David Grusch, the former Pentagon official and whistleblower, once again claimed that the United States is in possession of alien craft and “non-human” biologics. If what Grusch is saying is true, aliens are not the only things coming to our planet from far away.
While Grusch came out with his bold uncorroborated claims a little less than two months ago, he was testifying under oath when he spoke to the US Congress on Wednesday. This means that he is opening himself up to charges of perjury if he is caught lying, which comes with strict punishments in the country.
Grusch said during the testimony that there are secret “multi-decade” US programs where they collected and attempted to reverse-engineer crashed unidentified flying objects (UFOs). When asked whether the bodies of the pilots of these craft were recovered, he said that the Pentagon is in posession of “non-human biologics,” without going into the specifics of what that means. He also went on to say that he knows people who have been physically harmed during efforts to cover this up.
But one important thing to note through all of this is that Grusch doesn’t say he has personally witnessed any of the things he claims exists. Most of the information he speaks about is cited to other “senior former intelligence officers” who started to confide in him. He also says that he has not seen photographs of these alleged UFOs himself. Also, he kept most of his answers during the testimony brief because he claims a lot of the information he has is classified.
The Pentagon issued a statement in response, denying the claims made by the former intelligence official. Even though Grusch does not seem to have much to back up his claims, there are other US armed forces official who have made claims about witnessing UFOs while they worked, including former Navy pilots Ryan Graves and David Fravor, who testified along with Grusch.
All said and done, the testimony in front of Congress has opened up more questions than it has provided answers. But fortunately, it could act as an impetus for more investigations into unidentified aerial phenomena or UAPs, the US government’s preferred term for UFOs.
In other news, scientists discovered that a distant supermassive black hole called Markarian 421 is throwing out a high-energy jet of particles aimed directly at Earth. But worry not. The “blazar” is more than 400 million light-years away from our planet. And even though black holes sometimes spit out particles at near the speed of light, it will be hundreds of millions of years before these particles ever reach us.
Also, if they do eventually make it all the way to our solar system, there is a good chance that the heliosphere, a vast bubble like region around the Sun, will protect our planet from it. But nonetheless, the blazar was an interesting discovery for astronomers especially because of the interesting shape that it takes.
There is next to no chance of humans going outside of the solar system within your or my lifetime. Voyager 1, the farthest human-made object in space, only exited the solar system in 2013, 36 years after it was launched. All the technological marvels that humans have created shrink before the vastness of space.
But if we are ever to become an interstellar civilisation, we will need to come up with innovative and revolutionary propulsion systems. A nuclear-based space propulsion system is a right step in that direction. And the good thing is, there is already someone working on it. NASA and DARPA had announced in January this year that they will collaborate to design, develop and test such a system by 2027.
On Tuesday, they announced that Lockheed Martin, the Maryland-based aerospace and defence firm, has been selected to begin work on the fabrication of such a system.
The hope is that nuclear thermal engines can reduce transit times in space, which in turn would mean that astronauts will be put through less risks in space.
Faster transits could also be crucial for long-term missions to Mars and beyond because they would help reduce the amount of supplies and the robustness of systems required for space travel. Also, a nuclear thermal engine would have a higher payload capacity and higher power that can be used for instruments and communications.