'UFO Witness': Were modern aircraft reverse-engineered from suspected crashed alien spaceships at Roswell?
Reverse engineering is a rather common practice used by several industries as well as governmental organizations in order to stay at par with or surpass global competitors. In fact, several research and development wings of tech-based companies invest heavily in backtracking software or hardware prototypes in order to keep up with global trends. But while such an approach may be feasible in our worldly day-to-day, is it possible to apply the same to solve otherworldly mysteries?
There is a lot of speculation whether the US military has derived various forms of technology from downed UFOs, and whether we are competing with extra-terrestrial beings by using their crafts as a substrate for advances in modern technology. Several researchers have investigated the possibility that the wreckage obtained from Roswell and other alleged UFO crash sites may have provided us with technology to create fiber optics, night vision, et cetera.
These unanswered questions are finally being tackled in UFO WITNESS, a new series launching Thursday, January 14 exclusively on Discovery+.
UFO enthusiasts have for long claimed that the debris from Roswell was transported to a secret base and used to reverse engineer and build a highly advanced spacecraft. Physicist Bob Lazar grabbed headlines in 1989 when he claimed that he had worked at a secret research base outside of Las Vegas, Nevada, where he witnessed the reverse engineering of alien spacecraft and subsequent testing rounds. While the government denied the existence of such a secret base -- now known as Area 51 -- UFO investigators have long suspected that the installation was the site where a UFO that crashed in July 1947, was reverse engineered to create aircraft such as the stealth bomber. This inspired droves of UFO buffs to hide in the rugged terrain near the base and look for any mysterious phenomena taking place in the vicinity.
Some technologists who are fascinated with UFO's were notably pleased when US Navy pilots reported mysterious spherical objects flying around at high speeds earlier this year. Last year, a report by Vice noted how an interest in alien spacecraft is "still a pretty taboo subject" in the tech industry, and that most investors are unwilling to fund such ventures as there is "no guarantee of a payoff."
Speaking to Vice, Deep Prasad, CEO of Canadian quantum computing startup ReactiveQ, said his life's goal is to find a UFO and reverse engineer it for the betterment of the human race. "In front of our eyes are technologies underlying these UFOs that are far beyond our understanding," Prasad said, but "if we pay close attention and reverse these technologies to bring to the masses, we will see a world with interstellar travel at our fingertips."
Meanwhile, Rizwan Virk, executive director of Play Labs @ MIT, told the outlet that UFOs could feature technology way advanced than that understood by modern science. "This phenomenon seems to be about advanced technology that doesn't always fit into our current model of 'what is technology' and what isn't," Virk said to Vice.
In its report, Vice also referenced "American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology" by Dr. Diana Walsh Pasulka, chair of the University of North Carolina Wilmington's philosophy and religion department. The book reportedly claims that the fascination with UFOs is largely tied up with religious elements, but Pasulka acknowledges that there are those who approach the subject scientifically.
Episode 3: “Alien High Tech” of UFO WITNESS begins streaming Thursday, January 14, exclusively on Discovery+.