The Truth About UAPs with Jon Kosloski

What’s really going on with UAPs? Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-host Paul Mecurio get to the bottom of identifying the unidentifiable with Jon Kosloski, Director of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO).

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Paul.

• 0:00Paul Mecurio?

  Yes.

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Finally got to the bottom of the UAPs.

• 0:02Paul Mecurio?

  Yes, which is, we don't know anything. But it's so fascinating.

• 0:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we know a couple of things.

• 0:08Paul Mecurio?

  We do.

• 0:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so they go from UAP to IAP.

• 0:11Paul Mecurio?

  IAP.

• 0:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Identified.

• 0:12Paul Mecurio?

  Right. They're slices of pie and balloons sent up by little kids. So I feel good.

• 0:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Coming up on StarTalk.

• 0:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. Neil deGrasse Tyson, you're a personal astrophysicist. And today I have as my co-host.

• 0:43Paul Mecurio?

  What's up?

• 0:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hello, Mr. Macario.

• 0:46Paul Mecurio?

  Good to see you, buddy.

• 0:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. What you doing, man?

• 0:48Paul Mecurio?

  Uh, you know, just running around trying to be funny. And not annoying my wife. And I got a dog.

• 0:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As a professional comedian, you can't just try to be funny. You have to be funny.

• 0:57Paul Mecurio?

  Well, it depends.

• 0:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There is no try.

• 0:59Paul Mecurio?

  It depends on the fee. It's all, it's all.

• 1:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really?

• 1:02Paul Mecurio?

  It's all, it's a sliding scale.

• 1:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're a writer and performer for the Late Show?

• 1:07Paul Mecurio?

  I perform on the Late Show.

• 1:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, Late Show.

• 1:10Paul Mecurio?

  And you were on a while back. Awesome with Mr. Shatner, one of the best shows we ever did.

• 1:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent.

• 1:16Paul Mecurio?

  And.

• 1:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you got a Broadway show.

• 1:18Paul Mecurio?

  I do, because I'm a big shot.

• 1:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. Permission to speak.

• 1:22Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, directed by Frank Oz.

• 1:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What I like about that is it takes the improv dimension of a crowd interaction and makes it, it formalizes it into a show.

• 1:30Paul Mecurio?

  It does, and it's more, it's not like just crowd work, insult stuff. It's really like just getting people's stories. People have incredible stories. And I find that they like it because it's no judgment, say whatever you want.

• 1:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, good.

• 1:41Paul Mecurio?

  And it's really fun. And now it's online on YouTube and Patreon.

• 1:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. PaulMacario.com it is. Yes, so today's topic, we have with us the director of the All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office. I think I said that right?

• 1:59Paul Mecurio?

  You did.

• 1:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The A A R O. Please join me in welcoming John Kostrowski. Did I say your name right?

• 2:06Paul Mecurio?

  You did, you did. Thank you.

• 2:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk. It's a pleasure to be here.

• 2:09Paul Mecurio?

  Nice to have you.

• 2:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, my gosh, there is no one in the world, perhaps no one in the universe, that isn't interested in this topic. It's a great topic. Totally a great topic. Yeah. Yeah. Fun job.

• 2:19Paul Mecurio?

  Do you ever get burned out when you go out and somebody wants to talk to you, but you're just trying to have a beer?

• 2:24Speaker 02

  It hasn't happened yet, but maybe a year and a half.

• 2:26Paul Mecurio?

  I'm gonna tell everybody to do it. Where do you live? Just give us your address.

• 2:30Speaker 02

  Post it on your webpage.

• 2:31Paul Mecurio?

  Yes, exactly.

• 2:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you're trained in electrical engineering?

• 2:34Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Love that. And you did research in quantum optics, I think?

• 2:40Speaker 02

  I did, yes.

• 2:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that a good way to classify that?

• 2:42Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you were formerly with the NSA in the Research Directorate?

• 2:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  NSA. People have love-hate relationship with the NSA.

• 2:50Speaker 02

  They do.

• 2:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In case you didn't know that, I just thought I'd...

• 2:52Speaker 02

  Be careful what you say. I still technically work for them. I'm just on a diversity assignment for a couple of years with Arrow, so I do have to go back.

• 2:59Paul Mecurio?

  I could tell you work for the NSA. You seem very calm. You're controlling your heartbeat right now, aren't you?

• 3:03Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 3:04Paul Mecurio?

  That's the training. That's the training.

• 3:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, our audience is not unfamiliar with UAPs. We've done a whole show where we had one of my colleagues, David Spurgill, who was head of the... this was a civilian commission to look at the reports of unidentified anomalous phenomena. But you're the first one we have who's from on the inside.

• 3:25Speaker 02

  Oh, wonderful.

• 3:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On this. So, we're delighted to have you. And we have a zillion questions.

• 3:31Speaker 02

  Bring them.

• 3:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, let me just start off. Tell us, why were UFOs rebranded as UAP? That's the only way I can think about what you guys did. We all know what UFOs are: unidentified flying objects. And now, you're still using the U, unidentified, and anomalous, that extra, I don't know what it is, and then P is phenomenon. So, what led to this need to rebrand it?

• 3:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, essentially, the public took over the term UFO and made it synonymous with extraterrestrials. And for us in the government, that becomes problematic because the definition's sort of supposed to be in the name. Unidentified and anomalous. We don't know what it is. We need to approach it without bias. Could be any number of things, but if we just assume it's extraterrestrial, that's gonna guide our investigation.

• 4:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Got it. So, it put a little distance between you and that assumption that people make?

• 4:24Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 4:25Paul Mecurio?

  So, you were working in this broader sense while UFO existed, and you would get annoyed, you'd be in the office and start screaming at the TV when you saw somebody say UFO?

• 4:34Speaker 02

  Not me personally, but some of my predecessors.

• 4:36Paul Mecurio?

  I heard it was you. I really heard that you went...

• 4:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so an anomalous phenomenon, how would one commonly be detected?

• 4:45Speaker 02

  So, the most common detection is just the human eyeballs.

• 4:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 4:48Speaker 02

  Most of our reports are coming in from people, but that lends itself to think that cameras are also going to be a great way of detecting them.

• 4:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You think, right?

• 4:56Speaker 02

  Yep, your doorbell cam is going to pick up every weird flying object. Most of those are probably grasshoppers or gnats. But it's probably going to be coming in from cameras. We're also going to be using radars and other types of sensors, that, anything that can pick up a physical object, and then looking at electromagnetics as well.

• 5:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so you have a background in quantum optics?

• 5:14Speaker 02

  I do.

• 5:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you get to use some of that research background from your PhD in this effort?

• 5:19Speaker 02

  I hope so. I think that if we're digging in-

• 5:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tell us what quantum optics is. It's just, it's just thinking of light as photons rather than as waves. Is that all it is?

• 5:27Speaker 02

  For the most part, that's what it is, yes. Looking at the unique nature of light, once you get down to the really small phenomenon. But it has a wave property, it has phase, you know, there's interesting things that can be done with optics at certain levels.

• 5:40Paul Mecurio?

  Can it, can it explain light emissions from UAPs? Because I know there's, there's sort of unusual light emissions at times, right?

• 5:46Speaker 02

  Don't know, don't know. We don't have good enough scientific data, and that's really the heart of the problem right now.

• 5:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, the whole notion of detection of some kind of electromagnetic energy, you're uniquely positioned as an expert, a research expert in that field.

• 6:02Speaker 02

  Yep, that's what we're going for. We have enough fuzzy pictures of Bigfoot.

• 6:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, no, exactly.

• 6:07Speaker 02

  We have to put out some more standard sensors, and then once we have an understanding of what the phenomenon could be, then we'll look at upgrading the sensors. But we have to go from just eyeballs to sensors, so it's a huge step right now.

• 6:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And there are many more eyeballs that are just regular people walking around the world-

• 6:21Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 6:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  -than you could ever duplicate in your own government-

• 6:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's no substituting for that kind of volume of sensors.

• 6:27Paul Mecurio?

  And listen, I think that's great, but I don't, it's, we're human, my neighbor, I don't want to go off of his eyeballs, he's nuts.

• 6:35Paul Mecurio?

  For anybody watching, you know, four people in your life, would you trust that, like, so don't, don't you get a little, like, how do you vet these, in all seriousness?

• 6:43Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 6:44Paul Mecurio?

  You know, unless the guy shows up with like foil on his head, Neil, uh, how do you, how do you vet some of that?

• 6:51Speaker 02

  That's a great question. So, we believe that everyone coming to us is sincere. And we accept everything that they're saying, and then we look to corroborate that. So it's not any one narrative that we're going off of. It's the collection of narratives.

• 7:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very important, you don't prejudge what they're saying. You receive it as some form of data, however flawed it might be.

• 7:09Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 7:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so now, what distinguishes what you do and your interest in collecting data? From what I know, my colleague was interested in David Spiegel, who was head of, like, there was a civilian panel that was brought on during the hearings to report on what might they, these objects be? How might NASA participate? How might we crowdsource data? So they came out with a suggestion that maybe there's a, there's an app that someone develops that if you see something, invoke the app and the app will gather all the right information from your smartphone, because everybody's got a smartphone, and then feed a central clearinghouse so that you can have as best information as you can gather. That's what he was talking about.

• 7:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what might you know or what do you have access to that would be different from what he was trying to solve? And is that a matter of what's classified versus what's not classified?

• 8:00Speaker 02

  Not so much classified versus unclassified, but maybe resources and the ability to reach out a little wider audience and partnerships. So we read the study from the NASA. We had folks participate in that. A lot of great recommendations and we're following a number of them.

• 8:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I thought it was very, very sensible and level-headed and honest and, yeah.

• 8:20Speaker 02

  One of the issues we have, though, is if we're collecting data with cell phones, it's a very small aperture camera. And if we're taking pictures of something rather far away, similar with telescopes, small aperture telescope, you're only going to get certain resolution. And so we're looking at larger sensors, more widely distributed. And so we're going to be tying in with a variety of sensors from other US government organizations, and that's really the benefit that our office brings, is that ability to partner across the whole federal government as well as with the private citizens and academia.

• 8:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you're a branch of the Pentagon?

• 8:49Speaker 02

  We are, yes.

• 8:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what is an example of what would become classified information relative to non-classified?

• 8:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, so there's nothing inherently classified about the anomalous phenomenon. It tends to be-

• 9:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because we can all see it.

• 9:02Speaker 02

  Exactly. Yeah, and we don't know what it is. So you can't say that it's classified if you don't know what it is.

• 9:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We classify your ignorance.

• 9:11Speaker 02

  I tell them that all the time with mine, but the issue is the platform it's collected on. So if we're collecting data, say, from a specific type of fighter and it has really high fidelity sensors on it, we don't want to let the adversary know the capabilities of those sensors. So that data is classified until we can decrease the resolution perhaps, or remove the anomalous data from the sensitive part, not give away any of the capabilities, and then just focus on the scientific data.

• 9:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because I think most people who think of something that would be classified, they're never thinking that maybe we classify how well we can observe something.

• 9:47Speaker 02

  That's exactly right.

• 9:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or what the specs are of this new device that came out of some new lab that the adversaries doesn't know we can measure with that precisely, or don't even know we have such a device. And so, because people usually think, it's classified because we found an entire flying saucer. That's classified, right? But most of what's classified is not that.

• 10:08Speaker 02

  No, it's the quality of the sensor.

• 10:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Quality of the data.

• 10:11Speaker 02

  Where we fly the platforms. You know, if we're flying in an area where we don't want the public necessarily to know about, we'll have to scrub that data a little bit before we share it with the public.

• 10:18Paul Mecurio?

  So we're talking about adversaries and foreign adversaries. How do you?

• 10:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Foreign or domestic.

• 10:23Paul Mecurio?

  Foreign.

• 10:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Get the speech right here.

• 10:26Paul Mecurio?

  Foreign or domestic. How do you, how do you get a sense, if you're looking at something that's potentially UAP, is in fact sort of some advanced technology from a foreign adversary, and how do you, and then do they sort of leverage off of us not knowing and get into a disinformation campaign?

• 10:47Speaker 02

  Great question.

• 10:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, great question.

• 10:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, so.

• 10:50Paul Mecurio?

  Thank you. I'm done.

• 10:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:52Paul Mecurio?

  Can I leave now?

• 10:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 10:54Speaker 02

  You've earned your donation on Patreon. Any unknown phenomenon is an opportunity for an adversary to be operating. And that's really one of the reasons that our office is inside of the Pentagon. It provides us access to all the information about our programs, which we would call blue programs, as well as what we know about potential adversary programs and where our sensors are.

• 11:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You said blue programs?

• 11:14Speaker 02

  Blue. So US government, blue, as in... The US Air Force, yeah.

• 11:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, let's get into some nitty gritty here.

• 11:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You want to collect data.

• 11:22Speaker 02

  We do.

• 11:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On objects where we don't otherwise know what it is. You have a clearinghouse for this data? What do you do with it? You pour over it? Do you, what do you do? What do you?

• 11:31Paul Mecurio?

  And to tag that is, do you have standardized protocols? Because if you're getting data from all different sources, how do you get some sort of standard measurement so that you can relate it to each other?

• 11:41Speaker 02

  Lots of good questions. So, the office is...

• 11:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's your second good question today.

• 11:44Paul Mecurio?

  Oh, thank you.

• 11:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, that's your quota.

• 11:46Paul Mecurio?

  Can I get a raise, old star?

• 11:48Speaker 02

  You're getting paid for this?

• 11:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 11:49Paul Mecurio?

  Look, I got two bottles of water for it.

• 11:52Speaker 02

  So, the data right now is primarily coming in from Department of Defense channels. So, that's pilots, ground crews. We're also getting some from the FAA and from some law enforcement. We are going to be opening up to the public soon and have a public reporting mechanism. Is that...

• 12:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How soon?

• 12:08Speaker 02

  Hopefully, by the end of this fiscal year. So, before October.

• 12:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The government fiscal year. So, in 2025.

• 12:13Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 12:13Paul Mecurio?

  Website?

• 12:14Speaker 02

  Before October. It'll be based on a website and we can circle back to that in a minute. But the data comes into our office. Right now, it's primarily narrative data. We're going to be tying into more sensors, as we talked about. So, that'll be slightly different.

• 12:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And by the way, if people are encouraged to use their smartphone or use some other detection device, then there'll be less narrative data that you'll be

• 12:33Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 12:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  cued into.

• 12:35Speaker 02

  Absolutely. And so, in this website, they'll be able to upload certain types of media, pictures and video up to a certain volume.

• 12:42Paul Mecurio?

  You know you're going to get a lot of weird pictures, like guys at their birthday party, stuff like that, just whatever.

• 12:48Speaker 02

  We're prepared for that. But inside of that large haystack, hopefully, there'll be some really nice needles that we can use. And so, potentially, a lot of data. Right now, we have a little over 1,800 cases. And so, we're going to be investing heavily in automation, machine learning, artificial intelligence, that we'll be able to triage, use natural language processing, look for correlations across that data and feed into investigations.

• 13:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What will you do, which we're already contending with, when people introduce...

• 13:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fake data created by AI. Do you have safeguards against being fooled by that?

• 13:24Speaker 02

  We're working on it, but I don't know that there is a work every time solution. I think that there's always going to be advancements in that technology. They're coming out weekly.

• 13:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yep.

• 13:33Speaker 02

  And it's just going to be an arms race essentially and how well we can detect that. It'll be one of the offshoots.

• 13:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, so so true. If someone claims there's a, you know, a flying saucer in front of the place and then they produce a photo of it, AI generated photo, and no one else has any other photo, yet there are other people in the street. Because when you have multiple photos, you have different, you can triangulate on what's going on.

• 13:54Paul Mecurio?

  You're like Columbo. You're like, it's amazing. You figure out if there's five people and one gives and the other doesn't.

• 14:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, what I'm saying, it's very hard, even for AI, because AI doesn't think this way, to properly reproduce every angle that everyone has on that object and what that object would look like from every side. And most people who would want to pull such a prank wouldn't know enough to even give the right instructions to make that happen, is all I'm saying. So, so that's part of your checks and balances on the data that you receive.

• 14:26Speaker 02

  It is, but similar to the narrative data, we're not going to go off just any one report. It's all about feeding into the scientific method. It'll.

• 14:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Scientific method? What's that? What? What? You're going too fast now.

• 14:40Paul Mecurio?

  Whoa, Mr. Big Shot. I work for the DOD. Real quick on AI. There's theories that, you know, AI in and of itself has its issues because it's designed in a way to give you the answer you want. It's a product that they want you to keep using, right? So in a way, you have to also sort through that, right?

• 15:00Speaker 02

  We do.

• 15:00Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, because like I type in Paul Mcherio's handsome. Yes, you are. Yes, you are. And it just keeps coming back. No, in all seriousness, that's an issue.

• 15:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've done this? It sounds like you've done this.

• 15:11Paul Mecurio?

  No, but in all seriousness, that can be an issue too, right? You can only trust it so much in and of itself inherently based on what it is right now.

• 15:19Speaker 02

  Yes, and there's also that possibility of hallucinations within AI.

• 15:23Paul Mecurio?

  Tell me about it.

• 15:24Speaker 02

  It's going to be essential for us to be using different types of systems and a variety of filters. But all of that is not to do automated analysis. It's to help do triaging, prioritize what gets put in front of a human and not remove the human from the loop.

• 15:38Paul Mecurio?

  You're supporting, you're supporting the more substantial, substantial evidence of AI.

• 15:52Speaker 03

  Hello, I'm Vicky Barok Allen and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Nailed Grass Tyson.

• 16:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you try to get information on the person reporting? The reason why I ask is many people who saw the Navy video, of course, with the with the monochromatic Tic Tac, and you hear the excitement in the Navy pilots, with those F-18s, I guess, where they were flying, in restricted airspace, of course, but you hear that excitement and then you say to yourself, "These are Navy pilots, they wouldn't be trying to fool us." So, there's an assumption that a person's pedigree makes their data better, or their reactions better than someone else without pedigree. And my view on this is, are you human? Then you have susceptibilities. Period.

• 16:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't care how many stars and bars you have on your uniform. That being said, the community of amateur astronomers in the world, it's a world community, we look up all the time. We look up more than Navy pilots do, okay? You don't get an increased number of sightings of things they don't understand, because we know what the hell we're looking at. We know what Venus looks like in the twilight-stuck sky. We know what... I'm on a roll here. We know what satellites look like when they're crossing the sky, and when they're lit and then they disappear? How did that happen? They went into Earth's shadow, because we know this. So, do you take into account what might be the profession of the person reporting?

• 17:36Speaker 02

  We do.

• 17:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because it can go both ways, is all I'm saying.

• 17:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, we're not looking for conclusions. So, if somebody reports something, we want to know what they experienced, what they saw, not what they think they saw.

• 17:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but of course you're going to get what they think they saw. I have correspondence from an old lady in Brooklyn who wrote to me, say, not she didn't know me, I was just Director of the Planetarium, so that's what I was.

• 18:00Speaker 02

  You're just that guy.

• 18:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just that guy, right? She writes to me and says, "There's a hovering..."

• 18:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's a hovering light in the sky. And so I wrote back and I said, what direction are you looking? Well, I'm looking towards Manhattan. So, okay, so she's looking west. Okay, so I know that Venus was visible after sunset at that time. And I say, well, how high above, how high in the sky? Well, it's about a few inches above Marty's Deli.

• 18:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay?

• 18:31Paul Mecurio?

  This is what you're gonna get.

• 18:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then I said, oh, okay, you're very likely seeing planet Venus. It is very bright and it's not hovering. It's just there and it's gonna set like everything. And she said, wow. And she had a kind of an older voice, so she had to have been there a while. And I said, cause I'm thinking, this is not the first time this has happened with Venus. So, how come you've never noticed this before? Oh, there used to be a building blocking my view and they tore it down and now I can see the sky.

• 19:03Paul Mecurio?

  I would just wanna be in her apartment. Irving, I'm telling you, it's not a streetlight. It's not a streetlight, Irving. See, I told you. Look, it's there again. It's coming for us.

• 19:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so she is speaking truth.

• 19:18Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 19:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As her perceptive ability enables her.

• 19:22Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 19:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, no, she's not interpreting it. She's not saying, I see aliens, you know, flying in the sky. So there was that accuracy. But to tell me it's a few inches above Marty's Deli is not helpful, right?

• 19:33Speaker 02

  It requires a lot more like work on our part after the fact. And we do get a lot of that. But we find that most people do report, like you were saying, what they're seeing and it's fairly accurate. Now, the context is a little off from our perspective. But when we talk to folks, we're not looking to look at their pedigree, like you were saying. We just wanna understand the context. Were you stressed? Were you looking up? Were you looking down? You know, what was going on with you?

• 19:56Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, where you have like multiple safety nets regarding getting just narrative information from people, from the average person. So you start to sort of sift through that using those. But, and you standardize it as best you can, as you said, at this point.

• 20:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, there'll be a standard for the public reporting, which isn't out yet. There'll be a standard form that will ask certain questions. And then people will be able to add additional context in the email to fill it out.

• 20:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, how many people are in your office?

• 20:25Speaker 02

  Several dozen. It's a little fluid, you know, people are coming and going.

• 20:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that feels like the right number. I mean, at least initially, if it becomes a big thing, sure.

• 20:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it's not the size of our office that's really critical. It's the partnerships that we have across the US government and that we're building with the federally funded research and development.

• 20:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So many of those people are establishing those, that connectivity.

• 20:43Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 20:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you know what would be cool? If you guys developed a kit, people would buy this kit, you know, that has different tools of measurement. And then, basically, you're deputizing everyone to become a scientist.

• 20:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, so there are some UFO groups that have designed kits, observatories essentially, and there are some.

• 21:02Paul Mecurio?

  Badges, you gotta have a badge.

• 21:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You need a badge. It's not official, unless you have a badge.

• 21:06Paul Mecurio?

  Big shiny badge.

• 21:07Speaker 02

  Once you get me one, then we can start handing out to other people.

• 21:10Paul Mecurio?

  I wouldn't mind that pin, by the way, if you want to throw it my way. Anyway, go ahead.

• 21:14Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 21:15Paul Mecurio?

  You have one?

• 21:16Speaker 02

  Here you go.

• 21:17Paul Mecurio?

  Oh, my God!

• 21:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What?

• 21:19Paul Mecurio?

  I just got a free pin, everybody.

• 21:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What?

• 21:21Paul Mecurio?

  This is going on eBay in an hour.

• 21:23Speaker 02

  They better bring a lot. But you're absolutely right. I think getting more sensors out into the country, getting more data.

• 21:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And these are sensors that have a uniform calibration, because you're supplying them.

• 21:36Speaker 02

  I think that's a good idea. Now, whether or not we, the US government, can sell sensors, probably not. But what we can do is procure sensors, we can deploy sensors, and potentially provide that data back out to the public, like through data.gov. NASA does this already.

• 21:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, good.

• 21:50Speaker 02

  Other groups have done.

• 21:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I forgot there's a data.gov.

• 21:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, they push data out. And so I think that, similar to the way that the folks have helped NASA observe things coming in through an analysis of their data, we should be able to push our data out and help them find the unusual things.

• 22:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just because the amateur astronomy community has more eyes on the sky than professional astrophysicists. So they will discover things, and then alert the professional community, and then we can turn our big telescopes on it.

• 22:15Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 22:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And get a better view.

• 22:17Speaker 02

  We're thinking the same thing.

• 22:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 22:19Paul Mecurio?

  So you also have to be conscious in the location and the type of sensor affecting geographical bias, and does, do you run the risk of?

• 22:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's geographical bias?

• 22:27Paul Mecurio?

  One of the biases of, that you have to face, right? And then you have hotspots, or, you know, that aren't truly hotspots.

• 22:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's geographical bias?

• 22:34Paul Mecurio?

  That, this sort of, there's a presumption that UAPs have been seen in one area, and so people start to think that they've seen more in that area.

• 22:43Speaker 02

  A sociological effect, essentially.

• 22:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 22:45Speaker 02

  So yeah, there's a couple issues that we're contending with. One, there could be a geographic bias just imposed by the natural environment. If there's more ambient light from cities, maybe they're going to be less likely to see the venuses and less likely to report, or less likely to see the actual phenomenon.

• 23:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I like this future prospect of getting everyone to be your eyes, your eyes on the aliens, or your eyes on the anomalies.

• 23:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, if it's a true anomaly, and it's as rare as we think it is, right now for all the cases coming in, it seems to be less than 2% of those cases from good DoD reports, less than 2% after a careful analysis seem to be anomalous. We're gonna need an awful lot of help.

• 23:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, let me unpack that. So, of all the reports, what you're saying is 98% are explainable, apparently not by the person who made the report, because otherwise they wouldn't have reported it.

• 23:33Speaker 02

  After careful analysis.

• 23:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like my fellow astronomers. Like, we know what weather phenomena does. We know a lot of things, clouds, you know. So, I've seen things where, like, wow, if I didn't have the background that I do in meteorology and in night sky phenomena, I would be totally calling that in to the government, to whatever level of the government would take interest. So now, given that, you say about 2% remain unexplained after all of your analysis?

• 24:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, so we've closed about 40% of the cases. About 57%, we don't have enough good data, scientific quality data, to do a careful analysis.

• 24:08Paul Mecurio?

  But they're still open.

• 24:09Speaker 02

  They're still open. We are always looking for additional data.

• 24:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's when he said not closed, that means open.

• 24:14Paul Mecurio?

  Oh, is that right?

• 24:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, not closed means...

• 24:15Speaker 02

  It's a great point, though, because some people think that we just close a case when we don't have the data. We're always looking for more data, though.

• 24:23Paul Mecurio?

  Breakthrough technology, right? Is that a catch-22 in a way? Because if you're looking at something and trying to determine if it's so advanced that technically meets the definition of breakthrough technology, but if you don't know what it is, how do you get that it's a breakthrough?

• 24:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's easy, because it behaves in ways that no known laws of physics would allow. And so that takes you outside of your zone of awareness.

• 24:46Paul Mecurio?

  I think I asked him.

• 24:48Speaker 02

  So, we actually...

• 24:51Speaker 02

  We're not quite as picky, so we're not requiring known, breaking the known laws of physics. We're just going past, well past the bounds of our engineering. So for example, we're not assuming that it can travel faster than the speed of light. We're just saying if it's in the lower atmosphere and it's going Mach 35, that's very interesting to us. Maybe physically possible, but the engineering would really be outlandish.

• 25:12Paul Mecurio?

  But if it's doing something that you don't understand it's doing, it's technically could be breakthrough technology. Because it's doing something that we don't.

• 25:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I would want, depending on, to know what that is and to protect that. That's what I'd want it to do. Oh, by the way, I've read the full, I don't know if it's still the one used, the quoted description of what a UAP is and the government's response to it. It's something like, a UAP is anything that's unidentified and anomalous that could pose a threat to our military bases or operations. And I thought, no, that could pose a threat to any of us.

• 25:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I mean, I care about you, yes, but you're the friggin' military. You're supposed to protect us.

• 25:59Speaker 02

  And you've got guns, we don't. We have a fighting chance.

• 26:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's America, everybody's got guns. They have missiles, okay? Get your arsenal straight here, it's America. So tell me again, your, your ongoing statistics on these reports. Where are you now percentage wise?

• 26:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, we have closed about 40% of our cases.

• 26:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Case closed.

• 26:20Speaker 02

  Yep, yeah, we understand what they are. Great, about 57% are unresolved. And so those are in our active archive, always looking for that enriching data. And about 2% are unresolved.

• 26:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Unresolved, and unresolved means.

• 26:32Speaker 02

  Continuing analysis.

• 26:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're still, they're mysterious, you can't explain them.

• 26:36Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 26:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're waiting for some better data or some deeper understanding of what's going on that you might not have yourself.

• 26:42Speaker 02

  Right, and we're using those to, to guide our hypotheses that will help us decide how to tune our sensors when we put them in the field, tell us what to look for as we jump back into that scientific method.

• 26:53Paul Mecurio?

  And how long will you keep a case like that open? It is, do you.

• 26:57Speaker 02

  We're never gonna close it until we resolve it.

• 26:59Paul Mecurio?

  Really?

• 26:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And by the way, I want to emphasize what you just said. When we explore the universe, if we're just exploring, not knowing anything, you throw in some sensors, just tell me what you got. Once it makes a detection of some kind, however mysterious, the next round, we're going to focus on that. We're going to say, now that we have, it's over here, it's got this spectral type, let's put in a special spectral analyzer for just that, and that way you can hone in. More sophisticated sensors. Exactly. On what would otherwise be just a survey of what could be out there.

• 27:34Speaker 02

  Exactly. Yep. As an example of a couple of those cases that merit further analysis that are helping us refine our hypotheses, there are a few triangles that have been seen by local law enforcement.

• 27:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  These are glowing triangles in the sky.

• 27:47Speaker 02

  In this case, a very, very black triangle, triangular prism. So it looks like a pie slice hovering about the size of a Prius, about 40 to 60 meters away. So as the officer was driving up to investigate underneath a glowing orb, which I'll get to those in a second.

• 28:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I am so afraid right now. Are we, I'm on a bunker. Can I get a bunker for Christmas? I'm worried enough about the damn triangle.

• 28:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. All right. Now I'm a little, now I'm scared. Okay, go.

• 28:20Speaker 02

  He slammed on his brakes and this thing the size of a Prius, blacker than black, reared up 45 degrees and then shot up into the sky faster than anything he'd ever seen. And as it was leaving his sight, it shot out red and blue fireworks, flares so bright it lit up the inside of his vehicle. He didn't see any propulsion, no wind, didn't hear anything over the sound of his own vehicle.

• 28:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you have more than one of these sightings?

• 28:43Speaker 02

  We have a few others, one from local law enforcement, some from the.

• 28:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He was not able to get a picture. No, I thought, I thought.

• 28:48Speaker 02

  No dash cam, unfortunately.

• 28:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How unfortunate.

• 28:51Paul Mecurio?

  Yes.

• 28:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, they've got, they've got, they've got chest cams.

• 28:54Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah.

• 28:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know.

• 28:55Paul Mecurio?

  But you gotta give all of law enforcement UAP cams.

• 28:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 28:59Speaker 02

  So we're working on.

• 28:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very disappointed here.

• 29:01Paul Mecurio?

  Really?

• 29:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:02Paul Mecurio?

  Wow, I am.

• 29:02Speaker 02

  You're on it. Yeah, yeah.

• 29:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You on a roll.

• 29:05Speaker 02

  We gotta equip folks. You're absolutely right.

• 29:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I am so disappointed here.

• 29:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, so there have been cases, triangles, there have been cases of large orbs seen hovering a few.

• 29:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why didn't the officer turn on their forward dash cam?

• 29:17Speaker 02

  In this case, he slammed on his brakes. It happened almost instantaneously and he was terrified. He didn't know what was happening.

• 29:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He knew enough to notice it and respond by putting on his brakes.

• 29:26Paul Mecurio?

  He couldn't just get the, pull over, please.

• 29:29Speaker 02

  He couldn't do that?

• 29:30Paul Mecurio?

  You can't do that? I throw a gum wrapper out and I get that.

• 29:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying, he had enough time to think about it, put on his brakes. If I see a triangle prism, I'm, I'm photographing it.

• 29:42Paul Mecurio?

  I know, but it's out of fear maybe. Like people, people are skeptical because they don't want to confront something they don't understand.

• 29:47Speaker 02

  In this case, I don't think he was skeptical. He was terrified for his life. And so he was just getting back to a safe position. That's what that was.

• 29:54Paul Mecurio?

  Did he go in reverse?

• 29:55Speaker 02

  He did. A hundred miles an hour backwards while on the phone with his sergeant the whole time.

• 29:59Paul Mecurio?

  On the phone?

• 30:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:00Paul Mecurio?

  Going backwards?

• 30:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:02Paul Mecurio?

  He can't stop and take a picture?

• 30:04Speaker 02

  I, I don't think that's what your training tells you.

• 30:06Paul Mecurio?

  Give me this guy's name and badge number.

• 30:08Speaker 02

  You're gonna get.

• 30:09Paul Mecurio?

  I want his badge number right now.

• 30:11Speaker 02

  I'm not sure that'll go well for you.

• 30:14Paul Mecurio?

  Wait, there was a floating orb thing, glowing floating orbs.

• 30:17Speaker 02

  In that same region of the country, a couple of law enforcement officers had seen glowing orbs. A few hundred feet above the ground, a few miles away. In one of these instances.

• 30:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, if it's a few miles away, how do they know it was a few hundred feet above the ground?

• 30:28Speaker 02

  He was estimating based on height above trees.

• 30:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is four inches above Marty's Deli.

• 30:31Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 30:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what this sounds like.

• 30:32Speaker 02

  That's exactly right.

• 30:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, all right.

• 30:34Speaker 02

  That's exactly right.

• 30:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What part of the country was this?

• 30:36Speaker 02

  Uh, we'd rather not say as we're conducting our investigations.

• 30:39Paul Mecurio?

  Dude, I am taking a vacation. You gotta tell me where, because I am not going there.

• 30:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So how precisely do you intersect either law enforcement or the public as a supplier of resources to them?

• 30:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, right now, we're

• 30:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you're not giving out kits, yet, okay?

• 30:56Speaker 02

  Right, we're in the mode where we're going to be providing a few kits to primarily federal law enforcement, so that as they're conducting their normal job, if they come across the UAP, they'll be able to gather quality data for us.

• 31:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this would be like a little black box, you know, break seal in emergency for the alien?

• 31:13Speaker 02

  Well, we're hoping that they're going to use it more often, maybe for their law enforcement responsibilities, so that they're well-practiced and well-versed in it. We don't want them just to use it once. And the primary role for us, though, is the analysis of the data. So they'll be able to provide whatever data they have. We will then go through a long checklist of other places we can get data, like FAA radars, for example, other sources of imagery.

• 31:35Paul Mecurio?

  By the way, how do you define a hotspot? Like, how many things have to happen? What pattern of life has to happen, or frequency of something where you say, "That's a hotspot"?

• 31:43Speaker 02

  So, we've been hesitant to define hotspots at this point now, because we don't know that we can get past the bias that we have, our collection bias. And so, we're going to be working with some statisticians as we're moving more sensors out and getting data from the public, to assess the noise in that data, and then we'll look at defining hotspots.

• 32:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, collection bias, fascinating term, I love it. It seems to me one of those would be a person's expectation to see something, once they heard that other people have seen it. And then they will interpret something that might have otherwise been, have a simple explanation, but they're shocked into joining the crowd.

• 32:20Paul Mecurio?

  Is that like a form of confirmation bias, in a way?

• 32:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, I would imagine so, yeah.

• 32:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, because it's, there was some fascinating case where there was a zoo where a leopard had escaped, and they put everyone on alert for the leopard, and they got like dozens of sightings across the city, and then they finally found that the leopard was asleep behind a door and never left the zoo. So, so, so people's expectations of something-

• 32:46Paul Mecurio?

  The leopard was a placebo, basically.

• 32:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But an interesting psychology experiment that would become.

• 33:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You work for the Pentagon.

• 33:12Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 33:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I don't care what the thing is, that you don't know what it is. I care about your assessment of whether or not you think it's a threat. And so, where's the line between this is just some sky phenomenon, even if we don't know what it is, don't worry about it. And this could be a threat, it could be an adversary, or foreign or domestic. And that's your job, to protect us.

• 33:41Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 33:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How do you find the line and how do you draw it?

• 33:43Speaker 02

  Great question. When it's unidentified, we've tried to look at, is it demonstrating any anomalous characteristics? And is it doing anything that would demonstrate that it's potentially an advanced technology? If it is, for example, a blurry blob floating at the speed of the wind at some normal altitude, we would probably assess that's not a threat if it is far away from...

• 34:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That would be a cloud.

• 34:05Speaker 02

  Cloud, a balloon, yeah. Things that the DOD doesn't usually worry about, yeah.

• 34:11Paul Mecurio?

  I don't know that cloud.

• 34:12Speaker 02

  That's exactly right.

• 34:13Paul Mecurio?

  Cloud looks menacing in more ways than one.

• 34:15Speaker 02

  It might rain.

• 34:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It might rain.

• 34:18Paul Mecurio?

  You gotta come on the road with me.

• 34:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The two of you are funny. Yeah, you got a thing. So, it's a threat assessment, ultimately, that you want to make.

• 34:26Speaker 02

  And so, we have too many cases to be able to do a month-long, multi-month-long analysis of every one case, and so we have to triage them. And we do that based on how much of a threat it might be, how anomalous it seems to be, how urgent the case would be, and then the quality of the data we have available.

• 34:40Paul Mecurio?

  You also have to look at all the various biases as well, right?

• 34:43Speaker 02

  I do, yes.

• 34:44Paul Mecurio?

  I mean, it's like confirmation biases, there's the stigma, is that still an issue where...

• 34:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It shouldn't be. It's all in the news, mainstream media.

• 34:52Speaker 02

  It shouldn't be, but it is. We see it across different pockets. Some of our partners aren't comfortable reporting, but it's gotten a lot better.

• 35:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's stupid. No, no. You tell them Neil deGrasse Tyson said... I'll get a note from dad.

• 35:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You report, okay?

• 35:09Paul Mecurio?

  You know what, I think you should be the psychologist on the staff.

• 35:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I'm just saying, I'm watching, I'm watching people testify in Congress. And they're testifying that this is real and they will show us your evidence in the back. No, because that could put me at risk. You're already out there talking about it. No.

• 35:25Paul Mecurio?

  But it's also the stigma of like, people don't want to report it because they think people are going to think that they're nuts or crazy.

• 35:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We have congressional hearings on this, okay? I got you on this show, alright? If I thought it was crazy, you would have not walked through the front door. Alright, so, what I want to, I have on my notes here, there are a few cases that might have been mysterious initially. And then they were like, case solved, with the rubber stamp. So I have one here, Go Fast. So what is that? What was Go Fast?

• 35:53Speaker 02

  It's a classic case from 2015. It was popularized in 2017 where an F-18 Super Hornet was flying off the coast of Florida.

• 36:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is an airplane.

• 36:01Speaker 02

  Airplane, yes, yes, sir.

• 36:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this is the one that got probably the most press attention of any of them. That's what I was, I guess I was reciting earlier, that has the pilot track, we can hear them.

• 36:11Paul Mecurio?

  Close to the surface of the water, though.

• 36:13Speaker 02

  It appears to be close to the surface of the water, and that's what the pilot saw. It looks like that object is just zipping along really quickly near the surface of the water. But after careful analysis of all the numbers on the heads-up display there, and doing the geometry, and looking at the track of the airplane as it was flying, we were able to assess that the object actually had to be at about 13,000 feet, not close to the water, and the plane was about 25,000 feet. And there's actually an optical phenomenon called motion parallax, which familiar with from astronomy, that makes it appear that the object is moving much faster relative to the background than it actually is.

• 36:47Paul Mecurio?

  There's no rotor wash, there's no jet wash, there's nothing, though. That's what's fascinating about this.

• 36:52Speaker 02

  There's nothing, but with the parallax, we can assess that the object is moving actually at wind speed. So we don't know what that object is, but we know that it's.

• 36:59Paul Mecurio?

  It's called a bird.

• 37:01Speaker 02

  It's consistent with a bird or a balloon. We don't know what it is, though.

• 37:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or Superman.

• 37:06Paul Mecurio?

  But wouldn't a balloon?

• 37:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a bird, it's a plane.

• 37:08Paul Mecurio?

  But wouldn't a balloon sort of been more erratic?

• 37:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, it would go with the wind. A balloon can't go where the wind won't take it.

• 37:14Paul Mecurio?

  But what if the wind shifts quickly, it's good?

• 37:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then it would, but that's not what happened here.

• 37:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, at those altitudes, it's more like a stream, so it's like a leaf in the stream just going with it.

• 37:21Paul Mecurio?

  It sounds like he knows a lot about Go Fast, you should interview him. We're gonna bring him on staff later, yeah.

• 37:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, so, so there's a, there's a case here. It might be anecdotal, but it's, it could very much happen. And this happened in New Jersey, I was told. There was a, a squad car that was tracking a UFO in the sky. And the UFO, of course, it's happening in twilight dusk, as all the...

• 37:44Paul Mecurio?

  And you have me guess, the UFO was in the shape of a croissant?

• 37:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was, it was darting back and forth, left and right, across the road. Okay? It was this glowing light hovering, darting back and forth. And he's, he's calling this in. And you could hear it. And then, so what is it? And then they found out. And this is a little bit of your motion parallax problem. It was, the road was turning. And he was so transfixed on the object that he did not realize he was following the road.

• 38:15Paul Mecurio?

  Please tell me he's not a cop.

• 38:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's his badge number?

• 38:20Paul Mecurio?

  This is what I mean in all seriousness, going back to what we talked about. Getting data from, God bless people, like, the average person, like, it's, you're gonna have a hard job.

• 38:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, a lot of analysis is required for these anomalies. Yeah. Absolutely.

• 38:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's, that's code for a lot of idiots. That's a polite way.

• 38:38Paul Mecurio?

  Not my show, trying to be diplomatic, but, you know.

• 38:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I got a couple more, just so you can comment on it. What do we call here? Oh, Mount Etna. So what do we have here?

• 38:47Speaker 02

  So in this case, we had a platform that was flying through the Mediterranean.

• 38:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What is a platform?

• 38:52Speaker 02

  A drone or an airplane with a camera on it.

• 38:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 38:54Speaker 02

  Sorry, thank you.

• 38:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not everyone is military.

• 38:56Speaker 02

  I'm sorry, I'm, I'm working on it.

• 38:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When I think of platforms, I think of stages where bands perform.

• 39:03Paul Mecurio?

  The band Kansas was floating across the sky.

• 39:06Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 39:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 39:07Speaker 02

  So in this case, they're flying through the Mediterranean, and they're getting video of Mount Etna as it's exploding. So they're going to, while they're watching this plume, see an object that appears to come towards the plume, and then go through the plume. Superheated ash and gas. And it looks to go through unphased. And those temperatures are between 900 and 1800 degrees Fahrenheit. And so that would seem to be very anomalous.

• 39:32Speaker 02

  We sent this off to a number of our science and technology partners, as well as other agencies within the intelligence community, had them do an independent analysis and then brought them together. They came to four separate conclusions on what it should be.

• 39:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very important so that they don't influence each other in their own analysis. So that keeps the independence of the perspectives.

• 39:52Speaker 02

  Exactly. Yep. And then we brought them together and asked them to hash it out. Turns out several of the groups invented new methodologies. Several of them looked into the type of thermal turbulence that you would get from a volcano and how that would affect the imagery. Bringing all that together, the new techniques, they were able to create a model that would predict where that anomalous object would be floating through the video. And even after they lose sight of the object later in the video-

• 40:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They recover it.

• 40:17Speaker 02

  That model predicts where it shows up at the end. And even though the human eye can't see it, just in the video, with their careful analysis, they're able to pull it out. And so that validates the model.

• 40:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what was it?

• 40:26Speaker 02

  Long story short, we don't know exactly what it is, but what-

• 40:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why would I have you here? You are killing me. What did- who- I thought he meant something.

• 40:34Speaker 02

  That's what my mom says every day.

• 40:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a flying toaster, everybody. It's a flying toaster. Okay, finish that.

• 40:40Speaker 02

  What we can say is that it was about 170 kilometers away from the volcano, 30 kilometers away from the platform, so much closer to the platform than it was to the volcano, nowhere near the superheated ash, and it was flying at speeds consistent with the wind again. We don't know if it was a balloon or a bird, probably a balloon. A lot of sky trash up there.

• 41:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 41:02Paul Mecurio?

  And environmental factors are huge factors in your work, right?

• 41:05Speaker 02

  They are, yeah.

• 41:06Paul Mecurio?

  Like Starlink is also another issue where it's sort of pilots seeing things off a starlink, turns out the lights bouncing off in a certain way, so all of that stuff.

• 41:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, just to emphasize, even though you don't know what it is, the fact that it was not in the volcano, A, the fact that it was moving in the prevailing wind speed, helped you to determine that it was not a threat?

• 41:30Speaker 02

  Yet not anomalous. And so-

• 41:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Neither anomalous nor a threat.

• 41:34Speaker 02

  Right. And so for our assessments, if it's not both unidentified and anomalous, then it's no longer within our purview. We'll hand it off to the appropriate authorities to deal with it. Since it's not a threat-

• 41:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The lackey is over in the- As long as it's not that cop that couldn't figure out he was on a road. So remind me, a mountain, Etna, is that Italy?

• 41:53Speaker 02

  Yes, that's Italy.

• 41:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's Italy, okay. Italy's got that, it's got Vesuvius. Man, Italy's got...

• 41:59Speaker 02

  I'm Italian, we're hot people.

• 42:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is an active volcano.

• 42:02Speaker 02

  It is, yeah. Just erupted recently, yeah.

• 42:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, yeah. And I got another one here. The Puerto Rico object. Again, you need some better branding here.

• 42:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, maybe not my strong suit.

• 42:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 42:14Speaker 02

  I didn't name these. So in this case, this is a Customs and Border Protection platform, and they're looking through a midwave infrared camera, and they pick up an object or a pair of objects. And those objects are going to appear to come together and fuse into one and then separate a couple times throughout this video. And later, it will appear that that object flies over the water, and it will appear to dip into the water, creating what we would say is a transmedium effect, where it goes from one domain to the other, and then come back out.

• 42:43Paul Mecurio?

  It's a flying dolphin. Could you tell me, do you have a sense, were you able through the analysis, to figure out the size of that object?

• 42:53Speaker 02

  We were. So in this case, the platform, the Customs and Border Protection platform, was flying around the airport. And by analyzing its trajectory, as well as the direction that the camera was pointing, we could assess that the object was actually flying over the airport, more appropriately floating over the airport, slowly descending. And it just appears that the object dips into the water because the water is in the background, and it's an infrared camera. And we get something called thermal crossover, where the temperature of the water equals the temperature of the object.

• 43:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you can't distinguish them at that point.

• 43:25Speaker 02

  Exactly, so it looks like it merges in. And we can assess it was about a one-meter-sized object.

• 43:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the remake of the Thomas Crown affair, where there's a heist of art.

• 43:35Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 43:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What they do is, they heat up the room. They kill the air conditioner, and it's a very hot day, and so the temperature begins to rise until it's the same as the body temperature of the thieves. So that the infrared cameras can't distinguish just the air, which is radiating infrared, with the skin temperature of the people. Turns out there would be a way to do it, but a given is Hollywood, so that's fine. Because gas has a different density of the radiation than a solid object would. So you would be able to find a border between the two, but one wouldn't pop the way it would otherwise be. So, yeah, so if you don't know that, then you don't know that, right?

• 44:14Speaker 02

  Yep. Yeah, so in this case, we assessed that it was likely either a balloon or a pair of sky lanterns, or a pair of balloons, rather, or a pair of sky lanterns that are just changing an orientation with the wind, that wind thing that you wanted to happen with the balloons, that happening.

• 44:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What is a sky lantern?

• 44:28Speaker 02

  So, sky lantern would be like a Chinese lantern, where you have a light.

• 44:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. And some cultures, they pop those up, and it's buoyant by heated air?

• 44:36Speaker 02

  That's exactly right. And as it's losing fuel, it's going to descend, and this is near some resorts in Puerto Rico, where they tend to launch those sky lanterns for weddings. So it's consistent with that, but we don't know for sure if it's sky lanterns or balloons.

• 44:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm. Got it. One thing, just as we try to land this plane, what's your relationship with conspiracy theorists?

• 44:57Speaker 02

  So, we're not looking to debunk anything, we're not the belief police, and so...

• 45:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but you have street cred from the NSA, and nobody trusts the NSA, except when we want them, and then they're our friend, right? It's a love-hate relationship, or at least that movies have with the NSA. So why should anyone believe anything you ever say?

• 45:20Speaker 02

  I don't know, I'm not gonna make an argument that they should, but what I would...

• 45:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You could've said that differently. I probably could've. Okay, take two. Oh, yeah? Who says? You and what army? So, what methods, efforts do you invest to gain the trust of people who are reporting to you?

• 45:40Speaker 02

  I think that the only method that we have is absolute transparency. And so it's difficult from within the Department of Defense with the different data sources that we have, but we're working towards releasing more videos, releasing them faster, releasing more of the narratives, shining a lot more light onto the data that's coming in and the cases as we're resolving them. And I think it's just through that transparency that we're going to build trust.

• 46:02Paul Mecurio?

  Well, also, the transparency, to me, it would help educate us to know what to and not look at, right? So it's that fine line that there's security issues, private data. By the way, I know you're NSA and you're doing this, you get your hands on a lot of sensors. Please tell me you're not going to check my Google searches and find out that I'm a Buzz Lightyear fan group parent, because it's very embarrassing.

• 46:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They've already done that. It's too late.

• 46:25Speaker 02

  I did my homework coming in.

• 46:27Paul Mecurio?

  But is that transparency that sort of educates us to be able to help you?

• 46:32Speaker 02

  It does. So in addition to showing the raw information that's coming in and our final product additionally, as we discover these phenomenon which are being misidentified, such as the starling flaring that you mentioned, we are building educational materials that we're releasing through papers, through videos, and we want to get that out to the public, not just to affect the conspiracy theories, but just so that the public understands when they look up in the sky in New Jersey or elsewhere, what are they seeing?

• 46:59Paul Mecurio?

  Makes your life easier because they can start ruling things out.

• 47:01Speaker 02

  It does. Yeah, it'll be a smaller haystack.

• 47:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Especially New Jersey.

• 47:05Speaker 02

  I love New Jersey.

• 47:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, thanks for your time.

• 47:11Speaker 02

  It's been my pleasure.

• 47:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you came up from Washington for this.

• 47:13Speaker 02

  Fascinating stuff.

• 47:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We very much appreciate that. Thank you. Obviously, the subtext of most people's interest in this is whether we're being visited by aliens. Whether or not you have the more antiseptic view, is it a threat or is it not, or is it a balloon? People are saying, is it an alien? And I get that. Hollywood stokes it within us. More than a billion high-resolution photos are uploaded to the internet every day.

• 47:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That people obtain with their smartphones around the world. So it seems to me if there were aliens visiting us, it would be crowdsourced without your prompting. We'd have pictures of flying saucers, that there wouldn't be a fuzzy dot in an infrared camera in a restricted area. We would be flooded with data. And so, do you have any insights or a sense of people's urge to want to be visited by aliens?

• 48:16Speaker 02

  I don't have any brilliant insights, you know, I'm just a lowly engineer. I think that it's an exciting prospect, it's the possibility of the unknown. It's the possibility that there could be something coming next that we don't have access to now. You know, people want to look forward to something, maybe that's what it is. But in regards to the data, you know, a cellphone's an awfully small camera. And so if extraterrestrials were coming here, the chances that they're going to be within 50 feet of that camera are pretty small. So, but not we'll be able to get that.

• 48:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Most of Earth is not inhabited. But one thing we are missing are the alien abduction stories in the era of the smartphone.

• 48:52Paul Mecurio?

  I have one.

• 48:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because they used to be.

• 48:56Paul Mecurio?

  It happened in a cornfield.

• 49:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it used to be common even for a person to retell a story of getting abducted and getting their orifices probed. And today you could just film that and post it, and it would go viral instantly. I mean, cat videos go viral for less, so there's none of that. And so I'm very, I'm disappointed that we haven't been visited. I want to be, I'm all for the aliens, and all my people are for aliens too. Don't get us wrong.

• 49:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Every night I'm out there with my telescope, looking up alone in the stark silence of the night. I just waiting for a beam of light to come and just take me.

• 49:38Paul Mecurio?

  Take you away?

• 49:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh yeah.

• 49:39Paul Mecurio?

  And you'd go.

• 49:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It looks like I wouldn't have a choice. It looks like I wouldn't have a choice if that's what was going on.

• 49:46Paul Mecurio?

  No, you might, it might be an option. Depends on what plan you bought to go.

• 49:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, okay. So, take us out. What, what should we look forward to going forward?

• 49:55Speaker 02

  The public reporting mechanism should be coming out, as I mentioned, before the end of this fiscal year. And we look forward to not only receiving those reports, but then sharing more information. We're gonna be building more on our transparency.

• 50:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you work with other countries as well?

• 50:07Speaker 02

  We're working towards that.

• 50:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 50:09Speaker 02

  Working towards that. We're gonna have a scientific journal coming out in FY26.

• 50:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nice.

• 50:14Speaker 02

  Fiscal year 26, and we're gonna have some...

• 50:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Does that have some name that is completely forgettable? Because you don't have English majors helping you name things?

• 50:20Paul Mecurio?

  Picture book.

• 50:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What, what's the journal gonna be called?

• 50:26Speaker 02

  We'll get back to you on that. I don't wanna be judged.

• 50:29Paul Mecurio?

  Why don't you, you gave me a pin, let us name it.

• 50:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, call me.

• 50:32Speaker 02

  You're part of the club, yeah, I'll let you, I'll let you tag it.

• 50:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm, I'm good at this, call me, alright.

• 50:37Speaker 02

  I'll let you write the first article. But that journal's gonna be coming out. We're gonna have a variety of workshops, work on engaging with the citizen scientists as well as more academics.

• 50:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Beautiful. I look, I look forward to that. Well, again, thanks for making the trip.

• 50:48Speaker 02

  Thank you, I appreciate this.

• 50:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, and good luck going forward.

• 50:51Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 50:51Paul Mecurio?

  Great having you.

• 50:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright. Uh, dude, thanks for being here.

• 50:54Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, it was so much fun.

• 50:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, alright.

• 50:56Paul Mecurio?

  Really understand more now, which is great.

• 50:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This has been StarTalk, devoted entirely to UAPs.

• 51:04Paul Mecurio?

  Ooh. What was that?

• 51:07Paul Mecurio?

  Okay, sorry.

• 51:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, as always bidding you, especially now, to keep looking up.