Nathalie Cabrol

part of military program or actual UFOs?

I always run into that question because, of course, as the director of the Carl Sagan Center at the Study Institute, I received a number of emails about the subject.

People actually...

about what the study institute is.

We are not studying UFOs.

We are studying, we are actually looking for messages.

The way I put it, you know, usually is that we are studying extraterrestrial in their natural habitat.

And the UFO people are trying to understand whether they invaded our aerial space.

So this is two very different things.

And unfortunately, over the years, I actually respect very much people who are trying to

to go to the bottom of what UFO are following some very scientific ways of doing this.

There are very, very credible agencies doing this.

Unfortunately, there is a folklore around UFOs.

And this has been a huge disservice to the scientific community.

And this is why you have been having that much pushback for a long time by the scientific community, because no congressman in the world

wants to tell their taxpayer that they are supporting something, that they're looking for flying saucers.

When you see what's happening, it's terrifying.

And I am actually concerned about that relationship that people do between folklore and real search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

In fact, it's been so bad that...

Until today, there is no government agency that is actually funding the SETI search.