I like to dig into claims that people make about vaccine statistics and see whether the numbers add up. I like to do that type of thing.

And this other stuff is a bit of a distraction. Not to say that people aren't raising valid issues, but it's not helping figure out what UFOs are. Right. And it transcends the topic you're ultimately kind of brought everyone together. Yeah, of course we should care about people. issues with race, gender, sexuality. Like, there's a time and a place for that. And there is a time and a place for that in these fields.

But like you said, that's not what you focus on. And I'm sure you have your own personal thoughts and beliefs and convictions when it comes to all that. But like you said, that's not why you're in the UFO world and why you're having these conversations. So I get that. I get that. Well, I have one more.

question to wrap things up here, Mick. Let's see. Smiles Defy Gravity on Reddit asks, do you have any plans to make any more computer games or video games? And if so, I'd personally like to see him create a good UFO simulation game like Roswell, where you play the ET pilot who survives. Any plans? Someone asked me on UCR.

Yeah, I think what might be likely is I would do some, kind of UFO scenario recreation software. I'm kind of interested in getting into virtual reality because I think a huge issue of UFOs is this disconnect between seeing things on a two-dimensional screen and the actual reality of what people actually experience. And if you can, instead of recreating an experience by drawing diagrams or even making a 3D simulation, if you can do it in virtual reality, I think. think that would be super

useful for people getting perspective on what actually happened. You go back to some of the let's say the classic swamp gas thing back from I believe it was Jay Alan Heinek gave it an explanation of a couple of sightings as being

possibly swamp gas and part of that was because he kind of triangulated where this light was and in one case at least least it was over some swamp area. But people took this more generally and they thought it sounded ridiculous. But perhaps if you could actually recreate in virtual reality what the people in that farmhouse

saw and the people on the other side of the swamp saw and then do things where you can kind of fly around the entire scene and view it in 3D, you might understand how it could possibly have been such a thing. Or you go back to, say, the fiends. Phoenix lights. You've got video of these lights over this ridge of mountains. Perhaps if you could simulate the possible scenarios of like flares or alien spaceships or secret technology ships in some kind of virtual reality environments, you might get a much better sense of what people saw. People talk about a lot like something flew overhead and they say it was the size of a

football field. When it would be literally impossible for it to be the size of a football field based on their actual description because they're usually looking at something that's fairly small angularly. But if you just got these verbal descriptions and you end up drawing diagrams of it, it's very hard. But I think if you had the virtual reality thing and you could recreate what they actually saw and get them involved in that, that would be a good way of actually getting a much better

model of what actually happened. and helping them understand what they might have seen and helping other people understand what they might have seen. So if I do any UFO-related programming, I think it's probably going to be UFO virtual reality recreations. Oh, my God. I've like electricity just searched through me the excitement of that. That's genius.

Like talk about putting yourself in the shoes of a witness. Like now you can have that concept, take the data, take the testimony. Or the cockpit, exactly, and recreate that scenario. Obviously, it won't be perfect, but it's fun and it's a way to try to understand it better. You need to patent that right now, and I know you'll raise millions to have that become a reality. I should crowdsource it. Love it. Well, Mick, this has been fascinating.

You've been so gracious with your time, man. We covered a lot, and I know there's a lot. there's a lot of questions we all still have of you know all these videos that have come out and everything and where this whole UFO thing is heading but I just want to thank you for the work you've done I know you get a lot of a lot of flack in the community and again I don't agree with everything you've come up with

but neither do you agree with everything everyone else has come up with but it's essential what you're doing yeah thank you and yeah I think what's really essential is trying to have the dialogue with people. Like I said earlier, like if it's just like some guy making videos here and another guy making videos there, it's always guys making these videos.

We'd get a lot, we'd be a lot more productive if opposing positions would actually get together and discuss. And that's what I think, you know, might be something that we should try to focus a little bit more on in the future

rather than just going back and forth with dueling videos. Exactly. Well, I mean, I appreciate you having this discussion with me today. And last question, of course, where can we find everything you're up to, your book, and yeah, everything in between. Where can we find that? Well, you can just go to Twitter at Mick West. And that's pretty much the will lead you to anything you want.

So you can go to Mick West.com, and he has a long list of my other stuff as well. Well, my book is called Escaping the Rabbit Hole. If you want to try to talk to your friends who are stuck in conspiracy theories, this is the book that tells you how to do it, or one of several books. But, you know, you can just find me on Google. Mick West, there's not very many others. Good, good, yeah.

And I know a few friends and family who could probably learn a lot from your book. So I'm going to definitely make sure they check that out. But, Mick, thank you. Thank you so much for joining me today. Yes, I'm really surprised. Welcome to Anama Khan. Anama Khan is a virtual conference on everything anomalous, live streaming on YouTube, Twitter X, and on Twitch.

Join us on September 1st and 2nd, as over two dozen speakers give presentations on everything from UFOs and aliens to ghosts and the paranormal, from Bigfoot and Lake Monsters to witchcraft and the occult. It's all happening at Anamakan. And most importantly, it's completely free. To learn more about our speakers and the event, visit Anamacan.com.

We'll see you on September 4th. first and second for Anama Khan. This is Somewhere in the Skies 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. Pontempe 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 UAP 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 Pentampi. Paula, thank you so much for joining me today and 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 the, this and jotting down every name of every panel member and kind of looking into what they've done, their 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, so I was so happy that you were 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, you know, 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 to draw 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, 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 exoplanets 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, Palaband Tempe human thinking about it, it would be really depressing if we were the only, organisms out there. And Earth was 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. You know, I'd love to hear a little bit more about your time at NASA in terms of, you know, 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 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 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 have.

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, treascial 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 meat 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 take? takeaways from the panel. Well, I know we still have pending report that's going to come out. I'd love to touch on a little bit later, if there is anything I can share. But yeah, what are you 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, an artifact of the camera that you're using to look at it, plus what your eye limitations are, you know. So we did explore a little bit like that. And I think one of the panelists,

Josh the metter, gave an example at the panel of the parallax error, you know, 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 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. Desigmatizing. 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 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 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? 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's 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. And at least there's that bit of support there. 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 etc they want to give that experience to somebody and be told it's okay we'll look into it right and 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, 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 an 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 2 to 5 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 agency or division,

you must go do this without the funds to actually do it properly, 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, you know, 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? You know, do they want to keep us 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 Ariel to a, 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, as, as, best as we can and keep the report short. I don't think it'll be 400 pages long. It'll be actually 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 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 too, right?

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 you 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 notionographer 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. But I was 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 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, it covers 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'd never talk 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. Wow. Yeah. It's not. It's kind of, I'm sure you think about this all the time, but for me, it was kind of mind-blowing. You know, 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 cliche 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 due 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 photos and these videos of spaceships from other planets coming into 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. you know, 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, 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'll 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 within our oceans? 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. 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, 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 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 governments are dedicating their lives to, can we build sustainable structure? 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 kids. 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 often. Yeah, right?

In the Covenant at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Yeah. No, I hope not. 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. 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, you know, abutting astronomer, you know,

I think that the one recommendation that the panel made was, you know, 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. 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'll 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 going, 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 model.

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 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 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. You know, they're also doing this reforestation project as well. So they're doing things right. And I love this idea of like we, 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 ocean office? 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. Anybody 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 to 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 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. The Somewhere 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. This is Somewhere in the Skies with Ryan Sprague. Welcome everyone to Somewhere in the Skies. As usual, I am your host, Ryan Sprague, and I am so excited today. This is an interview that I have been waiting to do for a very, very long time. We're going to be talking about this revolutionary new project that is headed by one of my favorite people in the quote unquote UFO community, enemy of UFO Twitter, and just one of the coolest guys I know working. on this brand new UFO tracking device. And we're going to talk all about how it works, how you can get involved with this, and everything else going on with UFOs in 2021. So without further ado,

here is the host of the Matt Scientist podcast and on the advisory board, the head of the advisory board for Sky Hub, Dr. Chris Cogswell. Chris, how's it going, my man? Good, man. It's going really well. How are you doing? I am good.

I have mentioned on the last episode, I was able to escape New York, and I'm here on the island of Oahu for the umpteenth time. I'm starting to think people probably think I'm like in the witness protection program because I'm escaping to these remote places so often. But no, things are good for me, brother. How about you? Things are going well. You know, I haven't escaped anywhere as nice as Oahu, but I occasionally make my escape up to New York. Hampshire still in the mountain. So that's, that's always nice. But yeah, doing well. Dude, give me East Coast, like fall over anything. Like, I'm not a beach guy. I'm not a swimmer.

So, like, yeah, it's great. It's Hawaii. And I feel very fortunate. But I'm not, like, one of these people who's like, let's go. Let's go. I like doing this stuff all the time. Sure. Yeah. No, totally feel you, man. Yeah, napping under a tree in the middle of the autumn. It's nice and crisp outside. You can't beat it. And then you wake up full of bugs, which is... Full of bugs. Yeah. But whatever. It's fine. We move fast. Exactly. Your pumpkin spice lattes tipped over and someone stole your wallet. Yep. Yeah. Got to love it. Love it, brother. Awesome. Well, I know we could talk weather and locations for a while, but that's not why you're here. We're here to talk about Skyhub, which is so

amazing. But before we get to what it is, how it works, how you're involved, for any of our new viewers or listeners, I want to kind of catch them up to who you are, what you do, how you got involved with the UFO topic, and what brought you into this crazy community that we've all found ourselves in. And yeah, give us the origin story, if you don't mind. Yeah, sure. So I was bitten by a radioactive scientist at the age of 10. No, So I kind of involved initially because so my family is definitely one who tends to believe in more. My family tends to be one that believes in sort of, you know, non-scientific things at times and things that I think the public would think of is sort of more fringe or out there belief systems. But at the same time, my family was very grounded in the sciences and in history and philosophy.

And so, you know, my, at our family kind of gatherings, we were, you know, as likely to sort of talk about, you know, religious philosophy and dogmen, whatever, as astrology or, you know, ghosts or UFOs or whatever. So my family was very sort of steeped in that view. And I think it's because my family's made up of immigrants. So when I was a kid, I, you know, was always pushed by my family to go into something technical and do really well in school and learn and everything else. But also there was always sort of an edge of mysticism and sort of fantasy and folklore, you know, imbued in everything.

And so when I got to sort of high school and then to college and then even in grad school, I've always been really interested in why people who are, you know, intelligent, good people can sometimes fall for fall for people who are trying to take advantage of them, whether it's people who fall into cults or people who give money to a psychic to talk to the dead dead relative or something or even the UFO subject, right?

Why does someone pay thousands of dollars to go on a, you know, whatever, an ancient aliens cruise or something? And so that's always been really interesting to me. And at the same time, I've always thought that you have this group of people, this large group of people who are making claims, and the scientific community, the sort of wider public just discounts their stories out of hand, or at least used to discount their stories sort of out of hand.

And I always thought that was really unfair because, you know, the people who have these sightings, it's not just, you know, crackpots or people who are, I don't know, drunks or whatever, and they come home and they're like, I was abducted, right? Like, that's not what happens. It's pilots. It's teachers, it's lawyers, it's mothers and fathers and grandmothers and grandfathers. And, you know, people from all walks of life have these experiences. And so for me, another part of it was always the interest in,

you have this community who claims that something is happening to them, them in many cases something very traumatic and disturbing and yet you know and they have real effects you know they have real uh real negative things happen to them i mean we've we've been at conferences together where people come forward and tell their stories and you know it's a grown man sobbing in front of a room of a hundred people that he's never met you know that's that's more than just you know again we might not be able to say what the what actually happened that person, but that's more than just someone making up something for attention. That doesn't fly with me.

That doesn't make sense. So when I was in grad school, I started doing a podcast, the Mad Scientist podcast, on sort of this question of the philosophy and history of science and why do people believe these things and is there anything to them and, you know, all those sorts of things. And a listener actually reached out and basically said, you know, basically said something like, You know, you're so smart. Why don't you get involved in? You know, like, you know, and I was like, oh, it's kind of a good point. Right. Like, I'm making all these claims and I'm like, I bet I can figure this out in a week.

And, you know, stupid stuff you say on the internet. And then after talking it through with other people who I consider to sort of be mentors to me in the science world, in the academic world, in the industry, and then in the, um, the scale. skeptical world, you know, basically everyone said, you know, if you think that that's a route forward to talk to these people and understand them and, you know, work with people who've had these experiences, then you should do it because it's a good, you're coming out of it from a good place. Yeah. And that's really why I got involved. And that initially led me to kind of talking to people and, you know, I was lucky to,

I was lucky to end up meeting a lot of people who were very interested in my background and research work and everything else in my take on this. That led me to doing work with Mufon for a little while, which didn't turn out so well, because Mufon just refuses to learn from their mistakes. And just keeps making bad, you know, worse and worse and worse decisions. But anyways, we could go into that. It's a whole other can of words. It's a whole other show, I know. You know, but suffice it to say that I've tried to be involved in this in a way that lets me retain, obviously retain my own credibility, because I have, I need a, you know, I have a day job.

I want to continue working in the sciences and in the fields that I work in, but also still able to do sort of outreach and engagement with people who have had these experiences, who believe these things, and try to get to some sense of what is really, happening here. And that, I guess, sort of my, I am a very critical voice in the UFO community generally. And so because of that, I have less friends than others do in the community. But I think that the people and the groups that I have worked with and we've built have been of a very high caliber. And again, just generally, you know, it's really easy to be on Twitter and say, this is all just people making this up. But again, you know, the thing I always come back to is if it's all made up, that's much scarier than if it's UFOs.

If it's all made up, that means that there is, you know, that means that it would be so easy then for a foreign adversary to start a blog and manipulate the public. You know, and we're seeing some of that with sort of, you know, politics today worldwide with conspiracy theories and anti-vaccination feelings and everything else. But it's a lesson that, you know, it's something that people in the UFO world have sort of been yelling about for decades. I'm not the first researcher to say that, hey, if you can understand why a UFO grifter is able to make money off of their, you know, their, you know, desert getaway packages, then you can understand how propaganda spreads in a community. And so that's sort of, I guess, you know, so that's how I got to before Sky Hub.

So how I got involved with Sky Hub was really, Sky Hub initially was another, An idea for something like Sky Hub has been sort of floating around the UFO community for a while. And actually, products or not really products, but tools like Sky Hub have actually been something that was of interest for the military and, you know, astronomers and NASA and other kind of, you know, governmental groups for a very long time. Actually, since basically the launch of Sputnik, the idea of tracking. and understanding what's in the skies above us has been of great interest. Public groups that have done this include like CAMs via SETI or other kind of meteor projects or, you know, even weather stations in some way or a type of sky hub or a type of, you know,

sky surveillance recognition platform. But the problem with those previous methods have been that they're all very large and bulky and costly and everything else. And my Sky Hub is this big. This is my Sky Hub. That's crazy, man. It connects to a camera. I just plug it in.

That's my Sky Hub. So, you know, the increases in technology and computing power and the shrinking of electronic hardware has gotten to the point now that what before we had to do with like an entire, you know, like a weather truck, right? you can do with a Raspberry Pi or a Jetson and some software. So that's really what was what was intriguing to me about the SkyHub project when the team originally approached me was you've heard about all these other projects. Obviously, this has been out there for a long time. We can do it for cheaper, smaller, and we will do it in a way that is completely transparent to the public.

And that to me was very, very, that was the thing. That was really the hook that got me. involved and maybe want to maybe want to take part in the project yeah well let me let me let me let's rewind just a little bit chris if you don't mind brother um and that's a really good point i do want to talk to you about the transparency uh that you guys are doing over at skyhub but um could you give us kind of i guess the origin of of skyhub before you were approached um who created this who's involved and yeah, maybe kind of walk us through what Sky Hub is, if you don't mind. I know that's a lot to ask, but yeah, maybe give us the origin of how it came to be

why you thought this was something you wanted to put your name on. And yeah, maybe a little about the process of what Sky Hub is. Absolutely, yeah. So there are, so, okay, so to start with, Sky Hub, Sky Hub really started as a effort by a group of developers. so software developers who wanted to build a who wanted to build a unit that could

capture evidence of objects in the sky above us using techniques and tools that would be beyond a question. So using machine learning and artificial intelligence to automatically capture and categorize

objects or images of objects in the sky above us. The initial idea really came from Steve McDaniel, Corey Gaspar, and Adam Allen. And actually, initially, they were on a team with Dr. Bob McGuire. That team sort of, that team didn't work out. And so then Steve, Corey, and Adam kind of continued the software development on their own.

And then from there, we've sort of built Sky Hub and so I think I was the I think the next person to join the team was probably Richard Hopphe who is our hardware design and fabrication specialist and I think it was me and then David Moore who's our audio engineering and kind of science communication specialist we now have other members of the team as well Paul Wright and Justin Phillips we have over 200 people in our discord who currently participate in and you know help us develop and answer questions and things like that. But so the basic idea, though, or the basic concept of Sky Hub is, we build a system that is easy to assemble, relatively cheap to produce and build, and we provide the software to run it free of charge to the public. The public then puts the thing together.

They buy the stuff from other places. They put it together themselves based on construction, we give them, and then they deploy them out in their backyards and on their roofs and wherever. And the software, what it does is as an object comes into frame above the camera, it automatically turns on and starts recording the video. And then on the back end, a system using artificial intelligence tells or sort of picks out from those images what is a bird, what is an airplane, what is an insect, and then ultimately what's left behind would be the unknowns.

That's, okay, so that was kind of my next question for you, is once the recording starts and you start getting that data in, how exactly does the machine learning play into differentiating these objects? So is it like, okay, we have five different sky hubs out there, monitoring, whatever, let's say a SESNA plane that goes by. Does the machine then know, all right, these are the properties of the SESNA, according to our sort of observational look at it and keep, you know, is it, okay, now we have all of these are SESNs, all of these are meteors,

all of these are blah, blah, blah, blah, and then the true unknown. How does that all work? So just to start, just to begin with, Artificial intelligence and machine learning are buzzwords that are used all over the place to see way more complicated than they are. You're technically any system where a sensor measures a set point and then tells a computer

to change something to get back to the set point is doing artificial intelligence. Okay. Right. So a thermoomical. So in your house right now, you have a thermometer or a thermostat that measures the temperature in the rooms of your home. And you can set the temperature to be at like 60 degrees, 65 degrees. If you're a weirdo might like me, you set it at 60 degrees.

And then you wear a sweat. Right? Yeah. If you're like me, you do that and then your wife is wearing a blanket. I know that feeling well. That's one or the other, right? But that system is a very, very simple version of artificial intelligence because what it's doing is it is taking a measurement and then changing something, making something happen to get to a certain set point or a certain value. So in many ways, like control systems, control schemes, sensors, those sorts of things with like control systems are a very simple version of artificial intelligence. In our case, the artificial intelligence is more complicated, but it's still basically just, we give it a list of, say, 20 to 30 set points that we say, okay, if you measure these things, it's an airplane.

If you measure these things, it's a meteor. If you measure these things, it's a bird or an insect or whatever. So that's basically how the artificial intelligence works. The set points are the things that we're actually looking at in terms of what we want the machine to be able to differentiate between are motion. So in other words, an airplane, if you're thinking about the camera itself is looking up at the sky, if you think about an airplane as it travels across the frame of the vision of the camera, the airplane will maybe it starts, you know, it starts coming in here, and then it'll fly at a very set path.

And it takes a straight line path usually. Whereas if we think about something like, you know, Elizondo's five observables, let's say, one of them is like non-ballistic motion, right? So the object bounces all over the place. We can do things with the video. So the first step is making the camera recognize

that an object is coming into frame. then all we do is we measure how the object moves across the video, so every frame where it moves. From that, we can get things like its speed, its acceleration, its direction. We can tell how straight the path is, so is the path tortuous or not. We can tell all kinds of other things like that.

And then we have other sensors too that can tell us, you know, this is an airplane, this is a whatever. All the artificial intelligence is doing is if it sees a certain number of those things that fit within, say, the bucket of airplane, it marks it as an airplane. Does that kind of make sense in that case, Ryan?

Oh, yeah, totally. Because I think, again, it's all about differentiating these objects. That's the point of this until you get to the true unknown. That's always the bottom and the least likely. Exactly. Now, the way that the machine learning works is, if you can give a computer instructions to say,

okay, I want you to measure a thousand videos of an object. I'm telling you that these objects are airplanes. So I have to know that they're airplanes beforehand. I have to tell the computer it's an airplane. And then what the computer does is it measures those metrics again that we tell it to measure for, speed, acceleration, tortuosity, displacement vector,

whatever, those other things. we tell the machine to measure those things and then at the end of it it essentially says okay well based on the thousand measurements I've now taken of an airplane this is what the airplane profile looks like so airplanes have a velocity

between this value and this value and most of them are here and so within 95% confidence I can say that if you have a velocity of this you're an airplane that's a very simple example we're not going to be able to do it just based off velocity but so that's the way the machine learning works is really it's instead of us giving the computer the set point right we let the computer determine what the most likely set point is for a set of

data that is so cool yeah so you know imagine imagine you know Elon Musk um Elon Musk gets you know whatever it's 100 years from now when Elon Musk has turned us all in our robots and we have microchips in our brains or whatever um imagine if your thermostat was able to measure how comfortable you were, right? It's basically you would be telling it, okay, well, I want you to measure for things like, is the person persper, you know, are they sweating? Are they breathing heavy? Are they red in the face?

Or they, whatever? Or measuring your internal temperature maybe. And then changing the thermostat to fit to where your internal temperature hits the right set point. So machine learning is basically just, again, Again, it's just another kind of fancy way of saying, instead of it being a person or like interns for us or whatever, getting all that data ourselves by doing pen and paper math, we let a computer do it. That's all it is. And so over, yeah, so over time then, and so in that way, then you basically can, if your system is good enough, ultimately the goal would be that we would be able to find the easiest, cheap. and by cheap, I mean cheap computationally,

not necessarily cheap economically. But like, you know, the most accurate measurement we can do with the smallest number of sort of cycles of math we have to do to tell this is a bird, this is a plane, this is a whatever. Yeah, expediting the process, yeah. Right. And so, and that's really where that's where kind of continuous machine learning comes in

where after a while, like right now, let's say we have a data set with, I don't know, 10,000 videos of airplanes, right? And that's just a random number. I don't, I don't know picking a random number. I don't know how many, you know, whatever. But let's say we get that data set of 10,000. Eventually, with a complicated enough system, you can find other data points that, like, So, for example, airplanes have, airplanes all give off a signal telling other airplanes or air traffic controllers, hey, we're an airplane, we're in the area. That is like a 100% it's an airplane, right?

That's a definite signal that it's an airplane. So we could train our models to say if you get that signal, whatever you're viewing is an airplane and then train it based on that. Right? That's one way to say do kind of continuous machine learning again, where you don't need to, to be inputting all the time videos of airplanes. But yeah. Yeah. And so it gets more complicated.

Right. What I think, and you stress this quite well, is that the public and those involved and those using the program are literally helping to evolve the algorithms, evolve Skyhub. I saw in an interview where I believe you said, you know, This software, this, this device, this technology is constantly evolving. So it's not like Sky Hub is just developed, built, and game over. Like, it's done.

This is, this is cool because it is constantly in motion and learning and growing and helping us to figure out what the hell these phenomena are. And, you know, I've been sent several Skyhub videos. by people who have, you know, purchased what they needed to create Skyhub and get the data out into the cloud. And some of them, dude, have been really compelling. I mean, there was one I recently saw of what we thought might have been a plane and then totally made a 90-degree turn out of nowhere and took off. So again, you're talking about kind of those observables that the Pentagon looked at. So I guess my next question for you would be, what are some of the stuff you guys have come across?

I mean, yeah, of course, meteors, probably Starlink satellites are one of the big ones. But any really intriguing ones that have kind of left you guys over at Skyhub scratching your head so far? Honestly, I think one of the coolest things about this project so far has been just how unexpected the results have been. You know, if you thought to yourself, okay, I'll put a camera outside my house. It's pointed up in the sky. And I'm going to measure, you know, I'm just going to, I'm going to see airplanes probably.

I'll see birds. I'll see airplanes. I'll see some insects, you know, whatever. There is stuff in the sky all the time that, you know, I would never consider or think we're in the sky above my house or, you know. So, for example, I think me. one of my favorite ones is one of the units is out in um is out in the united kingdom just give it that that's as as close to locale as i want to give um and so the unit is there and it's in someone's

garden and they captured somebody uh they captured somebody paragliding over like a residential neighborhood you know there's a there's someone paragliding and And if you had asked them at the beginning of this, you know, what do you think you're going to capture? What do you think you're most likely to capture here? I don't think in a million years they would have said they would capture paraglider. Right? Like there's just no, you know, there's no way you would think,

oh yeah, yeah, paraglider. There's definitely paragliding going on here unless you know that it's happening, you have no idea. Right. So that's been really one interesting one. Another really interesting one, I think, and you highlighted it here too, we've captured a video of what are potentially drones. I mean, you know, we don't know what these objects are yet that we're capturing all the time.

I mean, a paraglider is easy because it's like there's a guy. You know what I mean? Like it's, you know, unless it's like Batman, it's a god of a paraglider or whatever. But some of the, you know, most of the objects we capture are going to be points of light in the sky. You know, they're going to be dots of light. And so for those ones, that's really where a good analysis of the motion of them is what's important. But we've captured some, though, that are, you know, it appears that the object comes very quickly in a frame. It goes down straight, then stops.

We'll sit there for a couple of seconds and then takes off at another angle. It just shoots off. We've had a couple of those now. And, you know, my best guess would be that they're drones. But even then, that's kind of interesting if they're drones. Like what, you know, what's going on? Like, who's flying a drone like that at nighttime? And kind of an interesting one.

Another interesting one that we've captured, one of the units is in a fairly, I would say, remote location. And it keeps, it captures a lot of military aircraft because it's near an airport base or an airport base. It's near a, you know, it's near an Airfield or something. Airfield, whatever, military base. That one's captured some really interesting ones.

You know, military plans flying low and stuff like that. But also is captured, also has captured like what appears to be an object sort of breaking apart maybe in reentry or something. We're really sure what it is. It looks like it might be some kind of weather balloon or something. And I know that's cliche to say to, you know, UFO. It's a weather balloon, right?

We're captured a lot of swap gas, Ryan. Again, saying Chris is the enemy of UFOs for you guys. I'm coming for you guys. It's all swamp gas. Our machine learning module just as one option, swap gas. The object, it appears like it's tethered to something else. And the thing that it's tethered to looks like it's kind of floating or lighter. But it looks like it's kind of metallic.

It's an interesting, again, kind of an interesting video. So, you know, I think just overall we've kind of captured just stuff you wouldn't expect. And, you know, the number of like shooting stars, you know, the International Space Station flyby as we've captured, like, you know, it's just, again, because we're still in very early stages for this. And that's one thing we try to make clear to anybody, you know, people, people all the time will come into our chat or on our website or whatever, send us emails and say,

hey, you know, we want to give you the money to get a Sky Hub. and our answer I think, which is probably frustrating for most people is whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second. Before you build a Sky Hub, we need to tell you all these things. Like, we basically tell people a list of reasons why they shouldn't build one yet.

You know, we're like, it's hard to do. There's a lot of troubleshooting. We're still making the software. We haven't really settled yet on, you know, the cameras. And like, you know, just because it's early stages, right? I mean, if you were, If you were designing any other engineered product, you wouldn't start selling it before it was ready.

Right. But I think for a lot of UFO people or people that are interested in this, that's something that's a little bit out of the ordinary for the field. Because usually people will start hyping things before, you know, someone will think, like, wouldn't it be great to have a machine learning method to capture your foes, and then they will hype the hell out of it. And they're on, they're on podcast saying, you know, we're going to do this and all this and stuff.

And like, it's a lot of work. It's a lot of effort and it's really hard. And so before we start doing that, we want to make sure people understand that if they are building one, if they're going to buy the parts, that they're going to help us with this, they are developing with us. They're helping us. And just like any other kind of hobby where you're trying to, to work with a group of people to build something, it might not work.

You know? I mean, we've had promising results, but, you know, we're not, you know, we're not ready. We're not ready to be sold in Target or whatever. We're never going to be sold in Target. Frankly, we're not trying to sell anything, you know. So it's just a different, it's a different, I guess, way of doing things and a different way of viewing this. We view ourselves as a, we view ourselves as a open science or citizen science project. And so what that means is, just like if you were part of a birdwatching group in your local community,

you would be going to, you know, going on hikes maybe with other people and chatting with them online and sharing photos and videos and whatever, that's, you know, it's similar to what we're doing here. We're not, we don't charge people money to be part of our Discord or to chat with us or we don't even sell like Skyhubs. We don't, we don't sell anything. people now can can purchase an enclosure that was designed for us by one of our you know our hardware designer but that's that's mostly a donation to the group you know we're so we try to make it clear like if you're going to come in and build these things um it's going to be a lot of work and it's not necessarily the easiest right now um but that's just what designing something like this takes yeah and you know

I've seen several individuals who have, you know, taken that initiative, built the entire thing from scratch themselves, throw it on like their Humvees and drive it all out in the desert, which is so cool, man, how remote this has become, which I think like you showing your own Sky Hub there is things have changed drastically in terms of how accessible these things can be. But because you said you're in the initial stages still, a lot of it rides on the individuals who are using it, who are creating it.

And the open source data is another big thing, very positive thing, I think. We're so used to like, whatever, move on or NASA or the government being so cagey when it comes to sharing things they've seen or experienced when it comes to unknowns. And I think that's awesome that you guys are putting that out to the public. My question would be, and I know again, this is very, very early in the stages of what you guys are doing, could military or government programs or, you know, agencies, could they use the software and kind of the setup of Skyhub and privatize that data and information? You know, like we have the open source thing, which is awesome. Everyone can be a part of it and talk about what they think it might be. But is there a chance that your technology or what you guys have created could be used, like you said, in the military or whatnot?

And we never see any of that data. So, so first off, all of the Sky Hub software is available to download online for free right now. Okay. So if people want to, if say some group, forget the military even, if some group decided they wanted to build a private Skyhub software, right? So right now the way that the code works is it goes to a public, it goes to a database that, you know, again, we're still early on. So there's not data to share yet, really. I mean, we have videos and stuff, we put them on YouTube, but in terms of actual kind of data, we're working on getting that pipeline sort of moving, privatizing it in a way that it's available for the public and all those other things.

Someone could, in theory, I guess, go on and change the software so that it goes to a private server instead. And, you know, us at Skyhub have no control over that data and whatever. And so then it just goes out there. Someone could do that if they wanted to. you know, we're, it's part of the danger of making a open source kind of citizen science like project is if a company wanted to, they could, you know, they could do something like a Skyhub or something. But because we've done it and it's available on the internet already for free, and so the code itself that kind of builds it and underpins everything is available

for free to the public. Although some small section of the data might never get to the public, the bulk of the data would. I mean, it's sort of a, think about it like a camera, right? Camera's kind of a bad example, I guess. I guess what I'm saying is

if someone wanted to buy a Skyhub and keep it not connected to the internet, they could also kind of keep that data to themselves. It wouldn't work at this point. But, you know, someone could go in and make a private Sky Hub network for themselves. But the technology is freely available to the public. So even if the military wanted to come on and take it and use it and whatever,

the military would just be putting them in places that the public couldn't. But the technology can never become like, you know, the technology can ever just become privatized by something. Right. It's already out there. That's a good point. I think I understand your analogy of like, even if you threw a photo up on Facebook or whatever, Like anyone can download it and then alter it or change it or use it how they want. You know, that's what's scary about Facebook.

You think that stuff, you own that? Sorry, read the fine print guys. Yeah, that's a good point. It's already out there. It's under a Creative Commons license. It's under an MIT kind of software license and things like that. So, you know, people can download it and use it however they want. I mean, we're not stopping anybody from using Skyhubs, right?

Like, that's not our goal at all. Yeah. But, you know, the software is freely available on the internet. So, yeah, it's a good, it's a really good question. And frankly, if the military came out and, or if the military came to us and said, hey, we want to use the Sky Hub software, I'd probably say no. That would be tough, yeah. Kind of doesn't feel very good.

You know what I mean? Like, if NASA wanted to, that would be different, I think. Or if, you know, SETI wanted to utilize this or whatever. or like those are research. Those are, that's for scientific research, right? The goal is for this to be done for scientific research. So I guess that's the difference there. The application of it might become privatized or whatever for some parts of people or whatever,

but the software itself, the tool itself, that cat's already out of the back. Yeah. Well, I mean, and I've got some really good listener questions in a little bit, Chris. But this was kind of a big question. that a lot of people had, and it befuddles me why they might not be using it, but a lot of people

want to know, you know, Skinwalker Ranch, again, this big buzzword, this TV show, this mysterious place. Why aren't they using Skyhub, man? I mean, come on. They are, like, out there every day saying stuff is happening.

They're seeing aerial objects that defy, explanation, but, you know, we're not seeing that 24-7. They're not monitoring the sky. As far as I know, I could be wrong. But has anything like Skinwalker Ranch or any other companies approach you guys about using this stuff yet? What's up, guys, Ryan Sprag here, and I'm just dropping in to remind you about our Patreon campaign. Somewhere in the Skies is always free to consume, but it's not free to create. So if you want to help the show on a monthly basis, we have tons of

awards for you in return, including shoutouts on the show and website, bonus content and episodes, and free merge. Want to be my guest or pick a topic for the show? You can do that too. So if you'd like to learn more and to help support the show, visit patreon.com slash somewhere skies. Thank you and keep looking up. Yeah, so a lot of people have approached us. I'm not going to give any particular names or anything because I think that would go against

sort of confidentiality and just, you know, just be kind of a, kind of a dick move. So I'm not going to do that. That's fair. What I will, what I will say, though, is that, so a lot of the times the issues come down to, a lot of the times the issues are, there's a couple of different issues. One issue is that private data issue. That comes up a lot. That is a real issue for some people in some groups and whatever, because a,

especially let's say if you're working on maybe a project that you hope to publish a scientific study on or something like that, sometimes that data you want to keep under wraps before you publish it. Because you don't want somebody else to scoop you, frankly. So that's one area where there has been some discussion about, you know, okay, well, that makes sense and, you know, they're not going to use it or whatever. Another one is the units currently need to have access to a power source and need to have access to the internet. You know, and that's why like the Osiris project, let's say, is kind of an interesting, you know, offshoot of a user trying to make, you know, trying to make a better version of their Skyhub, right? You know, our focus is on getting the software going, making sure that any bugs that are there fixed, and making a unit that can work for our initial purposes, which was, you can have it on the roof of your house, you can have it in your garden, kind of near the home.

But things like, you know, applying, you know, getting Wi-Fi or something on there, or solar panels to power it, or other kind of power sources or whatever, all of that is kind of next stage development stuff that we haven't even really considered yet because we're trying to focus on getting this stuff done. So, you know, sometimes there's issues of logistics, sometimes it's issue of data handling, Sometimes it's just, sometimes it's just people are busy doing other things, frankly. You know? So, yeah, I think that's probably the best I can give on that answer, really.

Yeah, absolutely. That makes complete sense. Yeah. Again, it's you guys stressing to people who want to take part in this. Like, a lot of the legwork is on you, which is awesome. You guys apply, you give the software, and you, collect the data, which is awesome. But yeah, you know, something like

Osiris, I can understand. Like, taking what Sky Hub has created, building off of it, and doing your cool thing out in the desert. So God bless Mr. McGowan for doing that. I give him a very cool idea. It's one that we would never have

considered in a thousand years. Yeah. But yeah, I wish him luck. It's a very cool. It's a very cool application of it. Yeah. It's badass for sure. Well, speaking of videos, I want to kind of transition over to some recent stuff in the UFO, I guess, mainstream, and talk to you about these videos released by Jeremy Corbell, George Knapp. We saw these flying pyramids or pizza slices, if people have said recently. And we've also got an object possibly submerging into the ocean. in both Pentagon confirmed videos. They are authentic.

They are apparently still unidentified. We don't know that for sure. But in terms of video analyzing, Chris, and kind of what you guys are doing over at Skyhub with constant tracking, what do you make of these videos? And, yeah, everything going on right now in the UFO world when it comes to these leaks, apparently.

Are these leaks? What do you think? So I've always been cautious. about making claims about any of these things too soon. I've always tried to kind of give caution, but also always tried to take a pragmatic approach to any of these sorts of releases and things. My issue with the videos, or I guess the thing that I see when I look at the videos,

they're interesting, they're very interesting. The way that they've come out is interesting, and I think that the people who have pushed them out also are inevitably part of the story. It's really hard when you are, like Corbell and Knapp have kind of, and even Leslie Keene and Ralph Blumenthal and all of those figures have kind of inserted themselves

into the stories. You know, they've built for themselves their own mythos in UFO, in UFO history and lore. So I think it's really It's really disingenuous to expect the public Or other researchers or scientists or whoever To just take the videos on their merits alone

When there is so much history And You know, bad actors and everything else Kind of rolled up into the history And provenance of the videos and the intelligence that comes from them. So that's one thought, right? My main thought has always been, you know,

I mean, I'm sure I've said it on your show before. I've said it on many other shows before. For me, the concern has always been that any data that you get that comes from or comes through the kind of standard UFO media sources is fruit of the poison trait. You know, if someone came to me with a, if somebody came to me with a, clear-cut video of a UFO, I would not be the person to break the story on my podcast.

Right? Because it's an important piece of like evidence in history. I would bring it to the best people I could find for it. And so I think that the issue or one of the issues is that before this, the people you would bring it to have made it. something, sometimes they've made it about themselves or have become part of that story themselves. That's issue number one. In terms of the videos themselves, the quality of the videos, they're interesting.

I think actually probably the most interesting thing about them is hearing the people's, especially in the second video released, of the kind of round infrared object or the infrared of the round kind of heat signature dropping into the ocean. That one is interesting because you, can hear the people giving the, kind of giving a playplay of what's happening to it.

That is very interesting. But in terms of what we would probably categorize them as, I mean, I think it's too early to say. I think it's hard to say, but they don't, they don't really appear to have any of the, they don't behave differently enough from known objects to make them interesting. And that's kind of the problem, I think, sometimes with, using a, you know, one question that people have given us that's a really good question is, well, what if the UFO is just flying like an airplane?

Right? That's a good question, yeah. A question, right? It's a really good question. And in that case, we're going to get a false negative, right? We're going to measure and say that it's an airplane when it isn't. It's really an unidentified or whatever it is. That's possible.

But that's why you give other metrics as well. You don't just base it off of, you know, velocity or shape or whatever. You do other things. I think that the arguments, on the first one of the triangle, I think the case that it is an object not really in frame is pretty convincing to me, unfortunately. So you're talking like a sort of an apparition of the camera? Okay. Essentially that the object itself, like the object itself isn't is blurry.

Right? And unless Mitch Headberg's right and, you know, Bigfoot is blurry. And that's why all those photos look blurry. It's not really a great argument for why your video is blurry. So I think that one's kind of interesting. But I think, again, would probably be something that we would not, we would not consider to be of interest, maybe. The fact that it's a triangle shape is of interest.

that would be something we would notice. And our machine would notice too, the system would notice, hey, this is a triangle. That's different than the shape of a normal airplane or an insect or whatever. But that's also why our system ultimately is the goal is to have two cameras,

one for initial detection, and then the other one to focus and take a clear image. Oh, that's cool. Which is a really cool thing. And it's like, here I am, like before I said, you know, people come on and hype stuff before it's even developed. We haven't developed for it, but it's something we hope to develop soon. The other one, the other video of kind of the round object that appears to sort of fall slowly to the ocean surface and then dip away.

Again, it's sort of, if we had that video, we probably would think it's interesting. It would be out of the realm of normal things that we'd expect. But I do suspect that, again, if that one I think you need more, you need more data on. You know, the argument, the argument that it's like a balloon or something, I mean, maybe that kind of could make sense. It could be a light piece of metal falling that's been heated and that's why it's kind of the IR flare around it or whatever. You know, all of those, I mean, maybe, but, you know, it's, for me at least, it starts to stretch. credulity, like the idea that a the idea that a

single pilot or single Navy service member or whoever that she or he would be mistaken about seeing an object once very quickly and having kind of a frightened reaction and whatever that to me doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility but that's not what we're really talking about here.

We're talking about a group of people claiming to have all seen the same thing over a prolonged period of time at regular intervals. That is not going to just be every morning, everyone on the ship wakes up and puts on their boca glasses. That isn't going to work. And so I think that in that case, we have a much more interesting question. question to ask. But again, the other thing that UFO people don't seem to want to, or the people pushing this story don't want to really make note of is that a lot of these people have made extreme claims before and been proven wrong. You know, Bob Lazar didn't make a super mega element that let him travel through space. Or aliens travel through space. Like that

didn't happen. And so it's part of, I think, the problem ultimately of people think that, people at the same time think that science is this evil thing, keeping UFO world down and making fun of them and whatever. But then also think that UFO or science is this perfect bastion where a single clear photo will get rid of 100 years of fraud and con men and grifters.

Science is a human endeavor. So you need to think critically is the person who's putting this evidence forward. Have they cried alien before? If they have, don't use them. They're not a good source anymore, right?

Because like, it sounds harsh. It sounds harsh. it sounds terrible, especially considering you and I both have podcasts to talk about UFOs. But you know what I mean? Like, if you are trying to get the best evidence out there or this story out there in a way that gets taken seriously, you either have to have taken it seriously from the beginning and kind of been consistent with your arguments and everything else and try to stay away from the con men and everything else and whatever. or you get to be a UFO media celebrity.

You can't have both, in my opinion. You know, you sometimes can. Like, I think your show is a good example here of you listen to people's stories. You kind of take their views in. But you're also not really, what's the word? You're also, though, you're almost more like a commentator, right? So it's a different place in the kind of stuff. storyline. If you're somebody, though, who's trying to produce evidence, that requires a different

play in this world. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's, you may, you bring up so many good points, Chris, and you do. And I mentioned this on my previous episode of, and I actually heard this from a fellow researcher, Nick Redford, said, when you are a UFO researcher and you're given videos, you're given documents, things like this. Remember, you have to ask yourself, why me? Why did they choose me to give this and say to put this out in the public? So I completely understand that that side of what you're saying. I guess kind of to piggyback off of that in terms of these videos, in retrospect, are these videos something that Skyhub can then look at and analyze in terms of the software that you've created.

So can we put old UFO videos into the data processing of Skyhub and possibly get some answers from them? Like, if you could, I mean, holy shit, man, we would have 70 plus years of videos we can now look at. It's something we've considered before. Right now, the camera, so let me show you quickly, the camera that Skyhub uses currently, is a fish eye camera. So all of the metrics,

all of the kind of machine learning, all of the stuff that we've built, all the software we've built has been built with a fish eye camera lens in mind. The other kind of value of Skyhub or something like a Skyhub is because the camera and the systems are all the same thing

or within the same realm of things, all of the data can be compared to each other. It's kind of like back in the, 80s or 90s when UFO investigative groups would give out, they would give to witnesses special cameras that they use for those sorts of things or that couldn't be tampered with and all those other stuff. So to start with, at this point in time, no, that can't happen. However, it isn't hard to do something or it would not be impossible to do something like that. So there are there are other

there are machine learning object detection or object categorization tools that are out there right now that are available on the internet for free that people can download it takes a little bit of Python or Gowlang knowledge but if I was able to learn those things

well enough to kind of work with the software people for Skyhub anyone can I am not good at languages and so it's not super impossible actually. Yeah. Coding's not my thing either, man. No, it's really, I've never been good at it, but it's something now that I've actually gotten,

I have a reason to learn, right? So it's nice. I can do it more. So what I would say is, you know, for, so it's something we could build. It's something we could. We absolutely could build. It's not the current plan,

or it's not the current structure that's in mind. however, it would not be impossible to build. In fact, it might be easier than, it might even be easier than Sky Hub, because Sky Hub is using a fish eye lens versus just a normal image. Right, right. It's a really good question.

Yeah, so many variables would have to be put into play. You know, the camera that was used for that particular video, so much to it. I completely understand that, where you guys have something more immediate. Right. Still, though, it's, again, like, that is a huge part of, so right now, kind of object detection software engineering or kind of, you know, theory or whatever, the research world is kind of broken up into two major categories, I guess. One would be static object or static detector or static camera, and the other would be like a motion or a moving camera, like a drone or something, or a camera. or a camera on a drone.

The camera on the drone system has more study done with it, frankly, because I think it's more of interest as a hotter topic. But that is actually probably closer of what we would have to do for something like what you're talking about. Yeah, it's a really good question, though. So, Chris, I want to move to some listener questions that people were really excited to submit. I know some of these people are directly involved with Skyhub,

either have the software, have been messing around with it, or they're really curious about your thoughts on some of this other stuff. So I'm going to start with Aaron on Twitter. Aaron asks, what do you expect Sky Hub to look like in 10 years? We kind of touched on this what the future of Sky Hub is. But yeah, man, 10 years from now, I don't even want to know where humanity is going to be at, let alone Sky Hub. But yeah, what do you think?

I was going to say, let's hope that we're all still. you know, civilization is still standing. Yeah. No, also, Aaron has been a huge, a hugely important new member of the team, actually. His camera is like, his camera is like in the best possible place. It's so interesting. Like, anytime we capture something interesting,

there's like a 75% chance it's from Aaron. At this point in time, it's ridiculous. Dude, he sent me some of the videos. Yeah. And man, those things, I don't even know how you can begin to describe some of the things he's captured so far. But that's what you guys are for. Yeah, I know. He's capturing some really cool things, which is amazing.

So in 10 years, you know, what I would really love to see is I would love to see our initial system completed. So in a stable state. So not really, you know, updates occasionally, but, you know, no. major updates to the platform. So what I mean by that would be units that are able to do that kind of minimum set point analysis. So, you know, they have a camera attached, they have sensors attached. They are able to detect objects, categorize them successfully. And there is a pipeline where the public, even if you don't own a Sky Hub, can go and view the videos that are coming out of Sky Hub. And pull the data if you want to do data analysis as well, if that's of interest for you. So that would be, if we could reach that goal, and it's not really, that's not even as long term as 10 years, but if we could hit that goal, that would really be, I would feel like we've

done exactly what we've set out to do. In terms of further stuff, what I would love to see would be, I would love to see Skyhubs used for other purposes, besides just, you know, detecting airplanes or, you know, those sorts of things. I would love to see a Sky Hub. I would love to see groups develop Sky Hub for, you know, astronomy, for measuring, you know, attaching. There's very cheap telescope systems that can be added to things like Raspberry Pi, say, for example, today. Sky Hub uses the Jetson platform, which is a microcomputer like a Raspberry Pi, but from NVIDIA. You know, development of something like that on top of Sky Hub, I think would be really fascinating and interesting,

and add another layer of what it can do. I would also love to really see, I would love to see the units themselves get cheaper and the software get more robust. bust to the point where for you to purchase the stuff you need to make a Skyhub work, you're spending $100, $200. That really, in 10 years, I think that's absolutely doable. Right now, a Skyhub can cost, depending on what you want to put in it and everything else, you know, around $1,000 to $2,000, depending on the cameras you want, and how many other sensors you want to add and all that other stuff.

But I think as we develop, you know, every month that we develop, it gets a little bit cheaper. But the hardware really is the area where the cost comes in. And those are hardware pieces that we have no control over. We're not building our own cameras or something. So 10 years, that's what I want to see. So I want to see a Sky Hub that's fully functional that only cost you $100. I love that, man.

Again, it's sort of democratizing the entire experience. You know, I mean, the more people who can afford to do Skyhub, the more data we're going to get, the more we're going to understand what we're dealing with, and everyone wins. So, yeah, I think that's a really good point. And also using the software and technology you guys are creating for other purposes. You know, I wrote this huge, scary article over at the debrief about satellites and how there are satellites right now that can literally zoom into your bedroom and can actually peer-sharp. through solid walls to capture images. And that sounds absolutely terrifying. And the breadth and scope of these satellites seems very, you know, like privacy breaking.

But we have to keep in mind, too, some of these satellites that are monitoring the Earth 24-7 are being used for really good purposes, such as natural disasters, and being able to get that information out to the public sooner, be like, yo, this fire is. coming your way, get out of there, or to better prepare for things like that. So I think that's great that, again, Sky Hub is not just for looking for UFOs or, you know, there's a reason it's called Sky Hub and not UFO Hub or something like that, right? Right. Yeah. I think actually you do bring up a good point, and it's actually something I should have probably,

maybe it'll end up in a listener question, but the privacy issues, we take those extremely seriously and it's such an important thing. I mean, you know, we're, you know, if you, if you, if someone came to me and said, hey, I'm a UFO researcher, let me put this 24 hour camera on your house, I would tell them to go to hell. You know, I would, they would not get past my lawn. the camera is built to only measure when it detects an object that's number one number two one of the things that we are detecting for at the early stages here are things that we want to tell the camera don't measure this right so for example if you you know my my unit for the winner

because my enclosure isn't very good wasn't very good for a long time, was sitting here in my office. And the most common object, my Sky Hub unit detected, were my cats. Right. So that kind of thing, we would tell it, hey, throw this out. Or if it's a person, throw it out. Or, you know, automatic masking of buildings or surrounding areas to retain privacy. So all of that are things that we're taking very seriously.

And again, if you're interested in those kinds of, If you're interested in any of this, but, you know, join our, join our Discord and ask us to be part of the team. Because we are, we are, again, an open project, so anyone can join. And so long as you have the time and the desire to, we're happy to have your help. Cool, man. Yeah, and we'll definitely put those links in for people at the end here. Let's move on to this listener question. Onee on Facebook, longtime listener of the show.

So shout out to Ome. Thank you for all your support. Yep. He's awesome, man. The bald scientist. The bald scientist, exactly. He's got a curb ball for you here. I like this one. The Tick-Tac type of UFOs.

I'm partial to the Nuts and Bolt's model to explain them, but what gives me pause are two main properties of them. Their apparent lack of interaction with the environment, you know, lack of sonic booms and hypersonic speeds, he says. And even more weirdly, their uncanny ability to stop on a dime. inertia be damned. You can tell he's a scientist. Do you know of any material that even theoretically could be manipulated to express both these properties of the Tic Tac? It's a really good question. The reason, I think I know One well enough to say that one of the reasons he's properly asking the question on inertia is,

if you guys have ever seen the movie Spaceballs, there's the part where when they come out of ludicrous speed or whatever, they stop. And then Lord, you know, Helmut or whatever, Darth Helmut, goes flying, right? Yeah, he kind of wakes up, what's going on? Love it. So anyone that's been on a bus that is stopped suddenly,

or even in a car that stopped. suddenly and been jolted forward, we'll know what the problem here is for something like a Tic Tac object where it is going very, very quickly, then stops. Unertia would suggest that all of the occupants of the Tic Tac are jelly after they hit the side of the wall. So they experience G-forces and the forces of the wall, all those other things.

In terms of the, we have things that can lessen the effect of G-Force, but not materials, but like you can imagine, for example, like I just gave a stupid... So, actually, a lot of high schools will do this experiment with their engineering students where you build a protection,

a protection device for an egg that goes into a water rocket, right? Oh, yeah, that's cool. I've heard of that. In this scenario, we're the egg. Right? And we don't want to become a goo. So one thing that we could do, for example, inside an object like that or a TikTok or whatever is, I'm not a, you know, I'm not a civil or an aeronautic aerospace engineer.

But one could imagine, for example, an internal cavity that actually is also always, is in motion. So you have kind of a, so like imagine you're on, you're on an airplane, but you are on, you're sitting on a, on a, on a, on a, on a bike.

And so, the airplane stops suddenly, but you're on the bike, and the bike has its own separate stopping mechanism of the, you're inertia, you would still stop. So the airplane stops and you keep moving.

but because you have your own braking mechanism internally to the airplane, you can stop at a good enough speed that you are not impacted by, or you're impacted less than by the G-Force or whatever. That is one potential kind of idea that you could do, right? So there's ways that you can kind of design maybe around that, but again, we're talking like, these are the, there's an aerospace engineer someplace listening to this that's being like, these are the ramblings of a lunatic mind.

You know what I mean? Like, there's like stuff you can do. I mean, you know, we, we do some stuff like that too with, um,

you can think like with ballistic, uh, ballistic vests or stuff like that, right? Those are all designed to lessen the impact of a ballistic impact on a person or on an object or whatever. Similar sorts of technologies can be applied to things like an air, you know,

a spaceship or whatever. whatever. In terms of the ability to kind of, the ability to seemingly not be affected by sheer or the kind of wind drag or stress or things like that that come from being in an atmosphere, there are surface coatings that can allow you to much significantly lessen drag. there's also ones that can greatly decrease decrease the heat generated or things like that and also ways that you can besides just not feeling the effect

there are also again ways that you can kind of mitigate the force of those things so for example there are nanomaterials that are structured in such a way that heat transfer is limited to a maximum value because the material is so small in some direction that the quanta of heat energy, the phonon literally cannot transport through the material.

So that would be another thing that potentially you could think about, you know, something like that maybe could happen. But, you know, again, I think that, you know, so there are possibilities there for things that could maybe. be happening. And sometimes I think the answer is less, sometimes the answer is less exotic than we think it is. You know, I mean, you know, if you painted, you know, painting an object white versus painting it black will change the amount of thermal radiation it gets from sunlight by a huge fact. Right? That's a simple change you can do. So there might be other simple changes we can do.

that we just don't know of yet because we just haven't had to face that problem with engineering. Such a good point. Yeah, we are we are cursed by our own limitations at times. But yeah, that's a good point. Well, Onee, he just leaves this comment too, and I'd love to read this, even though it's not a question. He puts it really well. Personally, I hope these things are from other countries and not from out there. You see, if they are from here, at least we have a decent chance of replicating such technology, like you said, and even developing defenses against them, because there is no significant difference in the technological capabilities between countries. On the other hand, true alien tech is bound to be thousands, perhaps millions of years ahead of ours.

In that case, there will be nothing we can do if they decide that they are done with us, which I wouldn't blame them at this point, Chris, would you? Oh, no, we are. Yeah, no. A lot of self-reflection. Yeah, that's, oh boy. You know, I think ONA is totally right, though. If this is another country doing this,

I was just, I was watching yesterday actually a documentary on, or a series of documentaries, I guess, on World War II. And they got up to the point where they were talking about the V1 and B2 rockets. and just thinking about how big of a, you know, at the beginning of World War II, people were going into, people were going into battle still on horses, on horseback. And by the end of it, we were having tank, you know, tank only battles. Technology has changed a tremendous amount just in our lifetime. from to think that a chat like this even talking via video in real time with crystal clear picture

when I was a teenager, you know, that in the year 2000, the year 2010, would have been nigh unthinkable. Yeah. It would have been something that we would have like, you know, in 2010, I think we would have been like, yeah, okay, that's probably on the horizon. But when I was a kid, you know, like the first computer we owned was an IBM PC Jr. He used DOS. You know what I mean? Like our technology has progressed a huge amount. It probably is far outpaced our ability as a species to handle it, really.

And so to think that another country who maybe was focusing more on surveillance or stealth or drone building or whatever couldn't have gotten a decade or two ahead of us? I don't think that's that ridiculous to think. And that's the other part of it too. You know, the other answer to One's question from before, what happens to the inertia or whatever, what if there's no organisms inside the object? Yeah, exactly. What if it's just a robot?

What if the Tick-Tac is just a drone? Then we're no longer talking about an organic, you know, being affected by inertia. We're talking about the machine. You know, and the machine is common sense, man. Yeah. Absolutely. That's how we do it. We don't send men to the moon first.

We send out, you know, probes and whatnot to check it out. So that makes total sense. We let our billionaire send people to other planets. Yeah, exactly. Or our monkeys. Yeah. So, you know, it's not, it's so, you know, the idea that this could be from another country, I don't think is really, it's not out of the, it's not out of the realm of possibility. Yeah, it isn't. And, you know, the concern with that being when you have people like Christopher Mellon or Luis Alizando or anyone, for that matter, saying, you know, could it be Russia or China? Possibly, we don't think it is. that's troublesome.

I talked to Micah Hanks about this recently. If it is Russia or China, then those are acts of war coming into a training space for the Navy during a training exercise. Like, dude, come on. How much more of an act of war do you need? So if it is Russia or China, shouldn't we be seeing, you know, the top gun scenarios coming out and Maverick shooting those things out of the sky? and we're not. We're seeing them disappear out of the atmosphere, supposedly. That's the other part of it that I think is so, the other part of it that I think is so fascinating as well is we. So I guess two thoughts on that, right? The first one would be, you're absolutely right.

If this is a, if this is as serious and national security concern as, well, I think it's, our world is so, different and so much more diplomatically oriented than we were, you know, pre the United Nations. Like we, you know, we have evidence of like atrocities being committed in North Korea. You know, let's take an example of a country that we don't even have trading a real diplomacy with. Right. Like, we know that the North Korea is a, is a terrible country where a dictator reigns supreme and is doing these terrible things and everything else. and yet our military and our leaders can't act on that because of all these other socio-political concerns and things that we have to consider, you know, these other considerations.

So the idea that we wouldn't, you know, to me then the argument that we, if we saw something like this in the sky and we wouldn't go after it immediately, I don't know, that kind of makes logical sense to me. But at the same time, it is frustrating because you'd think, again, if we don't know what they are, we'd want to find out. Yeah, exactly. And we're, like you said, we're seeing that reflected even right now in Israel and everything. There are certain actions you can take and some you can't do to, like you said, so many socio-political issues and whatnot. So, yeah, even if it was Chinese or Russian, would we immediately say, okay, let's go to war. let's do this.

Like, this is the reason. Or a lot of people think right now that all the mainstream coverage having to do with the military and the potential threat these objects could cause, is this leading up to something? You know, are we trying to boost the military funding yet again with all these possible threats in our skies and our national security being threatened? I mean, you know, maybe the thing is that, too, like, you know, I don't think we really need UFOs to make the case right now that say Russia is an adversarial bad actor who doesn't want what's best for the United States. Right.

Like, that's the other part of this, too, that I think is so funny is people, you know, people on Twitter or wherever talking about UFOs will often act like this is the only thing going on in the world. Yeah. And it's not. It is a very small part of things that over. Overall, I think, you know, even like, say, Marco Rubio, Marco Rubio's involvement, you know, from my kind of cynical viewpoint, is a very convenient story to get him out of the news. Right?

So, you know, I think, so the other thought, the other thought, I guess, I had based on what you were saying, was, um, so imagine, imagine pre-World War II the V2 rocket is out there and who reports on the V2 rocket

being real is the same person who reported on I don't know a year before had done a report on fairies in Wyoming right? Like fairy folk and gnomes in Wyoming

claiming that they were traveling around in ships and whatever yeah And then these rockets come out. They're like, actually, no, it's a military thing. The problem, again, with the message, the problem is not necessarily the message. It becomes the messenger in their history.

And it's something that I don't think people in the UFO space have really grappled, or UFO fans, I guess, haven't really grappled with. You know, I remember when the, when this first, you know, the first report about this, the task force or whatever came out. And everyone was, you know, people were like on, you know, on Twitter, you know, all excited and everything else. And you had some of the old, you know, older UFO people who'd been involved in this before and seen disclosure come and gone at 100 times and whatever.

And they were all saying, you know, hey, this has happened before. And what happened last time was, you know, Linda Moulton Howe's documentary on cattle mutilations, got some normal media attention. and then people started looking into the backgrounds of the players and the actual story and everything else, and it all fell apart, right? They don't seem to realize that, like, the, this is, if it is an important story,

if it is a real national security threat, if it's a real national security issue that they're working on, why publish a book like Hunt for the Skinwalker? Why do a Bob Lazard documentary? Like, is it, is it, serious or is it not serious? Yeah. It's one or the other.

And so you can't have it be, you know, it's just entertainment. So, you know, we're just putting, you know, that was the thing with TTSA that always really kind of frustrated me was, on the one hand, you had them coming out saying, no, this is really serious stuff. These are national security issues, everything else? And then you'd ask them, well, why are you publishing a Bob Lazard, doc, you know, biography? And they say, well, that's our media arm. Yeah.

You know what? Like, that's a really good point. Yeah. You know, the, I don't know, there's a reason that there's, you know, North, there's a reason Northrop Grumman doesn't have a media arm that publishes stories on, you know, flying rockets or whatever. Yeah. You know, there's a reason that Raytheon doesn't have a superhero as their logo who's got comic books and movies. because it's serious. It's a serious thing. People die.

And, you know, so it's so frustrating to, you know, it's the same thing with some of the figures, too, where you just, you have to say to yourself, you have to wonder again, you know, like Greer recently pushes out this thing saying that Elizondo is a, you know, what did he say on his YouTube thing? Elizondo is a disinformation agent. and false flag alien invasion pending. Yeah. Like, okay, well, then if it's serious, at least Greer has,

Greer, I think at least has taken himself too seriously his entire career. But, you know, again, it's this sort of thing of, you know, is it serious or not? It has to be one or the other. I think for a lot of people, the argument of, you know, they're just doing that because it's just good TV

or because it's just media exposure or whatever. Media exposure is not the kind of currency of the realm that people seem to think it is for national security issues. It's very strange. You know, there's a reason spies don't go on the history channel. You know, there's a reason that doesn't happen. It's a little contradictory. Such a good point, man.

All right. Well, let's move to, I guess, let's move back to Skyhub for just a moment. Our last Skyhub question of the day. David on Twitter asks, let's see here, what skills or knowledge are you in most need of to help move Skyhub forward? Really good question. So we currently would love developers with skills in Golang, in Python, in C. In Java, any of the languages that we write the code in currently, it would also be really great or really useful to have people involved to help us kind of take the machine learning and user interface side of things to the next level. So people with experience and database management are building would also be very, very welcome.

And also, you know, just people interested and ready to be actively engaged in this. You know, it's a, it's a, this is a project where people are working for free, we're spending our free time to build this because it's a labor of love. That isn't everybody's cup of tea, you know. So, but if you think that it's something that you'd like to be involved in and it sounds something, like something that you think it would be a good way to spend a part of your weekend. please reach out to us. You know, team at skyhub.org is the email.

So shoot us an email. We'd love to have you. Cool, man. And again, I think it's important to stress that all of you at Skyhub are dedicating your time, your insight, even your own money to making this happen. And I know you guys have a Patreon as well. And a couple people were wondering, what is the Patreon for? How can they support you guys?

And where does the money go for the Patreon campaign? Yeah, it's a really good question. So all of the Patreon money goes towards development costs. So we actually just put in a order for some Sky Hub enclosures. So what those are, they are kind of a thermoformed 3D printed, not 3D printed, thermoformed cases where people can build and put their skyhubs and have an official enclosure, right? A big chunk of the money goes towards paying, frankly, for server cost. So paying for someplace to put the data.

Yeah, man. It's not cheap, I know. No, that, the website, all of those other kinds of aspects and things. And then ultimately the goal would be to have the ability to get professionals working on Skyhub part-time. So paying people, you know, for three hours, four hours of specialty programming work or whatever, where our team can't, you know, where our team can't, what's the word? Where our team maybe doesn't have the expertise or the ability to handle a specific aspect or a specific thing like that. So, you know, it's a great question, though, and another thing that we are, what's the word? Another thing where we are currently figuring out, you know, this is for a lot of us the first time that we have, for some of us, it's not the first time that they've worked on kind of a charity or something like this.

For me, it really is the first time that I've kind of worked at this high level of a charity or kind of an organization, not charity, a non-for-profit kind of endeavor or project and the Citizen Science Project. being transparent with the money is also an extremely important aspect of that. And so that's another thing that we are, you know, if we had all the time in the world, all of this stuff would be done already. We don't. It is a public project. But that's definitely something else that we hope the public will keep us. accountable on and keep us moving forward with right but but right now though like I said

you know the money is going towards so the building and developing of the the enclosures for you know environmental conditions more extreme let's say than my garden the development of you know or the kind of cloud computing costs and things like that that we have and the the storage cost Awesome. Yeah, and again, I think that's really important to sort of demystify the whole contribution thing. You know, a lot of people want to know, well, you're not using this money to go on a vacation, are you, Chris? So it's good to know what is actually being done. And I highly suggest everyone check out your Patreon campaign over there.

It's very, very important for something like this. Yeah, definitely check it out. I mean, that's the other thing, too. We've toyed with, like, we've toyed with any of the, in the past. passive like trying other the good the good news right now is that our our need for money we break even right now you know what I mean

our need for money doesn't overcome the amount of money we have every month coming in which is great which is perfect it's exactly what you want to be but as more of these units come online as we want to do bigger things or bigger projects with this or stuff like that you know, it's going to, you know, that's what the Patreon really is for to kind of build that base up and make sure that we're ready to operate in the coming years so that there is a

Sky Hub in 10 years. Exactly, man. Come out swinging. I got you. Well, moving to the podcast, my man, before we go here, tell us about the Mad Scientist podcast. Maybe some of your favorite episodes you guys have recently done. I know you did like a huge multi-part series at time travel, which is,

so cool, a topic everyone can relate to and find interesting. But you guys break it down, which I love. So yeah, what do you got going on over at the Mad Scientist podcast as of late and in the future? Yeah, so the show that we do is the Mad Scientist podcast. It's me and my co-host, Marie. And so our show really looks at kind of the history, philosophy, and hard science behind topics that usually come up in science fiction. or on, you know, I don't know, just science fiction kind of topics and things like that. But also looking at parts of the science world or science history that maybe weren't taught in school but are still really interesting. So my favorite series probably are we did one on the history of surgery, which was fascinating and terrifying and just really, really fun to research for.

we did one on Robert Bigelow and kind of the beginnings and early, early time period of the Skinwalker Ranch saga and how it played into Two the Stars Academy and how it really got us to today. And we did a series recently, like Ryan said, on time travel, which was a lot of fun. And we kind of go into, you know, what is time as kind of a physical concept? What does it mean mathematically? How do we use it in our mathematics? All of those kind of big questions, ultimately getting to, okay, well, you know, what does this mean for time travel and what does it mean for our ability to go back or forward in time? So it's been a lot of fun. Check it out. We're available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Play. We're available now on Pandora too, which, you know, we're just available everywhere.

So go find us and take a listen. Yep, absolutely. Anywhere you find somewhere in the sky's mad scientist podcast is there as well. Well, you know, closing question, as always, my man, you know this role by now. Where can we find everything you're up to? And where can we find Skyhub to learn more? Yeah, so you can find Skyhub at skyhub.org. That's where you'll find the link to our Discord server. So you can come in and ask us questions.

That's where you'll find our Git repository. So where you can actually go and download the code and see the interworking and everything else. You can find us on Twitter. So at Sky Hub 10 is the main Sky Hub page. But there's also, obviously you can follow me at Mad Scientist Pod, you know, follow other folks from the team on Twitter as well. Our Twitter handles are up under the team kind of heading on the Sky Hub website. And, you know, our next kind of big appearance is going to be at the SEU conference here coming up. We have a video presentation on kind of what Sky Hub is, how it's evolved, the software and the hardware and all.

all those sorts of things. That'll be going up on YouTube after the conference so people can go see it. And yeah, that's really the best place for people to find us. So I'm on Twitter all the time, probably too much. So you can always find me on Twitter yelling about something. We all are, man. We all are. I'm glad you brought up SCU.

I know you guys are working with them. And also with the UAP Expedition Group, who's going out to the Catalina Island to monitor the activity out there with a TikTok event took place. So that's really exciting. I highly suggest the YouTube channel where you can watch some of the videos that Skyhub devices have captured, which is really cool. The comments are great hearing everyone say what they think it is and everything in between. So, no, man, you guys got a good thing going on.

I am so happy to, like, be in this generation that is taking UAP seriously, is trying to put more science into all of this, and trying to understand these phenomena that continue to mystify it. brother. So thank you for coming on somewhere in the skies. And yeah, thank you for being a part of Skyhub. I think this is the future of UAP Studies, bar none. As always made, thanks for having us. Always a pleasure. And yeah, we can't wait to have some really good videos here that we can keep sharing with you. So we'll talk soon. Awesome. Thank you. Welcome to Anama Khan. Anamacan is a virtual conference on everything anomalous,

live streaming on YouTube, Twitter X, and on Twitch. Join us on September 1st and 2nd as over two dozen speakers give presentations on everything from UFOs and aliens to ghosts and the paranormal, from Bigfoot and Lake Monsters to witchcraft and the occult. It's all happening at Anamakan. And most importantly, it's completely free. To learn more about our speakers and the event, visit Anamacan.com. We'll see you on September 1st and 2nd for Anamacan.

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. This is somewhere in the skies with Ryan Sprague. Guys, we are here right now with one of the gentlemen who found the metal alloys out in the

Roswell Desert at the famed crash site. We have with us once again returning guest Chuck Zikowsky. Chuck, welcome back to Somewhere in the Skies. Hi, thank you for having me back. This is pretty exciting, right? Yeah. It's been something that I've been doing for years and years and years. One of the first investigations I was doing was on Roswell,

gosh, 35 years ago. And I was one of the lucky people that actually met and became friends with Glenn Dennis, who was the mortician and Walter Hopt. And I used to go by the museum so many times. I live in California. So every time I took the family on vacation, It was always routed around Roswell. I'd go say hi to the guys.

And they got to the point where, you know, they were comfortable seeing me. They knew who I was. And so they started feeding me more and more information. And it was Glenn Dennis who actually gave me the GPS coordinates to the debris site. So it was like one of the guys from 1947, rather than getting it from another investigator. I got it right from, you know, the proverbial horse's mouth. And then, you know, a lot of the stuff that, you know, I, you know, when I interviewed them that I learned is pretty cool stuff. And some of it was published and some of it wasn't.

But it's cool because, you know, he would talk to me as a friend, you know, rather than an investigator. So we got down to the meat of things a few times. I'm fine. Yeah, I know. And of course, Roswell is that case. You know, so many UFO researchers sort of hang their first. had on it. Whereas more skeptical people will say, what's their left to discover about the oldest UFO case out there? And then lo and behold, you, Frank Kimbler, who we'll get to as well,

have developments in the story, not only developments, I would say more evidence than anyone has ever been able to actually find that has anything to do with the Roswell incident. So I guess let's kind of get to the meat of it. What brought you out to the crash site with the geologist Frank Kimber, who I've also had the pleasure of going out there and looking for stuff. I never found anything. So I'm extremely envious of the both of you. But yeah, can you sort of run us through the few times you have been out there with Frank

and kind of walk us through what some of those discoveries might have. have been if you don't mind. Well, it was interesting because I think the very first time I was out at the debris site was around 2000. And I had a metal detector out there and I was, you know, looking for, you know, anything. And then 2002, I did a TV show with the sci-fi channel. And we did an archaeology dig out there. And after they were done shooting the TV show, I convinced the archaeologist to let me and my sister come out one day later after the production crew left and do our own dig. I didn't like what they were doing. They were digging into the drastic period. I only wanted to dig back to 1947. So we did strip digs. And in 2002, my sister and I actually found a piece of debris.

And then I had it analyzed here in Colorado on an SCM scanning electron and microscope, and it was an aluminum alloy. We did a press release a year later, and lo and behold, we did a press release on it, and we were asking for a lab to pick it up. So if you do more analysis on it, and lo and behold, it was Bass, Bigelow Aerospace. Now, at the time back then, I didn't realize that Bigelow was actually working for the Pentagon. We learned that back in 2017 years later. that he was under contract with the Pentagon

looking for UFO materials and investigating UFO sites. So it was kind of exciting later to find out that when he was analyzing the piece that we found in 2002, it was probably funded by the Pentagon. They know a little more about me than I kind of want them to know about me.

What happened to those pieces, Chuck? Were they still in possession of them? Yeah. What happened was, was the Maxwell Museum and New Mexico's had archived it. And it took me about three months to find it. And then I had to write a proposal up to the board of directors to be able to release it so big and low aerospace would be able to analyze it.

And but I threw a caveat in there. I said, okay, we're not going to give them the whole piece. We're going to cut a piece off and send them a piece of it because, you know, this stuff you never know. So Dr. Bill Doman was able to cut a piece and we sent that piece to, to Bigelow, within one week I got an email back saying that it was an unknown polymer. I swear, okay, this is what the email said. And it's posted on my website to go way, way back and look and search, you know,

Roswell debris. And I actually have a clip of it. But it said some, you know, it said that of that's like really nothing, but it's still an unknown polymer based on the catalog polymers that we have in the lab. And right there was a red flag for me skating that. okay, it's not common. Because if it was a common polymer, then, you know, obviously we would have been able to identify it. And then I said, so what's next?

And they said, isotop analysis. And I said, oh, my gosh, okay, isotopanalysis. Let's see if there's things even from this planet. And that was the last I heard of Bigel. And I tried numerous times to get a hold of them. And it was about a year later. I finally got an email back saying, oh, it was nothing. sent the piece back. Well, I can't guarantee what they sent back to, you know, the museum was the

actual piece, but it didn't matter me because I, you know, I know that we have an actual piece still, you know, still archives there. Smart. Yeah. And all that stuff, you know, for anybody wants to know, Ben Mezzarick, it wrote a book called The 37th Parallel. And it's all in that book. You can find it now on Amazon used copies for $2, $2,3. But it kind of talks all about that. at the very end of the book, I had speculated that, you know, Bigelow was a big part of this. And at the very end of the book, there's a lot of stuff that's retracted, you know, black lines going through here and there. You know, in other words, I was insinuating that, you know, Bigelow was part.

Now, you got to understand, this was still before it came out in 2017 that he was part of it. You know, he's a billionaire. I'm a hundredaire. I have a couple hundred dollars. And, you know, there's no way I can compete with, you know, all the money he's got and his attorneys. So, you know, it was kind of like on a DL, kind of poking fun, but not actually saying that I think he was involved in it. So that kind of started back in 2002. Now, since then, you know, I've done a couple of other archaeology digs there.

But the issue is, you know, when we're doing digs, we have these big screens that are like four by four screens on two by fours. As you dig, you kind of sit through the dirt, and we're looking for pieces of metal. Well, the stuff that we're finding now is really, really tiny and would have slipped through the pieces of metal. We would have missed it. And because you're doing this out in the middle of the desert, it's windy, and it's sunny. It's 100, you know, 100, 105 sometimes if it's during the summertime. So recently, beginning of June, went out to the site. And the whole purpose for that was for me to get some drone,

footage and do a little bit of digging, or not digging, just, I meant digging as in digging around, but not actual archaeology digging, just using a metal detector to see if we'd find anything. And that material I was going to use for the Roswell Festival that I was going to like, I'm lecturing, or a lecture to add in July. And so I had my metal detector, and then Frank had his metal detector, and we're just kind of like sweeping around out there. And, Frank started getting hits. My metal detector, I wasn't. And so I kind of dropped that and started watching Frank.

Now, I have to tell you this, this is really exciting stuff. Okay. So I'm going to go ahead. Well, I was out there with a person. I took another person out there that was shooting a little documentary for, you know, his website. And I had asked Frank. if you wanted to go out to the website, or I'm sorry, to the debris site, you know, with me. And, of course, he said, you know, I was going to ask you if I could go.

So he was pretty excited. And I've been dealing with Frank for a few years, you know, looking at some of the stuff that he had found and trying to figure out where it came from, especially the buttons and all kinds of cool stuff. So we're out there and see if I can remember exactly what was going on. Okay, so we're out there with a, I'll just mention his name because he's a cool guy, L.A. Marzula. So I was out there with L.A. Marzula, and he had his cameraman, he had his audio guy, and he was interviewing Frank there, and I'm kind of like, you know, watching the whole interview. And then the cameraman says, hey, hey, something happened. I didn't catch the last 30 seconds of this, you know, of this interview.

I don't know what's going on the camera. Let me go figure it out. And at that time, the audio guy goes, yeah, you know what? battery died and it was charged earlier. And so it says, I'm going to go back to my truck because I took them all out there in my truck. And I looked over at Franklin and Frank looks at me and like, okay, something's going on out here because as you're in investigators, there's been a lot of times when we've been in active places where there's a high electrical magnetic field and your batteries go out and, you know, there's all kinds of interesting things mucks with your, you know, your technology. So he's, he looked at me, says, hey, Chuck, did you bring your EM

meter and I said, yeah, it's in my kit. So we brought it out and Frank was walking with his with with with the meter and I'm going, okay, well, I'm not picking up any. Oh, actually at that time we weren't metal detecting. And so I said, I'm going to get my drone set up so I can film him, you know, doing EMF sweep. So I'm going to use that, you know, in my conference, my lecture in July. And he comes back, goes, I'm going to get my metal detector. I go, what's up? Because why as I'm walking? It's like, like waves. So as I walked, there was a wave of EMF, and they would spike a little bit, and then he walked in and spike again. So he goes, I'm going to grab my melody detector and check this area. I said, great. So I grabbed my drone, and I put my drone, and my drone's in a kit,

so I'm putting the props on and getting it ready. And I'm right there where Frank is, mental detecting, because I don't want to miss anything. If I hear a tone on this mental detector, you know, I want to be there to see it. But when I got my drone set up and it powered up, it wouldn't lift off. It said battery air, battery air. I'm going, there's nothing wrong. I just charged this. Battery air. And then, and then, so I pushed the battery back in, took it out, back in, you know, reset it, reset my app. And then it said, take off air. I'm like, okay, what's going on? And I was getting frustrated because I thought it was something I was doing wrong. So I just took the drone back to where my truck was. And I said, well, I'm going to try it one

more time and then everything worked fine. And I dawned on me, oh my gosh, that was the high EMF area that, you know, that we had issues with a camera and the audio guy. And now the drone went lift off. So I got the drone up and I was shooting some shots. And then at that time, Frank was using his metal detector, was getting hits. After I finished my drone shooting, I grabbed my metal detector and I went out there too. I wasn't getting anything. But he was picking up hits. he found a couple of pieces of material. And that kind of started this whole thing of, you know, analyzing. He found one piece.

And then he says, the next piece I'm going to give to you. And, you know, I'll test it here. New Mexico, you can test yours in Colorado. And we'll do two tests, two separate labs, two separate states, and see if we get the same results. And that's what you kind of want to do. Because if you use one lab and their instruments are not, not calibrated properly or they have older stuffware or whatever, you know, you never know

if you're going to get, you know, if the results you're getting are going to be the results that anybody was getting, right? So this was the best way of doing it. And that's when we came up with a little bit of Malawi. Now, we went back again towards the end of June right before the, you know, the Roswell Festival. And this time, I was a little smarter. So the Malady detector that I had originally was designed to look for coins and stuff like that. A france metal detector is a fisher and it was designed to look for gold. And so the frequencies are different when you're looking for specific metals. He was getting hits.

I wasn't getting anything. So within the time frame of the beginning of June to the end of June, I got on eBay and I found a new Fisher Gold Bug Pro metal detector that's designed. just to look for gold nuggets. We went back out there at the end of June, and within 20 minutes I got a hit with this new metal detector. So now it does on me now that you need a gold hunting metal detector to look for this anonymous, you know, material.

Now you have to understand that in the past 20 years, we've been out there with metal detectors and got nothing. And then at one point, even I think Mufon had shot a show or something out there, and they had a slew of people out there with the metal detectors. But as it turns out, I think, that they were using the wrong detectors. Because depending on the detector, you know, depends on what you're looking for. The frequencies are a little bit different. Adjusting the ground, the whole bit so different.

But it seems like the fisher, you know, a gold hunting metal detector seems to also be a Roswell, you know, hunting metal detector. it worked really, really well. So when we were out there at the end of June, we found probably a good, see, four, eight, nine, about ten pieces. Now, what's interesting about these pieces is it's some we found on the ground closer to the surface and some was, you know, six or so inches in the ground. Some of it was shiny. Some of it had some patina on it. And depending on which ones we have analyzed, the ones that had some patina, some dark coloring in it were thrown into like a 6,000 series. Frank can explain this more because he's a geologist and he's, you know, who I look to,

you know, to really explain, you know, the science behind it. You know, my background is microchip designed. So I know that aluminum alloys is using microchip and it's, you know, it's very conducive of electricity. So we use it all the time in designing microchip. It's one of the higher metals that we use as power buses in microchip design. It's a little higher in resistance, but it's a great conductive of electricity. So current flows really easy through that. So this is stuff that technology now uses in microchip design because, you know, it's, like I said, you can pump current through it. So it's interesting, though.

So we have two different types of metals in this area. It's kind of confusing why we have it. But the 6,000, when we tested it not only on the X-ray spectrometer or the SCM, the scanning electron microscope, we're getting these results that it's falling into like an unknown polymer. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It's falling into an unknown aluminum alloy. Now, what I mean by unknown aluminum alloy, the polymer was the first one in 2002,

these were falling into an unknown aluminum alloy. Now, it's not unknown to the point where it couldn't be created here. It's unknown to the fact that it hasn't been cataloged as a commercial alloy. So you go through the thousands of alloys that have been cataloged that people are, you know, the industry is using, and this one falls into a 6,000 a series, but it hasn't been cataloged. And that's another red flag. Well, why? I'm sorry, I get out excited about this because I'm kind of going through it all my head.

Yeah, I know. I mean, just last week, you know, I had the SCM done over here in Denver and a couple of days before that Frank had his done over, and Albuquerque and all of a sudden we're getting the same results. Oh, my God. This is, this is ridiculous. You know, this is, we're getting this. this aluminum alloy that is not, you know, registered or cataloged in any of the

alloys that, you know, we have right now. So what does that mean? Okay. Could it be an alloy that, you know, was with some top secret project at one point that never, you know, or never or still isn't going to be cataloged, you know, for commercial use or is it something else? You know, it's really hard to say what's going on. And then what about the other aloys we're getting out there?

The stuff that's very similar to aluminum cans, we're getting that too. But when I took the first piece to the lab out here in Denver that we had found at the beginning of June, I took it to Colorado metallurgical company, and their expertise is aluminum alloys. And this guy, the general manager there, Sean, is looking at this under microscope, And he said, I can tell you something right now that if I'm looking at a piece of an alloy for a customer of mine who's using it for whatever project, I would tell him this was a fail. I said, well, what do you mean by a fail? He says, whatever this was used in, experienced extreme trauma. He said, explosive in nature.

That's what he said. And he says, when you get right down to, you know, 500 microns or so, you're, you're, this. thing, it experienced something explosive that just destroyed it into such tiny little pieces and I haven't seen that before. So he said, whatever it is, he was pretty excited.

Whatever this metal was used for, exploded. Like a crash, right? Like an impact. There you go. And so that's another one of these aha moments where

okay, now we're finding evidence. Now, Frank and I can't say that this is extraterrestrial. We can't say that because, you know, if these are baby steps, this is, you know, this is the beginning of going through all the steps of trying to identify this material. So far, we have a couple different materials. And this is really good, though, because we have material that we kind of can identify and then we have some material that we can't really identify. So now we can use those two materials as comparison and all our, you know, lab analysis to, okay, so I try to figure out what the anomalous metal is.

Because when you talk to people, I go, well, there could be an aluminum can. Well, guess what? We've kind of found that or something similar to that. But then now we found something completely different. So we can compare the two. So you can't say this is an aluminum can because we can say this resembles it, but this does it. So we can compare the two.

So that kind of throws a skeptics out the door at that point when they're saying it's something that's common. We found some common stuff. And we found even more common stuff out there. Actually pieces of can and some other things. I said I can find this real quick. Yeah. And even when you find, you know, little pieces like this, which are just pieces of rusted can, you know, can tops and stuff. So we can find stuff out there that we can absolutely identify.

But it's the pieces that we can identify that's making this really, really excited. And so what's next? Well, you know, obviously more testing. You know, we want to, you know, eventually you jump into isotopal analysis to see if it's from this planet. The issue with that, though, is it's based on technology of how the, you know, of how the piece was put together. Now, pretty much if you look at the periodic table, everything on the periodic table is what we've picked up in space so far. There's some little microscopic type balls that, you know, that they found recently in the ocean that, that who, you know, the scientists who found

who found is saying could point to extraterrestrial. We may know more about that in a couple weeks. So we're still learning there could be materials and, you know, coming from meteorites or some, you know, from outer space that may not fall into our periodic table. But so far, everything on a periodic table, you know, is from space. So the metals themselves are, could be common to other planets. But it's how it's put together technology-wise and some other things that would make it unique of whether or not we would have the technology to do that here. But, you know, if isotope analysis comes back and says, this is unidentifiable, then we've nailed it.

Then we have something completely unusual, anomalous, and really exciting. And so like I said, it's, it seems like every step we take, we're getting closer and closer to, you know, hopefully, you know, of finding something that's completely unknown, you know, material-wise, not material-wise, but, you know, how it was technology, how it was put together.

And, but still at that point, we can't say it's extraterrestrial, because it could still be something that could be, you know, some top-secret, you know, project, something, you know, because I work in a microchip industry, so I've been involved in a, a few military programs where I've signed non-disclosures.

Now, it's just a technology that I worked on and not the actual material, so I really don't know too much about the materials used in it. But if you're looking for something, you're looking for an answer of what this stuff is, and you're pointing to like current technology or you can't do that because we found it under six inches of dirt, which means it was a few decades ago. I was just going to ask that, Chuck. You know, what is a what is a 6,000 series alloy? Like you mentioned, that could be part of some, let's say, aerospace manufacturer. what is it doing under the ground if that was the surface level like three, four decades ago?

That makes no sense. And you're absolutely right. And so it's really easy for people to say, well, we can do that now. You know, fine, but explain why it was under six inches of dirt at the middle of the New Mexico desert. And we found it there. Okay. Now, the aluminum canned stuff that's very similar, 300s, that wasn't registered till the 60s. Okay.

So it's not something very recent either. And we found that. Now, for all your viewers out there, if you know who Lieutenant Colonel Philip Corso is, you know, the day after Roswell book, he wrote that book before he passed away. He said, I can't remember. I hope I get this right. I think he was working for General Trudeau on reverse engineering Roswell Debris. Now, you have to understand, this is all stuff, you know, as investigators read, I've actually read some of the transcripts from Philip Corso when he was interviewed by Paola Harris.

And he seems very, very, very credible. As a military individual, he was very, very credible, and the Army never really did. discredited him after the book came out. But here he says, we got this material from Roswell, and I got it, and I'm working for the foreign technology department and reverse engineering, and we're going to take this material, and we're going to push it into industries here in the U.S. They have government contracts, and let's see if we can reverse engineers and use it as a, you know, in our technology. And that's what they do. And companies do it too. Other companies, they'll take They'll take a competitor company piece of technology,

and they'll reverse engineering trying to figure out why these guys are, their products working in this. There is it. Nothing new. And we've been doing it for years and years. So if he's right and some of this metal was found in 47 and was folded into our industry, then it kind of makes sense that if we're finding some 3,000 series, that could be closer to the room can,

but it wasn't registered until 60s, mid or mid-60s, I think it was. I think Frank was saying, and you can ask Frank about that, then that would make sense. But still, why are we finding it there? And why is it kind of still resembling, you know, the pieces of material that experienced trauma and very explosive in nature? But it's confusing. And then there's also the thought that maybe it was. seeded to throw and decligators off.

I mean, so you kind of have to think about all different types of possibilities why we're finding this. You know, one thought is, whatever, whatever exploded, whatever crashed there, had two different types or even multiple types of alloys, which makes sense. You know, associated with it, and we're

finding pieces now. Why are we finding now? Because of metal detectors, the technology now is way better than it was back in 2000, way better than it was in 19, 47 and the metal detectors back then were used to look for mines big pieces of metal not a little tiny fragments right and the the the Fisher gold bug pro that I bought has only been out for a couple years and and one of the specifications was that they altered the frequency a little bit to find gold

so the metal detectors are getting better and better and better technology is getting better and better and now we're hitting the jackpot when we go back to the brief back so when people say well why did you find it then technology is better than it yeah and it'll be better in five years and uh you know who knows we're going to find in five years but right now with current technology we're we're finding stuff now it's not easy okay so frank and out there frank the last time frank and i were out there We were both using Fisher metal detectors, and we were after a good four or five hours. So it takes a bit, you know, to look for this. And it's painstaking and, you know, swinging it back and forth real slow.

And you get hits, you got to dig into the hard ground and, and sip through it with your fingers because the pieces are so small. It's easy, very easy to miss this stuff. So you really got to be patient, which is tough for me because I'm not that patient. teach me, you know, patience. They go, yeah, how long does that take? Yeah. To learn patience. Exactly.

I will wait as long as I have to to find an interstellar piece of a spacecraft, Chuck. I'll tell you that much. Two last questions for you, actually. I guess the, I want to go back to that idea of seating for just a moment. So that would technically mean someone actually planted. like pieces there for what what purpose or motivation do you feel have you ever seen something that you just can't explain something paranormal perhaps the mystery of that event marinates in our minds and fuels our interest into the unexplained if you're intrigued by these mysteries of the

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Parabox Monthly.com. Let's say it was, I'll just throw it out there. let's say it was a flying soft, a UFO. I mean, it was extraterrestrial technology. And of course, you know, as investigators, I've been doing this long enough that, you know, a lot of my stuff is being monitored, a lot of stuff that goes public is being monitored,

and they're watching this, and they're going, okay, if these guys actually find pieces out there that point back to the 1947 crash, maybe we should kind of throw them off. And how they can throw us off as if, as if, you know, they, they, whoever they is, you know, create these, you know, little pieces of known alloys or something and throw that out there under the thought that we find those and say, hey, it's extraterrestrial.

And they go, no, it's not, because it's this, you know. But they don't know me and Frank, because me and Frank, or Frank and I, we don't do that. all we say is, look, you know, we're going to analyze this stuff. We don't, we're not very quick to judge. We don't, you know, we just don't assume it's all, you know, because we're both analytical thinking. So everything step by step by step to step to see what this stuff is, hey, look, some of it is an anomalous alloy in the 6,000 series.

Some of it is very similar to the 3,000 series. Now we can compare the two. And that kind of messes up. if it was seated, that we're not that ignorant, you know, or stupid that we would just look up in the sky and say, that's a UFO when it's really, you know, Mars or Jupiter or something, you know, or the ISS going by. I mean, you have to really know what you're looking at and know what you're doing, you know, to make these extraordinary claims. If you're going to make an extraordinary claim, you Damobary have extraordinary evidence to back it up, or you're going to get, you know, chewed up by, you know, the skeptics, bunkers and the media, too.

So Frank and I are being very, very careful with this. And as we're releasing this, releasing it, and we're showing the data. So people can look at the data and say, I can, you know, and it finds. At this point, I haven't had anybody since the first time I started releasing this, you know, come out and say, oh, I can identify exactly, here's the, you know, here's the sheet, the alloy sheet that says, that's what it's that, you know, and okay. But, you know, if we were trying to hide something, we wouldn't put the data out there for damn stuff, you know. So, you know, we put it out there and say, look, guys, this is what we're finding.

Here's the data, you know, you tell me. Yeah. Are we? Yeah. Sorry, Chuck. I'm just like, the gravity of these results really hit me when you put out this post recently of this 6,000 L. I mean, this comes back highly anomalous. Like you guys mentioned, there was a high level of barium found as well.

I don't think people realize like how important this discovery could actually be and what could happen after this in terms of more testing. It's crazy. It's really funny too because the first piece I had tested and I didn't post it because I didn't say that it had barium in it. And we were thinking, what the hell is burying? There must be an issue. And we're poking on.

But you see, you know, when you're, when you do an x-ray spectrometer or SCM, you're looking at a very, very small, small piece of a large, you know, very tiny. And I mean, if you look at the picture on my website where it shows an extreme close-up, and it looks like you're looking inside a cavern, you'll see a little scale.

there. It says, I think does it say five microns or something? It's, it's really crazy. Let me just scroll down there and see that one piece. But let's see. I think, yeah, so it says five microns. If you go to my website, UFO nut.com, you'll see that image there. And so it almost looks like you're looking, yeah, that's it right there. So on the lower right hand corner, you'll see five microns. So five microns, I explained it, you know, what a, what a micro is. is and it's one times 10 to the minus six. And this is microchip size, you know, structures is what we're looking at right here. And so when you get down and you're poking around, you may pick up a little bit of barrier.

You may not be. See, we were using an x-ray spectrometer. So we were getting down to this level when I first had a test it, you know, piece in the beginning of June. Now, if you look at the color pictures to the right there, that whole speckled pattern, each collar now, this is using an SCM, scanning electron microscope. And this particular one, what it does is it shows you on the elements, you know, how that element is scattered within the metal. And if you see blotches like with silicon, or I'm sorry, silicon, there's two different types. ones on microships and ones in people's bodies. You might see splotches.

And that could just mean it just could be a contaminated metal with silicon from being out in the middle of desert over decades. But if you see speckled pattern like you're seeing here, that means it's part of the metal itself as part of the alloy itself. And when you're looking at that end, so we did get barium hits from the first metal. I thought, okay, maybe the x-ray spectrometer was picking up something unusual, maybe not. And I was focusing more on the aluminum alloys.

But Frank being the smarter of the two when it comes to geology, focused on that and saw that that was the case. Next time, we'll look for barium more. I mean, we're learning with this. Exactly. You're learning as you go, and I think that's what's most important. And, you know, I can be fully transparent. I am working with an individual and with Frank on hopefully assisting you guys in getting those isotopic tests done. That's in motion right now. I can say that. There's communication happening where hopefully we can get more tests, whatever we can do in the public. research community to help you guys. I mean, you did the hard part. You guys discovered these. You did the initial testing. Let the rest of us take some of that weight off your shoulders now. But you get all the credit. You get all the credit, Chuck, when this does come back extraterrestrial. Well, the thing is, I mean, we're the initiators. Yes, exactly. By opening it to the public and

releasing all our information. Now, if anybody's ever been to my website or past, Anytime I do an investigation, I throw it all out there. Because, you know, I don't hide anything. Well, I mean, there's certain things I can't say because it may be military-oriented and I don't want to, you know, muck with crossing that, you know, proverbial line or anything. But when it comes to the olfology, I throw everything out there and I throw it out there for people to look at themselves and make their own decisions. Now, just, you know, I see things my way.

I try and I have tons and tons of books behind me and more. books and boxes. And I'll use some of those books as reference, but I don't treat it as a Bible. Because a lot of those investigators that are writing these books, well, every one of those investigators have never found proof of an extraterrestrial technology. It's all speculation. So you have to be very, very careful if you're an investigator, you don't want to follow someone else's investigators or investigations because they haven't found anything yet. They may have some good information, but you got to take your own road and you got to do it yourself. And you may pick up information here and then you mean, I want to try a couple of different things. I've done with

catamulations. And I found that stuff that I was doing on my own, actually, I was getting better results. And so even people out there now that are following this, you can pick up some of the information from me. We throw it out there. And if you take your own little route, that's good, too, because you may come up with something that we miss. You know, we only know what we know. And if you ever listen to anybody on anybody's podcast that says well that guy's wrong i know that no you know you're just you just think you know i just think of you know nobody knows everything there's an idiot uh anyway scientist out there recently that that's that's that's i don't want to mention his name but i know everything and there's no extra trestles and this is you know he's just a physicist and

everybody knows who this guy is, but he only knows what he knows, and he's got these glasses on. I think we all know who you're talking about. Yeah, and you can't do that. You have to be open. You have to be open to everything. You don't want to follow that one guy's thought pattern because he's going to lead you into a rabbit hole and you're not going to go anywhere.

You follow the people that say, hey, look at our evidence, go your own way and try and find things now exactly what you're saying here about you know you helping us out with isotope analysis that's what we want we don't want to because you know like you said you know if more people involved in this they get involved the the faster will get information done the more avenues we can hit at once these investigators some of these investigators you know they've been going on for you know 20 30 40 years you know they've gone one way and and they have haven't really, I mean, look at the Linda Moten Howl. Right?

She's really good at what she does. She's an investigative journalist, but has she proved extraterrestrials that existed? No, just because she stays on her own road. And you've got to be able to splinter off. You have to think way, way outside the box. Sometimes you'll hit a block wall. You know, other times you can keep going and, you know, that's what we do. But that's what makes it exciting.

The more reason is the more exciting is, and that was so. social media out there and talking to people like you and getting out to the public. Really exciting. I'm really happy about it. It's awesome, man. Well, hey, I want to end on kind of a joke question, but maybe not because recently we had this UFO congressional hearing with the House Oversight Committee. Very bold claims were made that the United States is in possession of crashed U.S. UFOs, there's programs being conducted to reverse engineer the technology. Again, very big,

bold claims that have yet to be proven, but the investigations are going on right now. And this kind of led to something very interesting in the National Defense Authorization Act of 2024. Bipartisan senators in the United States are calling for legislation where if there are intact spacecraft or even pieces, and that's the important part here, pieces of non-human craft in either the government's possession or in private possession, the United States government will inevitably have eminent domain over that, over that material, over those craft. If that law passes, that's going to be really interesting to see where all of this leads. We will see if any of what this UFO whistleblower says is true. But my big question for you is, this is kind of the jokey part, but I am serious too.

Are you and Frank ever worried or concerned that the work you're doing and the pieces that you're discovering will eventually be swallowed up by the United States again if a law like this passes? I mean, you look at like the materials that to the Stars Academy had, or Linda Moulton Howe. And eventually, those pieces went off to the United States Army to be tested, and they were never heard from again. So somehow these materials always find their way back into the military industrial complex, it seems. So yeah, that's kind of my soapbox moment there. But do you think that these pieces could ever be taken from you guys? before the ultimate tests. Oh, I can tell you this, because I've talked to, Frank, about it.

You know, it's interesting because I've got people ask me all the time, you know, well, you know, what are you going to do if you, you know, if you find out that it's extraterrestrial? What do you can do? I go, I've been doing this for 35 years. That thought does only cross my mind about a million times. And I've gone through every scenario, you know. I have to tell you this. This is absolutely true, polygraph, if you want to pay for polygraph.

You know, in the past couple of decades. I've been contacted twice by someone, it appears to be within the government, asking me specific questions. They would call me. You know, when cell phones first came out, and our phone numbers weren't as easy to get as it is now, I got a call from an individual, and he was asking me about the piece of metal that I found back in 2002.

Very specific questions. Mr. Zuckowski, can you tell me about this, what you found? What do your results? And I said, and I was very open with them, very truthful. And I said, if you need any more help, can you call? You know, I'm not here to keep anything from our government. I'm not here to keep anything from the public. Everybody gets all open.

And he said, thank you very much. And that was the end of that. Very polite. A couple years later, I got another phone call. And it was, I can't tell you the same individual because it was years later. But it was another male voice. And Mr. Zuckusk, can you tell me about the animal mutilations? and some of the investigations, and what have you found on that?

And I was very, you know, very specific questions. I answered the questions to the best of my knowledge at that time from what I knew. And he said, thank you very much. And so they do, I believe, you know, they do come in from time to time and poke around and see what you're doing and look at the websites and stuff. Now, if someone popped up to my door and says, okay, we've got to confiscate your material. And I said, fine, you want to sign for it? I'll give it to you. fine because now I can say

hey guess what the government came over and took this stuff from me that means it must be important enough that they took it and that's a big red flag out there for everybody because now they're interested in this stuff and they want our material but here's the point

frank and I'll just go back out to the brief sacrifice more exactly yeah or keep some hitting somewhere please actually I shouldn't say that And then we'll just go back and we know what to look for. We know what material is 6,000. We know what's 3,000 because we've done this enough now.

So we can identify it, visually identify it. You know, take it. Run with it. We'll just go out there and find some more. Yeah. What is that old saying they doth protest too much, right? They take it to try to keep the story under wraps and of what it is.

And in reality, them taking it is showing us there's something to it. There's something important. You bet I would just roll on that and throw that out there like nobody's tomorrow. Now, here's something Frank and I told, talked about. If they came to us and said, we don't want you to talk about this anymore. Okay, now that's a scenario too. then we would say the only way we'll do that is if you fill us in. That's fair. That's a good deal.

And, you know, and we would sign non-disclosures. Now people after going, well, why would you do that? Well, because we've been doing this so long that it's our obsession, you know, and it's, you know, it's something that we want to figure out before we leave this planet, however we leave it. But, yeah, I'm not going to turn down. I'm not, you know, if someone comes in and says, hey, you want to work for us, I'm not going to turn that down if it'll lead me to the truth of, you know,

extraterrestrials living on this planet or visiting this planet or whatever, because, you know, that'll, you know, that'll satisfy me. At this point, you know, everything goes out. But you have to think about all the scenarios, too, because they can just off you. You got to think about that, too. And that's happened. Remember Max Spears? Yeah, yep. The black vial they found.

Yeah. So he told his mom a couple of days before he died. No, Max Spears was an investigator, was. And he crossed that proverbial line. And then he taught, I guess he texts his mom or something. It says if something happens to me, go public with this and he was found dead. was some type of a black liquid or something coming out of his mouth. It was in his lungs. So he was very strange.

So this isn't a business you want to go into that you think it's all fun and games. It really isn't. You know, when you get phone calls from individuals that could be working for the Pentagon. You get followed. I've been followed once. My sister's an investigator at Missouri. She's been followed a couple times in investigations. So, you know, we're being watched, basically.

And they're watching us and seeing what we're doing. And, you know, if we go in an area that they don't want us to go in, they're going to let us know. Hopefully they're going to let us know ahead of time and not just run us off the road or, you know, something. But I think that's not going to be the case now because there's a lot of people within the government and a lot of people within the military that want this stuff to go public. And I think it's the perfect time right now. It's the right time, like you say, with legislation, you know, in development that gets us out there. So, and then social media. You know, now, you know, we say something and it, you know, just like a speed of light.

It's out there. And everybody has access to it. And it's because of your viewers, you know, that are helping this become a reality because they talk, they see it. It's because of you with your podcasts, but you're getting the information out, the people are watching it. And it's a multiplier effect that trickles out. You know, it's a virus, but it's a good virus. A good virus. A good virus.

That's a virus that we definitely want. Yes, for sure, man. Well, hey, you mentioned people watching you. While we don't want the men in black watching you, Chuck, where can everyone else watch you, find you, keep up with your work? Give us all of that information, man. Well, that's a UFO nut. So it's UFONut.com.

The reason why it's UFO nut is because years and years ago, you know, I was calling a nut. said you're just crazy doing this. And some people still do. They're so, you know, tunnel vision. They can't, you know, they can't see anything outside of wherever they're going. And they said, well, you're crazy or not or whatever. And so instead of getting mad, I decided to go with it and just kind of flow with it.

And I created an acronym where it's this unconventional flying objects, non-human, unrecognizable technology. So that's UFO nut. But it's the license plate of my truck. UFO bikers on my Harley. UFO Lab is on my trailer. Let's get this is right here. UFO Nut, my Harley and UFO Biker stuff. So, you know, I'm very open and public about it. And it's really cool because people will see it and they'll stop me.

And they'll give me, you know, their own, you know, reports of sightings and stuff. So it's pretty cool. UFonut.com. At the very top, it says, email, Chuck, that's directly to me. So please, you know, if you have any questions, email me, depending on how many emails I get, it may take a couple days for me to, you know, to get back to you.

But I do get back to every one of my emails. And look at the website. You know, it's all out there from cattle mutilations to lights in the sky that I've filmed, to the Roswell stuff going way, way, way back. it's all out there for everybody to look at it and make your own assessment, make your own judgments. Just because I'm a UFO investigator, I'm not saying that I know it all.

I don't know it all. Like I said, this is a learning experience for me and Frank and how we do this stuff. You got some great ideas? Let us know because we don't know everything. But don't ever, ever trust any investigator out there that says, I know it all, I know everything, and you don't know what you're talking about.

that's not true. You got to leave everything open. Absolutely, man. It's a mystery we all continue to chase for our own reasons, our own purpose, our own meaning. And, hey, in terms of your meaning and Franks, I can't wait to see what comes over this. It's very exciting.

And we'll have to have you back on when we get those isotopic ratios back for sure. Well, again, you know, it's funny because we were talking to, I'm not going to mention the other individuals, but, you know, they wanted us to go public with them, and they were going to do a big press release and a press conference and on and on. And it turns out that they were kind of exploiting

what we were doing, you know, for their own benefit. That's okay. I understand. Everybody's got an angle, and that's not a problem. But then they come back at the last minute, and this was just Friday, you know, because I was going to hold off until this week. coming up to do press release and a whole bit.

And they said, well, we want you to have more data. And we have enough data and isotope analysis that it proves that it's extraterrestrial come back and we'll do the press release. And we can guarantee all this and all the TV spots you want. And I go, I don't need you. If I can come out and say this is extraterrestrial, everyone's going to be coming to me and Frank. That's top analysis different, though.

You know, when we get our, you know, as we go through the process and, and we do more lab results, absolutely. We want to come back on this podcast and tell you exactly what we're finding, you know. But you'll know if it's extraterrestrial, it'll be everywhere. Oh, yeah. We'll tell us that. Aisotopin analysis will be another big step, you know. And then after isotope analysis, if it says it's anomaly and we go out on your podcast, and releasing this information I spoke now is now we have to go to the science community

and and now the science community or even you know Congress and we will go to Congress and say look we got something we got evidence proof what's our next step so something like yeah yeah yep yeah the steps are gradual but um they're their they're baby steps and we're in the Invency of disclosure. And we'll get there, man. We'll get there. Wow. There's so much more I want to talk to you about, Chuck. But we'll save it for the next show. This is a huge, huge development. And I can't be happier for you guys. And I have to thank you once again for coming on somewhere in the skies today. Well, you know, like I said, it shows like yourself that gets this information out of public. And if we didn't have people, like you that host these shows and then your viewers, listeners, if it goes audio or video, you know, it wouldn't help us. And the whole purpose of this is to get the information out public. But you guys, you're the driving force. You know, we're the ones that started it.

You know, we'll start the car, but you're going to help us drive it. And that's what we need. We're not going to be able to get from A to B without, you know, the support of your viewers and listeners and these podcasts. And you're the first one. So, You're going to be jumping off the floor and starting that car and getting it around. I am revving that engine. I'm revving that engine, brother. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

Thank you very much.