SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Accounts of flying discs floating, then disappearing, metallic orbs and a mysterious cylinder tumbling through space near an Apollo spacecraft. These were just some of the details contained in government reports recently released by the Department of Defense. Now, some of this information about unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAPs, which we used to call UFOs, has long been in the public domain in one form or another. But the DOD report, coming on President Trump's orders, is another step toward the federal government taking the question of UAPs more seriously. We're going to talk about all of this with Adam Frank, an astrophysicist at the University of Rochester, involved in the search for intelligent life. Welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
ADAM FRANK: Oh, it's my pleasure.
DETROW: So let's start here. In your piece for The Atlantic about these so-called alien files, your first line reads, spaceships. That's all I'm asking for. Just one actual stinking spaceship. Fair to say you were unimpressed by this?
FRANK: Yeah, because one of the things that's happened - so what I would call the modern era of UFOs, right? When I was a young scientist back in the '80s, you know, UFOs were just tin-hat sort of stuff. Nobody took them seriously at all. And then there was that New York Times article in 2017 which said, oh, there is actually a Pentagon program studying this. And then there's been these hearings, these explosive congressional hearings, where you've seen these former intelligence agents saying that we actually have - you know, the United States and other countries are routinely capturing crashed spaceships and that we've got alien biologics or nonhuman - I think the term they use is nonhuman biologics.
So these are, you know, really extreme claims that people are making. I expected, given all that, that this disclosure - wow, we're finally going to get the government disclosing documents. And it turns out it's just more the same.
DETROW: Yeah.
FRANK: Fuzzy blob videos or photos and unverifiable personal testimony.
DETROW: Look, I really appreciate you being the Scully to my Mulder in this conversation.
FRANK: (Laughter) I'm so sorry, man.
DETROW: In addition to that, though, I will say that I was among many people reading this thinking, like, get a load of these Apollo 11 transcripts, to be gently and not so gently reminded that, in fact, those transcripts had been released to the public for 50 years at this point. Given that, given the way that President Trump talked about this, saying, like, you know, have fun - or essentially that - is this a serious exercise by the federal government to you?
FRANK: It doesn't seem actually very serious. You know, there's actually - as I was going through the documents, I found, you know, it was a report about launch failures on, you know, reentry vehicles or - it was like, wait, what is this even doing here? It's like somebody just typed in space, you know, into the government database, and then just grabbed a bunch of stuff and threw it in there. That document had nothing to do with UFOs or UAPs. So this actually doesn't feel very serious. I am all in favor of disclosure, but I'm very skeptical, particularly of the claims made in those congressional hearings. I just see a lot of terrible science happening.
DETROW: Given all of that, if it were up to you, what would you like to see the government do next? What do you think the responsible way to move forward and kind of engage in these questions would be?
FRANK: The government has been involved in studying this for 70 years. So there's a lot of documents, right? There's going to be a lot of documents. And I just think it's great that, OK, release all those documents. If there's anything in there that actually leads us somewhere, that's what I'd like to see. And I want - you know, if we actually have alien bodies, you know, in a refrigerator in someplace or we have captured alien spaceships, you know scientists have done huge amounts of studies on them. So at least, if you're not going to show me the alien bodies, there must be pages and pages and pages of the results of those scientific studies. So at least show us that. And at some point, if you can't show us that, then it's just a story. These are just stories that have been circulating around forever. And there's much better places to put our time.
DETROW: You heard it from Adam Frank. Bodies or it didn't happen. Adam Frank is an astrophysicist at the University of Rochester. Thank you so much. Even though I'm a little disappointed by the outcome of this conversation, thank you so much for walking us through (laughter).
FRANK: I'm sorry. I know, I'm like Mr. Bummer. But, you know - but the thing people - I mean, it's - what's beautiful is people have this interest in the night sky. They should keep that. All the mystery, all the wonder, is there. But it's the stars and it's all the planets we've discovered orbiting those stars. So there's more than enough mystery and wonder to go around.
DETROW: Adam Frank, thank you so much.
FRANK: My pleasure. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
