Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Vogel Bomb Here. You're in good company if you often look up into the dark night, into the glittering specs of space and sky, and think you see something extraordinary, fantastic, or even inexplicable streak across the sky. People have been reporting unexplainable objects this guy since at least the time of the ancient Greeks. One of the earliest known discussions of the possibility of alien life appears
in a book written around fifty BC. These days, we're used to hearing these objects, called unidentified flying objects or UFOs A. NASA now even has an independent team of sixteen scientists and astrophysicists who will be studying and attempting to understand more about these mysterious observations in the sky, which they call Unidentified Aerial Phenomena or u A p ease four nine months, starting in October two, The team is pouring over the unclassified data collected by civilian stargazers
and national intelligence and security departments. The purpose is to discover new ways to collect and understand UAP data in the future, and to determine the best ways to use that information to ensure the safety of aircraft. They'll release their findings to the public in mide This isn't the first time a US government agency has studied UFOs. One of the most famous is Project Blue Book, which went on in the nineteen fifties and sixties, but this might be the first time they focused on U A p
S instead of UFOs. We know we were confused to at first. The acronyms UFO and u AP both refer to the same unidentified events reported in our sky unidentified objects and balls of light. The issue with using the term uf OH is that you can't say it or hear it without also thinking about extraterrestrials, you know, aliens
from outer space. And that's because we've been calling those flying saucers, hovering lights, and floating disks that suddenly zip off disappearing into the night UFOs since the late nineteen forties. One of the first and most notable discussions of unusual flying objects happened after June ninety seven, when pilot Kenneth Arnold flew over Mount Rainier on his way to neighboring Oregon.
Arnold reported seeing nine bright circular discs moving and what appeared to be an organized echelon formation in the sky at speeds as fast as one thousand, two hundred miles an hour. That's one thousand, nine hundred kilometers an hour. It was the first time in reported history that the terms flying saucer or flying discs were used to describe unexplained events. After seven, the US government created some investigation task forces as more sightings like Arnold's were reported around
the US and the world. These events became known by the term UFOs, and the term morphed out of flying saucer and was coined by civilians and government officials in the nineteen fifties. Since then, UFOs have fostered a fascination with the unexplained world of space and sky for generations, and have always been tied to aliens. But if we're all familiar with UFOs, why would the government bother to rename them first? U a P s are considered unexplained
sights in the sky rather than unidentified flying objects. U a P is a pretty new term. It came into our lexicon in the twenty teens when the U. S Department of Defense declassified several Navy videos that showed U a P s. Then in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released it's much anticipated report called Preliminary Assessment Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, without a single mention of extraterrestrials.
Here's a brief quote from the report. Most of the U a P reported probably do represent physical objects, given that a majority of U a P were registered across multiple sensors to include radar, infrared, electro optical, weapons, seekers, and visual observation. It might be easy to dismiss eyewitness reports, but it's much more difficult to reject a u a
P observed by eyewitnesses and corroborated on radar. This is also allowing researchers to apply the scientific method to study U a P s, similar to what study has been doing since the nineteen seventies. This is all to say that the renewed focus on U a P s in government intelligence circles is a good thing. It indicates that they're taking unexplained aerial activities and our skies seriously, the Navy videos were well alarming, so it's good news that
they're being investigated. And all of this does not mean that extraterrestrials are being completely left out of the picture or scientific investigations. The UAP moniker might be the scientific and intelligence communities way of finally admitting that these objects are out there and saying that it's okay to talk about unexplained aerial phenomena without the concern of being alienated
for sounding bonkers. Today's episode is based on the article Scientists Want You to Say U A p S not UFOs on house toff works dot com, written by Alison Troutner. Brain Stuff is production of by Heart Radio and partnership with house toffworks dot com, and it's produced by Tyler klang A. Four more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.