StarTalk Radio - Extended Classic: UFO Remix

Episode Date: February 10, 2017

Neil Tyson and Eugene Mirman turn a speculative, scientific eye towards Unidentified Flying Objects. Featuring UFO investigator James McGaha and SETI Senior Astronomer Seth Shostak. Now extended with Neil and Eugene answering Cosmic Queries about UFOs.NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can listen to this entire episode commercial-free. Find out more at https://www.startalkradio.net/startalk-all-access/ Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And this is StarTalk. This week our topic is UFOs, unidentified flying objects, about which so much is written. And so many people think about them and care about them. And I thought we should bring some sort of physics to the subject or some kind of analysis. No more speculation.

You know, there are thousands of sightings of UFOs every year. And, of course, most of them can be explained away as the consequence of natural phenomenon, like unusual cloud formations or bright planets, lightning, and especially meteorological or astronomical observations.

And some are just spaceships from other worlds visiting, preparing to take us over. Yeah, okay, some would be that, I suppose. That's one explanation, along with your gas cloud thing. But what happens is, when you see something unfamiliar in the sky, the brain tries to understand it

and come to terms with it. It'll go overboard in doing so. And so what it doesn't understand, it connects the dots, it invents missing pieces. And so when you try to judge what an object is or just judge how big it is, your brain fills in the gaps.

It's the same reason the George Lopez show is still on the air. Is that what that is? The brain fills in the gaps, making it make sense. So, but what happens is our perception, about which there's still a lot of research going on in the neuroscience community, the depth of our perception is still being understood

and how it can fool us and how we can think it's giving us correct information when, in fact, it's not. And so what happens is when we find that we're ready to doubt what we see, the brain just figures it out for you whether or not. With lies. With lies.

Using lies. Exactly. As its building block. So have you ever seen a UFO? Remember, use simply means unidentified. No, no, I know. Yes. It's funny because part of me wants to go like, no, not really.

But what I mean is by saying that, I'm like, I can identify everything in the sky. So in that sense, I can't. But I don't think I ever saw anything. Well, then you have seen UFOs, if you can't identify everything you've ever seen. Yeah, but I don't think I ever saw a thing moving and was like, oh, that's coming for me. I should get ready. What's my welcome speech? I feel like I haven't seen anything that was so unidentifiable, I wanted to blog about it.

Let's just say that. So that means you've encountered some objects in the sky that you say, I don't quite know what that is, but it's not so weird that I'm going to freak out about it. I think it's like a bright planet or something, or a shooting star. Like if I didn't know about shooting stars, I'd definitely be more scared. Oh, so you have some sort of foundation for your observations. Did you ever have have astronomy 101 in college no i went to a school where you decide your own major and i didn't include astronomy it's one of

those kind of schools yeah but i learned everything i need from tv shows about outer space so don't worry i know plenty of science so what would you have to see for you to scare you and then have you blog and tweet about it i would have to have a thing fly up to me maybe make a sound ask me some questions fly away away. That's definitely at the top of the list. That would work. And then something sort of just floating and glowing too much. Yeah. Well, speaking of

floating and glowing too much, one of the most mistaken objects for a UFO, well, it's not mistaken, excuse me. If you don't know what it is, you simply don't know what it is. One of the most reported objects as a UFO is the planet Venus in the sky. Because it's so bright. It is so bright.

Venus is 100% white cloud cover. So it's highly reflective, first of all. So it's as bright as it can be as a planet. But it doesn't dart around. It just sort of sits there watching you. Well, watch. If you happen to live near an airport and you're accustomed to seeing airplane lights coming in at twilight or at night,

and this would be Venus, and if you didn't know it was a planet, it would just be an airplane hovering. See, that's the thing. The fact that it's not darting around leaves people curious as to what it is, because anything else would have come in for a landing a long time ago. Of UFO sightings, how many happen near

airports? Because that would be slightly ludicrous. Yeah, so I don't know that statistic. But another thing about Venus is we orbit the sun farther away than Venus does. And so if you're ever going to find Venus in the sky, it's not going to be all that far from the sun. You'll see it just before sunrise. In fact, these days,

for any night owls out there, it's up just before sunrise. In fact, these days, it's up, for any night owls out there, it's up just before sunrise, and it's as bright as can be. And it's quite visible just after sunset. Now, here's what happens. Since it's in the twilight sky, and it's bright, as it gets lower in the sky, it could take on sunset colors the way the sun does. And so now you have a bright hovering light that has, a bright hovering object that has lights that resemble sunset colors. So you'd have orange and red and this sort of thing. You combine all this together and you get no limit of reportings of Venus being somebody's. So if aliens from Venus came here, it would be particularly confusing because we'd be explaining this phenomenon to them, and they would be explaining where

they were. We'll keep a special chapter on the UFO books for when Venusians visit us. Exactly. The most confusing type of alien to visit. Oh, by the way, you know the word Venusian is we kind of invented that after the fact. After which fact?

You make it sound like it. After the fact that if you are of Venus the correct word for being of Venus is venereal and the doctors got to that word before the astronomers did I don't mind saying oh venereal I'm just saying wait oh Martian

wait why venereal that's the proper genitive form of the word Venus you'd be venereal. I can't wait to arrogantly say that to people as I talk to them at parties. That's really venereal. Doctors had identified a disease common to lovemaking, and Venus is the goddess of love and beauty and all that goes along with it.

So Venus is a number one cosmic target for misidentified UFOs. That's right. And then the moon. By the way, cosmic target, great band name. Oh, is that right? Okay, you're keeping track of these. Would be. Sorry.

I'm saying you're coming up with things faster than you even know. I'll take the compliment. And the moon has been targeted. Of course, we all know what the moon looks like. But suppose the moon is a crescent and only a little piece of the crescent sticks out from behind a cloud so you don't see the whole thing and you don't know the moon is supposed to be there and there's little cloud areas growing around it.

It can freak you out. Yeah. And in fact, it happened to me. I was on a beach. Are you listening to Pink Floyd? I know. High on a beach and the moon sneaks up on you? I don't listen to record albums

that don't get their physics right. The dark side of the moon, there's no dark side of the moon, just so you know. You only listen to accurate physics albums. That's right. Like Jethro Tull's Thick as a Brick. Accurate rock albums. So just as an example, I was once on the beach, and I saw a glowing object on the horizon.

And I couldn't associate it with any terrestrial object. Of course, it was at night, because then you see less well at night when you have, that's where most of your UFO sightings are at night when you can least identify what it is you're looking at. And I saw something and I could not identify it.

And I was intrigued, pulled out my binoculars, which never more than arm's reach for me. There it was. It was the moon. And so I'm just simply saying there are objects that can be out there. Even if you're familiar with the sky, they can

stump you, at least until you continue to observe. But it's not only cosmic objects. You also get sort of meteorological objects. Clouds. Clouds. There are some beautiful cloud formations up there. Not just the puffy ones that make rain. There's some, particularly if you look...

Thanks for being so scientific about that. I was like, but which ones make rain? Is it the puffy ones? The puffy ones. Okay, good. Got it. Move on. You got the ordinary puffy ones, right? Yeah, yeah.

But then you have, they're clouds. They're orographic clouds. Orographic clouds are... So the two are puffy, orographic. That's right. And then weirdo clouds. Weirdo clouds. They go back and forth.

And so, in fact, there was a guy who put cloud shapes on a scale. And the big puffy cumulus clouds was cloud nine. And that's where you say you're on cloud nine. You're on a big puffy. Is that why? That is why. If you're on cloud nine, it's a cumulus cloud. Not cumulonimbus, because then you'd be wet.

No, don't be an idiot. Who would ever assume that? So an orographic cloud, and you have lenticular clouds. These are clouds that look like flying saucers. You find them near mountains, and they're very high up. And they take on this cylindrical shape, and they're isolated. And so watch what happens. The sun sets for you, but if you're high up,

the sun sets later for someone on a mountaintop than it would for someone at the base of the mountain. Like Moses. We have a better explanation than that one. up, the sun sets later for someone on a mountaintop than it would for someone at the base of the mountain. Like Moses. We have a better explanation than that one. So what happens is, the sun sets for you, your sky begins to darken. This cloud is still lit up by sunlight. It is still lit up.

And so it looks like it's glowing against the background sky. Takes on the colors of sunset, bada-bing. You've got a... Does it make that sound? I'll have to record it next time. And one of my favorite kinds of clouds are noctilucent clouds, which translates from the Latin

to meaning nighttime glow. I know. Okay. I'm just kidding. Was Latin one of the subjects you electively took in college? Yes, exactly. I know Latin and comedy.

So these are clouds that are so high up, they can still be lit by the sun an hour after sunset. And occasionally, spaceships and missiles can leave a contrail that is so high up that they become these noctilucent clouds. And people then identify and they say, oh, I saw this glowing thing in the sky when they knew nothing's supposed to glow there. If you know about these objects,

then you have a ready explanation for them. I can't wait to see that and then be like, no, no, it's not a spaceship. It's a cloud left by a human spaceship. And there's also lightning. Lightning can do weird things. Lightning is electrical charges going from cloud to ground,

cloud to cloud. By the way, most lightning goes from the ground up to a cloud. Is that true? Yes. Of course. I know. I don't? Yes. Of course it is. Why would you lie to me? I know. I don't know why. Oh, no, it's not true. It was just so opposite of what I was told earlier by school teachers who were misinformed. So much of reality

is the opposite of what we're all told. So lightning, it actually creates a plasma around, it's basically a charged gas that glows. Remember those glow things you find in Spencer Gifts? Yes, do I ever. I wanted one until I was probably 30. It's only five, six years ago that I was like, meh.

And then there are other things. For example, you have weird airplane designs. If you happen to be near an Air Force base that's testing unusual craft. Like a triangle-shaped spaceship. So if there are secret experiments going on and you look up and it's something you don't recognize, you're not going to say, oh, that must be an Air Force experiment with a new airfoil. No, if you're prone to imagination, as so many of us are, you'll say, oh, it's an alien

spaceship rather than the more terrestrial accounting for what it is that you see. So if an alien wanted to come here, if they just wrote U.S. government on their ship, nobody would bother them? I guess not. Is that the point? If they just covered themselves in a weird cloud? This signal goes out at the speed of light if you're giving them ideas.

Yes. And flares do interesting things. In daytime, it's just a flare. At night, it's this glowing thing in the sky. And there's a famous sighting of flares. In Phoenix, Arizona, March 13th, 1997, there was the fighter squadron from the Maryland Air National Guard. They dropped illumination flares as just part of an exercise at 8.30 p.m.

just after sunset, okay? And hundreds of people reported seeing a V-shaped UFO or either a formation of lights over the city and surrounding mountains. What their brains did was connect them into a single coherent object. And so rather than just say, I saw these lights, they said they saw a V-shaped UFO. Right. And so the urge to do that. They're balloons.

Now, for me, the most hilarious UFO sighting was in Manhattan just recently. October 2010. People saw glowing objects in the sky above Manhattan. Now here's for me the funny part. I live in Manhattan. Nobody ever looks up. So when they do, they have no experience

to identify anything in the sky. I've had people say, what's that? That's just the moon, all right? They don't notice it. They don't see it. So New Yorkers can be easily enchanted by balloons that are in the sky. Now, these were shiny mylar-surfaced balloons, and so that accounted for some extra glow that they had in the sky.

But this is, by the way, weather balloons also. Yeah. To me, everything you've said so far sounds like you're part of the cover-up. Just so you know. Anyone who's waiting for you to say that they're definitely aliens is getting more and more mad with each excuse you give. You're listening to StarTalk. Stay tuned for another segment. Welcome back to StarTalk.

Here's more of this week's episode. Eugene Merman, before the break, said that the way the aliens can infiltrate us is if they paint U.S. Air Force on their spaceships. And then we'll just say that they were... And then they'll be like, obviously it's a U.S. Air Force spaceship. It's a new... And I worry, since this is a broadcast show, that signal is now going out at the speed of light. And you've given away our last hope of defense against alien invasion.

Yes, it was the last piece. It was like, oh, that's a great idea. And we'll put on wigs and dress like humans. That's all they were missing. So other things that can be mistaken. Weather balloons. Weather balloons are not commonly launched near urban areas or near airports because they would tangle up your airplane.

So they're only in very secluded areas, and occasionally unexpected air gusts can carry it into populated areas. And no one has any experience looking at a weather balloon. Why? Does it look insane? No, it's just not something you've ever seen, unless you are like a weather balloon person, where you live where they do this sort of thing all the time. Or you have the money to Google the word weather balloon.

And so the Roswell incident, Roswell, you know, the entire economy down there is alien-based, if you've ever visited the town. I've been there a couple of times, actually, went to all the museums. It's an entire alien economy. The street lamps have alien faces on them and things. And so that was later reported as, that crash was later reported as a weather balloon. And when combined with some other experiments that had been done with sort of dummies, people now sort of remember that as sort of aliens and dead bodies.

Are there photos of the actual weather balloon? Of fragments of it, yes. Oh, okay. Well, of the payload that was part of the weather balloon. The weather balloon exploded? That I don't know. I don't know what was the consequence of that. I can tell you this, that if an alien really did come that far and it crashed here on Earth,

that's not the alien I want to meet. That's like anyone who can navigate better. Right. You don't want to meet the alien that came here. Do you think that there are also liberal aliens who would try to stop the meaner aliens from taking over? The political alignments of aliens. Yeah. You know who we have on the line?

We have a good friend and colleague, Seth Shostak. He works at the SETI Institute. The SETI is the acronym for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Let's see what Seth has to say. Seth, how are you, man? Just fine, Neil. Thanks for calling in to StarTalk Radio. Our subject tonight is sort of the physics of UFO sightings.

Notice I said physics of UFOs, not physics of aliens, because there are all kinds of accountings for things we see in the sky. But you're sitting at UFO Central there because you're advertising what it is you're interested in. So what's life like in your job? Well, in connection with UFOs, what's life like? I mean, you know, we don't have enough time to really go into that deal. But let me just tell you something with relevance to the subject at hand, and that is that I get at least five phone calls and emails a day from people who are having difficulties with aliens in their personal lives.

They send me photos, they send me videos of UFOs. They often think that we're doing the wrong experiment, trying to eavesdrop on alien broadcasts, because, after all, they, like one-third of the population of this country, believe that the aliens are here. Well, so, but what do you tell them? Do you say there's no evidence? How do you handle these encounters? Well, I listen to what they have to say, or I read what they have to say, because let's face it, it doesn't violate physics to go from one star system to another. It seems a little improbable that they would come all this way just for salacious experiments your mom wouldn't approve of.

But on the other hand, you could say that's alien sociology, and we don't have a whole lot of data when it comes to alien sociology, so nobody knows what they'd really be interested in. But the fundamental fact is that it's truly an extraordinary claim to say that aliens have come, you know, hundreds of light years to visit Earth with nothing better on their mind than these unfortunate experiments. And if you're going to make that claim, then what I want to see is the good evidence. So I look at what they have to say, and I look at the pictures, and I try and decide whether does this suggest that we actually have visitors here. And so what have you concluded? I guess I can guess, but I'm just wondering.

Yeah, I think you know the answer. I'm not convinced. Look, you know, there are a whole bunch of arguments that could be made to suggest that this is, you know, this is a bit unlikely. One thing you could ask is why are they here now? Why now? And I ask people who think that the aliens are visiting Earth, you know, how is it that we're so fortunate that they've come to Earth just while we are alive to improve our social lives or whatever. Well, you realize that there are references to aliens,

or at least unexplained sky phenomena, that goes as far back as the Bible. Ezekiel had a vision of wheels in the sky that had no other real account, and real alien fans would suggest that maybe he was bearing witness to that. And that's, you know, 5,000 years ago. Yeah, but 5,000 years ago is, you know, one millionth of the age of the Earth.

So that's still now. I love that cosmic perspective on the timeline. Okay, so that doesn't convince me because what it requires is either one of two things. Either the aliens are always visiting the Earth, so it really doesn't matter when you're born. You'll have the opportunity to have an unpleasant encounter with an alien. That's the men in black scenario. They've just been around us all the time. Yeah, there's that possibility, in which case I would think that the evidence wouldn't be so equivocal. that possibility, in which case I would think that the evidence wouldn't be so equivocal that, you know, that I would occasionally go down to the airport and, you know, and

the captain would come on and say, well, folks, we're going to stay at the gate here for the next 20 minutes because there's some unidentified craft in the area and they haven't filed a flight plan with the FAA, so we're just going to stay here. I mean, that doesn't happen to me. And I think if the aliens were really here, it would be like asking the North American natives, you know, 50 years after Columbus arrived, you know, do you think you're being visited by Spaniards? It wasn't something just for late-night radio. It was, they knew.

They absolutely knew. So I can't believe that they've always been here. So the only other possibility is that they're here now because they have some interest in one of our contemporary problems. They don't like the fact we have nuclear weapons, or they don't like what we're doing to the environment. So that's the plot of The Day the Earth Stood Still. Well, yeah, exactly. But of course, it doesn't make any sense, because they don't know any of that stuff, right? The only way they could know that homo sapiens is creeping and crawling across this mortal coil is because of the high frequency high power broadcast we've been sending into space

since the second world war and we're sending into space at this moment exactly but those things are only you know 70 light years out at most which means you you can only expect to visit with aliens that are no more than 35 light years out because they need time to get I Love Lucy, decide they don't like the jokes, and then get into their spacecraft, which are limited to the speed of light, and get back here just to haul you out of your bedroom. Okay, so none of it squares with you. It doesn't square because the number of stars within 35 light years is a few thousand.

That's a small number in astronomy. I don't think any aliens know we're here. So I really stumble across this problem of why are they here now? Okay, so if anyone actually finds an alien, we'll take them to your office and then you'll have another argument. Job security for me, Neil. Okay. Well, Seth, thanks for calling into StarTalk Radio. Can we call you at another time if we have an urgent need? Of course. Yeah. Okay. If we actually get visited, we'll have some champagne with you on that one. Okay. Box them up and send them even FOB. Okay. Thank you. That was Seth Shostak, a friend and colleague at the SETI Institute in, where else could that be, but California.

So, Eugene. Yeah. Have you seen any movies that have UFOs in it that you liked? I wish you could ask a broader question. Yeah. Yeah, lots of movies, from Men in Black

to the Star Trek seriesies. The Last Starfighter. I still want to fight someone else's war somewhere far, far away. And protect the Earth from an eventual, but not that great, costume-wise. You know who I have clips of? You know who I have clips of? I interviewed, there's a UFO skeptic, Hunter James McGaha, director of the Grasslands Reservatory in Arizona.

And I asked him about UFO investigations and how he got involved in it. Let's see what he's got to tell us. I got involved originally because as an amateur astronomer growing up, you mentioned to someone you were interested in astronomy, and he always asked you two questions. What's your sign and do you believe in ufos and it got me interested in astrology and ufos and and studying it and realizing that there was simply no evidence for it and it was really a belief system that a

lot of people had and as a result i started investigating and critiquing and analyzing UFO reports over the years. And so what have you found? Because there's tons of them, right? I mean, there's no shortage. Well, there's tons of reports, of course, but I've found that there's no evidence. Almost everyone thinks of the term UFO as being a spacecraft from another world. And that's what I mean. If you're referring to something that somebody sees that's unidentified, then that's a different issue. What you have to do is, most people see something in the sky and they interpret it as an alien spacecraft.

And there's no evidence that there are alien spacecraft flying around in the Earth's atmosphere. So that's where the belief system comes in, where the brain takes over the interpretation. Right. And, you know, it's a very strong desire for humans to believe in things in the sky. This is nothing new. This has been around for thousands of years. And it's related to the whole concept of humans wanting to find meaning and purpose, and this revolves around superstition, magic, hope, salvation, and doom, and UFOs fit this bill perfectly. You're listening to StarTalk Radio.

Stay tuned. More up next. Welcome back. Here's more of StarTalk. So just before the break, we talked about some famous sort of alien movies. Yeah. I think one of the classic ones now

is Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Because most of that movie was actually about UFOs. People saw lights in the sky and they didn't understand what was going on. And they were also making a lot of mounds. There you go. Is that the sound of a piper? Of like someone with a flute flying in from venereally?

The venereals coming in from Venus. So you know what my big gripe about Close Encounters was? That it was factually inaccurate? No. If you remember the movie, they were decoding on a teletype, back when teletypes were the coolest thing, this string of numbers that would constantly get repeated from space. And one person says, I know what those are.

It's longitude and latitude. That must be where the aliens are going to land. And I thought to myself, longitude and latitude? Is that the best you can come up with? It's a completely human construction, the coordinate system of our Earth. It's not even in base 10, all right? It's in base 60. So what is this?

And if the aliens knew enough about our culture to give us longitude and latitude, they would know enough to learn our language and just say, hey, we're coming down. We're going to land to the left of what you call Spain. Yes. Plus, the ship comes down. It flew across the galaxy. It's a flying saucer. And what do they have? They have the galaxy. It's a flying saucer.

And what do they have? They have runway lights. What's that about? If you have a flying saucer, you don't need runway lights. Hearing this, I both think that you're 100% right, and also it would be unpleasant to see a sci-fi movie with you, where you'd be like, that's not how beaming would work. Time travel's sort of not real.

So, you know, all the data from across the nation over the decades has been collected and investigated by the U.S. government. Did you know about this? I would hope so. I hope they're protecting us against... This was called Project Blue Book.

Very famous project. It ran for 28 years. Right from the depth of the Cold War, 1952, up through 1970. And they collected 12,000, I got the exact number here, 12,618 reports of UFOs. And the people who are giving them this information, they're thinking, oh, the government wants to know if we're being visited by aliens. That's not what drove Project Blue Book. Uh-oh. Commies.

Commies. It was like, what are the commies coming up to? And now you have 100 million observers in our country looking up, reporting on what it is they see. And this became this huge data gathering project. And so other governments across the world are doing this as well. But there are other things. Back then, there was the U-2 spy plane. well. But there are other things. Back then,

there was the U-2 spy plane. Very different proportions from a normal plane. Very big wingspan to fly in the rarefied atmosphere at 60,000 feet, where this thing would saw high up. It would be very hard to shoot it down. And another famous place is Area 51. You've heard about Area 51? Yeah, yeah. Isn't it a restaurant?

I'm not authorized to tell you what Area 51 is. We were interviewing earlier, James McGaha was director of the Grasslands Observatory in Arizona. And as you heard, he's a former military pilot. So he knows all about what the Air Force might have been doing. And so let's see what he has to say about Area 51. Let's go. Area 51 has never been called Area 51 by the Air Force.

Area 51 has never been called Area 51 by the Air Force. There is an area near Groom Lake in Nevada that people call Area 51. This comes out of the old Atomic Energy Commission areas when they divided up Nevada for nuclear testing. There is a facility there by the U.S. Air Force. It's highly classified. It does a number of flight operations and other operations. I have flown in and around the area as an Air Force. It's highly classified. It does a number of flight operations and other operations. I have flown in and around the area as an Air Force pilot. To the best of my knowledge, there are no aliens or no spacecraft there. It's all U.S. technology that goes on there.

But that's about all I can say about it. So what's your response to people who are certain there's a cover-up? Because surely, occasionally, if not often, the government would find a reason to cover something up if they judge it to be in the interest of security or public safety. So how do you reply to that? The government generally doesn't cover things up because if it ever comes out, they're embarrassed by the cover-up. Now, occasionally, some individuals will say things or do things that they shouldn't do. The proper thing for the military to do when dealing with classified, and after all, there are reasons to keep secrets, because a lot of classified

information is stuff that is very dangerous and we don't want to get in the hands of our enemies. The term, I will neither confirm or deny that. That's not covering anything up. It's simply not talking about it. So there are people, though, who will then rely on the fact that they're not told what's going on there. That's where, in their own mind, they can place everything for which they don't have evidence. Right, and this goes right to the heart of conspiracy theories. UFOs are wrapped in conspiracy theories.

And conspiracy theories are very attractive because they can explain complex social structures and problems, and they can simplify it and put a face on something otherwise that's very impersonal. You know, another interesting fact about conspiracy theories is that to assert that there's a conspiracy, that's the battle cry for having insufficient data. Right. So wherever you're missing data you say, oh, that's been covered up. I actually find

conspiracy theories slightly infuriating because they answer things people don't really understand. By saying that... By claiming a bunch of random connections. Right, and the connectivity comes about because they're saying the actual information that would connect it is hidden or held under wraps. There is something funny about playing a pilot being like, there's no secrets there. I mean, I'm sure he's telling the truth, but also it's the same thing he would say if he was lying.

That's what it means to cover something up. It's to come on the radio and be like, no way, I flew all around that area, no aliens. And I would know otherwise, yeah. Because I totally was let into all the secret rooms, even the alien ones. And another interesting thing about how much credence we give to the account given by one observer

or another, we tend to believe someone who's in uniform more than someone who is not. Well, they say, oh, he's a pilot or he's an astronaut. I often dress up as a doctor just so that people do exactly what I say. Is that right? Yes. Well, James McGaugh has actually had some comments on what it is to be a trained observer. Let's go

back to my interview with him. I've got over 40,000 hours looking at the night sky and thousands of hours of flying airplanes because I was in the Air Force for a career Air Force pilot. And after doing all of that, I've never seen anything that I couldn't explain. But the point is, I have a background in looking at atmospheric phenomena, looking at astronomical objects, and being able to analyze what they are and interpret them correctly. And I've seen all kinds of phenomena, all the way from St. Amel's fire to ball lightning. St. Amel's fire, that's that glow just before a lightning strike, is that right? Well, it's a static electrical charge that can build up on something moving, in my case an airplane, and it can be quite beautiful, but also somewhat dangerous.

Something that's often talked about is this idea of a trained observer. Somehow, the public believes that pilots and police officers are trained observers, but of course they're not trained to look at the night sky. They're trained to do other things, and pilots and police officers make mistakes all the time in the way they look at objects in the sky. Well, how about astronauts? There's one or two notable astronauts. It's the same sort of thing with astronauts.

They're trained to fly a spacecraft or maybe trained if they're mission specialists to do some tasks. They're not trained to look at the sky. They're not trained to look at the reflection of dust particles and be able to realize that's what they're seeing that's coming off the spacecraft. They're not trained to see. So you mean to imply that all you have to do is train people to know what they're looking at, and then the UFO sightings will go away? In large measure, I think they would.

The sightings would, barring the hoaxes, of course. If you think about in recent years, the most prominent have been what I call lights in the sky, the Phoenix lights and the Stevensville lights. And it's incredible that people would see these individual points of light in the sky, which were very bright, and then connect them together to make a larger object, connecting the dots in the sky. Of course, then this happened at night, when you have the least able to see things. Right. And they believe it's a UFO. They sincerely believe this, but they're simply incorrect in their interpretation of what they're seeing.

Yeah, so I can tell you this. When I was a kid, Eugene, I was an amateur astronomer, and we're looking up all the time. And I care when there are clouds in my way, so I'd studied meteorology just to help me find out when I can make my best observing. And I can tell you this, that in the community of amateur astronomers who are always looking up, And I can tell you this, that in the community of amateur astronomers who are always looking up, and among meteorologists who are always looking up, the sightings of things in the sky that they cannot explain is lower than that in the general public. And it's got nothing to do with who's wearing a uniform. Right. It's just based on who has the most amount of information. Most amount of information. And probably the most famous case of a person in uniform or with some kind of cultural authority who is a big fan of UFOs

or that they're actually aliens is Edgar Mitchell who's an Apollo astronaut. Mm-hmm. And he was a lunar module pilot for Apollo 14,

the sixth person to walk on the moon. He spent nine hours on the lunar surface. He believes that UFOs are visitors from other planets or at least some of them.

Even one is enough if he believes it's one. Yeah, exactly. It's not like the question is, are there 50 UFOs? Right, one would work. And he's pretty sure that the Roswell incident involved a real alien spacecraft. Now, he has not claimed that NASA is involved with UFOs, but NASA felt compelled to issue a statement that they do not track UFOs and don't share his opinions on this.

You're listening to StarTalk. Stay tuned for another segment. Welcome back to StarTalk. Here's more of this week's episode. You've got questions called from the internet, from all of our social media presence. Yeah. But they were solicited and people participate

and it's great service to the fan base of the show. So bring it on. Okay. So Joseph Devereaux asks... Devereaux. Just get into the name. I know. Devereaux.

Thank you. Sorry, I didn't want to sound too flirty. Assume a UFO was approaching Earth and posing a threat towards the future of mankind. What sort of information would we be able to obtain about this UFO from Earth, and how would we collect this information? Information can be size, shape, density, chemical makeup, general physical properties.

I think if a UFO comes here and wants to destroy us, we can hide, but it doesn't bode well. That's an interesting sort of sociological question, but yet I think the answer is obvious. If they can travel the huge gaps of interstellar space, because clearly we can't, because lately what have we been doing? Just driving around the block. That's all the space shuttle did, and now we don't even do that.

Their aliens are probably watching us from far away laughing. Laughing. Laughing. At our space program. Putting it in quotes, in air quotes, around our space program and giggling. Wondering when we'll finally rise to the challenge. I just picture that, an alien doing air quotes. Yeah, space program and giggling, wondering when we'll finally rise to the challenge. I just picture that, an alien doing air quotes. Yeah, space program.

Yeah, the human's space program. Dancing around. Well, you know that dude who jumped out of the balloon? No, but it sounds like a bad idea. No, the guy with the Red Bull thing. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, who jumped from space in a helmet.

Yeah, the marketing said he jumped from space, but, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, who jumped from space in a, yeah. He had a helmet. The marketing said he jumped from space, but I did the math on that. You get a schoolroom globe and ask how high was he above a schoolroom globe? It was a 16th of an inch.

So the human definition of space is really lame. Yeah. And you're right. Aliens would totally poke fun at this. So once they saw we're just driving around the block

and they decided they wanted to destroy humankind, I'm sorry. There's no – if they manage to get it. There's a chance that if they can't – well, no, I guess if we have infrared, they do too. Yes, thank you. If they gap the depths of space to get here and they're hostile, I'm sorry. That's the end. Right.

The end. That's probably why we haven't captured aliens, right? You know how there's all the theories of how there's Area 52 and stuff? It's very unlikely because if they could get here, there's no way they can't land. Plus, if they crashed, I'm not interested in those aliens anyway. Give me the ones who know how to fly. But the aliens that could get here from far away and then what they can't do is just land. They just can't land.

It's like, excuse me? Yeah. Like, what's up with that? That's very unlikely. So, if they're there, it seems to me the best information we'd be able to glean from it is, if we can see it, its shape, what its aerodynamic form is, if there's any

aerodynamics going on in it at all. Presumably there is because it's within our atmosphere and moving around, so aerodynamics matters. But they would surely know this if they came here to destroy us. And what we could do... They might want to enslave us, but not eat us. What we do is get all of our telescopes out and monitor it in the entire breadth of the electromagnetic spectrum.

So we think of spectrum as just rainbows and light. That's just visible light. Yeah, yeah. Not just the butterflies. They have 19 senses of light or something. Yeah, so other insects do this. So we're just some narrow portion of a huge range. And so there's ultraviolet

and x-rays and gamma rays and radio waves. We exploit each one of these in there alone for different reasons. We have microwave ovens, infrared lamps, radio communication, this sort of thing. All of these things are used to make us sexier. All of these are one

continuum of light. Some visible, some not. And if it's communicating, we may presume that it's using some form of electromagnetic spectrum. So we'd whip out all of our detectors to see which of these is it lit up in, because then it'd be

trying to communicate. Is it radio waves? Is it whatever? And so it's probably not using gamma rays, because they don't move through the atmosphere efficiently. They get blocked. Radio waves, we know, moves through air unhindered. That's why you can receive radio transmissions, even microwave transmissions, indoors.

Right. Right? That's how you. It's why your cell phone can work in places even though you're enclosed without a sightline to the tower. So what I would do if I were confronting this, and we knew we were all going to die, so we might as well do some fun

science experiments on it. Totally! So you'd come out and just measure whether it's emanating in any of these bands of light. Beyond that, there's not much else we can measure at a distance. You're listening to StarTalk Radio. Stay tuned.

More up next. Welcome back. Here's more of StarTalk. Eugene, this is your first time being part of the last segment of Cosmic Queries where it's the lightning round. Because I always spend too much luxurious time answering all the other questions. We have a backlog behind, and we'll just blow through it. Let's do it. Let's just answer these. I'm going to go in soundbite mode.

Nice. Soundbit mode. Are you ready? I'm prepared for soundbit mode, and I will ask only the briefest follow-up questions. Let us test the bell. We are ready. It works. Eugene, shoot.

John Randall asks, Is it possible that UFOs are actually time-traveling tourists from the future, from a future Earth? This could explain why so many have witnessed UFO phenomena, yet contact is rarely, if ever, made. Yes. Next. Wait, it's possible that they could travel back in time,

that someone from the future is coming here to the past. Yeah, however, if you're traveling through time, generally, if you're really good at it, you wouldn't need a spaceship because you're traveling through time rather than space. If you travel back through time, you have to watch out because if you want to travel to yesterday and here

in that seat, Earth was in a different place in its orbit. A lot of people probably fall in the Pacific because it's so big, is what you're saying. You'll be floating in space. Yes, you do have to care about where you land in space. You'd materialize in a hallway or in the middle of a wall. Or in the middle of a wall, cement pier.

Go. What if other civilizations exist in dimensions that we can't perceive with existing technology? Could we be visited by UFOs and not even know it? Yes. Great. That's a good thing about parallel other dimensions. It's like a flat surface that's two dimensions. If you put an ant on that surface, and if you say, okay, you're a prisoner of this sheet of paper,

you could hover over it and look at it and poke it, and it would have no concept. You could give it whiskey, and it would be like, I don't even get what's happening. I don't know where it came in, because you're coming at it from a higher third dimension. You come at us at a higher fourth spatial dimension or a fifth dimension. So there might be eight dimensional beings watching us right now laughing at this Q&A. Laughing at we being prisoners of our three dimensional cubes. Yeah, and a little bit of time. Okay, go.

What if others, oh, that is the one. Okay, I have had a thought for many years now. Is it possible, possible that what we call UFOs are actually natural creatures who live in the atmosphere, critters with a different evolution in DNA, but Earth creatures nonetheless? Possible? I'm going to say... Highly unlikely. Yeah, I'm even going to go, no.

I mean, it's possible. Yeah, I mean, look at how much of the airspace is sliced each day by aviation. There are thousands of planes going back and forth. You'd think we would have run into them every now and then, or pilots would have a really good view of them, or people would have photographed them out the side window. We have good enough evidence of absence. What if this person doesn't know about birds?

How impressed would they be if they find out about birds? And they're like, no, Neil, there's birds. That's awesome. Next. What technology would you expect to find on an alien ship? What would you expect? Like a thermos?

I would love to explore new materials. Maybe they went higher up on the periodic table of elements than we have. There are elements yet to be discovered. Every element we've discovered has awesome, different properties from every other element.

Ameresium, for example, named after America, very high up there. What's it do? What would happen if you put it in your soup? It's radioactive. But a tiny amount goes in smoke detectors, and it's what enables modern smoke detectors. Oh, really?

And we would have had no concept of that without the existence of the element. So I'd be feeling all the stuff on the ship and see if it had some new kind of material properties that we have, that our material science engineering has yet to discover. Right.

I just realized, based on what you said, don't eat smoke detectors. They're a little radioactive. Yes, exactly. Oh, one other thing. If maybe they're using matter, antimatter drives, I want to know how they contain their antimatter. I want to know what piece of luggage they use to carry it. Do we have access to antimatter right now?

We make it all the time. You just can't carry it around. Do we put that in soup? Because what your vessel would annihilate with it. Unless you traveled in an antimatter ship. Right, but then the antimatter meets your atmosphere and then it annihilates. It's really tough.

But we make it all the time. What do we do with all the antimatter we make? It annihilates pretty quickly with matter in the place we make it. Is it legal to shoot one down? I'm assuming a UFO. So there are no laws against shooting an alien from another planet.

All of our laws are human-to-human laws. There's a space law frontier that is trying to think about the laws of that next frontier. There are things like if the alien is more intelligent than you, it's a crime.

If they're not, then they're just food for you. But what then they're just food for you. But what if they're just dopey? But the truth is, most likely, if you shot at an alien or a UFO, you'd probably be just shooting at a plane or a cloud or something else.

Like shooting the deer and someone on their front doorstep. So I would say... Don't shoot guns in the sky. Let's just say that to our listeners. That's responsible. I would say... Don't shoot guns in the sky. Let's just say that to our listeners. That's responsible. I would say that the UFO, if you... I would say it would be... If you have the opportunity to interact with a UFO, don't shoot at it.

Thanks for listening to StarTalk Radio. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Many thanks to our comedian, our guest, our experts, and I've been your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. Until next time, I bid you to keep looking up.