Are aliens real? Do UFOs really exist? These questions, once relegated to the confines of conspiratorial enterprises, are now legitimately being pondered among some scientists, academics — and even in the halls of Congress.
It’s an issue Dr. Hugh Ross, an astrophysicist and apologist, has long researched and explored.
“I became a UFO expert, but not on purpose,” he recently told “Billy Hallowell’s Playing With Fire” podcast. “I was an amateur astronomer before I became a professional astronomer.”
Ross eventually found himself handling UFO reports at universities, exploring claims people made about aliens and unidentified phenomena. And he came to some fascinating conclusions.
RELATED: Creationist Ken Ham Believes in UFOs — Not Aliens From Outer Space
“About 99% of what people would report to me as UFOs, I could explain as natural phenomena, a hoax, or secret government military activity,” Ross said. “But there’s a 1% residual that falls in a different category, and these would be UFO phenomena.”
Listen to Ross explain the nature of these alien encounters and what he’s observed:
He said these reports violated physics, yet there was purportedly evidence indicating they were “real phenomena.” Ross said many scientists won’t look seriously at these claims, as they’re not open to the possibility of “non-physical reality.”
“But, as a Christian, as a believer in the inerrancy of the Bible, I do believe in the existence of non-physical reality,” he said. “Because the Bible tells us God created two different species of intelligent life — one that’s constrained by the physics of the universe, and one that is not.”
With humans in the material realm and angels in the spiritual, Ross said new possibilities emerge when understanding claims of alien life and UFOs.
Rather than literal space creatures, Ross believes alien encounters are actually spiritual manifestations.
Citing details from claims of space crashes, landings, and supposed extraterrestrial encounters, the scientist said there’s never any debris and artifacts left behind — a fact he finds notable.
RELATED: ‘Many Incarnations’ of Jesus? NASA Enlisted Theologians to Study Faith Implications of Alien Life
“If it was a physical craft crashing into the earth, you’d be able to recover some debris and artifacts,” he said. “But the fact that you see a crater, and melted snow, and damaged vegetation, means [it’s] something real.”
As for the human reaction to these encounters, Ross also noted they are “never beneficial” and interactions are “always deleterious.”
“The best you’re going to come away from with one of these encounters is recurring, terrifying nightmares,” he said. “Worst case scenario, you get killed.”
Reports of alien encounters also mirror what some have experienced during claims of demonic activity, he said. From going into trances to engaging in automatic writing, Ross believes the parallels between possession and purported interactions with extraterrestrials cannot be ignored.