Welcome back to Signs of Life, PARADIGM’s weekly briefing tracking all things UAP and NHI (UFOs and aliens).
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THE RESULTS ARE IN
… and they indicate birds.
The newly formed UAP Science Advisory Council published its first conclusions this week in the form of a preprint of a new paper analyzing a UFO video of six objects picked up by a military aircraft’s infrared camera last year in the Middle East.
The authors, who include council lead Avi Loeb of Harvard, conclude that the objects in the video — which was released In September by the War Department —are most likely a flock of birds.
That’s based in part on a comparison of the rate at which the objects dim and brighten in the video to the rate at which birds flap their wings. The paper finds that the objects’ apparent high rate of speed could be an illusion caused by parallax.
The paper highlights the finding as an example of what scientists can achieve with creative analysis when forced to evaluate videos where much of the relevant instrument data has been withheld.
“Releasing the redacted sensor and platform data would provide information that could refute these hypotheses,” the paper adds.
That comes off as a pointed comment if you’ve been following the ongoing tensions between officials who say they are providing UFO transparency and the activists and scientists who say it is not enough.
Disclosure activists have been privately pressing the administration and lawmakers for many months to release more of the sensor data that accompanies UFO videos — and to release full-resolution versions of the videos themselves. One factor preventing fuller disclosure is a concern that it could reveal the capabilities of military sensor systems to adversaries.
But, based on what I’m seeing on X and Reddit, the large and fervent community of Disclosure supporters has grown increasingly frustrated with the pace of Disclosure in recent weeks. Their discontent has been exacerbated by a disconnect between the escalation of claims from whistleblowers like David Grusch, for example on last week’s Joe Rogan podcast, and the far more mundane results of the Trump administration’s formal Disclosure process to date.
PARADIGM recently caught up with the new paper’s lead author, the astrobiologist and advisory council member Jacob Haqq-Misra. If you’re unhappy with the level of Disclosure so far, Haqq-Misra feels your pain.
Our conversation had a recurring theme.
“We just need more data.” … “It’s frustrating,” ... “Show us the data.”
… “I understand that they don’t want to reveal classified secrets. But if there is data that can be declassified and shared, then let’s work on it together.” … “We need data. It’s a very frustrating problem.”
I expect this will be an enduring point of tension between the Trump administration and its UAP science advisory council, compounded by pressure from the online grassroots.
Subscribe to get the full Q&A with Haqq-Misra — including his visit to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence — when it comes out tomorrow.
HERRINGTON’S STORY EVOLVES
John Herrington, who served as Ronald Reagan’s energy secretary, now says that he did once pay a teenage Brent Friedman to drive his car across the country.
The cross-country drive is central to the premise of a famous story Friedman, now a Hollywood writer, tells about Herrington confiding over dinner that he had received secret government briefings revealing the existence of aliens.
When I asked Herrington about this last year, he said the alien story was “total BS,” as PARADIGM previously reported. He told me that he had paid his son-in-law to drive his car cross-country, but that “Brent Friedman had nothing to do with it.”
On a new episode of American Alchemy, Herrington now tells host Jesse Michels, “we hired him to drive our car to Washington.”
Crucially, Herrington, who is now 87 years old, still maintains the crux of Friedman’s story — that Herrington admitted to receiving a secret government briefing about aliens — is “BS.”
Later in the episode, Michels and Friedman speculated at length about the lag between my interview with Herrington and PARADIGM’s publication of an item based on the interview.
FOR THE RECORD: I spoke to Herrington at the beginning of my UFO research last fall and published an item based on our interview a few weeks after PARADIGM’s launch this August. I did not realize just how big this story has become in UFO circles, and I was surprised by the tremendous interest in Herrington’s denial.
AN XPRIZE FOR ALIENS
ICYMI: PARADIGM reported that XPRIZE Foundation chairman Peter Diamandis is actively exploring the creation of an XPRIZE for anyone providing proof of an alien presence near Earth in the form of technology that was demonstrably not created by humans.
The creation of a prestigious XPRIZE for alien visitation would cement the subject’s move from the fringe to the mainstream.
ICYMI, Part II: The piece also included the news that former Navy fighter pilot Ryan Graves, founder of Americans for Safe Aerospace, is joining the Trump administration’s UAP Science Advisory Council.
OUT THERE
Astronomers have detected radio waves coming from a planet 63 light-years from Earth. It may be the first direct evidence of a magnetic field — which can help make a planet hospitable to life — on a planet outside our solar system. (NYT)
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said his agency “should have a seat at the table” if aliens are shown to be behind UFOs (Space.com)
FOR YOUR RADAR
House Oversight chairman James Comer said he wants to schedule another UAP hearing for the lame-duck session after the November election (Ask a Pol UAP)
The Liberation Times obtained 67 reports from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission about aerial incursions over nuclear facilities since 2024. (Liberation Times)
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Song of the week
The Herrington stuff is compelling. It’s ironic in the Jesse Michels interview that he continues to criticize government service types as being “Fauci” when they seek public attention, yet here he is doing an interview and making public statements when he really doesn’t need to be. He could easily remain silent and private, yet he’s choosing not to and criticizing others for doing the same thing. Add that to mentioning that he hangs out at Bohemian Grove, and the continuously changing story, and I’m scratching my head at what this guy is doing.
I did note that he dropped a nugget in the interview that he’s seen a laser weapon that can take anything out of the sky, and Michels passed right over it.