FILE – A patron passes a painting inside the International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell, N.M., on June 10, 1997. (AP Photo/Eric Draper, File) A little over a month ago I joined the UAP Science Advisory Council. Never heard of UAP? Well, it is the fancy, scientific term (“Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena”) for UFOs.
Now, you might be saying, Liberty, are you serious? Yes, I am. Professor Avi Loeb (Harvard University physicist), in support of President Trump’s directive on UAP transparency, was tasked by the White House with creating this council, which involves the Pentagon, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI, and the intelligence community.
When I told my father I had joined this council, he asked me if I was “nuts” — direct quote. So I asked him to give me five minutes of his attention so that I could explain what I see as the goal of the council, and why I believe this is not only worth of study, but necessary for both the science and the nation’s security. Give me the same five minutes and let me explain.
There are three main questions that arise when it comes to extraterrestrials. The first is whether life exists anywhere other than earth. I think the answer to that is yes, with a probability of nearly 100 percent.
The second question is whether any of that life is at least as intelligent as we are. I think the answer to that is probably about 60 percent.
Where do those numbers come from? I could invoke fancy terminology about Bayesian statistics, but all it really means is that, based on what we know about how Earth was formed, we can estimate a probability that what happened on Earth has either happened somewhere else already or is happening somewhere else right now.
Human intelligence first appeared on Earth about 300,000 years ago, with the emergence of homo sapiens in Africa. To be clear, it took billions of years to develop the neurological capacity for modern intelligence.
The 60 percent and 100 percent come from assuming that at least some small share of other planets — out of the estimated 300 sextillion planets we believe might exist in the universe — either will follow or have already followed the same trajectory as Earth, with some share of them seeing the development of some sort of intelligent life.
The mathematics of this well-known problem are overwhelming, even if the specifics are a bit hazy. If the total number of planets in our universe is a 3 followed by 23 zeroes, then even a vanishingly small probability that any given planet supports intelligent life would imply that hundreds, thousands or even millions of them do indeed have it.
This brings us to the third question: Have aliens visited us? As a statistician, I never want to say there is a zero percent chance of anything, but in this case, I think there really is a zero percent chance.
So what is this council doing then? Well, first of all, “unidentified” means just what it sounds like. We should be curious about phenomena observed, accepting that the explanations could all be completely terrestrial. When someone sees a glowing orange orb that dodges and weaves and zips away unlike any piece of technology we have ever seen, shouldn’t we want to know what it was? If it wasn’t Klingons on a scouting mission, what if that is some earthly adversary’s technology that we don’t know? I see that question about intra-terrestrial security as something just as important as whatever else the council does.
And there are non-ridiculous extraterrestrial possibilities as well. Humanity has put quite a bit of stuff — and I actually mean “stuff,” including a Tesla and a tool bag dropped by a NASA astronaut during a spacewalk — into space. We have also intentionally sent a few objects into deep space with no clear idea of what has happened or will happen to them. If there is intelligent life elsewhere, who is to say they could not have done something similar. It is possible — if highly implausible — that some piece of alien technology has found its way to Earth, even if no little green men have landed.
I have been asked extensively about the criticism the council is receiving from other scientists or academics that think it is all, to put it bluntly, looney tunes. But scientific study throughout history has been pushed forward by unconventional ideas. Perhaps entertaining implausible ideas and scrutinizing them will, in one way or another, help us expand human knowledge — perhaps in unexpected ways.
Thank goodness we aren’t living in the 1600s, when Galileo was accused of heresy for proposing that the Earth was not at the center of everything — that in fact, based on his observations of Venus’s phases, the Earth and all the planets might be revolving around the sun instead.
The public’s trust in science is now at the lowest it has ever been, thanks largely to the scientists themselves. Perhaps a council on UFOs where wide a wide range of belief is represented — spanning from people who believe aliens have visited to the publisher of Skeptic magazine — is just what we need to show that some scientists are not afraid of having their beliefs challenged and tested. After all, this is how we decide those beliefs are sound.
I think we learned from the failings of the scientific community during COVID that what we need is exactly that: scientists who aren’t afraid of having their work questioned and who, in fact, welcome it.
Dr. Liberty Vittert Capito is a professor at Washington University in St. Louis.
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