Stumble on Neil deGrasse Tyson’s response to shot down UFOs

Tonight the US is still not able to call the three objects shot down by the United States over the course of three days. Anything but objects. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby says one leading explanation is that the objects.

Shot down over Alaska, Canada and Michigan over the weekend were tied to some commercial yet benign purpose. But this is not satisfying White House critics who are demanding more answers I don't think they're being transparent enough, and.

And I think that's got to change. All right. Meanwhile, and OUTFRONT investigation tonight from our Selena Wang and Beijing showed six Chinese entities that produced Chinese spy balloons and are blacklisted by the United States openly talking about their words,.

Killer military capabilities, their products. And then one of them, I mean, this is really incredible. Just show you this was one of their founders had put the screen up in a presentation and points to the balloon and says, oh, look,.

There's the United States is a fly right over. So there. There you have it. OUTFRONT now, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. He is also the author of Starry Messenger Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization and many other books.

That I hope people get. Okay. But so so, Neil, let's just start here with this. This they're bragging about flying over the US. What's your reaction as you hear this whole story and if watched this unfold?.

By the way, if you lift balloons high enough from the west of the United States, that's what they will do. Because these are the prevailing jet streams that move a floating object circulating around the earth. So to say, they're like targeting the the wind does that for free.

So to put that out there, that's why they're so cheap. Right. The windows mean does the propulsion the wind is or is you is your jet a jet stream in this? And so so not only that, by the way. Just for context. A thousand or so weather.

Balloons are launched every day around the world and loaded with helium. They get very high. They get very large and they float the way, you know, a drop of oil at the bottom of a water will float to the top slowly, but it'll get there.

And then when it gets there, it kind of hovers there and it'll move wherever the water currents will take it. So by analogy, I'm just saying, this is not a new phenomenon that you might find balloons in the air. The fact that the you know, just a bee,.

That first balloon, the one that we are certain was from China. It's very large, you know, three busses or something like that in length. And just the idea that we should feel threatened by something that is large.

And slow moving, that you can pop I don't I just so I don't know, I'm more casual about this. You make me feel maybe I should be I make me feel better because, you know, John Bolton was on Ambassador.

John Bolton earlier was I consider using nuclear you know, use it as a nuclear delivery system. So. But but I guess the separate part from this is the US China space race. I know here we're talking near space right where.

We're sort of in that that that that in the middle is going to control the new high ground. Right. And so the Space Force lieutenant general of the U.S., Inner Mongolia, said recently, I think it's entirely possible they could catch up and surpass us.

Absolutely. Talking about China. And you've got they've got their own space station now, Tiangong, because we didn't we didn't work with them on the issue as they went, did their own. It's not that we don't work with them. And I invite them. We invite them.

They went to the south. We've kicked them out of the sandbox. They built their own sandbox. So would you expect them to do. The NASA administrator, Bill Nelson, says China could beat the US to the moon. I mean, we went once,.

But then we didn't go for 30 years. So, by the way, all this whining I'm going to call it whining because I feel strongly about this. Had we continued on to the moon and stayed on the moon and onto Mars, we wouldn't.

Be like looking over our shoulder now wondering who's going to catch up with us. We would have stayed ahead of the world. So. So to sit back, kick up our feet for five decades and then all of a sudden say, Oh, let's build our audience.

And go back to the moon. Well, what's motivating you? Well, China says they want to go back to the moon. So let's be honest with ourselves that we're not being proactive for the high ground. We're being reactive.

And on top of that, just to people understand, you're talking about unlimited resources of minerals. Oh, yes. Everything up. I mean, it's not just it's not just for the bragging rights, right? That's all there.

Never mind the military aspect of hypersonic missiles and everything else, but SpaceX basically has unlimited resources. Everything that's rare on Earth is common in space. You know, rare earth metals, even though.

They're just rare in location, they're not really rare in abundance. But you look at things that we have fought wars over access to energy, minerals, water, and there's no end of that in space. So one of my dreams is that we turned space.

Into our backyard, earth, turn SpaceX into its backyard, and upon doing so, it would remove an entire category of why we have ever fought wars, which is battling over access to limited resources. So I think SpaceX might be the best hope.

For peace in the future of civilization. And of course, now looks like we're fighting over it. So now in the context of these objects, okay, three more objects are shot down. And as you point out, there's a lot of objects out there. But, you know, and look, I look at a map of the world.

And I see all the satellites up there, and it's very terrifying because you're like, my God, if this started raining down, we'd all be gone. But now, you know, this whole concept of extraterrestrial came up, right? And there had been congressional hearings.

About this, about UFOs. And and now we find out most of them were Chinese spy balloons or weather balloons or whatever. But in the broader conversation here. Does this change your view at all of the nature, the nature of extraterrestrial life?.

I know. Not really, because we have greater capacity. I've used this phrase before, and I mean it genuinely given the number of smartphones in the world today, 6 billion. Yeah. We are.

Unwittingly crowdsourcing any possible alien invasion because everyone can take High-Resolution video of it, post it instantly, and it would be viral at least as viral as kittens jumping from a table. Oh, no, nothing that's not viable. Okay. Okay.

Anything to do with cats? I think it would be best. Okay. After cat, then aliens invading earth. Okay. So. So I. So I think I'd like it when people need an excuse to look up. Right. Look up.

And by the way, the government doesn't want you to not look up if a billion. Hundreds of millions of people look up and see things that could harm us. I want the military to investigate this. But by all means. Right. And so it's just odd that we have expensive.

Planes and expensive missiles to pop balloons. That's a little odd to me, but fine. Protect my airspace. Now, do I think these are visiting aliens? It would be odd if they were aliens moving across the galaxy.

And dropping some balloons. Oh, what aliens would do? I don't want to meet those aliens coming. I don't want to take aliens Well, it's a high tech to think that you could come in and then launch balloons. But just so you know, I'm just. I'm disappointed.

So, yes, we don't know what they are, so technically, they are. You f the first three, you unidentified flying object. The government call them UAPs that they were just rebranding. Oh, they were trying to rebrand. Don't try to fool before you before you leave the stunning images.

From the James Webb. What's your favorite so far? Oh, I'd say the Carina Nebula. Oh, my gosh. It's it's this is like. Oh, oh, I just have to bask in the majesty of that image. This is a gas cloud,.

A ridge of gas clouds. And the James Webb Space Telescope because it uses infrared light, infrared can penetrate into gas clouds where you bear witness to the birth of stars, stellar nurseries, not only the birth of stars,.

But the birth of planets. And that's just in front of our nose. And it does that. In addition to looking at the birth of galaxies in the early universe, It's a bad telescope, the thought. And if it finds a balloon, then there call me.

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