Gravitas Plus: UFOs, Aliens & Science

on the 24th of june 1947 kenneth arnold an american aviator and a businessman was flying near mount rainer in washington state he was searching for a transport plane that had gone missing in the area he ended up seeing something extraordinary and strange a series of nine unusual objects flying in a v formation he estimated their speed to be 2 700 kilometers per hour three times faster than any aircraft at that time he said they were moving side to side occasionally flipping and darting around and looked like saucers skipping on water the news of his sightings hit the u.s media the pilot had all the makings of a reliable witness but the details of his observations were twisted media reports said he had encountered flying saucers this was perhaps one of the biggest miscourts in history but the term flying saucer became a household name in america soon everyone was scanning the skies for flying saucers reports started coming in from all over the world there were nearly 853 flying disk sightings in 1947 alone and they grew with time this obsession turned into pop culture it became fodder for hollywood films which linked the phenomenon with aliens now we call them ufos unidentified flying objects are they indeed extraterrestrial controlled by visitors from another world these questions have haunted our imagination for decades we may now be one step closer to finding an answer hello and welcome to gravitas plus i'm palki sharma and nasa is getting serious about ufos the new chief of the american space agency has asked scientists to investigate the existence of unidentified flying objects this comes exactly one year after the u.s department of defense released three declassified videos they showed u.s navy pilots encountering what appeared to be ufos it was the first time the pentagon formally acknowledged the existence of such videos now lawmakers from all stripes are pushing hard for answers both republicans and democrats who agree on almost nothing have set aside their differences and are asking in one voice what exactly is all the unexplained stuff flying in their airspace a pentagon report on this should be out any day now nasa too has promised to find some answers let's tell you what we know starting with the object itself what is a ufo an unidentified flying object a term that was coined by the u.s air force in 1953 they used it to describe any aircraft they cannot easily identify or explain now this term is fairly new but the concept dates back millennia for thousands of years people have reported seeing strange lights and objects flying through the skies the first known mention is from 440 bce in ancient egypt when the scribes of pharaoh tutmos iii reported fiery disks floating in the skies then in 218 bce the roman republic recorded several sightings of phantom ships gleaming in the sky in christianity there's a painting depicting the crucifixion of jesus christ which shows two ufos at the top corners neither of the pilots have a halo around them which discards the possibility of them being divine beings and in india the earliest reference goes back to ten thousand-year-old rock paintings found in the basta region of chathisgar archaeologists say these paintings depict ufos like those shown in films now these references and paintings are proof that ufos have fascinated mankind since ancient times but there's no evidence to suggest that they belong to other worldly beings it's just a paradigm that some of us have willfully embraced and when i say some of us i mean hollywood it has always loved aliens because there's money in aliens silver screen saucers make for good content they sell tickets even more when they're placed in real life contexts in the 1950s films like the day the earth stood still and invasion of the body snatchers channeled the cold war paranoia today movies like men in black independence day and the avengers are used to depict the scourge of global terrorism in some movies aliens and ufos are considerate they come in peace in some others they come to annihilate the human race they make for good cinema no doubt but they've also sensationalized the topic to such an extent that most people have started believing that aliens are really visiting us where do these most people live where else the united states of america a 2019 gallup survey showed that 33 of american adults believe that aliens in ufos have been visiting earth another survey in the same year nearly 50 percent said that successive american governments have been hiding something about ufos president obama says that there is footage and uh records of objects in the skies what do you think that it is i would ask him again thank you but how many americans have seen a ufo according to america's national ufo reporting center there have been at least 90 000 sightings since 1905 with an average of six sightings per day and some of them at the same time in the exact same place on the 31st of october 2004 77 people reported seeing a ufo in chicago illinois september 19 2009 75 people reported seeing a ufo in burlington new jersey interestingly most of these sightings happened on weekends and at a time when most people were believed to be drunk look at this graph it depicts all ufo sightings between 2000 and 2014 most of them happened during drinking hours now we're not suggesting that everybody was drunk but the timing and the rate of alcohol consumption the states they were reported in is often used to reject the claims so what did these people see in most cases what they believe were ufos turned out to be planes clouds or weather balloons or celestial events like meteors and planets that seemed unusually bright most of these can be scientifically explained and yet there are some unresolved mysteries in 1954 a football match in florence italy was disrupted after unidentified objects were spotted above the stadium tens of thousands saw something in the sky what was it most testimonies say it looked like an egg-shaped object which glittered as it fell from the sky then in 1966 around 350 children and teachers at a school in melbourne australia saw five planes around a silver flying saucer the planes tried to airily hurt the object for 20 minutes before it disappeared now these were just a few examples there are many many more a french ufo research group says that three and a half percent of all ufo sightings remain unidentified and defy all explanations 3.5 percent is not a small figure especially not when you look at the kind and scale of investigations that have been carried out to find answers america has conducted a total of 12 government-funded investigations on unidentified flying objects project blue book project grudge project serpo project sign project silverbug to name a few the united kingdom has carried out two secret studies into ufos the flying saucer working party and project condyme the soviet union had dedicated an organization to investigate ufo sightings institute it functioned for a total of 13 years now besides the fact that they all got suspended what's common between all these probes is that all of them concluded that ufos do exist and there is no evidence to suggest that they are hostile some said they could probably be extraterrestrial beings that have no interest in making contact with humans some others said that they were made by humans who had learned how to manipulate the laws of physics and i yet to reveal their intentions but these were all suggestions none of the probes could find out exactly who and what was operating these objects now here's the thing the universe as we know is unfathomable it stretches some 93 billion light years it has 2 trillion galaxies each shining with millions of stars and dotted with more planets than you could count given all of this it seems unlikely that we are alone yet we found nothing to suggest otherwise scientists real scientists have spent a lifetime searching for signs of other civilizations some concede that we've got the cosmos to ourselves some highly doubt that's the case but none of them have said that aliens are visiting us in ufos and even if they were they won't be so considerate to just pass by stadiums and rooftops on weekends but then again good science takes time and the human desire for scientific advancement is insatiable just this month a group of international scientists in seoul discovered links between galaxies hidden bridges that are made up of dark matter they've even built a map to understand how these bridges work once they figure out how to navigate this map perhaps we'll be able to see if any ufos are passing through until then read the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy fabulous book the funniest piece of science fiction ever and let's just assume that aliens are benevolent beings perhaps already living among humans trying to play peek-a-boo with their ufos

Channel: WION

Views: 2,447,234

Keywords: gravitas plus, gravitas plus with palki sharma, nasa, ufo, aliens, pentagon, palki sharma upadhyay, gravitas world news, gravitas english news, world news, wion, wion videos, live, wion live, gravitas plus live

Id: AX-mifWsRYE

Length: 9min 56sec (596 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 13 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/ZahricAurelian]

No mention of the Mahabharata?

[u/Taco_Dave]

This is legitimately one of the best news segments I've seen on this topic so far. Well done OP.

[u/nekkoMaster]

News channels all over the world are talking about UFOs. They might be preparing us for the reveal LOL

[u/bluebagger1972]

New cults in India would be formed just from this story.