By Marcia Dunn
NASA held its first public meeting on UFOs Wednesday a year after launching a study into unexplained sightings.
The space agency televised the hourslong hearing featuring an independent panel of experts. The team includes 16 scientists and other experts selected by NASA including retired astronaut Scott Kelly, the first American to spend nearly a year in space.
Several committee members have been subjected to “online abuse” for serving on the team, which detracts from the scientific process, said NASA's Dan Evans, adding that NASA security is dealing with it.
“It’s precisely this rigorous, evidence-based approach that allows one to separate the fact from fiction," Evans said.
The study is a first step in trying to explain mysterious sightings in the sky that NASA calls UAPs, or unidentified aerial phenomena.
The group is looking at what unclassified information is available on the subject and how much more is needed to understand what's going on in the sky, according to astrophysicist David Spergel, the committee's chair who runs the Simons Foundation.
No secret military data are included, such as anything surrounding the suspected spy balloons from China spotted flying over the U.S. earlier this year.
The meeting was held at at NASA headquarters in Washington with the public taking part remotely.
A final report is expected by the end of July.
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Cheddar's Need2Know Podcast for Tues., June 16, 2020.
From milk to canned tuna to shampoo, soy is in a good majority of our day-to-day products. It’s added to around 60% of the nation’s processed foods. Soy has been known to provide some real health benefits, like high protein. But there are legitimate health and environmental consequences that raise the question: why do we use so much soy? And should we?
Researchers in England say they have the first evidence that a drug can improve survival from COVID-19. The drug is a cheap, widely available steroid called dexamethasone.
The Food and Drug Administration said Monday that the drugs hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine are unlikely to be effective in treating the coronavirus.
As the number of coronavirus cases continues to rise in the U.S., Johnson & Johnson's chief scientific officer Dr. Paul Stoffels told Cheddar the company has an accelerated plan to create a vaccine.
Scientists are beginning a new study to tell if the blood plasma of COVID-19 survivors might help prevent infection in the first place.
Coronavirus cases are rising in nearly half the U.S. states. And while many are chalked up to increased testing or to small, local outbreaks, others are more alarming.
If you lived in a big city in the 90s, you're probably one of the unlucky people who was kept up at night on a regular basis by errant car alarms. But today, those in that same big city hear alarms far less often than you did. So where did car alarms go? How have they evolved, and did we ever need them to begin with?
The skyline of Washington D.C. is stunted. You've probably heard that D.C. can't build skyscrapers taller than the U.S. Capital Building or the Washington Monument. But those are both myths from a bygone era. Cheddar tells the real story.
A top World Health Organization expert has tried to clear up “misunderstandings” about comments she made that were widely understood to suggest that people without COVID-19 symptoms rarely transmit the coronavirus.
