NASA held its first public meeting on “unidentified anomalous phenomena,” commonly known as UFOs, where scientists called for a more rigorous scientific approach to clarify the origin of hundreds of mysterious sightings. An independent team of 16 scientists are due to report their findings in a report by the end of July, with Wednesday’s working meeting a forum for its final deliberations. There have been more than 800 events collected over 27 years, of which two to five percent of them are thought to be possibly anomalous. The agency’s posture in the past was to “debunk” such sightings, reinforcing the stigma over the hunt for alien life. NASA’s work, which relies on unclassified material, is separate from a Pentagon investigation, though the two are coordinating on matters of how to apply scientific tools and methods.
