If the “day of revelation” comes, how can we trust the evidence of the existence of UFOs?

Steven Spielberg’s new sci-fi film “Disclosure Day,” which hits theaters June 12, explores what might happen when the world gets undeniable proof that we’re not alone in the universe. While the film is pure Hollywood, the possibility that we might one day see actual evidence of the existence of UFOs moves from science fiction to scientific plausibility.

to The last two monthsthe federal government has declassified and published reports of UAPs, or unidentified anomalous phenomena, on A website run by the Ministry of Defence.

While the government’s disclosures provide no actual evidence of extraterrestrial life or alien spacecraft, they do signal a shift from its previous stance of secrecy on the subject. The Pentagon’s real-life versions of the bizarre scenes draw a clear parallel to the film’s plot.

Without spoiling too much, Reveal Day begins in the middle of the action: A whistleblower, played by Josh O’Connor, has stolen evidence of an alien contact cover-up, while a Kansas City TV anchor, played by Emily Blunt, suddenly gains strange new abilities. The duo spends much of the 2.5-hour film on the run from a mysterious government organization that wants to hide the truth.

It was Spielberg Inspired To mark Disclosure Day following a groundbreaking 2017 New York Times report storywhich posted military videos of UAP sightings and claimed the existence of a secret UAP program in the Pentagon. According to what the New York Times quoted some government officials and experts Help reduce stigma Share reports of UFO incidents, especially among service members.

In subsequent congressional hearings, former Navy pilots provided eyewitness accounts of drones in the sky, and a former intelligence officer testified that… The presence of a secret UAP recovery programwhere non-human “biology” was recovered from crash sites.

I’ve looked through several UAP files released so far, and haven’t found any evidence of alien life, but it’s still an interesting read. Some of the documents date back to the era of the Roswell crash in the 1940s, one of the most famous cases of alleged flying saucer recovery. Aliens or not, official military correspondence from 1948 mentioning “flying discs” remains a fascinating historical record.

Media attention, coupled with the government’s admission that it has long investigated UFOs, has helped move the topic beyond conspiracy books and online forums. In recent years, Commissioned by NASA An independent study team examined UAPs, which Prepared a report (PDF) Noting that the agency “must contribute to a comprehensive, government-wide approach to future data collection.” Even the late Pope Francis Directed The idea that alien discovery and religious faith do not have to conflict with each other.

While videos, documents, and testimonials about UAP sightings are interesting to watch and read, the material still lacks experimental data that conclusively proves that extraterrestrial life has visited Earth. However, these sightings are still a matter of debate, with some scientists pointing to other possible explanations, such as drones, satellites, atmospheric phenomena – or even optical and infrared distortions. Many cases seem to point to more mundane terrestrial origins.

As Carl Sagan wrote in A World Inhabited by Demons, his 1995 book about critical thinking and the scientific method: “Everything depends on the question of evidence. The more we want the evidence to be true, the more careful we have to be. No witness statement is good enough.”

Have you ever seen a UFO?

Reveal Day imagines what would happen if we knew for sure that aliens were here. In the real world, the SETI Institute has been studying the stars for traces of life since 1984. Sagan briefly served on the board before his death in 1996. He even wrote the novel that inspired the 1997 science fiction film Contact starring Jodie Foster, which led to the publication of SETI. The institute has been taking the issue of extraterrestrial life seriously for a long time, but has not found any evidence of it yet.

June 5 International Academy of Astronautics It ratified an updated set of post-disclosure protocolswas developed with input from SETI members, to address modern challenges in assessing and verifying evidence for extraterrestrial intelligence. New protocols This will help control how scientists report evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence in today’s global media environment, which is much more complex than when the original Protocols were last revised 15 years ago.

Astrophysicist Michael Garrett, chair of the IAA SETI Post-Discovery Committee, told CNET that misinformation is one of the main reasons for updating the protocols. Artificial intelligence, deepfakes, and social media engagement algorithms have made it harder than ever to tell what’s true from what’s false online.

“Today, rumours, conspiracy theories, fabricated documents, and images, audio and video generated by artificial intelligence can spread very quickly,” Garrett says. “Independent verification by the global scientific community remains the most effective way to establish credibility and maintain public trust.”

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Garrett also said two common misconceptions he hears are that the protocols assume that extraterrestrial civilizations will be hostile or that researchers will try to keep the discovery secret.

“No that’s true,” Garrett said. “The Protocols do not make assumptions about the intentions of extraterrestrial intelligence. Nor do they establish any mechanism for secrecy.”

Instead, Garrett says the protocols emphasize openness and public accountability.

“The updated protocols encourage researchers to make monitoring data, analysis methods, and software tools available to the public where possible once a candidate signal has been verified,” Garrett said. So, if scientists discover alien life in the real world, hopefully we won’t need a government whistleblower to spread the word.

Maybe the truth is not there

It’s entirely possible, and perhaps even likely, that we’ll never know what’s really out there. But this has not stopped decades of rampant speculation and deep fascination with the subject. Sagan argued that many people believe in aliens because humans have historically searched for ways to fill in the gaps in mysteries and inexplicable phenomena.

In 2021, Pew Research Reported that 65% of Americans believe there is intelligent life on other planets. In 2023, A.J Poll them It found that 42% of Americans believe in the existence of UFOs, and 10% say they have actually seen one. Now that the government has released decades of UAP reports and sightings, it seems more likely than before that we might get proof that we’re not alone. Or maybe not.

Sagan has long warned of the dangers of ignoring scientific rigor and how tempting pseudoscience can be. Even when mundane thinking can explain fiction, we often tend to abandon our doubts and ignore the boring explanation.

“We have not yet found conclusive evidence of the existence of life outside Earth,” Sagan wrote in his book “A World Inhabited by Demons” more than three decades ago. “We’re just at the beginning of the research. New and better information, for all we know, may emerge tomorrow.”