NASA panel hold a session on UFOs, now known as UAPs NASA panel hold a session on UFOs, now known as UAPs NASA panel hold a session on UFOs, now known as UAPs Members of NASA’s 16-member panel, who held a four-hour session on unidentified flying objects (UFOs) spoke at length about the lack of scientifically-reliable methods of documenting UFOs or ‘unidentified anomalous phenomena’ (UAP). They said that these phenomena are generally recorded with cameras, censors and other equipment that are not evolved enough to measure such incidents.
David Spergel, chair of Nasa's UAP team, spoke of one such incident that took place in Australia, where the researchers working on UAPs were thrown off by a microwave heating lunch.
Spergel said that the researchers in Australia had picked up a burst of radio waves that pointed to a really “strange structure”. “People couldn't figure out what was going on. Then they start to notice a lot of them bunched together around lunch time," he said.
The researchers then figured out that the sensitive instruments that were used by the researchers were picking up signals from a microwave used to heat up their lunch – hence the signals during lunch time.
Former astronaut Scott Kelly also told a story about an optical illusion that convinced the pilots that they saw a UFO. Kelly and his co-pilot were flying near Virginia Beach, when his colleague was convinced that he saw a UFO fly by. “I didn't see it. We turned around, we went to look at it, it turns out it was Bart Simpson - a balloon,” he said.
The NASA panel said that the lack of high-quality data and lingering stigma pose the greatest challenge in unraveling mysteries around UAPs.
Spergel said, "If I were to summarize in one line what I feel we've learned, it's we need high-quality data. The current existing data and eyewitness reports alone are insufficient to provide conclusive evidence about the nature and origin of every UAP event."
The term UFO that is being used widely to refer to flying saucers and aliens has been replaced by UAP. The US government's renaming expanded the scope of NASA's research scope to include inexplicable events in space or at sea too.
(With Reuters inputs)