The Sol Foundation

Sol is proud to feature astrobiologist Dr. Jacob Haqq-Misra on the latest episode of the Sol Forum. In a conversation with Peter Skafish, Jacob reflects on the relationship between the scientific search for extraterrestrial intelligence and the growing body of UAP observations. Rather than treating these domains as separate, he suggests that they may be part of the same underlying problem: how to recognize and interpret forms of intelligence that do not conform to human expectations. Drawing on his work in technosignatures and the philosophy of detection, Jacob asks what it would mean to expand SETI to meet this challenge. Link to video in comments.

The Sol Foundation is excited to share the latest video from its symposium this past fall! In a highly anticipated fireside chat, James Fowler, technologist and president of Compass Tech, and Sol Briefing host Marik von Rennenkampff discuss the technical aspects of tracking UAP with advanced sensors. Fowler and von Rennenkampff also analyze a string of brazen incursions by mysterious objects, frequently dubbed “drones” by the media, over highly sensitive facilities and assets in recent years. Fowler describes his experience tracking unknown objects via his firm’s advanced sensor suite as a government contractor and subsequently with the Skywatcher initiative. Von Rennenkampff then provides a survey of the recent incursions which, in some cases, have been documented on radar and military infrared sensors, resulting in perplexing footage and incidents that defy easy explanation. Link to video of the conversation is in the comments.

In this new edition of the Sol Briefing, host Marik von Rennenkampff discusses the extraordinary comments by presidents Trump and Obama that led to President Trump's pledge to release “government files related to alien and extraterrestrial life" as well as UAP and UFOs. Von Rennenkampff also analyzes eyebrow-raising comments from Hillary Clinton and Sen. Mike Rounds, one of the most perplexing military-filmed UAP videos released to date, and intriguing online bets placed on the timing of a U.S. government announcement of the existence of alien life. He closes with intriguing, historically unprecedented comments from the former acting director of the Pentagon’s UAP analysis office. Access this installment of the Briefing through the link in the comments.

Following Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s public remark last week that she was questioned about UAP while providing a deposition to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, the committee released footage of that exchange, which shows Missouri Representative Eric Burlison asking her about former White House Chief of Staff John Podesta’s 2016 statement that she would declassify relevant records if elected president. Secretary Clinton’s response shows that she is among the former presidents and cabinet officials, from Barack Obama and Kamala Harris to Marco Rubio and H.R. McMaster, who are conversant with and take seriously the UAP issue. “I think,” Clinton said about federal government UAP records, “[that] they have to be carefully scrutinized so that no national security information is disclosed. This is an issue of real importance to so many people. I think whatever can be disclosed should be disclosed… As you mentioned, John Podesta, who was one of my advisors, was deeply interested in the issue. If I had been elected, I certainly would have listened to his advice.” This exchange, between a MAGA congressman and a giant of the Democratic Party during an otherwise heated closed session, shows once again that interest in UAP transparency and disclosure spans generations, administrations, and, party lines.

In light of Donald Trump’s announcement yesterday about UAP records declassification, the Sol Foundation presents Eric Davis’s account of a briefing that President Jimmy Carter may have received from the CIA on UAP and nonhuman intelligence. Davis’s account raises questions about what later presidents, including Trump and Obama, may have learned from the intelligence community about UAP. youtu.be/nBB3jFKf_eM

President Trump’s and former President Obama’s recent comments on “aliens” are not without precedent, and they also confirm what voices and whistleblowers from the intelligence community have been saying for some time: the US government has classified information and programs concerning unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) and so-called nonhuman intelligences. Although the questions of whether and what US presidents know about UAP is typically regarded as subjects of speculation, it is a matter of historical record that many postwar presidents commented and took action on the phenomena. In 1947, Lyndon Johnson, then a junior congressman from Texas, made the first congressional inquiry to the DoD about UAP, following dozens of reported sightings that year. In 1952, Harry Truman’s administration demanded answers from the US Air Force about multiple UAP observed and tracked by civilian and military airport personnel and aviators over Washington, DC. According to the CIA’s own official history of its engagements with UAP, Lyndon Johnson’s administration requested records and information from the CIA on UAP. And as though all this weren’t enough, Gerald Ford called for congressional hearings on UAP in 1966, when he was House Minority Leader, following multiple, well-documented sightings in his home state of Michigan; and in 1976, Jimmy Carter made, prior to his election, a campaign promise to publicly share all information about UAP held by the government. Finally, Bill Clinton inquired into the alleged 1947 Roswell, New Mexico crash while president in the 1990s—and stated in recent years that he was never able to get to the bottom of the matter. Why do presidents show an interest in and occasionally acknowledge UAP? The short answer is that, apart from the abundant data and witness reports attesting to the reality of the phenomena, components of the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community have long engaged in efforts to detect, track, and study UAP. Presidents are, to greater and lesser degrees, apprised of those efforts and the intelligence they collect, but that information is likely deemed, as President Trump acknowledged today, classified. At the Sol Foundation, we pursue the kind of academic and scientific inquiry into UAP that statements like Obama’s and Trump’s make more relevant by the day. Our publications and public education work have helped establish the facts about the US government’s history of knowledge and engagement with UAP and define their significance for science, society, and humanity. To follow our work, visit thesolfoundation.org

The Sol Foundation is proud to announce the publication this week of the first in our new series of papers, the Sol Foundation Science and Policy Briefings: “Robust Evidence of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena in Pre-Satellite Era Night-Sky Images,” by Sol Briefing host and UAP analyst Marik von Rennenkampff. thesolfoundation.org/publications/r… Our Science and Policy Briefings are aimed at providing Congress, executive branch components, other national governments, and a range of institutions with digest presentations of findings from recent UAP-related scientific and policy research. We hope that the papers both inform policymakers of some of the key scientific discoveries and policy issues associated with UAP and help advance Sol’s own efforts to offer solutions to the many problems raised by the phenomena. In this paper, online Sol Briefing host and UAP analyst Marik von Rennenkampff provides a brief account of the recent publications of astronomer Beatriz Villarroez on her research on transient objects in near-Earth orbit in pre-Sputnik images of the night sky. As Marik states in his briefing: “By using the Earth’s shadow as a filter, Villarroel and her colleagues demonstrated with exceptionally high statistical confidence that tens of thousands of these “transients” are not optical artifacts or defects. Instead, they are likely brief (<1 second) glint-like reflections of the sun off objects of unknown origin with flat, highly reflective surfaces. These objects must be at least several hundred kilometers, and most likely tens of thousands of kilometers, above Earth. These scientists also discovered a statistically significant association among observations of such ‘transients,’ nuclear tests, and historical UAP reporting.” Look out for more briefing papers soon, along with further policy papers.

The latest video from the Sol Foundation’s symposium this past fall has been released. Sol advisory member, former acting NOAA administrator Admiral (ret.) Tim Gallaudet, assesses the prospects for disclosure following the latest failure in the US Congress to pass the UAP Disclosure Act. He asks whether a “disclosure do-over” will require a more international approach, undertaken not only by governments but also by academia, media, the private sector, civil society, and people of all stripes. Don’t miss this timely intervention from Admiral Gallaudet and the provocative questions it raises about the future of public knowledge of UAP. Follow the link in the comments for the video

The Sol Foundation is proud to announce release of video of a talk from our 2025 symposium by our friend and colleague, astronomer Dr. Beatriz Villarroel. Beatriz joined us in Italy this past October to share details about her research showing robust evidence for nonanthropogenic UAP. In a series of recent papers, she and her colleagues demonstrate that photographs from surveys of the night sky taken between 1949 and 1957, in the pre-satellite era, contain hundreds of thousands of temporary star-like points of light, called “transients,” that do not appear in other images of the sky. In her talk, Villarroel discusses how she and her colleagues used the Earth’s shadow as a filter to demonstrate, with exceptionally high statistical confidence, that tens of thousands of these “transients” are not optical artifacts or defects. Instead, they are likely brief (<1 second) glint-like reflections of the sun off objects of unknown origin with flat, highly reflective surfaces. These objects must be at least several hundred kilometers, and most likely tens of thousands of kilometers, above Earth. Villarroel and her colleagues also discovered a statistically significant association among observations of such transients, nuclear tests, and UAP reporting. For video of the talk, click on the link in the comments. To support research and public education of this kind, consider a membership with the Sol Foundation: thesolfoundation.app.neoncrm.com/forms/membersh…

The Sol Foundation is proud to release this new episode of the Sol Forum, which features physicist Eric Davis sharing remarkable claims about the U.S. government’s and some U.S. presidents' knowledge of UAP. Expanding on his comments in Dan Farah’s film Age of Disclosure, Dr. Davis shares information from discussions (which Sol has not verified) about government UAP secrecy which he claims to have had with President George H.W. Bush, and from an interview he conducted with a Carter administration cabinet official about President Jimmy Carter’s alleged briefing on UAP. Davis also discusses details from briefings that that he himself received from an aerospace executive, interactions he had in an official capacity with whistleblower David Grusch, and details about his interviews with individuals that may have been involved with alleged crash retrieval and reverse engineering efforts. To support the Sol Foundation's research and public education efforts, consider supporting us with a membership: thesolfoundation.app.neoncrm.com/forms/membersh… Link to video in the comments.