Top 10 Alien Developments That Happened in 2023
It was a big year for UFO news, so hold onto your hats. Welcome to WatchMojo, and today, for all you believers out there, we’re counting down our picks for the year's biggest alien and UFO-related news stories.
Transcript
00:00 People were talking about UFOs and aliens in a more serious way.
00:04 Welcome to WatchMojo, and today, for all you believers out there,
00:08 we're counting down our picks for the year's biggest alien and UFO-related news stories.
00:13 The office tracking these sightings received nearly 300 reports.
00:17 Some of these incidents are still under investigation.
00:19 It was a big year for UFO news, so hold on to your hats.
00:23 Number 10. Supposed alien bodies brought to Mexican Congress
00:28 Jaime Maussan is a long-time Mexican journalist and TV personality. He's also a ufologist.
00:34 In September of 2023, he helped foster congressional hearings in Mexico,
00:39 where he presented a pair of mummified alien bodies.
00:42 These diminutive corpses, he claimed, were discovered in Peru in 2017.
00:55 He also claimed that carbon dating by Mexico's National Autonomous University
01:00 proved they were a thousand years old.
01:02 The hearings were a spectacle in Mexico, garnering national media attention.
01:15 Scientists from around the world expressed real doubts in the validity of the claims Maussan made.
01:20 In December, the confusion and mystery around the bodies deepened.
01:24 He returned to Congress, claiming that a DNA analysis proved that 30% of the body's DNA is,
01:34 quote, "not from any known species".
01:37 Number 9. Experts fear that wild stories undermine real science
01:42 It was a big year for ufologists, an unrecognized,
01:46 pseudoscientific field of amateur research.
01:49 Astrobiology, on the other hand, is a respected field of scientific research.
02:06 Space agencies like NASA employ astrobiologists to discover how life may exist beyond the Earth.
02:13 They are more likely to get excited by "microbes on the moon" than by "navy videos of UFOs".
02:18 The rash of alien-related news stories in 2023 have astrobiologists and internet researchers worried.
02:25 The flood of news stories, they say, have led to the spread of rumours and misinformation
02:43 online. This spreads belief in cover-ups and undermines trust in institutions.
02:48 Scientific research is cherry-picked to reinforce online narratives,
02:52 and fake scientific papers spread misinformation throughout the world.
02:56 Number 8. Defence officials concern that UAPs threaten flight safety
03:12 One of the strangest stories of the year involved spy balloons.
03:16 Several Chinese balloons were discovered over or near the United States.
03:20 The military and media scrambled to cover the bizarre story. Between the multiple balloons
03:38 and UAP stories, it became increasingly clear the skies are full of stuff we don't know about.
03:44 A number of officials began to express concern over the volume of junk in the sky.
03:56 For the first time, government officials admitted that UAPs, quote, "present potential safety of
04:02 flight concerns". The manoeuvrability, unpredictability, and high speeds of UAPs could
04:08 represent a clear danger to both civilian and military aircraft. While there's no evidence of
04:21 UAPs getting too close to our planes yet, it may just be a matter of time.
04:25 Number 7. Pentagon launches online UFO reporting
04:29 The All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office has existed within the U.S. Department of Defense
04:34 since 1945. In August, they launched a website to act as a one-stop-shop for relaying declassified
04:41 information about UFOs. In October, as part of this effort in transparency, they added a new
04:52 online UAP reporting tool. In addition to hosting declassified government photos and videos,
04:58 the website is a tool for whistleblowers. AERO will soon be publishing a website,
05:03 making publicly available all unclassified UFO reports it has, complete with witness accounts,
05:10 videos, and pictures. For now at least, it's only available to former government employees,
05:15 members of the military, and government contractors. Any people in those categories
05:20 can use the tool to report any information about UFOs directly. AERO is very willing to take any
05:26 inputs or information and to investigate into claims of UAP, and so if that information is
05:34 made available to the department, certainly we'll take a look at it.
05:38 Number 6. NASA report pours cold water on alien theories
05:42 NASA was one of several government agencies to release a 2023 report on UAPs. The NASA report
05:48 came out in September and presented a dose of skepticism for believers. A panel of experts,
05:53 including 16 scientists and retired astronaut Scott Kelly, came together to try and explain
05:59 the mysterious sightings. The agency found no evidence that any UAPs represented proof of
06:04 extraterrestrial life. An independent panel of 16 scientists and experts reviewed videos, photos,
06:10 and other UAP evidence. They believe that visual distortions in certain videos are likely digital
06:16 artifacts of video compression. They also debunked stories about strange changes in UAP acceleration
06:22 and speed as human error. At the release of the report, NASA's director announced a new position
06:39 within the organization, Director of UAP Research. They hope that taking UAPs seriously will give
06:45 them credibility to shift the conversation from sensationalism to science. All of this talk of
06:50 what else might be out there is reducing the UFO stigma. More folks are coming forward.
06:55 Number 5. Book on UFOs and the US government
06:58 In the wake of bombshell stories about government cover-ups, Garrett Graff released his new book,
07:04 UFO! The Inside Story of the US Government's Search for Alien Life Here and Out There.
07:10 Graff is a national security writer and former editor at Politico.
07:14 So, this book tries to weave together sort of twin threads of the US military's hunt for UFOs
07:21 here, which dates back to the sort of the early days of the Cold War.
07:24 He previously wrote well-researched and regarded books about Watergate and 9/11.
07:29 His new book turns that investigative lens upon the US government's relationship to UFOs.
07:34 The government is suddenly being way more forthcoming about these things. What do you
07:38 make of that? Yeah, so that's actually what got me interested in this subject, was
07:42 you now see sort of serious people talking seriously about this subject.
07:47 Graff reveals almost 80 years of public and private research into UFOs.
07:52 He comes to an interesting conclusion. Decades of government cover-ups are likely
07:56 not motivated by a desire to hide the truth. In actuality, the government is likely trying
08:01 to hide from us just how little they actually know.
08:04 The government, I think, at the end of the day, is covering up its ignorance
08:09 about what this phenomenon actually is.
08:11 Number Four. Pentagon Fears Possibility of Alien, Technical Supremacy
08:16 The modern world is a chaotic place, with a torrent of information pummeling us on a daily
08:21 basis. In the middle of this anxiety-inducing news stew, the government has been dropping UFO
08:27 news like it's no biggie. What's the most common misconception
08:30 people have of UAPs or of the work you're doing? That they're all the same thing, and they're all
08:35 extraterrestrial. And neither of those are true. In a less chaotic world, it would be a much
08:41 bigger story when a military official and scientist expressed fear of alien technology,
08:47 if it were to exist. What keeps you up at night?
08:49 Technical surprise. And that could be adversary technical surprise, or
08:56 extraterrestrial technical surprise. In the summer of 2023, the head of the
09:00 US government's UAP taskforce addressed that. The US military is now on the record with their
09:06 concerns about the possibility of "technical supremacy" of non-human intelligences. The
09:12 technological capability observed in some UAPs "remain a top concern" to investigate for the
09:18 government. "We are going to follow our data and our investigations wherever it goes, right? So,
09:23 I have a full range of hypotheses." Number Three. Pentagon Releases UAP Report
09:29 A succession of Pentagon-created panels on UAPs have led to fairly regular reports by the Pentagon
09:35 to Congress. "It doesn't appear as though the government has been able to really come to any
09:39 significant conclusions as to exactly what these objects are, but it does appear to be not a lack
09:45 of transparency here. They just don't know the answers to some of these questions."
09:49 The latest report, detailing 2022 to 2023 updates, was released in October. Some of the details of
09:56 the report are still classified, for governmental eyes only. But, as part of their mandate, the
10:01 Pentagon has released unredacted and declassified information, too. "I think it's mostly classified
10:07 because it occurs near military bases or whatever, and I suspect the type of data we're looking at
10:14 involves radars or particular imaging devices that the military just doesn't want to publicize."
10:20 Most have been officially explained away. Some, however, remain a mystery even to the US military.
10:26 The government notes the purported strange and superior capabilities of some UAPs.
10:31 None of the phenomena described in the report have been publicly attributed to foreign powers,
10:36 nor does the government validate any presence of non-human intelligence. "But officials say
10:42 they have found no evidence of any extraterrestrial life." Number two were fragments of an alien
10:48 spacecraft found in the Pacific. Harvard physicist Avi Loeb made a splash in the believer community
10:55 this past summer. "And we collected magnetic material from the ocean floor that is two
11:00 kilometers deep, and first we put it in vials as you see here." Loeb is the lead researcher of
11:07 Harvard's Galileo project. Their remit is to search for proof of alien life. Loeb believes
11:13 that some such evidence may have been discovered off the coast of Papua New Guinea. Research divers
11:18 discovered 50 strangely shaped iron chunks from the IM-1 interstellar meteor. "This object was
11:25 moving faster than 95 percent of all stars in the vicinity of the sun." The controversial professor
11:31 believes that it's definitive evidence that IM-1 is from another star system. He even thinks that
11:36 there is a chance the fragments are part of an alien spacecraft. Other scientists disagree. "What
11:42 it means is is that we can actually maybe recover some of this material that comes from another
11:50 source system. But of course there's no guarantee that the stuff that he found actually comes from
11:54 this meteorite." Before we continue, be sure to subscribe to our channel and ring the bell to get
11:58 notified about our latest videos. You have the option to be notified for occasional videos,
12:03 or all of them. If you're on your phone, make sure you go into settings and switch on your
12:07 notifications. Number 1. UFO Whistleblower Testifies Before Congress
12:14 David Grush set the internet ablaze with information he discussed in interviews in 2023.
12:20 The retired Air Force major was part of the Pentagon's UAP task force until he turned
12:25 whistleblower. "Do you believe that our government is in possession of UAPs?" "Absolutely, based on
12:30 interviewing over 40 witnesses over four years." Grush made official complaints to the inspector
12:35 general, claiming that rogue elements within intelligence and military agencies are hiding
12:41 information from the task force. David Grush claims he was denied access to information on
12:46 a government UFO crash retrieval program, something the Pentagon disputes. "He brought
12:51 these claims to the House of Representatives, where he testified under oath on national
12:56 television. Grush stated that he could provide exact locations of UAPs held by the government."
13:02 "Biologics came with some of these recoveries." "Were they, I guess, human or non-human biologics?"
13:07 "Non-human, and that was the assessment of people with direct knowledge on the program I talked to."
13:12 He also claimed that the government had non-human bodies. He detailed a history of investigation and
13:19 cover-up dating back to World War II, and by the end of the year, it already seemed as though the
13:24 pressure from Grush and others had made a difference. In December 2023, news broke that
13:30 the Senate had finally passed a new UAP Disclosure Act as part of a broader defence bill. "For the
13:36 first time, the National Archives will gather records from across the federal government on
13:40 UAPs, and have a legal mandate to release those records to the public if appropriate." It could
13:46 lead to more previously withheld UAP data being released to the public, although it's also been
13:51 criticised for still not going far enough, and some ufologists remain unconvinced. What do you
13:57 think was the most important UFO-related development in 2023? Let us know in the comments below.
14:03 "Buzz look, an alien!" "Where?" "Ahh!"
14:05 Did you enjoy this video? Check out these other clips from WatchMojo,
14:10 and be sure to subscribe and ring the bell to be notified about our latest videos.
14:14 [Music]