Opinion

Are we alone in the universe?

GREG ODOGWU (CITIZEN SMITH)
Apexnewsgh

Greg Odogwu

A fortnight ago, the Pentagon, that is, the headquarters of the United States Department of Defence, officially released three videos depicting encounters between American Navy pilots and unidentified aerial phenomena. The videos show what appear to be Unidentified Flying Objects rapidly moving while recorded by infrared cameras. Two of the videos contain service members reacting in awe at how quickly the objects are moving.

Ordinarily, this action would not raise any eyebrows, considering that America has the biggest military establishment with a busy fleet that should invariably have innumerable encounters.

However, it sent shock waves around the world – as it was instantly reported by big-time news channels like the BBC, CNN, New York Times, The Guardian (London), among others. On the surface, the report looks ordinary, but underneath, there is a heavy psychological score which the development has touched, and which will definitely set off some other global developments, all things being equal. For many of us in the developing world, however, the dynamics is not that obvious; unless one has a background knowledge of what the “UFO encounter” is all about.

An Unidentified Flying Object is any aerial phenomenon that cannot immediately be identified. The term is widely used for claimed observations of extraterrestrial spacecraft (that is, a vehicle from another planet or parallel universe).

The Pentagon video sparked global interest because, whereas many people believe that the UFOs are actual otherworldly spaceship, the world government(s) has been solidly skeptical of this phenomenon. As a matter of fact, you were seen as either crazy or a conspiracy theorist, if you came out publicly with the story that you were a believer or an ‘experiencer’ in such UFO occurrence. The encounters are graded into categories, from Encounters of the First Kind, to the Fifth Kind – where the individual has physical one-on-one contact with beings inside the UFO.

Interestingly, with its terse and diplomatically couched statement at the UFO video release, the Pentagon may have just given its imprimatur to the UFO sightings. No one is sure why it is making this move at this time, but the motive would soon be clear. The three videos actually occurred in 2004 and 2015, but the videos did not publicly surface until The New York Times included them with a front-page story about the Pentagon’s “mysterious UFO programme” in 2017. The Navy previously acknowledged that the videos are authentic, but the Pentagon never authorised them for release.

Now, three years later, the US DOD finally authorised the video; not minding that they have already been watched by millions of people. The Pentagon stated in a press release on Monday, April 27, “After a thorough review, the department has determined that the authorised release of these unclassified videos does not reveal any sensitive capabilities or systems, and does not impinge on any subsequent investigations of military air space incursions by unidentified aerial phenomena.”

Just days after the US DOD statement, Japan’s Defence Ministry decided to draw up protocols for potential encounters with the UFOs. According to the Japanese Defence Minister, Taro Kono, the SDF pilots have never encountered the UFOs, but the ministry has decided to “set protocols with an aim to cover the possibility”.

Naturally, such possibilities have always existed, but because America officially denied or hushed it, mum was the word in the global defence sector. To be sure, in 2008, the UK made public its UFO files, via ufos.nationalarchives.gov.uk <http://nationalarchives.gov.uk/ufos/>. But now that the number one defence establishment in the world has pointed to the skies, there is no doubt that nations around the world will start coming out.

In fact, some celebrities – like footballer Jozy Altidore – in reaction to Pentagon’s expose, are already tweeting, “Are aliens out there?”

An American lawmaker, Senator Harry Reid, wrote, “I’m glad the Pentagon is finally releasing this footage, but it only scratches the surface of research and materials available. The US needs to take a serious, scientific look at this and any potential national security implications. The American people deserve to be informed.”

I, for one, am very excited that such a window has been opened by no other than the almighty American defence authorities. I am aware that this only touches the periphery of what is really at stake; but given the research mentality of the West, this window is enough to begin the “alien/UFO disclosure” the world has been earnestly yearning for. The age-old question, “Are we alone in the universe?”, may now be answered in the negative.

Before now, many analysts had opined that it was too risky to disclose the true state of things to the man in the street. They said that it would upset the world stock market, cause mass hysteria, and uproot our entrenched social and religious roots. Many feared it would come at a great price to civilisation as we know it.

Nevertheless, it is now becoming obvious that such unveiling of hidden scientific reality is long overdue. Even the citizens in the most remote environments are already prepped and ready for a “change” in the psycho-social make-up of their existence, without even knowing what they expect. The truth is that when you think about it, one just realises that we are ready for whatever is out there. Nothing will shock the humankind!

At the beginning of the 20th century, scientists were extremely skeptical about the existence of life anywhere else in the universe. But from the 1960s, most scientists began to hold the opinion that thousands of other planets in the universe are probably inhabited. As you read this piece, the biggest machine in the world – a contraption known as Large Hadron Collider, built in Geneva to search for living matter in unseen planes of reality – is, in a layman’s words, about to open the door which “separates the world of the living and the dead”.

I am also convinced that even the religious community is ready for a grand ‘Revelation’. Let us think about it for a moment. The central event in the Old Testament is the Exodus: The Hebrew people were slaves in Egypt, so the Bible reports, and God sent an ‘angel’ to Moses and called him to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. After various plagues came upon the Egyptians, the Israelites escaped, and for the next 40 years, “The Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them along the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, that they might travel by day and by night” (Exodus 13:21). This strange aerial object looked cloudlike during the day and glowed in the dark, a description often associated with modern flying saucers.

Jesus Christ, also, was recorded to have been carried in the clouds to heaven. Ordinary white, fluffy cumulus clouds do not carry people off into space. Flying saucers and spaceships do. This ascension ‘cloud’ is one example of many Unidentified Flying Objects which are described in the Bible. Of course, there is no reason to expect Biblical people to call a flying saucer a flying saucer even if they saw one. They could call it a ‘cloud’ because they had never known what a ‘machine’ is, and so could only associate their vision to a physical ‘airborne’ material they could identify with. I know that if the American military officers in the Pentagon video were to be transported back in time to Biblical period, there is no doubt that they would see the ‘cloud’ for what it was: a UFO!

PUNCH

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