Stephen Colbert: Isaac Asimov would have been 100 today. He published in every category of the Dewey Decimal system. After reading him your mind works better. Too many great quotes. Here's one: "Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right." Here's another: "It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety." In 1967, Asimov talked about what life with robots might be like in the future. "I wonder if we will make robots so much like men and men so much like robots that eventually we'll lose the distinction altogether." (A short BBC interview on it.)

Asimov's commentary on society: "The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom."

"There are no nations! There is only humanity. And if we don't come to understand that right soon, there will be no nations, because there will be no humanity."

"There's no way I can single-handedly save the world or, perhaps, even make a perceptible difference -- but how ashamed I would be to let a day pass without making one more effort."

sandbagger writes: Visual artist and futurist Syd Mead, who helped shape the look of influential sci-fi films including "Blade Runner," "Tron," "Aliens" and "Star Trek: The Motion Picture," died Monday of complications from lymphoma in Pasadena, Calif. He was 86. Mead was set to receive the Art Directors Guild's William Cameron Menzies Award during the Guild's 24th Annual awards in February for his contributions on "Aliens," "Blade Runner" and "Star Trek: The Motion Picture."

This post contains spoilers for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.
Jason Koebler, writing for Motherboard: Emperor Palpatine is back with a fleet of planet-killing Star Destroyers, the masses are scared to fight the Final Order, and the last glimmer of hope for the rebellion is nearly stamped out by ... overbearing DRM? The Rise of Skywalker is an allegory for the dystopian nightmare we are quickly hurtling toward, one in which we don't own our droids (or any of our other stuff), their utility hampered by arbitrary decisions and software locks by monopolistic corporations who don't want us to repair our things. In Skywalker, C3PO, master of human-cyborg relations, speaks six million languages including Sith (spoken by the Dark Side), but a hard-coded software lock (called Digital Rights Management here on Earth) in his circuitry prevents him from translating Sith aloud to his human users. Presumably, this is to prevent the droid from being used by the Sith, but makes very little sense in the context of a galactic war that has relied so heavily on double agents, spies, and leaked plans and documents. The only explanation that makes any sense is a greedy 3PO manufacturer that sells the Sith language pack as a microtransaction and a galactic Congress that hasn't passed strong right to repair laws for the junk traders, droid mechanics, and droid users of the galaxy. C3PO's software lock is a major plot point in Skywalker as he's unable to translate a Sith passage that could lead our heroes to the Sith planet that the aforementioned Palpatine is hanging out on.

dryriver writes: 27 years ago, the BBC's "Tomorrow's World" show broadcasted this little gem of a program [currently available on YouTube]. After showing old Red-Cyan Anaglyph movies, Victorian Stereoscopes, lenticular-printed holograms and a monochrome laser hologram projected into a sheet of glass, the presenter shows off a stereoscopic 3D CRT computer display with active shutter glasses. The program then takes us to a laboratory at Massachusetts Institute Of Technology, where a supercomputer is feeding 3D wireframe graphics into the world's first glasses-free holographic 3D display prototype using a Tellurium Dioxide crystal. One of the researchers at the lab predicts that "years from now, advances in LCD technology may make this kind of display cheap enough to use in the home."

A presenter then shows a bulky plastic VR headset larger than an Oculus Rift and explains how VR will let you experience completely computer-generated worlds as if you are there. The presenter notes that 1992 VR headsets may be "too bulky" for the average user, and shows a mockup of much smaller VR glasses about the size of Magic Leap's AR glasses, noting that "these are already in development." What is astonishing about watching this 27-year-old TV broadcast is a) the realization that much of today's stereo stereo 3D tech was already around in some form or another in the early 1990s; b) VR headsets took an incredibly long time to reach the consumer and are still too bulky; and that c) almost three decades later, MIT's prototype holographic glasses-free 3D display technology never made its way into consumer hands or households.

Astronomers compared old views of the sky with what we see today and found that at least 100 stars appear to have vanished, or were perhaps covered up. While they've seen no signs of aliens just yet, they say parts of space where multiple stars seem to disappear could be the best places to look for extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI). CNET reports: On March 16, 1950, astronomers at the U.S. Naval Observatory pointed a telescope roughly in the direction of the constellation Lupus the wolf and took a picture. When scientists look at that same patch of sky today, something is missing, and it could be evidence of something else lurking out there. Back in 2016, researchers in Sweden reported that a star had been lost. One of the roiling distant suns visible in that USNO image from the previous century could no longer be seen, even with the more advanced and sensitive digital sky surveys in use today.

The team published a paper on the discovery, but called it "very uncertain" at the time, resolving to do more follow-up work and to continue scouring old USNO observations for other celestial objects that seem to have gone missing. Three years later, it's still unclear what happened to that star spotted in 1950, but the team behind the "Vanishing & Appearing Sources during a Century of Observations" (Vasco) project now says they've found a hundred more missing stars like it by comparing old and new observations. "Unless a star directly collapses into a black hole, there is no known physical process by which it could physically vanish," explains a new study published in the Astronomical Journal and led by Beatriz Villarroel of Stockholm University and Spain's Instituto de AstrofÃsica de Canarias. "The implications of finding such objects extend from traditional astrophysics fields to the more exotic searches for evidence of technologically advanced civilizations."

Long-time Slashdot reader sandbagger brings the news that D. C. Fontana, an influential story editor and writer on the original 1960s TV series Star Trek, has died this week. People reports: The writer is credited with developing the Spock character's backstory and "expanding Vulcan culture," SyFy reported of her massive contribution to the beloved sci-fi series. Fontana was the one who came up with Spock's childhood history revealed in "Yesteryear," an episode in Star Trek: The Animated Series, on which she was both the story editor and associate producer. As the outlet pointed out, Fontana was also responsible for the characters of Spock's parents, the Vulcan Sarek and human Amanda, who were introduced in the notable episode "Journey to Babel."

In fact, Fontana herself said that she hopes to be remembered for bringing Spock to life. "Primarily the development of Spock as a character and Vulcan as a history/background/culture from which he sprang," she said in a 2013 interview published on the Star Trek official site, when asked what she thought her contributions to the series were.

With Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, she also penned the episode "Encounter at Farpoint," which launched The Next Generation in 1987. The episode introduced Captain Picard, played by Patrick Stewart, and earned the writing pair a Hugo Award nomination.
Fontana was one of four Star Trek writers who re-wrote Harlan Ellison's classic episode The City on the Edge of Forever , and her profile at IMDB.com credits her with the story or teleplay for 11 episodes of the original series. In the 1970s Fontana worked on other sci-fi television shows, including Land of the Lost, The Six Million Dollar Man, and the Logan's Run series.

Fontana later also wrote an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, three episodes of Babylon 5, and even an episode of the fan-created science fiction webseries Star Trek: New Voyages.

From a report: When the English translation of "The Three-Body Problem" was published in 2014, it was hailed as a groundbreaking work of speculative fiction. President Barack Obama praised the novel, calling it "just wildly imaginative." Mark Zuckerberg recommended it to his tens of millions of Facebook followers; George R.R. Martin blogged about it. Publishers around the world chased after translation rights, which eventually sold in 26 languages, including Turkish and Estonian. It won the 2015 Hugo Award, one of the genre's most prestigious honors, making Liu Cixin the first Asian author to win the prize for best novel. It was also the first time a novel in translation had won the prize. The book and its two sequels went on to sell nearly nine million copies worldwide. Now, Liu Cixin says, he recommends that Chinese sci-fi fans who speak English read Ken Liu's translation of "The Three-Body Problem" rather than the Chinese version. "Usually when Chinese literature gets translated to a foreign language, it tends to lose something," he says. "I don't think that happened with 'The Three-Body Problem.' I think it gained something."

The success of "The Three-Body Problem" not only turned Liu Cixin into a global literary star; it opened the floodgates for new translations of Chinese science fiction. This, in turn, has made Ken Liu a critical conduit for Chinese writers seeking Western audiences, a literary brand as sought-after as the best-selling authors he translates. (Among Chinese sci-fi authors and fans, he is often referred to affectionately as Xiao Liu, Little Liu, to distinguish him from Liu Cixin, who is known as Da Liu, Big Liu.) Liu's translations have reshaped the global science-fiction landscape, which has long been dominated by American and British authors. Over the past decade, he has translated five novels and more than 50 works of short fiction by dozens of Chinese authors, many of whom he has discovered and championed himself.

Netflix's reboot of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 made this year's "Best Of" lists from both The New York Times and Rotten Tomatoes. Yet apparently their bosses didn't like them, and have shot them into space.

Forbes reports: In a controversial move poisoning Thanksgiving for many indie comedy fans, Mystery Science Theater 3000 host Jonah Ray tweeted that Netflix has cancelled the young reboot after two seasons... The reprise of Mystery Science Theater 3000 -- whose maiden incarnation made hordes of fans airing on Comedy Central and Syfy throughout the '90s -- ran on Netflix for two seasons and 20 episodes beginning in 2017 after a record-breaking Kickstarter campaign by creator Joel Hodgon fueled its return.

"We don't know what the future holds for the show," Ray added in a later tweet, "it always seemed to figure out how to survive. From Comedy Central to Syfy. Then kept alive by RIFFTRAX & Cinematic Titan. Whatever happens, I want everybody to know that getting a chance to be on this show was a dream come true." Shortly after news of the show's cancellation, Hodgson tweeted reassurance to fans that he'll look to revive the series elsewhere....

Earlier this month, Shout! Factory TV announced the debut of an MST3K Twitch channel that unspools the series and promises to feature "related programming...." Fans can also turn to Pluto TV's 24/7 MST3K channel to gorge on the series pre-Y2K catalogue (1988-99).

The MST3K staff is also currently on a sprawling 60-plus city tour that will stretch into March 2020. In 2008 Joel Hodgson, the show's creator, answered questions from Slashdot readers. "I've been a fan so long, I can't even remember when," posted CmdrTaco. "I've been shuttling my MST coffee mug from desk to desk for like 15 years now, so I'm pretty pumped that he'd waste your time with us."

In a gracious note this week, Hodgson emailed fans that "We've had a wonderful time working with the Netflix team, and will always be grateful to them. After all, they gave us the opportunity to spend the past few years aboard the Satellite of Love, and made it possible for new generations to discover the joys of riffing cheesy movies with your friends..."

Is it embarrassing for adults to like superheroes? According to Alan Moore -- creator of the Watchmen series and widely considered one of the greatest comic book writers -- it is. From a report: He says superheroes are perfectly fine for 12 or 13-year-olds but adults should think again. "I think the impact of superheroes on popular culture is both tremendously embarrassing and not a little worrying," he says. Alan wrote Watchmen in 1986. The series depicts an alternate history where superheroes emerged in the 1940s and 1960s and their presence changed the course of history. He believes the characters are "perfectly suited" to the imaginations of a younger audience - but now, they serve a "different function, and are fulfilling different needs." The writer claims adults enjoy superhero films because they don't wish to leave their "relatively reassuring childhoods" behind, or move into the 21st century.

The authors of a 2017 study which found that reading science fiction "makes you stupid" have conducted a follow-up that found that it's only bad sci-fi that has this effect: a well-written slice of sci-fi will be read just as thoroughly as a literary story. From a report: Two years ago, Washington and Lee University professors Chris Gavaler and Dan Johnson published a paper in which they revealed that when readers were given a sci-fi story peopled by aliens and androids and set on a space ship, as opposed to a similar one set in reality, "the science fiction setting triggered poorer overall reading" and appeared to "predispose readers to a less effortful and comprehending mode of reading -- or what we might term non-literary reading." But after critics suggested that merely changing elements of a mainstream story into sci-fi tropes did not make for a quality story, Gavaler and Johnson decided to revisit the research. This time, 204 participants were given one of two stories to read: both were called "Ada" and were identical apart from one word, to provide the strictest possible control. The "literary" version begins: "My daughter is standing behind the bar, polishing a wine glass against a white cloth." The science-fiction variant begins: "My robot is standing behind the bar, polishing a wine glass against a white cloth."

Now that we have arrived in Blade Runner's November 2019 "future," the BBC asks what the 37-year-old film got right. Slashdot reader dryriver shares the report: [B]eyond particular components, Blade Runner arguably gets something much more fundamental right, which is the world's socio-political outlook in 2019 -- and that isn't particularly welcome, according to Michi Trota, who is a media critic and the non-fiction editor of the science-fiction periodical, Uncanny Magazine. "It's disappointing, to say the least, that what Blade Runner "predicted" accurately is a dystopian landscape shaped by corporate influence and interests, mass industrialization's detrimental effect on the environment, the police state, and the whims of the rich and powerful resulting in chaos and violence, suffered by the socially marginalized."

[...] As for the devastating effects of pollution and climate change evident in Blade Runner, as well as its 2017 sequel Blade Runner 2049, "the environmental collapse the film so vividly depicts is not too far off from where we are today," says science-fiction writer and software developer Matthew Kressel, pointing to the infamous 2013 picture of the Beijing smog that looks like a cut frame from the film. "And we're currently undergoing the greatest mass extinction since the dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago. In addition, the film's depiction of haves and have-nots, those who are able to live comfortable lives, while the rest live in squalor, is remarkably parallel to the immense disparity in wealth between the world's richest and poorest today. In that sense, the film is quite accurate." [...] And it can also provide a warning for us to mend our ways. Nobody, surely, would want to live in the November 2019 depicted by Blade Runner, would they? Don't be too sure, says Kressel.

"In a way, Blade Runner can be thought of as the ultimate cautionary tale," he says. "Has there ever been a vision so totally bleak, one that shows how environmental degradation, dehumanization and personal estrangement are so harmful to the future of the world? "And yet, if anything, Blade Runner just shows the failure of the premise that cautionary tales actually work. Instead, we have fetishized Blade Runner's dystopian vision. Look at most art depicting the future across literature, film, visual art, and in almost all of them you will find echoes of Blade Runner's bleak dystopia. "Blade Runner made dystopias 'cool,' and so here we are, careening toward environmental collapse one burned hectare of rainforest at a time. If anything, I think we should be looking at why we failed to heed its warning."

Luke Skywalker wasn't going to be the only Jedi in the final Star Wars movie, reports Yahoo Entertainment: In the original version of the ninth and final installment, The Rise of Skywalker, his sister, Leia (played by Carrie Fisher), was going to emerge as a full-fledged Jedi warrior, complete with her very own lightsaber. That's according to no less an authority than Fisher's real-life brother, Todd Fisher, who filled us in on what the plan was for his sister's iconic character prior to her sudden death in December 2016. "She was going to be the big payoff in the final film," Fisher reveals exclusively to Yahoo Entertainment. "She was going to be the last Jedi, so to speak. That's cool right....? People used to say to me, 'Why is it that Carrie never gets a lightsaber and chops up some bad guys,'" Fisher says, noting that Alec Guinness was roughly the same age when Obi-Wan Kenobi battled Darth Vader in A New Hope. "Obi-Wan was in his prime when he was Carrie's age...!"

Unfortunately, a version of The Rise of Skywalker where Leia picks up her father and brother's chosen weapon can only exist in our imaginations. After Fisher's death, her alter ego's arc had to be re-conceived by returning director J.J. Abrams, who previously directed the actress in 2015's The Force Awakens. "The truth is that J.J. Abrams was great friends with Carrie... he had an extraordinary sense of love for her," her brother says. It was that love that led the filmmaker to make a bold, and creatively risky decision: take unused footage of Leia left over from The Force Awakens and make it part of The Rise of Skywalker. "They had eight minutes of footage," Fisher tells us. "They grabbed every frame and analyzed it... and then reverse-engineered it and [got] it into the story the right way. It's kind of magical."

"The news just keeps getting worse for Terminator: Dark Fate," reports CinemaBlend: It had a disappointing opening last week and a sharp drop in its second weekend at the box office. It also had the worst Friday-to-Friday drop of any other Terminator sequel in the franchise... According to Forbes, it made only $2.8 million on Friday, November 8, marking a 73% drop from opening day on November 1...

[A]t this point, Terminator: Dark Fate is only expected to make just over $10 million this weekend, which would be a drop of 65% from last weekend. That is pretty big considering Dark Fate only started with a $29 million opening weekend. To go back to Terminator Salvation, that movie opened to $42.5 million 10 years ago, so even a slightly bigger week-to-week percentage drop gave it more money than Dark Fate...

Terminator: Dark Fate cost between $185-$195 million to make, not including marketing costs. According to Deadline, the movie will have to make $470 million worldwide to break even. If it were making a killing at the international box office, that might happen. But it's not exactly crushing overseas either. Going into this second weekend, the film was only at $135 million worldwide, with $94M of that from the foreign box office. That's a lot more than domestic, but the addition of this weekend's numbers, and whatever comes next week and beyond, probably won't be enough to hit that break even point... [E]ven if you too think you know where James Cameron was going with his Terminator trilogy plans after Dark Fate, it's unlikely now that those plans will see the light of day.
Forbes calls it "a sign that making a better sequel couldn't save a franchise for which general audiences stopped caring decades ago... [I]t's an example of the studios looking at the threat posed by video-on-demand and streaming and giving theatrical audiences exactly what they don't want."

Meanwhile, they write, the movie Joker has become the most profitable comic book movie of all time, earning $958.7 million worldwide on a budget of just $62.5 million.

"Terminator: Dark Fate once again failed to avoid Judgment Day because audiences just don't care about the Terminator as a brand, an IP or a franchise," writes a box office pundit at Forbes.

He points out the newly-released film earned just $10.6 million on its opening day: The sci-fi sequel, directed by Tim Miller, produced by James Cameron, and starring franchise vets Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger alongside newbies Mackenzie Davis, Natalia Reyes and Gabriel Luna, was the third attempt to revive the Terminator series in a decade... Terminator has become a metaphor for itself, with filmmakers trying different things only to face the same outcome: Judgment Day is inevitable.

Hollywood may yet figure out that audiences who aren't die-hard sci-fi geeks have little interest in additional Terminator movies... The pitches change, the hooks differ, but the result is always the same. Just because folks liked The Terminator in 1984 and lost their minds over Terminator 2: Judgment Day in 1991 does not mean they have any interest in additional Terminator movies. Just because something was once popular doesn't mean audiences care for a new iteration.

The sheer hubris, to try to convince audiences three times in a row to want something that they clearly don't want, at great expense, is frankly appalling. The "this time folks will bite" attitude is what has left theatrical moviegoing in grave peril as streaming and television networks have filled the gap for something beyond cover records of yesterday's former glories. It is one thing to try a reboot, strike out and move on... It is another entirely to take the same dead franchise and presume that the same audiences who said "No, thank you" not once but twice will somehow magically embrace it on the third try.
The article harshly concludes that Terminator: Dark Fate is bombing in North America "because audiences didn't want to see it."

Blink-182 singer Tom DeLonge's UFO research organization has signed an agreement with the U.S. Army in which it will help the military study and develop advanced materials for the purposes of develpoing "active camouflage, beamed energy propulsion, and quantum communication" for use on military vehicles. Motherboard reports: On October 17th, To the Stars joined forces with the Army's Combat Capabilities Development Command, a research and development body. While To the Stars has made recent headlines with its UFO themed content, such as its acquisition of "exotic" materials which it claims are not from Earth, and videos acquired from the Navy purporting to show unidentified anomalous phenomena, this recent deal with the military portrays a different side of To the Stars: as a potential technology company.

In recent months, DeLonge's organization has made a big deal out of obtaining those "exotic" metals that it believes may come from UFOs. Though the contract doesn't specifically mention the origin of any of those metals, it does say that To the Stars and the U.S. Army will use government labs to study "meta materials," which could refer to these alloys. "Government shall: Perform assessments, testing, and characterization of Collaborator-provided technologies. The Government is interested in a variety of the Collaborator's technologies, such as, but not limited to inertial mass reduction, mechanical/structural meta materials, electromagnetic meta material wave guides, quantum physics, quantum communications, and beamed energy propulsion," the contract states. The contract lasts for five years. The government isn't paying TTSA anything, rather, it is agreeing to collaborate with TTSA on researching new technologies and has committed to spend at least $750,000 on the research.

CNN has a story about a Chinese prototype helicopter that looks like a UFO. Slashdot reader ClickOnThis shares the report: China has been unveiling a lot of new weaponry lately, but one of their latest reveals looks really, well, out of this world. Called the "Super Great White Shark" by Chinese media, the aircraft conjures up images of 1950s sci-fi movies more than 21st century technology. But China says the "armed helicopter" was designed for the "future digital information battlefield." State-tabloid the Global Times published an image gallery of the aircraft, calling it a fusion of modern, proven helicopter designs -- such as the American AH-64 Apache and CH-53 Sea Stallion as well as the Russian Ka-52 and Mi-26 copters. It also has the blended-wing design employed by stealth aircraft, including the US B-2 bomber. [...] The prototype was displayed last week at the China Helicopter Exposition in Tianjin. It was a static display only. The aircraft is landbound -- at least for now.

A family who spent nine years in a basement "waiting for the end of time" have been discovered by police in the Netherlands after one of them turned up at a local pub, reports say. The BBC reports: A man of 58 and a family with young adults aged 18 to 25 were living at a farm in the province of Drenthe. They were found after the eldest of the children ordered beer at a bar in the nearby village of Ruinerwold. He then told staff he needed help, broadcaster RTV Drenthe reported. The older man, who has been arrested, was initially assumed to be the father, but local mayor Roger de Groot later told reporters that was not the case. Nor was the man the owner of the farmhouse, Mr de Groot said, adding: "I've never seen anything like it."

The public broadcaster said that the family had been living in isolation waiting for the end of time. Unconfirmed reports said the children's father was among those found. Bar owner Chris Westerbeek described how a man had come in, ordered five beers and drunk them. "Then I had a chat with him and he revealed he had run away and needed help... then we called the police," he said. He added: "He had long hair, a dirty beard, wore old clothes and looked confused. He said he'd never been to school and hadn't been to the barber for nine years." "He said he had brothers and sisters who lived at the farm. He said he was the oldest and wanted to end the way they were living." Officers visited the remote farmhouse and carried out a search. They discovered a hidden staircase behind a cupboard in the living room that led down to a basement room where the family were housed.

Freshly Exhumed writes: Adam Frank, professor of astrophysics at the University of Rochester and consultant on numerous movie scripts, was excited to watch "Ad Astra," the new Brad Pitt space thriller. The film was promoted with the promise of scientific realism in depicting a solar system well on its way to being settled by humanity. Unfortunately, Professor Frank finds that despite very good intentions, "Ad Astra" strikes the wrong balance between story and fact, art and artifice. While the plot ventures out to the farthest planet Neptune, the demands of the film's theme cramp its science fiction imagination. Instead of letting us explore a vision of our common future in space, "Ad Astra" delivers a solar system stripped down to fit a very particular story.

Local authorities in Rachel, Nevada -- the location of a planned Aliengate festival that evolved out of a viral Facebook event -- are considering taking legal action to cover $250,000 the county plans to spend to prepare for the potential onslaught of visitors. Gizmodo reports: Matty Roberts created the "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us" Facebook event on June 27 as a joke, but the event went viral and evolved into an actual festival -- Alienstock -- which was planned for September 19-22 at the Little A'Le'Inn in Rachel, Nevada, near the US Air Force base known as Area 51. But just a few days before the event was supposed to begin, Roberts and his partners backed out, posting on their website that they "foresee a possible humanitarian disaster in the works" and after considering "the lack of infrastructure, planning, and risk management, along with concerns raised for the safety of the expected 10,000+ attendees, we decided to transition Alienstock away from the Rachel festival towards a safer alternative." That safer alternative is an "Area 51 Celebration" happening on Thursday night at the Downtown Las Vegas Events Center.

However, Little A'Le'Inn owner Connie West has made it very clear that she still plans to host her own Alienstock, despite Roberts' attorney sending her a cease-and-desist letter ordering her to stop using the name "Alienstock" since the event at that location was canceled. Lincoln County Sheriff Kerry Lee told Gizmodo that as of Wednesday morning, people had already started arriving at A'Le'Inn. "Matty Roberts is the one that started this on Facebook. So our district attorney, his opinion is that Matty Roberts and Facebook stand to be partially to blame for this" Lee told Gizmodo. "He's already told people that this is quote-unquote 'His event.' He told some of the other event promoters that this was his event. And so I guess if it's his event and he's taken ownership of it then we know where legal action should go toward. I'm not an attorney but that is what Lincoln County district attorney is saying." Facebook is protected from legal action regarding content created by one of its users under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, but it's possible that the district attorney may argue that this particular circumstance wouldn't be covered by those protections.

A Navy official has confirmed that recently released videos of unidentified flying objects are real, but that the footage was not authorized to be released to the public in the first place. From a report: Joseph Gradisher, the spokesman for the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Information Warfare, confirmed to TIME that three widely-shared videos captured "Unidentified Aerial Phenomena." Gradisher initially confirmed this in a statement to "The Black Vault" a website dedicated to declassified government documents. "The Navy designates the objects contained in these videos as unidentified aerial phenomena," Gradisher told the site.

He tells TIME that he was "surprised" by the press coverage surrounding his statement to the site, particularly around his classification of the incursions as "unidentifiable," but says that he hopes that leads to UAP's being "de-stigmatized." "The reason why I'm talking about it is to drive home the seriousness of this issue," Gradisher says. "The more I talk, the more our aviators and all services are more willing to come forward." Gradisher would not speculate as to what the unidentified objects seen in the videos were, but did say they are usually proved to be mundane objects like drones -- not alien spacecraft. "The frequency of incursions have increased since the advents of drones and quadcopters," he says. The three videos of UFOs were published by the New York Times and "To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science," a self-described "public benefit corporation" co-founded by Tom DeLonge, best known as the vocalist and guitarist for the rock band, Blink-182.