The Council on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena was established in parallel with the release of new government documents on mysterious phenomena recorded by pilots, the military, intelligence agencies and federal agents over decades.
Administration Donald Trump formed a new scientific council for unidentified anomalous phenomena, in which several scientists are convinced that some of the unexplained phenomena could be related to technology of extraterrestrial origin. The problem, however, is that even the thousands of pages of documents released by the US government this year do not yet offer solid evidence for such a claim.
"Alien hunters are now in charge," is how the New York Times begins a story about the new American Council for the Scientific Study of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena - UAP, as the phenomena once known simply as NLO today they officially call it.
The council was established by President Donald Trump's administration this summer, in parallel with the release of new government documents about mysterious phenomena recorded by pilots, the military, intelligence services and federal agents over decades.
It is headed by Avi Loeb, a theoretical astrophysicist from Harvard and one of the most famous scientists who openly considers the possibility of alien technology.
"Even if only one in a million cases turns out to be of extraterrestrial technological origin, it would be the greatest discovery humanity has ever made in science," says Loeb.
Trump explained the publication of the documents on social networks with the desire that people can decide for themselves "what the hell is going on."
Among the new documents, the report from October 2023 stands out.
Two federal agents were investigating drone sightings around sensitive facilities in the western United States when they saw a series of rapidly moving lights on a clear night. They turned off the vehicle's lights and followed them using night vision equipment.
As they approached, the lights coalesced, according to one agent's report, into a powerful white-orange ball of light surrounded by what appeared to be a halo.
The agents approached her at about fifty yards, or less than 50 meters. The object then changed direction at high speed. When they tried to follow him, he changed course again and disappeared.
But not for long.
When the agents stopped, the glowing orb reappeared and, they said, emitted multiple orange and purple lights that flew across miles of inaccessible terrain.
One of the agents compared the whole chase to chasing after "the flying car from Harry Potter".
According to a Pentagon memo, six agents reported seeing "bullets ejecting other bullets" over two days.
What they actually saw - the documents do not explain.
Such mysteries, however, are not new.
Back in February 1949, scientists gathered at Los Alamos to discuss the green fireballs that were being observed around research facilities. Among the participants was Edward Teller, one of the creators of the hydrogen bomb. They also failed to explain the phenomenon.
Loeb believes that the main problem with most historical cases is the poor quality of the data.
"We can't go back in time and improve the data," he says.
Loeb himself caused great controversy when he hypothesized that Oumuamua, the unusual elongated interstellar object that passed through the solar system in 2017, could be the product of extraterrestrial technology. Much of the astronomical community rejected such an interpretation as insufficiently supported by evidence.
However, not everyone in Trump's new council is convinced that aliens are knocking on our door.
Michael Shermer, the founder of Skeptic magazine, was given the role of a kind of "devil's advocate". His assessment of the material released so far is much more down-to-earth: mostly blurry photos, grainy videos, and stories from people who claim to have seen something unusual.
A particular problem, he says, is that the same pattern appears again and again. People come to the council who claim they have not seen spaceships themselves, but know someone who knows where the government keeps such objects.
When council members ask them who the man is, the answer is usually, "I can't tell you."
Shermer and Loeb even bet a thousand dollars whether evidence of extraterrestrial life would be found by 2030.
"I say he won't, he says he will," Shermer said. "I hope he wins."
Other council members go much further.
Retired rear admiral and oceanographer Tim Gallaudet claims that objects "not of our origin" are operating freely in US airspace and waters.
Stanford pathology professor Gary Nolan, who studied the allegedly anomalous materials, previously claimed that "there is something inhuman here and it has been here for a long time."
Anthropologist Peter Scafish says he is convinced that non-human technologies exist and that there are secret efforts within the intelligence community to study, detect and track them.
But even he calls the newly discovered documents "low-hanging fruit" -- material that was relatively easy to declassify and make public.
Skeptics, including former senior US officials, see the new advice very differently.
Sean Kirkpatrick, who led the Pentagon's Office of Anomalous Investigation during the Joseph Biden administration, called the new advice a senseless waste of taxpayer money and an attempt to introduce fringe theories into official policy.
Kirkpatrick claims that during his work he found no evidence of either alien technology or an alleged government conspiracy to conceal its existence.
"The best thing that could have happened to me in that job would have been to find aliens and be able to bring them before the public," he said. "But I didn't."
Even the documents published so far did not impress the long-time researchers of the UFO phenomenon.
Professor Greg Egigian from the University of Pennsylvania estimates that there is nothing particularly new or revolutionary in them.
NYT writes that this year it created a database with about 155.000 unique pages of documents on UAP occurrences from seven states. Definitive proof that technology of extraterrestrial origin has arrived on Earth has not been found.
The members of the new council also ask a different question: if an advanced alien civilization exists, why do we expect its representatives to look like little green people?
Nolan believes that the development of artificial intelligence is also changing the way we should think about possible life beyond Earth.
A sufficiently advanced civilization, he believes, would almost certainly use artificial intelligence. After a long enough time, it might not even be possible to distinguish such a civilization from some kind of superintelligent AI.
In other words, if something actually reaches Earth one day, it doesn't have to have two arms, two legs - or be alive in the sense that we understand life.
As the NYT writes, for now there remain many unexplained recordings and testimonies, but no confirmed evidence.
And a thousand dollar bet that expires in 2030.
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