Senior SETI Institute astronomer reacts to new Pentagon UFO files

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:02]The Pentagon is releasing and declassifying files on UFOs. This includes eyewitness testimony, photos, and reports of sightings of unexplained objects. So, I want to bring in Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute in Northern California. Seth, thank you so much for being with us.

[00:00:22]First, can you explain to us what the SETI Institute does?

[00:00:26]Yeah, well, the SETI Institute uh it it does many things, many kinds of uh research. That's what it is, research organization, all connected to the idea of our, you know, is there other life in the universe beside what we find here on on planet Earth. And that includes, you know, of course, things like plants and, you know, other sort of stupid life. No no affront to the to the plants, but still. And maybe more famously, to looking for, you know, intelligent alien life, which we've been doing for a long time.

[00:00:57]And and so, what do you make of the Pentagon's release of these new materials today? Did you learn anything?

[00:01:02]Anything surprise you?

[00:01:04]Well, to be honest, this kind of story, stories that are very analogous to what was released today, appear about every couple of months in the news because, you know, somebody says something somewhere. I I think you have to look at it this way. If really there was good evidence for aliens, you know, cruising our skies, which is the implication of today's story, that would be something that would be noticed by, you know, the FAA, the Federal Aviation Administration. It would be noticed by astronomers. It would be noticed by, you know, Joe Sixpack in his backyard.

[00:01:40]And that doesn't happen. These stories have been, you know, circulating for at least a half a century, and we've not really learned anything from that.

[00:01:51]Yeah, I I you know, I got to say, Seth, there's a lot of skeptics who are going to believe that these pictures are frankly of objects created by our foreign adversaries, namely Russia and China, who send these unique objects to our airspace to distract us and also potentially gather more information about our own surveillance capabilities.

[00:02:11]What do you make of that theory? No, I think it's a good theory and it's undoubtedly true. I mean, it's been proven to be the case in some, you know, specific circumstances. It's also the case that there are something like 8,000 satellites orbiting the Earth. Most of them have cameras that are looking down.

[00:02:27]And and some of those are military, you know, reconnaissance satellites. So, you know, they're looking down and they're up there in the sky a couple of hundred miles above your head. They reflect a little sunlight now and then. So, they look like bright objects sailing across the across the sky. So, these things get reported. People get all upset about them or at least excited about them thinking that the aliens are about to land. But, unfortunately, it's probably not the aliens. It's probably humans.

[00:02:54]What do you think is the most compelling evidence thus far in your own research that there is extraterrestrial life beyond our planet?

[00:03:03]Yeah. Well, to be honest, there is no compelling evidence so far for extraterrestrial life. I mean, if if that weren't the case, that would be a huge story. If we really had proof that there was some sort of life, even if it's stupid life, right, on some planet X light years away, whatever, that would be beyond the front page of every newspaper in the country because that would be really interesting. That would tell you right away, hey, life is not a miracle. It's not just limited to Earth.

[00:03:33]Life is all over the place. So, that would be big story. But, you haven't read that big story yet because we've never found that that evidence.

[00:03:40]Personally, I think that life is probably, you know, like fire hydrants or whatever, very, very common all over the place, but we still haven't found it. So, you don't think the government is hiding alien corpses somewhere. A lot of people believe you don't believe that there's aliens walking among us, that there's spaceships orbiting our our our planet here. You don't believe any of that. No, those would be huge stories if true.

[00:04:07]>> [laughter] >> But but the aliens probably wouldn't limit their visits just to the United States. They might also want to you know visit other interesting countries like Bulgaria or whatever. I mean you would you you would you would think that if this were true, right, it would be a story worldwide, but it's not.

[00:04:25]Seth Shostak, thank you so much. Always good to talk to you. My pleasure.

[00:04:29]Keeping it real. All right.