The Truth About UAPs with Jon Kosloski

24:43And so that takes you outside of your zone of awareness. I think I asked him. So we actually... We're not quite as picky, so we're not requiring breaking the known laws of physics. We're just going 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. But if it's doing something that you don't understand it's doing, it technically could be breakthrough technology.

25:17It could be, yeah. Because it's doing something that we don't understand. And I would want, depending on, to know what that is. 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. I mean, I care about you, yes, but you're the frickin' military. Terry, you're supposed to protect us.

25:59And you've got guns. We don't. We have a fighting chance. You don't. I got nothing. That's America. Everybody's got guns. They have missiles. That's true. Get your arsenal straight here. Thank you. America. America. So tell me again your ongoing statistics on these reports. Where are you now, percentage-wise? Yeah, we have closed about 40 % of our cases. Case closed. Yep. Yep, we understand what they are, right? About 57 % are unresolved, and so those are in our active archive, always looking for that enriching data. And about 2 % are unresolved. Unresolved. And unresolved means... Continuing analysis.

26:33They're mysterious. You can't explain them. You're waiting for some better data or some deeper understanding of what's going on that you might not have yourself. Right. And we're using those 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. And how long will you keep a case like that open? and it is, do you see? We're never gonna close it until we resolve it. Really? Yeah. And by the way, I wanna 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.

27:11Once it makes a detection of some kind, however mysterious, the next round, we're gonna focus on that. We're gonna 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 and whatever. Exactly, on what would otherwise be just a survey of what could be out there. 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. These are glowing triangles in the sky.

27:47In this case, a very, very black triangle, a 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. I am so afraid right now. I want a bunker. Can I get a bunker for Christmas? I'm worried enough about the damn triangle. Flowing orbs. Okay. All right, now I'm a little, now I'm scared. Okay, go. 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.

28:29And 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. And you have more than one of these sightings? We have a few others, one from local law enforcement, some from the... He was not able to get a picture. No, I thought... No dash cam, unfortunately. how unfortunate yes that's our love they've got they've got chest cams yeah you know but you gotta give all of law enforcement UAP cams right so we're working very disappointed here really wow I am you're on it yeah yeah you're on a roll we gotta equip folks you're absolutely right I am so disappointed here yeah yeah so there have been cases triangles there have been cases of large orbs seen hovering a few why didn't the officer turn on their forward dash cam in this case he slammed on his brakes it happened almost instantaneously and he was terrified he didn't know what was happening he knew enough to notice it and respond by putting on his brakes he couldn't just get the pull over please he couldn't do that you can't do that I throw a gum wrapper out and I get that 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 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 In this case, I don't think he was skeptical.

29:49He was terrified for his life. And so he was just getting back to a safe position. That's what that was. Did he go in reverse? He did. 100 miles an hour backwards. While on the phone with his sergeant the whole time. On the phone, going backwards. Yeah. He was terrified. He can't stop and take a picture? I don't think that's what your training guy tells you. Give me this guy's name and badge number. I want his badge number right now. I'm not sure that'll go well for you. Wait, there was a floating orb thing. glowing, floating orbs. 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.

30:24In one of these instances... Wait, wait. If it was a few miles away, how do they know it was a few hundred feet above the ground? He was estimating based on height above trees. This is four inches above Marty's Deli. Yes. That's what this sounds like. That's exactly right. Okay? All right. That's exactly right. What part of the country was this? We'd rather not say. Okay. As we're conducting our investigations, we don't want to bias the data. Dude, I'm taking a vacation. You got to tell me where because I am not going there. So how precisely do you intersect either law enforcement or the public as a supplier of resources to them?

30:53Yeah, right now we're— Because you're not giving out kits yet, okay? 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. So this would be like a little black box, you know, break seal in emergency for the alien. Well, we're hoping that they're going to use it more often, maybe for their law enforcement responsibility, 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.

31:25So 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. 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? 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.

31:59And then we'll look at defining hotspots. 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. Is that like a form of confirmation bias in a way? Yeah, I would imagine so. Yeah, because 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.

32:37And then they finally found that the leopard was asleep behind a door and never left the zoo. So people's expectations of something. The leopard was a placebo, basically. But an interesting psychology experiment that would become.

33:10you work for the pentagon yes 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. It is. To protect us. Yes. How do you find the line and how do you draw it? 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?

33:55If 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... That would be a cloud. Cloud, a balloon, yeah. Things that the DOD doesn't usually worry about. I don't know that cloud. That's exactly right. That cloud looks menacing in more ways than one. It might rain. It might rain. You got to come on the road with me. The two of you are funny. Yeah, you got a thing. So it's a threat assessment ultimately that you want to make. And so we have too many cases to be able to do a month-long, multi-month-long analysis of every one case.

34:32And 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. You also have to look at all the various biases as well, right? I do, yes. I mean, it's like confirmation biases. is that there's the stigma. Is that still an issue where - It shouldn't be. It's all in the news, mainstream media. 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. No, that's stupid. No, no.

35:02You tell them, Neil deGrasse Tyson said, okay? I'll get a note from dad. You report, okay? You know what? I think you should be the psychologist on the staff. No, I'm just saying, 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. 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. We have congressional hearings on this, okay? I got you on this show, all right?

35:36If I thought it was crazy, you would have not walked through the front door. All right, so what 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. Go Fast. What is that? What was Go Fast? 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. That is an airplane. Airplane, yes. Yes, sir. So this is the one that got probably the most press attention of any of them. Yep. That's what I guess I was reciting earlier.

36:09That has the pilot track where you can hear them speak. Close to the surface of the water, though. 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 I'm familiar with from astronomy, that makes it appear that the object is moving much faster relative to the background than it actually is.

36:47There's no rotor wash. There's no jet wash. There's nothing, though. That's what's fascinating about this. 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 moving. It's called a bird. It's consistent with a bird or a balloon. We don't know what it is, though. Or Superman. But wouldn't a balloon... It's a bird. It's a plane. But wouldn't a balloon sort of have been more erratic? No, it would go with the wind. A balloon can't go where the wind won't take it. But what if the wind shifts quickly?

37:16Then it would, but that's not what happened here. Yeah, at those altitudes, it's more like a stream, so it's like a leaf in the stream just going with it. It sounds like he knows a lot about go fast, you should interview him. We're going to bring him on staff later, yeah. Look, so there's a case here. It might be anecdotal, but it could very much happen. And this happened in New Jersey, I was told. There was a squad car that was tracking a UFO in the sky. And the UFO, of course, it's happening in twilight dusk, as all these... And the UFO was in the shape of a Krasn. It was darting back and forth, left and right, across the road.

37:52Okay? It was this glowing light hovering, darting back and forth. And he's calling this in, and you can hear it. And then, so what is it? And then they found out. 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. Please tell me he's not a cop anymore. What's his badge number? 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, you're going to have a hard job. Yeah, a lot of analysis is required for these anomalies.

38:33Absolutely. That's code for a lot of idiots. That's the polite way. Not my show. I'm trying to be diplomatic. So I got a couple more just so you can comment on it. What do we call here? Mount Epna. So what do we have here? So in this case, we had a platform that was flying through the Mediterranean. What is a platform? A drone or an airplane with a camera on it. Okay. Not everyone is military fluent. I'm working on it. When I think of platforms, I think of stages where bands perform. The band Kansas was floating across the sky. That's right. Okay. So in this case, they're flying through the Mediterranean, and they're getting video of Mount Etna as it's exploding.

39:13So 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 unfazed. and those temperatures are between 900 and 1800 degrees Fahrenheit. And so that would seem to be very anomalous. 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. Very important so that they don't influence each other in their own analysis.

39:49So that keeps the independence of the perspectives. Okay, go on. 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, that model predicts where it shows up at the end.

40:18And 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. So what was it? Long story short, we don't know exactly what it is. What? Why don't I have you here? You are killing me. What is, who? I thought he knew something. That's what my mom says every day. It was a flying toaster, everybody. It's a flying toaster. Okay, finish that. 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.

40:51Nowhere 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. Okay. But environmental factors are huge factors in your work, right? They are, yeah. Like Starlink is also another issue where it's sort of pilots seeing things off of Starlink. It turns out the light's bouncing off in a certain way. Absolutely. All of that stuff. 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.

41:31Yet not anomalous. Neither anomalous nor a threat. 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. But since it's not a threat. The lackey is over in the end. 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? Yes, that's Italy. That's Italy. Okay. Italy's got that. It's got Vesuvius. Man, Italy's got. I'm Italian. We're hot people. So my Etna is an active volcano. It is, yeah. Just erupted recently.

42:04Okay, yeah. And I got another one here, the Puerto Rico object. Again, you need some better branding here. Yeah, maybe not my strong suit. Okay, so what do you have? I didn't name these. So in this case, this is a customs and border protection platform, and they're looking through a mid-wave 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.

42:43It's a flying dolphin. Could you tell me, do you have a sense we were able through the analysis to figure out the size of that object? 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.

43:24And you can't distinguish them at that point. Exactly. So it looks like it merges in. And we can assess it was about a one meter size object. In the remake of the Thomas Crown Affair, where there's a heist of art, 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.

44:00Because gas has a different density of the radiation than a solid object would. So you would be able to define a border between the two, but one wouldn't pop the way it would otherwise be. So yeah, if you don't know that, then you don't know that, right? 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 in orientation with the wind, that wind thing that you wanted to happen with the balloons, that happening. What is a sky lantern? So sky lantern would be like a Chinese lantern where you have a light.

44:31Okay, and some cultures they pop those up and it's buoyant by heated air? 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. Got it. One thing, just as we try to land this plane, what's your relationship with conspiracy theorists? So we're not looking to debunk anything. We're not the belief police. 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?

45:12It's a love-hate relationship or at least that movies have with the NSA. So why should anyone believe anything you ever say? I don't know. I'm not going to make an argument that they should but I would have said that differently. I probably could have. 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? 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.

45:59And I think it's just through that transparency that we're going to build trust. Well, also the transparency, to me, it would help educate us to know what to and not look. 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. Because it's very embarrassing. They've already done that. It's too late. I did my homework coming in. But is that transparency and sort of educates us to be able to help you?

46:32It 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? It makes your life easier because they can start ruling things out. It does. Yeah, it'll be a smaller haystack.

47:03Especially New Jersey. I love New Jersey. So thanks for your time. It's been my pleasure. And you came up from Washington for this. Fascinating stuff. 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? I get that. Hollywood stokes it within us. More than a billion high-resolution photos are uploaded to the internet every day that people obtain with their smartphones around the world.

47:48So it seems to me if there were aliens visiting us, It would be crowdsourced without your prompting. We'd have pictures of flying saucers. 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 sense of people's urge to want to be visited by aliens? 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.

48:31Maybe that's what it is. But in regards to the data, you know, a cell phone'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 whether or not we'll be able to get that data. Most of the Earth is not inhabited. But one thing we are missing are the alien abduction stories in the era of the smartphone. I have one. Stop. Because they used to be. It happened in a cornfield. Stop. So it used to be common, even, for a person to retell a story of getting abducted and getting their orifices probed.

49:10And 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 wanna be, I'm all for the aliens. And all my people are for aliens, too. Don't get us wrong. 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. Take you away? Oh yeah. And you'd go. If you couldn't come back. It looks like I wouldn't have a choice if that's what was going on. No, it might be an option.

49:48Depends on what plan you bought to go. Yeah, okay. So take us out. What should we look forward to going forward? 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 going to be building more on our transparency. Do you work with other countries as well? We're working towards that. Okay. Working towards that. We're going to have a scientific journal coming out in FY26, fiscal year 26. and we're going to have some... Does that have some name that is completely forgettable because you don't have English majors helping you name things?

50:20Picture book. What's the journal going to be called? We'll get back to you on that. Why don't you let us... Why don't you... You gave me a pin. Let us name it. Yeah, call me. You're part of the club. I'll let you tag it. I'm good at this. Call me. All right. I'll let you write the first article. But that journal is going to be coming out. We're going to have a variety of workshops, work on engaging with the citizen scientists as well as more active works. I look forward to that. Well, again, thanks for making the trip. Thank you. I appreciate this. All right, and good luck going forward. Thank you.

50:51Great having you on. All right. Dude, thanks for being here. Yeah, it was so much fun. All right, all right. I really understand more now, which is great. This has been StarTalk, devoted entirely to UAPs. What was that? Okay, sorry. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, as always, bidding you, especially now. to keep looking up.