tech startup Enigma Labs wants to turn UFO sightings into data science.
In the past, people who saw strange lights flying around the sky had no choice but to tell a friend or call intelligence agencies. Soon, anyone with a smartphone will be able to use the app to report unexplained events when they occur.
Enigma Labs mobile app launched today. Initially, we were solving bugs by invitation only, but we plan to open it up to the public more broadly. It’s free to download and use for now, but they may charge for additional features later. We collect data on global sightings and incorporate them into our system. .
“At our core, we are a data science company. We are building the first data and community platform dedicated to the study of unidentified anomalous phenomena,” said the New York-based company’s chief operating officer. author Mark Douglas said.
Courtesy of Enigma Labs
One of their goals is to reduce the stigma of reporting something unexplained. (For the record, some government agencies and companies like Enigma Labs now use the term UAP instead of UFO: an unidentified anomalous phenomenon, not an unidentified flying object. It is intended to encompass a wide range of objects that may not be of extraneous origin, to eliminate the pejorative sound of the term.)
Identifying unknown distant objects or explaining never-before-seen phenomena poses unique challenges. Nonetheless, the app asks users structured questions, such as when and where did they see something in the sky and what was the approximate shape of that object. It also gives you space to tell sightings, provide details, and even upload photos and videos. It’s a bit like a citizen science project where volunteers help classify telescopic images of the galaxy, but in this case the images are submitted by volunteers and most of the classification is done by algorithms.
However, the company wants to go beyond just ingesting large amounts of data and apply its own model to filter out non-UAPs, such as determining whether lightning or unclassified aircraft are nearby. They also filtered the reliability of the data sources to make sure that they were “very reliable military pilots, trained observers with corroboration from multiple sensors, and at the other end of the spectrum… maybe a few drinks.” We want to distinguish between “single eyewitnesses” who may have drank too much. I saw a point of light in the sky,” says Douglas.
“A central question in studying this was the question of data: ‘What can be trusted, what can’t be trusted, who can be trusted and who can’t?'” he argues. “What we’re trying to do is bring some level of standardization and that rigor.”
Of course, applying scientific standardization to something that may not be scientific at all presents a challenge. Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable, and people interpret what they see based on factors such as current events and the scientific, political, and cultural context. “The data you get is socially constructed,” says Kate Dorsh, a historian at the University of Pennsylvania who specializes in generating scientific knowledge.
Courtesy of Enigma Labs
UFO sightings began as an American obsession following World War II and the Roswell Incident of 1947. That’s when people in New Mexico discovered mysterious debris that may (or may not) have come from a crashed military balloon. The sightings spread rapidly to most parts of the world, and interest in Roswell and the early U.S. and Soviet space programs may have prompted people to think of sky lights as alien technology, Dorsh said. There is a nature. After the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik satellite in 1957, however, UFO sightings declined. When people saw something strange in the sky, they thought it was a man-made spacecraft. And the geopolitics of where you live is also important. Today, when Germans witness strange phenomena, they often attribute it to Russian or American-made artifacts. .
Government agencies have always been interested in UFO reports for national security reasons, as flying saucer sightings may actually be sightings of rival clandestine aircraft. (Or, if the ship was in fact a secret project of the country’s own, the description of the sighting could reveal what it looked like to others.)
