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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The company overseeing the response to a large oil spill spurred by Hurricane Ida said Tuesday that a containment dome has been placed over a broken undersea pipeline, stemming the flow into the Gulf of Mexico.
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Cheddar asked its Gen Z and Millennial-aged Facebook and Instagram users about several topics including how they use social media, buying cryptocurrency, and the future job market.
The speed limit for most of Paris is now 30 kilometers per hour (less than 19 miles per hour). The new rule takes effect Monday almost everywhere in the city except for a few wide avenues like the Champs-Elysees and the bypass circling the capital.
Brazil, the country with the most freshwater resources in the world, has lost 15% of its surface water over the last three decades.
A SpaceX shipment of ants, avocados, and a human-sized robotic arm is on its way to the International Space Station.
A fearsome Hurricane Ida has left scores of coastal Louisiana residents trapped by floodwaters and pleading to be rescued, while making a shambles of the electrical grid across a wide swath of the state in the sweltering, late-summer heat.
New Orleans Mayor Latoya Cantrell has ordered people outside the city’s levee protection system to evacuate. Forecasters say Ida made landfall in Cuba as a hurricane and could grow to an extremely dangerous Category 4 storm with top winds of 140 mph when it nears the U.S. coast.
The operator of the wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant says it plans to build an undersea tunnel so that massive amounts of treated but still radioactive water can be released into the ocean about 1 kilometer (0.6 mile) away from the plant to avoid interference with local fishing.
The U.S. gave full approval to Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine on Monday, a milestone that may help lift public confidence in the shots as the nation battles the most contagious coronavirus mutant yet.
