This week, the media is reporting on the formation of a 16-member panel convened by NASA to examine instances of unidentified areal phenomena collected from civilian government and commercial sectors.

NASA said its panel would spend nine months devising its strategy for how to organise and study sightings before recommending “a road map of potential UAP data analysis by the agency going forward”.
Its first report is to be made public in mid-2023.
Associate NASA administrator Thomas Zurbuchen said said data was the language of scientists and made the “unexplainable explainable”.
“Understanding the data we have surrounding unidentified aerial phenomena is critical to helping us draw scientific conclusions about what’s happening in our skies,” he said.
The panel is chaired by David Spergel, who formerly headed Prince University’s astrophysics department.
— ABC news report.

It is interesting to watch the topic of unidentified aerial phenomenon or UFO’s slowly creep into the public facing domain of mainstream scientific and government agencies. And fascinating to watch mainstream media begin to report on this phenomenon without the mandatory accompanyment of amused banter, or playing the X-files theme.
At least in the US.

5 years ago, NASA wouldn’t seriously touch the topic of UFOs with a ten foot bargepole. There is a perceptible shift in the way the UFO narrative is being crafted.

Deep Dive? Don’t go there.

Oh yes indeed, I have taken my own deep dive into the social media domain of UFO’s and I would not recommend it as a productive use of one’s time.
I will spare you the details.

When it comes to UFOs, the social media noosphere is replete with self-made experts, influencers, confabulators, speculators, grifters, LARPers¹, trolls, and a motley crew of highly opinionated people who have all ‘done their own research’ and are eager to add their ten cents worth to the conversation.

It is nonetheless, important to note that among this maelstrom of social drama-infused opinion, here are peppered a few dedicated, methodical, empirical researchers, but the noise-to-signal ratio is overwhelming.

So, what do I think?

If you want my ten cents worth, here it is.

I think there is definitely something going on here. People are witnessing something not easily explainable in the skies (and oceans).

I think there are government agencies that know a lot more than us about this phenomenon….but a lot less than we speculate they might.

I think it is interesting that despite a massive number of people armed with high-quality cameras, we still do not have one single photo or video that provides substantive evidence to back up witness testimony. Not one.²

I think it is intriguing that despite the large number of people working in government organisations and military branches that have allegedly been privy to close encounters or indisputable data, we have not had one single whistleblower come forward with smoking gun evidence.

I think it is unlikely we are about to see any governments suddenly opening up with paradigm-shattering disclosure anytime soon. Yup, we have some alien craft that we retrieved back in the 1960s, and we have been negotiating with some beings from Zeta Reticuli since then, here are some pics.

Yet, after doing my own research… I still feel there is something going on.
And slowly, slowly, this awareness of sensible weirdness is growing in the general community. Hidden deep within the noise, there is a signal.

Is it aliens?
Maybe.

And maybe it is something else entirely.

1. Live Action Role Playing. Essentially, making shit up. In character. ↩
2. To be fair, most smartphone cameras are not designed to take high-resolution photos of tiny objects far away. But still…. ↩

• UFOs: eyes up or eye roll?
• I have seen something strange in the sky for 2 days in a row.

Photo by mostafa meraji