Are we alone in the universe?
The Inquiry
BBC
4.6 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 31 August 2023
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In July 2023 a group of lawmakers in the US held a session to explore evidence of extra-terrestrial life. The evidence included the famous Tic Tac videos of mysterious objects flying through the sky.
Pilots described encounters with Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon – or UAPs. Congress also heard of a secret US government programme that retrieves and reverse engineers materials made by non-humans, including crashed and intact craft – and possibly the remains of the entities that piloted them.
So does this mean we are not alone in the universe? Do sightings and hearsay provide enough scientific data to answer a question that has been asked by humans for thousands of years – are we alone in the universe?
Contributors: Greg Eghigian is professor of history and bioethics at Penn State University in the US. Leslie Kean is an investigative reporter. Adam Frank is Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Rochester, and author of The Little Book of Aliens. Dr Chelsea Haramia is a member of the UK SETI Research Network Post-detection Hub.
Presented by Charmaine Cozier Produced by Louise Clarke Researched by Matt Toulson and Bisi Adebayo Editor Tom Bigwood Mixed by Kelly Young
(UFO crash site sign in Roswell, New Mexico USA / Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Unexpected Elements is all about finding the surprising science angles to everyday news. |
| 0:06.0 | My absolute good blog. Amazing to me. |
| 0:08.4 | That's Unexpected Elements from the BBC World Service. Find it wherever you get your BBC podcasts. |
| 0:16.0 | Welcome to The Inquiry. I'm Charmaine Cozier, each week one question for expert witnesses and an answer. |
| 0:24.0 | July 2023 – Congress, Washington DC, USA |
| 0:35.0 | A group of lawmakers, Republican and Democrat, are watching three short, grainy, black and white videos taken from fighter jet cameras. |
| 0:43.0 | In one, an oval object glows and twists as it flies through the sky. |
| 0:48.0 | The shocked reactions of the Navy pilots during that training flight are also recorded. |
| 0:53.0 | There's a whole fleet of them will look on the ASA. |
| 0:58.0 | But God, they're all going against the wind. The winds are hunting, playing out the west. |
| 1:04.0 | But if there's a new thing, it's ready. |
| 1:09.0 | The other two videos shot at different times show mysterious objects doing similar things. |
| 1:15.0 | The footage was officially released by the Pentagon in 2020 but was leaked years before that. |
| 1:21.0 | Known as the tick-tack videos, they have millions of views on YouTube. |
| 1:26.0 | Now it's part of this House Oversight Committee public hearing which began with a Congressional caveat. |
| 1:32.0 | We're not bringing little green man or flying saucers into the hearing. |
| 1:36.0 | Sorry to disappoint, about half y'all. We're just going to get to the facts. |
| 1:41.0 | So this week we're asking, are we alone in the Universe? |
| 1:47.0 | Part 1. Eyes on the Skies |
| 1:53.0 | I think that you can say that without question, people have been seen things in the sky that struck them as strange or are for centuries. |
| 2:06.0 | Khräger Giegen is professor of history and bioethics at Penn State University in the US. |
| 2:13.0 | He's also writing a book about the global history of those strange sightings, including when reports of them really took off. |
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