Watch NASA's UFO Panel Tackle Unexplained Anomalous Phenomena

SYFY’s Resident Alien, based on the Peter Hogan and Steve Parkhouse comic book of the same name and streaming now on Peacock, follows the life and experiences of the titular resident alien, Harry Vanderspeigle (Alan Tudyk). He crash-landed here, on a mission to destroy the human species for the benefit of the planet. That was before he met us, accidentally caught feelings, and started to think at least some of us might be redeemable.

Come to think of it, that might be a good explanation for all of the unidentified flying objects we keep seeing. Maybe the aliens keep showing up, ray guns at the ready, and we keep escaping disaster at the last second, thanks to the laughter of a baby or something. Either that, or UFOs aren’t aliens at all. That was the focus of a panel discussion at NASA headquarters yesterday, as you can see in the video below.

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NASA PANEL SHOWS VIDEO OF UFO, DISCUSSES STRATEGY

Panel members include government officials, scientists, and astronaut Scott Kelly. Together, they hope to get to the bottom of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs). That’s the new official terminology for what the public usually calls UFOs. The updated moniker doesn’t have quite the same panache as UFO, but it hopes to cast a wider net. Officials aren’t looking just to the skies, but to the ground and the seas as well, in search of anything and everything acting weird on our turf.

In recent years, government officials in the United States have made a renewed effort to build scientific rigor and structure around the study of UAPs. More than 800 sightings have been collected, many of them from recent years thanks to the ubiquity of mobile camera technologies. Each of those sightings has been investigated and, when possible, explained.

Officials noted that the vast majority of UAP sightings have mundane explanations and you’ve heard most of them before. They are weather balloons (or, in some cases, spy balloons), drone aircraft, atmospheric anomalies, known spacecraft launching or returning from low-Earth orbit, or trash blowing in the wind. And sometimes they are unexplained. That is true of between 2% and 5% of reports, so there’s a little room left for aliens.

The only way to find explanations for the remaining portion is with better data and more science. That’s largely what the panel focused on, building strategies for organizing existing information and developing rigorous standards and methods for studying anomalous behavior.

If the Harry’s of the universe really are visiting us, we’re more determined than ever to find that out.

Resident Alien is streaming now on Peacock!