Don't expect startling UFO revelations

For a brief time, week before last, UFOs were back in the news again. The story quickly and deservedly gave way to more important news, such as the State of the Union address, the situation in and with the Islamic Republic of Iran, and so on, but it created a stir for a few days. President Trump ordered the Defense Department to open all of its files on Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs), Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs), and related matters to public scrutiny. The president's action apparently arose out of the stir former President Obama had caused earlier when he answered a random question in a "ask-me-anything" interview with a reporter. "Are aliens real?" the interviewer asked. The former president's reply was, "Yeah, they are, but I haven't seen them." He added that the government does not have live aliens, dead alien corpses, or crashed alien spacecraft in Area 51 or anywhere else, unless there is a conspiracy deep enough to "hide them from the president." Note how careful Obama was in his choice of words. He didn't say Earth is being visited by alien spacecraft. He didn't say the government is in communication with alien spacecraft pilots. He simply said, "Yeah, they (aliens) are (real)." Some folks, despite the narrowness of the former president's remarks, immediately leaped to the conclusion that the United States government has been able to verify that aliens are real through communication or observation of some sort. They also concluded that this must mean, to quote the title of a book written some 70 years ago, that "flying saucers are real." Well, not really. As Obama later confirmed, he was only expressing his personal opinion, based on the sheer size of the universe and statistical probability, that intelligent alien life must be out there somewhere. That's a perfectly reasonable conclusion shared by many people, including many scientists. One of my Facebook "friends" put up a very intelligent post to that effect shortly after Obama's interview. He said that he had no doubt that in the vast reaches of interstellar space there are other intelligent races, probably many. But he added that because the universe is so big, the distances so vast, and the light-speed limitation on how fast a hypothetical spacecraft can travel, he doesn't expect humanity to ever encounter any of them. Then he opined that Americans have been conditioned by science fiction to accept the ideas of interstellar travel and alien life, so we expect to see space aliens show up any day now, which he thinks unlikely. As I said, this is a perfectly reasonable point of view and one that I share in large part. I depart from my friend because he assumes we already know all there is to know about the universe and dismisses the possibility that there may be alien civilizations within our ultimate reach, or we in theirs. Serious people, scientists as well as science fiction writers, believe interstellar travel is possible. Based on what we know now, it will be hellishly expensive and take a long time, as in the film "Passengers." But they think it is possible. That, of course, does not mean that it has already happened, i.e., that we are being visited, or have been visited for centuries, by space aliens. But a fairly significant part of the population — perhaps, as my friend says, conditioned by science fiction, or perhaps simply because they enjoy conspiracy theories — believe it. And some of them believe it fervently. And so President Trump ordered the opening of the Defense Department's UFO files. All of them, he says. In announcing the executive order, the president noted the intense public interest in the subject. He was right. Nothing has been made public yet. "War" Secretary Pete Hegseth, when asked about the timing of the release, said only something like "we're working on it." He wouldn't give a date. But what can we expect to learn when it happens? In my opinion, not much that we didn't already know. We'll see that Air Force and Navy, as well as credible civilian pilots, have seen flying objects they could not identify and that could fly and maneuver at speeds of which our aircraft cannot duplicate. We'll hear that pilots from other countries have had the same experiences, and that this has been going on for a long time. But we already knew that. We won't learn what the UAPs are, or that they are a threat to national security. That won't convince the true believers. They'll continue to believe information is being withheld. But they shouldn't worry. If space aliens are here, they're illegals. Trump will deport them to the Planet Peewam. Or somewhere. Bob Arrington is a Kingsport attorney. You can email him at r_arrington@chartertn.net.