Dr. Frank is a professor of astrophysics at the University of Rochester. He and his colleagues were recently awarded a NASA grant to study signs of in

I’m a Physicist Who Searches for Aliens. U.F.O.s Don’t Impress Me.

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2021-05-30 23:00:07

Dr. Frank is a professor of astrophysics at the University of Rochester. He and his colleagues were recently awarded a NASA grant to study signs of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.

This month the TV news program “60 Minutes” ran a segment on recent sightings by Navy pilots of unidentified flying objects. The pilots’ accounts were bolstered by videos recorded by cameras onboard their planes that captured what the government now calls “unidentified aerial phenomena.”

In the wake of these enigmatic encounters, people are asking me what I think about U.F.O.s and aliens. They’re asking because I’m an astrophysicist who is involved in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. My colleagues and I were recently awarded one of the first NASA grants to look for signs of advanced technology on planets outside our solar system. (I’ve argued in these pages that the 10 billion trillion habitable planets that we now believe exist in the universe make extraterrestrial civilizations far more likely.)

I understand that U.F.O. sightings, which date back at least to 1947, are synonymous in the popular imagination with evidence of extraterrestrials. But scientifically speaking, there is little to warrant that connection. There are excellent reasons to search for extraterrestrial life, but there are equally excellent reasons not to conclude that we have found evidence of it with U.F.O. sightings.