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Man, Welcome back to Coast to Coast George Norri with you. We're back with Sarah Skoles, science writer whose work has appeared in The Atlantic, Slate, Smithsonian, The Washington Post, Scientific, American, Popular Science, Discover, New Science, and Wired. A former editor of Astronomy Magazine, she worked at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and the location of the first ever SETI project. She lives in Denver, Colorado. Sarah, welcome back to the program.
Hey, thank you for having me again.
Have you been everything good?
Good? Yeah, doing well, hanging out in Colorado.
You know, I've been tracking the government lately talking about UAPs, and they still won't come across and tell us that they think they're extraterrestrial. Why not?
Yeah, it was interesting. I was actually just listening to the hearing that the that happened on you Peaches just the other day, and they explicitly said that they didn't they didn't think it was extraterrestrials, which you know, is a different direction to go. I mean, I think, you know, they say they don't have any any evidence that that is what it is, though, I imagine, I don't know.
Why do you think I think they're afraid that people can't handle the truth, and I don't. I don't agree with that. I think people can and I think most people would say we knew they were real, we knew they existed, but for some reason, government just doesn't want to disclose it unless there's something very nefarious going on, something evil going on with them, and they don't want us to know, like these abduction cases and stuff. So many people disappear off this planet every year. Maybe they're
being taken. Who knows? What do you think?
I mean? I I don't have anything probably like probably like you, other than you know the stories that people tell or you know, people who do go missing. I don't. I don't know that the UH status part of the what like the Pentagon is investigating right now, but I would I would be interested to see some of that hard data on all of it.
Give us your thoughts, sir, on just what you think is going on with this phenomenon.
You know, I know this is a boring answer that nobody likes, but I try to remain agnostic about it. You know, I think it's it's incontrovertible that lots of people see things in the sky they can't explain, or have experiences that they can't explain. That that that's been true for decades and decades at least. But I haven't seen anything that convinces me that one explanation is the explanation,
or that the explanation is necessarily extraterrestrials. Myself, I know that's not something we totally agree on, but I try to keep my mind open to all the possibilities.
So you're not leaning that way toward extraterrestrial ill possibilities, not yet anyway.
No, I'm not. I would I wouldn't say I'm leaning that way, no, but I would say that I don't. You know, I don't rule it out. I don't really rule anything out except maybe, like, you know, vampires playing UFOs or something. I think that was pretty unlikely, but who knows.
Well, what about the title of your book? They are already here.
Yeah, that's that's the question. I get a lot. I probably should have titled is something different because I'm going to be so agnostic. But I think you know that that is something that I heard. You know, I come from the science journalism background, and so I have written and studied more on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence before
I started looking at UFOs. And so when I would talk about that works to people who were very into UFOs, and I would say, you know, there's these scientists searching for alien life out there, looking for their radio broadcasts, et cetera, et cetera. They would say, you know, why are they doing that. They're already here, And so it was just it was just a that I heard a lot that kind of stuck with me.
One of your other books is called Making Contact, about the astronomer Jill Tarter. She's seventy nine years old, but she's best known for her work on the Search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Tell me how you keyed in on her.
Yeah, I think that started back to when I was about twelve years old, which was in the movie Contact came out and I realized that, you know, that makes it pretty old now. So it's a movie about astronomers who are looking for radio signals from extraterrestrial civilizations, and there's an astronomer who's the main character who finds a signal, and that person is based on the real life Jill Tarter, and so I saw this movie when I was twelve
years old. I didn't know that radio waves came from space. I didn't know that it was anyone's job to look for aliens, and I thought it was so cool that somebody got to ask these big questions about the universe and get paid for it. So I was just obsessed with her back then. And so then when I grew up to be a writer and needed a book topic, I thought, well, what about that. I think I've kind of always been obsessed with in that person whose work iye was really interested in.
What do you think people Sarah are seeing? What are they what are they spotting?
I mean, I think, at a at a basic level, just a descriptive level, I think what people most see are lights in the sky that behave in ways that other lights in the sky that they have seen have not behaved. Something anomalous, is something unidentified, something that makes them notice. And uh, yeah, I don't I mean, I don't, you know, subscribe to the extraterrestrial hypothesis. But I don't doubt that people are seeing strange things. I've seen strange things.
I'm sure you've seen strange things. There's a lot of strange things going on up there.
Well, there they are, and as there's a high likelihood as far as I'm concerned, that's they could be extraterrestrial, But we just can't prove it yet, can we.
No, it would be nice if that was the case, that they would just land for a second and let us say hi and see who's driving.
The ship and come out and say hi to the world. But for some reason they don't do that. Why not?
See, that's why we have to get them to land so we can ask them that kind of question. I don't have that answer.
If you could investigate this, how would you start again? Where would you go? Would you go to the Pentagon? What would you do?
Yeah? I think, well, you know, now it's kind of different from when I started first investigating because there are a number of official governmental studies. Either we have the Pentagon and it's Arrow Office is what it's called. And then you know there's a NASA study on UAP and so I think if I were if I were starting my investigation now, I would go there because those organizations are going to be collecting kind of systematic data, analyzing
it critically, and producing produce. Well, I guess the Pentagon probably won't be producing reports we can all see, but they have the most resources, and so I think I would start there. But I also think, you know, it's important to talk to people who don't work for the government about their own experiences and things like that. So I would maybe start start at the data driven level, but still go down to the personal level.
In terms of investigating what do you think we need to do on this subject matter?
Yeah, I think, you know, when I think about this, I think about what did happen with the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence study or you know, looking for radio broadcasts in this guy, which is what led people to take it seriously and for it to become you know, a kind of mainstream scientific topic, was for people to create surveys where you know, they were like, we're going to survey this part of the sky looking for these frequencies at these times at these places, and then we're going
to publish it. And so I think it's kind of you know, systemizing it and creating consistent data. And I think if if this topic wants to move more into the mainstream and be taken up by different people, like that is a direction that it could go, and we have plenty of sensors that can collect that kind of data as we see from there were a couple of videos released yesterday or the day before or whatever the hearing was, and so you know, there's a lot that's out there that we could look at.
Aren't you working on a book on nuclear weapons and scientists?
Yes? I sure, Yeah, in the past couple of years going to uh labs run by the National Nuclear Security Administration and talking to people who work on nuclear weapons and adjacent topics.
Have you ever interviewed anybody who was at a nuke base who witnessed UFOs shutting down missile silos?
Uh? No, I have not. My book stuff was mostly focusing on the Department of Energy side of things more than the Department of Defense side of things, and so I didn't I didn't end up out there, but it would be interesting to talk to for sure.
Vast universe, What are the possibilities that there's extraterrestrial life out there? In your opinion?
Yeah, I kind of go back and forth. I've spent most of my life thinking, you know, like you said, the universe is vast. Now we know there's a whole bunch of planets. Now we know that even puny little earth organisms can live all kinds of places. It would kind of be crazy if there was nothing else out there in the universe. But you know, then, sometimes I talked to biologists who say, you know, we don't even know how life started here. How could we possibly know
how likely it is to start somewhere else? It could be very unlikely. Maybe we're the only ones out there. And so I've actually gone back to that kind of boring agnostic answer on that too, and that we just we don't know, but it would be awfully strange. I do think if we're the only one.
Well, if you take God out of the equation for just a moment, you then are puzzled by the universe and how it starts. I still, Sarah, of all the physicists and earth scientists that I've interviewed, I haven't gotten the right answer yet on how things started. They can't explain the Big Bang. Nobody can't.
Yeah, and you know what came before or the Big Bang?
And how could you have something before? Nothing? Right?
Right? Right? I think there is a book that I haven't read that that has a title of something like that that tries to explain it, but I can't give the answer because I haven't read the book, So but I don't know.
Do you know who the author is by any chance?
No? But maybe I can look it up during one of the breaks.
Okay, Yeah, I'll find out about that. That's one of the biggest questions. So when you put together they're already here making contact. What was your premise? What were you going after?
Yeah? I think with making contact, I was trying to just capture what it's like to be a scientist, spending your whole life on a question of life in the universe that a lot of other scientists didn't take seriously, and just trying to solve a mystery that you thought you probably wouldn't be able to solve in your lifetime, but kind of trying to contribute to a big a
bigger project humanity. And and they're already here. I was talking to people who are interested in UFOs from lots of different vantage points, some of them kind of spiritual, some of them kind of political, some some kind of conspiratorial, but they are all also united by kind of the same thing that motivates study scientists, which is here's here's a big mystery. It's been around for a while, no
one has solved it. Probably I won't either, but I'm going to like put my effort towards trying to figure it out. And so I think that, to me is the premise that unites them is trying to solve a really hard problem that probably takes many generations.
Sir, what do you think happened in July of nineteen forty seven and Roswell, New Mexico?
For me for that one? You know, I'm probably an unpopular opinion over here, but I see that and nuclear test detector fell to theirs and was part of a cover up, And so I guess I buy the cover up story of the cover up.
I think like a balloon or pieces like that.
Huh yeah, yeah, balloon carrying a sensor crashed to the ground if somebody found it around the same time that other people were talking about UFOs, and that became the story. But I also wasn't there.
So what do you think of uphologists who are dedicating their careers to trying to get this answer of whether we're alone?
I think it's a very worthwhile question. I think it's one of the most important questions that humans can ask and you know it has within it like where did we come from? How did we get here? What is the point of anything? I think that it's it's kind of the all encompassing question are we alone? And so I full respect from me to figuring that out.
I'm going to put you on the spot. Do you believe in life? Life after death?
I do not personally know what's your what's your take?
Oh?
Of course I think it's there's something there again, what it is, how it got here and all that. Taking God out of the equation for a moment is baffling, to be sure, But I think there's there's something there. Too many people have witnessed too many strange occurrences for me not to believe that there's something else out there. Do you believe in God? And no?
But I think I mean for both, for both God and the afterlife. I you know, I will say that I found a lot of my youth being you know, pretty black and white and atheistic about both of those. But I would say I I tend on those questions to be more like I am about UFOs or life in the UNI. Like maybe I think there's not life after death, but I honestly cannot.
Know that, so you're more agnostic. You're looking for the answers as opposed to doing an atheist who just doesn't believe at all.
Right, right, Yeah, and yeah, I wouldn't say that's me. I would say I think I don't know anything.
In general, while you were probably like the majority of scientists who just want proof.
Yeah, I think that's a fair a fair assessment.
What about faith, though, At what point does faith come in and you have to tap into that because of the lack of proof?
Yeah, I mean I think I would say, what makes you have to? Like I think I think if I wanted to have a firm or belief in something it didn't have firm proof, then I would have to tap into faith. I kind of I feel pretty okay living my life feeling like I don't know very much. That's that's that's pay with me.
Lots of pilots I've witnessing strange things. They don't know what's happening. Navy pilots of course, with the tic TAC videos. Did you ever see that.
By the way, Yeah, definitely many times.
I Mean, clearly there's something that they're tracking and they can't keep up with it. They don't know what it is. They could not see it's extraterrestrial, they could not say it's Russian, they could not say it's Chinese. But they all but they all agree that they don't know what they are. So they've got to be something. No, No, it's got to be something.
Yeah. I mean, I think it's just with service members, just just like with other people who see things. I think they are seeing things, but I also think, you know, I was, I was just listening to the Pentagon UAP Office hearing right before this, and even the leader of that said, you know, human sensors and human made sensors to the brain and the instruments in fighter jets all
can be subject to misperceptions or things like that. And I think that, yeah, that that It doesn't mean that people don't see things, but I think we don't always see your interpret things.
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