New UFO files released by U.S. government

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]Department of Defense has released hundreds of never before seen files on UFOs. This is part of President Trump's effort to increase transparency on government knowledge of possible extraterrestrial activity.

[00:00:11]Here are some of the new pictures on the Department of Defense's website. It includes one image from the Apollo 17 mission to the moon.

[00:00:19]Can't quite make this out. It's basically >> [clears throat] >> apparently it shows two it appears to show lights above the lunar surface. So for more on this, we called in an expert Avi Loeb. He's a Harvard astrophysicist who leads the Galileo Project which focuses on this kind of unidentified aerial phenomena or UAP.

[00:00:40]Professor, thank you so much for joining us. You've been going through these files. What stood out to you?

[00:00:45]Thanks for having me. Well, the Apollo images are indeed quite interesting.

[00:00:51]There are there is another release from Apollo 12 of some lights above the horizon. One thing to keep in mind is that there is no atmosphere to the moon. So any object will go straight and impact the surface without burning up in the atmosphere as often we see in meteors on Earth. And so that means that you can generate light as a result of these impacts and that's the one thing I would like to clarify whether this could be these lights could be the result of impacts by rocks on the surface of the moon which happened all the time. The Artemis two astronauts noticed all the six or eight flashes of light associated with that when they passed near the moon. So that's one interesting set of data, but there are also a lot of documents which are quite intriguing.

[00:01:42]For example, there is a document from December 19th, 1947 to the Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force in Washington.

[00:01:52]And the first point that is made in that letter is that there are reports on flying saucers, flying discs.

[00:02:02]And these are serious people, you know, exchanging secret memos among themselves. And the fact that serious people, I mean, we know that also more recently from pilots that are reporting unusual things they see. You know, that that deserves attention. We need to figure out what instruments recorded and try to um understand whether these are natural phenomena, whether these are adversarial nations, or perhaps some very advanced technologies that we are not aware of, that are not human-made.

[00:02:35]Irrespective of whether the last interpretation is the correct one or not, you know, we need to figure these things out. And any person should be filled with curiosity when seeing all these files.

[00:02:49]There will be more released every week or so. We heard that there will be weekly installments. So, this is really the very first installment. And my guess is that the more interesting documents, information, videos will be released in future weeks because they take more time for the declassification process to take to to allow us to see them.

[00:03:14]And in particular, the 46 videos that were requested by Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna, that hopefully will come out in the next batch of of releases.

[00:03:25]Uh so, some logical explanations there.

[00:03:28]Rocks as opposed to perhaps extraterrestrial activity, Professor. But in in your in your vast knowledge and expertise, you don't believe that we're the only carbon-based life forms in the entire universe, do you?

[00:03:46]Not at all. I I don't even think that we are at the top of the food chain. You know, that the Milky Way the Milky Way galaxy is full of 100 billion stars like the sun and about 10% of them have a planet roughly the size of the earth at roughly the same separation. So, it would be arrogant of us to assume that we are unique and special and most of the stars formed billions of years before the sun. So, there was plenty of time for even a spacecraft like Voyager that was sent out of the solar system 50 years ago, even for that to cross the entire Milkyway galaxy, it takes about a billion years. There was plenty of time for other civilizations that predated us to reach to our backyard. So, I think it's it should be treated as an experimental observational task for us to figure out if we are being visited.

[00:04:36]And if we are visited, of course, that would inspire us to visit the backyard of the senders of these probes.

[00:04:46]Uh Professor, I have so many questions.

[00:04:47]One is does this scare you because this scares me, right? Like if we have been visited, I find that all scary. Maybe I've seen too many movies. No, because the professor is I I think They never come in peace. Maybe initially, but No, but [laughter] the idea, Professor, that So, you made an interesting point, right? Which is that the universe is much older than this planet and that we're talking about systems that are light-years away from us. If a system if if aliens have the ability to travel at the speed that by which they could arrive here on planet Earth, which there's nothing that we know of that fast. And by that very nature, perhaps they would have gotten rid of all the things that plague us, war and division and strife. That's my like sort of like idealistic hope.

[00:05:34]So, the way to think of this is like a blind date of interstellar proportions.

[00:05:39]And when you go on a blind date, you never know if the dating partner will be friendly or a serial killer, right?

[00:05:47]And so >> [laughter] >> And so my my approach is I'm I'm sufficiently frustrated with the daily news, you know, reading the news every day here on Earth that I'm willing to experience whatever we find, you know, because my hope is that it will bring us to a better place. We would not be as arrogant as we are. We would not be, you know, engaged in conflicts all the time here on Earth because there would be something else out there that we should think about. So, all in all, I think it would bring us it will be a good transformation for humanity, and that's why I think we should search for anything.

[00:06:24]The other thing to keep in mind is even if we don't we are not willing to believe that, you know, the question of whether we have a neighbor or not does not depend on what we we think. You know, either we have a neighbor that is visiting us or not, and so our duty, at least my duty as a scientist, is to look at the evidence and figure out what it means.

[00:06:46]And I'm here to help government in this process as more data is being released.

[00:06:51]Professor Avi Loeb, thank you so much.

[00:06:54]>> That's what I needed for the weekend.

[00:06:56]>> Yes, on this optimistic note. And it's like what the astronauts said when they were in outer space looking back at us, they felt that we all needed to be more united. And that is that same sentiment.

[00:07:05]Professor, thank you. All right, we'll have more [clears throat] news after the break. This is CBS News 24/7 more.