The birth of a new science: Academic UAP research
Society for UAP Studies 2024 Conference, summary of the first day
This weekend, the Society for UAP Studies (SUAPS) organizes its first international online conference. Sentinel is covering the event in its entirety.
The first day featured an astonishing mix of scientists from the humanities and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) presenting their research, with a particular emphasis on showcasing the work of women, who are generally under-represented on the subject.
The first speaker was SUAPS Director Dr. Michael Ciphone, who emphasized the need for multidisciplinary research on this vast subject. However, he also emphasized the challenge of defining the subject of study itself and its boundaries, while questioning the methods for discovering what lies beyond the mystery for scientists.
He then praised the changing atmosphere surrounding the subject, which has enabled more and more scientists to work on it with less fear for their careers. Dr. Christian Peters added that it was important to develop a methodology, despite the limits of interdisciplinarity. He concluded the conference’s introduction by stating that he wanted it to be a safe space to talk openly about UAPs.
The Discovery of OIL
The first lecture was led by Dr. Brenda Denzler, PhD in Religious Studies at Duke University, having written her dissertation on UFOs and abduction-related subcultures in 1998. She explained that at the time, 26 years ago, the mere fact of writing that an event had taken place in Roswell was enough to trigger the concerns of her thesis supervisor. Another indication of the ongoing stigma surrounding the subject: she explained that she now feels freer to talk about it since she is retired. She went on to question the very fact that human beings have sufficient capacity for perception and understanding to grasp the subject of UAPs, which had led her at the start of her research to rely on a hypothesis of a “paranormal” explanation for the phenomenon.
She then recounted an intriguing encounter with a high-level university administrator. In discussing her research, she brought up the subject of UFOs, and he shared with her an experience from his time working with a security clearance at a research institute largely funded by the Department of Defense. He recalled a researcher who had come to validate an order for communications equipment powerful enough to communicate with a target in deep space. When the administrator questioned the researcher about it, the response was “let's just say there's something out there“, which the administrator understood as acknowledgement of a contact with an alien intelligent life form, according to Dr. Denzler.
Following this conversation, Dr. Denzler went on to consider hypotheses other than the paranormal to explain the UAP sightings, including the extraterrestrial hypothesis, even though the government and its agencies have attempted to ridicule it.
The rest of the talk is a list of the various hypotheses explaining some UAP attributes reported by witnesses. Particular emphasis is placed on local, even multidimensional, hypotheses of non-human consciousness, which would explain the difficulty of anticipating and recording them, as well as the fact that the information reported by witnesses is often incoherent. One of the few common aspects found in multiple close encounters is the attention paid by these apparitions to the environment and the exclusion of all other typically human concerns. This leads Dr. Denzler to suggest that the origin of UAPs is local, even temporal, citing the work of Dr. Michael Masters.
She then turned to the story of Sergeant Schirmer's abduction on December 3, 1967. He recounted being abducted by beings claiming to come from another galaxy and having communicated with them. Dr. Denzler went on to explain that the information given seemed to have been deliberately designed to keep us confused. The interlocutors seem to be very interested in our modes of reproduction, and, according to some testimonies, even having a desire to insert themselves into the Homo sapiens population.
Dr. Denzler went on to explain that there could be a revival of religious sentiment due to the understanding that ancient cultural influences may have taken place following close encounters. She explained, however, that studying the subject through the prism of religion faced a major problem: the object of study is in fact man's attitude to his gods, not the study of the gods themselves.
Later, she quoted Dr. Malidoma Patrice Somé :“We are often watched at close distance by beings that we ourselves cannot see”.
Dr. Denzler then evoked the Djinns, both spiritual and material mythological beings capable of existing in several planes, described as smokeless glows when they wish to be visible. They would inhabit an intermediate world to our own, and it is perhaps this other world that would actually interest extraterrestrial species in coming here.
In response to a question from Sentinel about the possibility of numerous simultaneous sources rather than a single one responsible for the whole phenomenon, Dr. Denzler said that she prefers working on one hypothesis at a time, but that the likelihood of there being many sources was, in her opinion, high.
“Observatories and Experiencers”
The next speaker was anthropology PhD student Maya Cowan, on how UAP research is organized and the attitude of scientists conducting it.
After explaining the difference between the materialistic approach which considers the physical aspect of UAPs, and the psychological approach which considers the human relationship to the phenomenon, she pointed out that this division is also due to the division of scientific research between the humanities on the one hand and STEM on the other. She hypothesized that this is in fact an object of scientific study belonging to a fringe space, a science of the anomalous, a science of the uncanny.
Indeed, even in the psychological approach with witnesses, technological elements often emerge from their accounts. She also pointed out that virtually all the scientists working on the subject of UAPs whom she has met have claimed to have seen something anomalous, or to have experienced even stranger things.
PhD student Maya Cowan then drew a parallel with the scientific discovery of meteors, the existence of which was held to be scientific impossibilities - after all, it can't rain rocks. Such was the case with the meteor shower in the village of L'Aigle, France, on April 26, 1803. While the subject of meteor origin had been debated in the wake of Chladni's thesis, Jean-Baptiste Biot's on-the-spot investigation brought the reality of this phenomenon into the scientific consensus. It's interesting to note that science has only been acknowledging this reality for two centuries.
She then cited the case of anthropologist Diego Escolar, who delayed the publication of his research for fourteen years, because he had observed a UFO during his study and took the time to better understand how to write about it in a scientific journal.
PhD student Maya Cowan recounted how she herself witnessed a strange coincidence. While she accompanied a team of scientists out in the field, a psychic came along to test her abilities. When the psychic claimed to sense a presence, the scientists detected an overload of infrared signals, which managed to disconnect the cameras.
She went on to explain that, during experiments, instrumentation can be considered as an extension of the witness's abilities to perceive.
In response to Sentinel, she explained that for scientists working on the subject, the main motivation stems from a deep interest rooted in science fiction or personal observations or even abduction experiences. She also pointed out that the reduction of the stigma on the subject is what has enabled scientists to work on it.
Detection and Characterization of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) Using Ground-based Observatories and Satellite Imagery
Dr Wesley Watters, Whitehead Associate Professor of Critical Thought and Associate Professor of Astronomy, then presented the research carried out as part of Harvard's Galileo project, under the direction of Dr Avi Loeb.
After recalling the publication of articles explaining the methods and tools used, he explained the two main instrumental ways of investigating UAPs: on the one hand, the set up of multimodal observatories which record everything that happens, and on the other hand, the hypothesis of a UAP signature with specific criteria so to search for one.
While the Galileo project is mainly focused on the former at the moment, he announced that the team is beginning to consider how to set up the latter.
Dr Wesley Watters went on to explain the hard and yet invisible amount of work carried out in the project, calibrating the observatories equipment to the extreme and processing the data recovered as a result. In this respect, he showed images of the impressive amount of data generated by the multiple instruments, indicating that they are still in the process of commissioning the observatories. Indeed, until the observatories can be used continuously, the instruments need to be fully calibrated, and the data processing system set up. They use and train artificial intelligences with simulated data to recognize conventional objects, create trajectories from image-by-image analysis and then link them to known performance envelopes to detect anomalous signatures. At present, the observatories consist of infrared cameras and microphone arrays. Dr Wesley Watters presented how they were developing new techniques for interpreting signals from these arrays, to recover the audio signatures of birds, aircraft, and their echoes on the environment to deduce speed, altitude, and direction. They then set out to develop a foundational model to enable the system to self-supervise.
Dr Wesley Watters then presented other detection platforms they are working on, much more compact and easy to transport. He showed preliminary results with examples of meteors light signatures. One of the methods used to distinguish objects is to use trajectory analysis and extract turn angles to detect objects which are capable of rapidly changing trajectory. He also showed their optical signature triangulation trials, simultaneously using several cameras to estimate the altitude and distance of aircraft. He added that in his opinion, the two most promising tools for obtaining data in the future would be a spectroscope, obtaining the precise light signature of an object, and radar.
When asked by Sentinel News about a possible solution to the immense amount of data retrieved by such an observatory, he replied that they had not found an ideal solution, keeping in mind that access to the data was essential. The only possibility is to reduce the data input by recording only what would be picked up as anomalous by artificial intelligence, but at present this is not yet viable.
This question is particularly important, as it lies at the heart of Sentinel Lab's mobile observatory project, SELMO. Scheduled to go into official operation in January 2025, the observatory’s instruments are already being tested in the field to identify the best possible settings for observation campaigns. The current issue, however, is the sheer volume of data generated by high-resolution instruments, both in terms of time and accuracy. This data needs to be easily accessible if it is to be exploited, and stored securely, away from the influence of electromagnetic fields. Furthermore, outdoor network connections often can't cope with the sheer volume of data required for remote storage.
The Latest Scientific News From UAlbany and UAPx
Last to speak was Matthew Szydagis, Associate Professor of Physics at the State University of New York at Albany, he presented the results of UAPx, a research group that conducted a field study in 2021 on the US West Coast near Los Angeles. He explained the immense efforts made to develop analog methods of automatic anomaly detection, and how they tried to categorize and explain as many anomalies as possible. The main anomaly that was identified remains unexplained to this day. The radar data obtained even seems to show that a phenomenon did occur at the filmed location, despite the results being inconclusive.
He then argued for a level of acceptance of scientific evidence on UAPs at sigma 3, which physicists consider statically acceptable, and translated into the fact that a situation due to coincidence has a likelihood of far less than a 1% chance of occurring and provoking a false correlation of data.
He concluded his presentation by calling on interested parties to join the course he'll be giving at the Society for UAP Studies in September on propulsion modes for interstellar travel.
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