UFO Hearings: How Top Scientists Reacted to Revelations

Leading scientists have reacted with skepticism to claims espoused in a special hearing that alien life not only exists, but has traveled to Earth and specimens are held by the U.S. government.

In a session of the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday, part of an investigation of claims regarding UFOs, witnesses testified that the government had been aware of non-human activity since the 1930s.

"I watched a few clips and saw some people who seemed to believe stuff saying extraordinary things without presenting extraordinary evidence," reacted physicist and broadcaster Brian Cox on Twitter.

Other academics said that it was possible that aliens could have visited Earth, but it was "difficult to imagine" them doing so and that the witnesses had provided "insufficient data" to form an opinion on the matter.

At the beginning of June, House Oversight Committee chair James Comer announced an investigation into allegations that a top-secret military program already had a fully intact UFO in its possession.

The alien probe was launched after David Grusch, a United States Air Force veteran who previously worked at the National Reconnaissance Office, told NewsNation, following an article on the same subject in The Debrief, that the government had retrieved several "non-human origin technical vehicles," some of which contained "dead pilots."

In the opening statement to his testimony in front of the committee on Wednesday, he said under oath that "the U.S. government is operating with secrecy—above Congressional oversight" with regards to Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP).

He said he had become a whistleblower following "concerning reports from multiple esteemed and credentialed current and former military and intelligence community individuals" regarding the alleged secret UFO program.

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which Grusch had worked for, previously confirmed to Newsweek that he had resigned in April 2023 and had provided "technical advice" to portions of its "support to [Department of Defense]-wide UAP efforts."

Department of Defense spokesperson Sue Gough told Newsweek that the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) had "not discovered any verifiable information to substantiate claims that any programs regarding the possession or reverse-engineering of any extraterrestrial materials have existed in the past or exist currently."

"There is no impediment to AARO receiving all UAP-related information, past or present, regardless of level or origin of classification," she added. "By law, AARO may receive all UAP-related information, at all levels of classification, regardless of whether the original classification authority for such information is within DoD or the Intelligence Community."

Alongside Grusch, other witnesses who gave testimony at Wednesday's hearing included David Fravor—a former U.S. Navy commanding officer who observed a "Tic Tac-shaped" object off the San Diego coast in 2004—and Ryan Graves, the executive director of the advocacy organization Americans for Safe Aerospace.

Responding to the testimony, Cox, who is also a professor at the University of Manchester in the U.K., added: "It would be great if true—it would take a bit of the pressure off our civilisation if we weren't the only means within the Milky Way by which the Universe understands itself.

"Sadly, as of today, I still feel that pressure, so can we perhaps focus on not messing our world up rather than hoping that, to paraphrase [astronomer Carl] Sagan, someone will float down to save us from ourselves."

This sentiment was supported by Richard Betts, a professor of climate science at the University of Exeter, while Jeet Sukumaran, an assistant professor in biology at the San Diego State University, said that the hearing had yielded "insufficient data to form any opinion or even inform a perspective."

Social media users appeared to be split between agreeing with Cox's skepticism and arguing that his explanation did not preclude the existence of alien life, which many wish to believe in.

Representative Tim Burchett, a Tennessee Republican who has previously spoken out about UFOs and has been leading the investigation, acknowledged a lack of photographic evidence prior to the hearing but advocated for the public interest in the matter.

"We need to tell the folks at the Pentagon they work for us, we don't work for them...We're going to uncover the cover-up," Burchett said in his opening statement.

Avi Loeb, a professor of astrophysics at Harvard University who has written several books about the possibility of alien life, told CBS News following the hearing that any knowledge of UAPs should be made public if it has "nothing to do with human-made technologies."

"We want to understand if U.S. adversaries have technologies that the U.S. does not possess and what they mean," he told the outlet. "If you realize this has nothing to do with human-made technologies, that should be knowledge shared by all humans. They should release that information."

Referencing the claim that the government was in possession of alien pilots, he added: "That is very surprising if true because biological creatures would have a hard time surviving such a large journey through interstellar space with millions of billions of years. It's difficult to imagine having the patience to finish the journey.

"Perhaps there are ways to extend longevity and ways to extend biological creatures in ways we don't imagine."

NASA said following the NewsNation interview that despite one of the space agency's priorities being searching for alien life, it too had not found credible evidence of it or UAPs.

Update 07/28/23, 3:53 a.m. ET: This article was updated to include comment from Sue Gough, a Department of Defense spokesperson.

Correction 07/28/23, 3:53 a.m. ET: This article was updated to correct the year in which David Grusch resigned from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.