Neil deGrasse Tyson

The Department of Defense's file release included NASA transcripts from missions roughly four years after the earliest Pentagon material in the same release.

Department of Defense has released hundreds of never-before-seen files on UFOs... NASA transcripts from four years later are also part of this release.

The NASA documents included in the file release were never classified.

those NASA documents were never classified.

Astronauts' in-flight reports of light flashes during Apollo-era missions have a complete, mundane physical explanation and are not evidence of anything anomalous.

what the astronauts were seeing would have a complete full rational explanation, but you have to read the transcript to see and understand why

The press did not do adequate homework in covering the file release and misleadingly implied that all the released material, including the mundane NASA transcripts, was part of the same unexplained mystery as the Pentagon UAP files.

I'm a little disappointed with the press how they've treated this subject because they're not doing their homework... juxtaposed with other files where people see unidentified anomalous phenomena... it's almost guilt by association.

Cosmic rays (relativistic particles from supernovae and galactic centers) strike a telescope's digital detector and corrupt individual pixels, requiring astronomers to take multiple exposures and discard or median-combine affected pixels.

cosmic rays will hit your digital detector and light up pixels within it... you want to take at least three images of your object.

Apollo astronauts reported seeing flashes of light with eyes both open and closed while in space, indicating the effect originates in the eye/retina rather than in the external visual field.

They would just see it with their eyes open and with their eyes closed. Evidence that something is getting triggered on their retina

A helmet fitted with cosmic-ray detectors (ALFMED) registered particle strikes at the same moments astronauts reported seeing flashes, corroborating the cosmic-ray-retina explanation over an alternative 'cosmic alien force' framing.

if a cosmic ray triggers your helmet at the same time you see a flash, there's hard evidence... Sure enough, that's exactly what was observed.

Our check The ALFMED (Apollo Light Flash Moving Emulsion Detector) headband was worn by an astronaut on Apollo 16 and 17 for cosmic-ray tracking correlated against verbal flash reports. NASA's own analysis found direct temporal coincidence for a subset of events (2 of 15 tracked particle events lined up with reported flashes), and combined with geometry/Monte Carlo modeling and later corroborating evidence (ground-based particle-beam studies, ISS reports), this is treated as confirming the cosmic-ray/retina explanation over any exotic alternative. The direct hit-rate was modest, which nuances but does not overturn the claim's framing.

Sources ntrs.nasa.gov, en.wikipedia.org

Beyond producing visible flashes, cosmic-ray particles entering an astronaut's body can damage DNA and break apart complex molecules, a longer-term medical concern for spaceflight.

These particles are entering their bodies and could mess with your DNA. It can break apart complex molecules within your body, within your brain.

Transcript phrases like 'bright as a headlight' describing the light flashes sound dramatic ('like there's some craft out there') taken out of context, but read in the surrounding transcript are ordinary technical communication with mission control about the ALFMED experiment.

Bright as a headlight... if you just take that comment out of context, it's like what are they experiencing? But in the framing of the sentences that precede it and follow it, it is clear that it is simply more communication with mission control about flashes of light.

A separate astronaut report of lights outside the capsule described as reminiscent of '4th of July' fireworks is attributable to frost, fin fragments and paint chips shed from the Saturn V third stage during the translunar injection (TLI) burn, not to an anomalous craft.

one report was that there were lights outside of the craft that reminded them of the 4th of July... Right about at that time, they see these flashes of light outside their capsule.

The Apollo command module had windows facing only one direction (forward of the crew), unlike the 360-degree cupola view added later on the space station, limiting what astronauts could visually confirm about lights outside the craft.

the Apollo capsule is not completely clad with transparent windows. They're only windows sticking out in like one direction... you don't have a 360 couple of view the way they do in the space station

Every astronaut who traveled to the Moon served in the military, as an officer or (in one or two cases) enlisted, except geologist Harrison 'Jack' Schmitt, supporting the claim that the Apollo program was fundamentally a military/Cold War undertaking.

Every astronaut who went to the moon served in the military and were either officers in the military or one or two might have been enlisted. They all served in the military except for one who was the scientist, Jack Schmidt.

Testimony from whistleblowers, insiders, former security officials and ex-military personnel provides sufficient reason to think there is a real, undisclosed extraterrestrial presence being held by the government, though this falls short of direct physical proof.

We have sufficient reason to think there are aliens in the back shed because of testimonies from whistleblowers and insiders, former security officials and for ex-military.

In the history of science, the correct explanation for a previously mysterious phenomenon has never turned out to be magic or aliens.

in the history of science, the correct explanation has never been magic or aliens ever.

In the cold open Tyson says that if the government had aliens and wanted to hide them from a president, the president would not know.

But if you have the aliens and you don't want the president to know, the president's not going to know.

Tyson says depictions of gods (Medusa, a floating Jesus with beams, Jesus walking on water) could pass for aliens, so imagining aliens is the same impulse as imagining gods: picturing beings beyond ourselves.

what are our images of deity? Many of them could pass for aliens.

Obama's remark was the scientifically literate position (aliens are probable somewhere), and the public turned it into a claim that the US government holds aliens.

They took his statement that sure there are aliens out there and turned it on to the US government

A May search-interest peak for aliens coincided with a Pentagon release of UFO files that week and with Tyson's book Take Me to Your Leader (released May 12); no file ids or contents are discussed.

So that one of those peaks in May in part was because there were files released that week by the Pentagon and dare I suggest my book was released in May on May 12th.

Tyson says high-ranking whistleblowers (former intelligence officers and military) gave sworn testimony in Congress, which is why he decided to engage with the topic.

I saw these highranking whistleblowers come forward in Congress, sworn testimonies, whistleblowers, former intelligence officers, former military folk.

Because the witnesses are official government people rather than anonymous farmers, testimony about UFOs must now be taken up 'a notch'.

no longer can you discount the testimony the way you might have done so before with the farmer in the back 40

The decisive evidence would be a physical alien specimen; once shown, belief questions end, as with elephants, which nobody is asked whether they believe in.

If you're saying you got an alien in the shed in the back 40, just bring it out. And the moment you do that, no one will ever have to ask again, do you believe in aliens?

In absolute brain size humans rank about fourth, behind whales, dolphins or porpoises, and elephants.

So, if aliens came to Earth and they knew that brains are important, we'd be like fourth on their list for who they want to talk to.

An operational definition of 'intelligent life' for the alien question may require technology (radio, spaceflight), under which the Roman Empire would not count.

Operational definition of intelligence might include your ability to communicate across space or your ability to build a spaceship to move.

One hypothesis for the lack of visitors ('if aliens are everywhere, where are they?') is that interstellar travel is too hard.

So maybe there are intelligent aliens out there, but space travels too hard. So they haven't come to visit us.

The congressional UAP hearings drew bipartisan participation, which Tyson sees as rare agreement in Washington.

We had Republicans sitting right next to Democrats asking questions about aliens.

Most released UAP video is monochromatic and low resolution, and Tyson, having seen most of it, finds none of it compelling beyond a point of redundancy.

Typically, it's monochromatic and very low resolution as this is.

Most UFO sightings have natural explanations (cloud formations, lightning, twilight conditions, misidentification), but some remain unexplained and Tyson is comfortable with that.

Even UFO enthusiasts of the most severe kind would agree that most sightings of what we call UFOs have natural explanations

Tyson finds the Tic Tac video interesting because he cannot explain it, and the pilots' reported shock adds to it; he describes the object as moving and 'gimbaling' in frames.

Well, cuz I don't know what it is. I'm a scientist. We are attracted to things with that we don't know or understand.

Tyson says whistleblowers have testified that the US has aliens, alien crash parts and reverse-engineered alien technology.

people have testified we have aliens, that we have alien crash parts, that we have reverse engineered alien technology

The public is ready to see an actual alien because Hollywood has prepared us, and Tyson expects the encounter to be charming rather than frightening.

Of course, we're ready. Hollywood has prepped us for decades for this day. I think it'll be charming.

An alien is unlikely to be humanoid, since most life on Earth (oak trees, worms, lobsters) is not humanoid; Hollywood aliens are actors in costume.

I would be most surprised if the alien was humanoid.

Tyson says whistleblowers have said, under oath in Congress, that they have met aliens.

until you had whistleblowers saying they've met aliens under oath in Congress and not the drunkards coming out of the bar at 2:00 a.m.

Reported alien sightings divide into archetypes: little green men (1950s and 60s), the grays (more common today), Arcturians, Lyrans, Sirians, tall whites and insectoids, about a dozen in his book.

So they divide into archetypes. So little green men that's, you know, we had a lot of those back in the 50s and 60s.

English-speaking countries report vastly more alien sightings than other cultures, which Tyson attributes to a reporting culture, not aliens preferring English speakers.

English- speakaking cultures have reported many more alien sightings than other cultures vastly more sightings which is a little weird

A test of shared DMT encounters would be whether one person can glean information from the entity that matches another person's independent information; absent that, it is not evidence.

So let's do experiments on that to see if can can one person experience an insect insectoid, glean information from that that psychedelic alien that matches someone else's information.

His book Take Me to Your Leader reframes assumptions about aliens, with examples such as an alien finding sleep baffling, handshakes being unsafe with unknown appendages, and aliens landing in Los Angeles concluding the dominant life form is the automobile.

What this book tries to do is reccast all of your assumptions about what an alien would think of us and about what we would think of an alien.