2022 Could Be a Turning Point In the Study of UFOs

In 2021, there was an upsurge in peculiar sightings reported, thanks to people with smartphones or other video gear that captured these strange glimmers in the sky. In 2022, UAP will get more attention from both the scientific community and the federal government, experts told Space.com. From the report: One potential major development in 2022 will be UFO detection, according to Mark Rodeghier, scientific director of the Center for UFO Studies in Chicago. "The effort to detect, track and measure the UFO phenomenon in the field, in real time, has recently entered a new phase," Rodeghier told Space.com. "The technology has gotten better, software tools have improved and the current interest in UFOs has attracted new, qualified professionals. "While one can't predict how soon we will gain new, fundamental knowledge about UAP/UFOs, I believe that these efforts are very likely to succeed and set UFO research onto a new foundation of reliable, physical data," Rodeghier added. "And as a consequence, we will have even more evidence -- as if it was needed -- that the UFO phenomenon is real and can be studied scientifically." One upcoming initiative, called the Galileo Project, will search for extraterrestrial equipment near Earth. It has two branches. The first aims to identify the nature of interstellar objects that do not resemble comets or asteroids -- like 'Oumuamua, the first known interstellar object to visit the solar system. The second branch targets UAP, similar to those of interest to the U.S. government. "The Galileo Project's data will be open to the public, and its scientific analysis will be transparent," said Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb, who is spearheading the project. "The related scientific findings would expand humanity's knowledge, with no attention to borders between nations." The Galileo research team includes more than 100 scientists who plan to assemble the project's first telescope system on the roof of the Harvard College Observatory in spring 2022. "The system will record continuous video and audio of the entire sky in the visible, infrared and radio bands, as well as track objects of interest," Loeb said. "Artificial intelligence algorithms will distinguish birds from drones, airplanes or something else. Once the first system will operate successfully, the Galileo Project will make copies of it and distribute them in many geographical locations." Currently, there is a lack of coordination among organizations involved in UAP detection equipment, but that may change this year, said Robert Powell, an executive board member of the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies (SCU) in Austin, Texas. "I believe that will improve as we go into 2022," he said. A number of SCU members are involved with the Galileo Project, and the organization has partnered with several groups, including UFODATA, the UFO Data Acquisition Project (UFODAP) and UAPx. "UFODAP already has a working model that has been sold into the marketplace and is reasonably priced in the $2,000 to $5,000 range, depending on the accessories desired," Powell told Space.com. "This system has already been used by a group known as UAPx to collect data. Our goal is to coordinate these activities in a way such that we use a system with standardized equipment set to collect data." But before that happens, Powell said, the groups need to plot out exactly what that equipment is trying to measure and verify that the system can achieve that goal.

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