In September 2026, the topic of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) received several notable impulses at once. Not loud sensations, but quiet yet quite concrete steps — academic, observational, and financial. They add up to a picture in which the mystery ceases to be marginal and gradually enters the familiar field of serious study.
I welcome Farmingdale State College’s new course examining UAP through science, public safety, national security, and policy. Serious academic courses and scientific research are essential to reducing stigma and advancing rigorous, evidence-based study of UAP. Thank you to
Early in the month, Harvard professor Avi Loeb publicly endorsed a new course at Farmingdale State College. Course CRJ 490, which launches in the fall of 2026, examines UAP through the prism of science, public safety, national security, and policy. It is taught by Dr. Keith Taylor, a specialist with experience in law enforcement and emergency situations. Students will analyze how to respond to objects that may pose a threat to airspace, regardless of their origin — human or otherwise. Loeb noted that such academic programs help reduce stigma and shift the conversation onto the plane of evidence. This is one of the first regular university courses where UAP are studied not as a curiosity, but as a practical question.
A little later, Loeb announced a partnership with philanthropist Adam Weitsman. On the grounds of Carl Sagan's former residence in Ithaca, near Cornell University, a new observatory for the Galileo project will appear. It will scan the entire sky around the clock in the infrared, visible, radio, and audio ranges. The data are planned to be made open. The location was chosen not by chance: it was here that Sagan reflected on life in the Universe and the possibility of contact with other civilizations. Now the same walls will become a site for instruments that record what previously often remained only eyewitness testimony.
And one more touch. Billionaire Robert Bigelow announced the creation of two foundations 501(c)(3). One of them — the educational one (Robert Thomas Bigelow Educational Foundation) — will address questions of the survival of human consciousness, non-human intelligence, and the nature of consciousness in general. According to Bigelow himself, this foundation could potentially have more than a billion dollars in liquidity. Bigelow has long linked the UAP phenomenon to questions of consciousness, and the new scale of funding opens the possibility for long-term, independent research.
These events are unfolding almost simultaneously. Academia is beginning to teach. Scientists are installing new instruments on historic ground. Private capital is ready to invest serious funds. At the same time, the phenomena themselves remain unexplained. Declassified materials of recent years contain descriptions of luminous orbs, objects with unusual trajectories and accelerations that have not yet received an unambiguous earthly explanation. The Galileo project continues to collect data, and Loeb, who heads the Scientific Advisory Council on UAP, insists: without systematic observations and open science, progress is impossible.
What exactly the sensors are recording will be shown only by time and open archives. But the very fact that the topic is being approached with courses, telescopes, and major foundations is already changing the atmosphere. The sky ceases to be merely a backdrop. It is becoming an object of attentive, patient, and increasingly well-equipped study.
