There has been a good deal of news recently regarding UFOs. This photo is one of the news items. It is said to have been “leaked” or unofficially released. The website The Debrief has done a good deal of work in investigating the context of this photo. They have spoken to members of the US Department of Defense, and members of the US Intelligence Community.
I see an unidentified standing still object
An enlarged portion of the 2018 photo
Anonymous sources tell us that someone took this photograph in 2018. The backseat weapons systems operator of an F/A-18 fighter jet took this picture with a cell phone camera. The fighter jet was somewhere off the east coast of the United States. This photo was part of a 2018 report from the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF). The pilots reported this object to be perfectly motionless, unlike a GPS dropsonde used in weather research. This photo has been widely distributed among the US Intelligence Community.
I see an unidentified standing still object. The UAPTF was only first mentioned in a 2020 New York Times article. But apparently it has been operating under that name as early as 2018. I infer from the wide distribution of the photo that the Intelligence Community is taking the UAPTF report seriously. The Department of Defense took roughly three years to confirm the leaked UFO videos of 2017 as genuine and complete. Will this photo be confirmed in three years? We’ll find out soon enough.
I see an unidentified standing still object. The New Message from God teaches what is currently a minority viewpoint on the subject of extraterrestrials.
Something happened on Monday, April 27, 2020 that received less attention than it deserved. The US Department of Defense confirmed that three videos that have been public since 2017 are both genuine and complete. Who took these videos? Pilots for the US Navy, while in flight training missions. What is in these videos? Flying objects moving at remarkable speeds and accelerations. Flying objects which could be neither identified nor intercepted. When did the pilots take these videos? In 2004 and 2015. Where did the pilots take these videos? The 2004 video is from off the coast of San Diego, California, USA. The 2015 video is from off the east coast of the United States. (I have written about this here.) Why did the pilots take these videos? The pilots took these videos because the pilots weren’t expecting to see these objects.
This may be all the disclosure we get
Chad Underwood, US Navy pilot recording 2004 “TicTac” UFO video
The Department of Defense confirmed that the flying objects in the videos remain unidentified to this day. No natural phenomenon has demonstrated this speed and acceleration. They are not known to be the military assets of any nation on Earth. They answered one question, only to leave a much larger question unanswered. Many people have contended that the videos were fake or edited. Between 2017 and the present, these videos have undergone intense scrutiny by interested parties. Many hoped to find evidence of fakery or inauthenticity. I imagine the April 27 confirmation disappointed them.
An admission against interest?
This may be all the disclosure we get. I wish to explore another aspect of this event. Can you imagine that the Department of Defense wishes to say that the flying objects in the videos remain unidentified? Would any military on Earth say “We do not know what this is” without significant motivation? I make no claim to know what this motivation might be. However, I consider the very existence of this confirmation to be evidence of its truth. This is known in legal proceedings as an “admission against interest.” The Department of Defense has a lack of incentive to make an embarrassing or damaging statement about itself. This is an indication of the statement’s reliability.
What consequences follow?
Image from the movie “Fire in the Sky”
This may be all the disclosure we get. I realize some people will be greatly disappointed in this. I believe historians will note that in 2019 and 2020, unidentified flying objects (UFOs) took a great step forward in credibility. The United States government has admitted that these objects exist. They have confirmed they are something other than instrument errors or pilot hallucinations. What does this say about the 6,000 UFO reports in the United States in 2019? Are those camera errors or mass insanity? What does this say about the testimonies of people being taken against their will? Are they some kind of cultural delusion? Perhaps we need to reconsider some things we previously rejected.
Have your thoughts and feelings changed?
This may be all the disclosure we get. The New Message from God teaches what is currently a minority viewpoint on the subject of extraterrestrials.
I realize some people consider this not only false, but impossible. But many things once thought to be impossible have turned out to be so. Therefore a belief in the impossibility of something carries little weight with me. Could the April 27 confirmation make this a little less impossible for you?
On the other hand, when this article appeared in the New York Times, it appeared on Page A14, roughly halfway between the front page and the editorial page. Media commentator Glenn Reynolds wrote “What does it say about the news environment that the U.S. government admitted UFOs were real earlier this week, and it was like the fifteenth biggest story?” Which it was.
The US Navy destigmatized UFOs
How do you feel about not being alone? On April 23, 2019, Politico magazine published an article with the headline, “U.S. Navy drafting new guidelines for reporting UFOs.” The May 26 New York Times article described UFO sightings by US Navy pilots in 2014 and 2015. I consider these sightings to have contributed to the new guidelines described in the Politico article.
What do these sightings mean?
Lieutenant Ryan Graves reported numerous UFO sightings in 2014 and 2015
How do you feel about not being alone? No one in my world disputed the testimonies of Lt. Ryan Graves and Lt. Danny Accoin. Graves and Accoin are the two Navy fighter pilots who spoke publicly and on the record to the New York Times.
A Navy veteran I spoke with mentioned that at one time, reporting a UFO was hazardous to a pilot’s military career. Furthermore, it was hazardous to a post-military career as a commercial pilot as well. Besides Graves and Accoin, there were three other pilots who only spoke to the New York Times on conditions of anonymity. It takes a great deal of time, effort and resources to take a person from a pilot trainee to a pilot. I surmise that there have been many UFO sightings by many Navy pilots. Enough to make it unprofitable to consider a UFO sighting as a sign of mental instability.
Plenty of people in my world offered opinions regarding the significance of these sightings. One person suggested that some party was developing the capability of projecting illusions to the radar of military aircraft. Another person suggested that the objects sighted by the pilots were advanced military craft. Still another person suggested that it was impossible for these objects to be of extraterrestrial origin, because of the vast distances between stars.
At this point, history helps
How do you feel about not being alone? I know someone is reading this and thinking “Well, what about you, Douglas? What do you think and how do you feel about these things?” Like everyone else in my world, I accept the testimonies of Ryan Graves and Danny Accoin. I believe they saw what they said they saw. I believe they saw objects capable of both hypersonic speed and hovering in one spot. I believe they didn’t see what they said they didn’t see. I believe Danny Accoin didn’t see the object that his radar detected.
The pilots of that squadron considered it unlikely that the US military would introduce advanced craft into a training mission. In recent history, when the US military has obtained a superior weapon, it has used it. The US used an atomic bomb in World War II. The US has used cruise missiles (developed in the 1970s) and drone warfare (developed in the 1990s) in the 21st Century. Therefore, if the US military had a craft that could both travel at hypersonic speeds and hover in one spot, I believe it would use it. The only exception I know of is the hydrogen bomb.
What if it’s…not American?
When other nations have developed superior weapons, they have used them. Germany used the V-2 missile in World War II. Therefore, if the military of another nation on Earth had a craft that do these things, I believe it would use it. If a military force had the capability of projecting illusions to military aircraft, I believe it would use it.
Humans have considered the possibility of intelligent extraterrestrial life for a very long time. It took centuries to confirm the intuition that the sun is a star. It took centuries to confirm the intuition that there were planets orbiting stars other than our sun. Therefore, the fact that human intuition about intelligent extraterrestrial life has not yet been confirmed, carries little weight with me.
I realize this is improbable
How do you feel about not being alone? The New Message from God teaches what is currently a minority viewpoint on the subject of extraterrestrials.
I realize these ideas are considered improbable at this time. But at this point, I’m recalling the words of Sherlock Holmes: “How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?”
“Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;”
Many new planets swim into our ken
I mention this to share two items of space exploration news. The first item is the sixth anniversary of the launch of the Kepler space telescope. Many times scientists conduct experiments expecting to find certain things. Many times they fail to find what they had hoped for. But the Kepler mission has found what was looking for in abundance.
Many new planets swim into our ken. How many? Kepler has found 1,019 exoplanets, planets outside our solar system. By “found” I mean “found possibilities of exoplanets which were later confirmed by independent observation.” The above image shows an artist conception of 5 of those exoplanets who share the same star. In addition to this, Kepler has found possibilities of an additional 3,100 “candidates” which will either be confirmed or discarded in the future. The mission scientists believe that 90% of the candidates will be confirmed as exoplanets, although I don’t know how they know this.
Many new planets swim into our ken. Where does this figure of 1,019 exoplanets fit into the larger picture of exoplanet exploration? At this point, NASA reports a total of 1,827 confirmed planets. The first exoplanet was discovered in 1992. In other words, Kepler has discovered more planets in the past six years than all the efforts from 1992 to 2009. And that’s not counting the candidates. Even though crucial components of Kepler failed in May of 2013, I consider the Kepler mission to be a smashing, groundbreaking success.
I was rummaging through an old poetry book at a used book sale when I came across this poem by American poet Walt Whitman (1819-1892). “When I Heard The Learn’d Astronomer” was written in 1865, and appeared in the 1881 edition of Leaves of Grass.
Space beyond any astronomer’s dreams. There are 9 steps in Steps to Knowledge where the phrase “Greater Community” is mentioned in the step itself. The first step is Step 187, “I am a citizen of the Greater Community of Worlds.”. The last step is Step 326. Part of the preparation of Steps to Knowledge is how an individual can prepare for humanity’s emergence into a greater community of intelligent life.
Space beyond any astronomer’s dreams. But for right now, I need poetry to even be able to think about things too great for me to bear. Who knows, maybe Walt Whitman felt a little bit of what I’m feeling now. I don’t believe Whitman bore any ill will toward the learn’d astronomer, merely that his configuration of inner lenses and mirrors had a different focus.
When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) was many things in his full, eventful life. He displayed a talent for memory as a child. He was an ordained Catholic priest and a member of the Dominican order. He was considered a scientist of that time. His instrumentation was inadequate to prove or disprove his thought experiments. He expressed his scientific and philosophical arguments in the form of literary dialogues.
The part of his life I find mysterious is his ideas about the universe. Nicolas de Cusa had suggested a hundred years or so earlier that the sun is but another star. In the early 16th century, Nicolaus Copernicus showed that the earth and the other planets revolved around the sun.
Giordano Bruno, prophet of the Greater Community
Giordano Bruno put together a number of ideas. Suppose the sun is but another star. Suppose there are planets around our sun. Why should there not be planets around other stars as well? Our planet has intelligent life on it. People believe that is a good thing. Why should there not be intelligent life on the many other planets revolving around the other stars? Why should that not be a good thing too?
Giordano Bruno envisioned what the New Message from God refers to as the Greater Community of Worlds. Sometimes it is just called the Greater Community. It is a universe swarming and teeming with intelligent life. I therefore call him the prophet of the Greater Community, someone who considered the idea quite a bit before its time.
