For a long time, expressing interest in unidentified flying objects, known briefly as UFOs, seemed foolish and unacceptable. Not only humans, but some of the world's most important governments, such as the United States, have taken a hard line on UFOs, but things seem to be changing.
A 60 Minutes report on CBS addresses the US government's disregard for UFOs. Next month, the US Department of Defense and intelligence agencies will issue an official report on the existence of unidentified objects, and as a result, a number of credible witnesses were interviewed, including former President Obama and a former US Navy pilot.
"What is true, and I am serious at this point, is that there are images and recordings of objects in the sky, that we do not know exactly what they are, we can not explain how they moved, we can not explain their trajectory, "Obama told CBS. "They did not have an easily explainable model. And so, you know I think people are still seriously trying to investigate and figure out what that is. "But I have nothing to report today."
Interest in UFOs is likely to rise as the US prepares to release the report in early June. In March, John Ratcliffe, Donald Trump's former director of intelligence, said the report would reveal that there had been "far more" UFO reporting than has been made public.
In April 2020, the Pentagon - the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense - officially released videos showing UFOs. For the first time, videos were published by the New York Times in 2017 and showed messy objects moving at speed.
One of the videos showed an incident in 2004 where Navy pilots encountered a 40-foot-long object that stood about 50 feet above the water, according to the New York Times; the other two videos belong to 2015 and showed strange objects in the air.
The Pentagon statement clarified that the videos were circulated unauthorized and that "the observed aerial phenomena remain unidentified."
Sources: Guardian, New York Times