Today we’d like to introduce you to Alejandro Rojas
Hi Alejandro, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I just moved back to Arizona from Cardiff by the Sea, where I lived for four years. I loved it. We vacation in the area several times a year and still go there to escape the Phoenix heat. I plan to move back.
My story is that I am a UFO expert. I have been writing and researching about the topic for over 20 years and have been hired twice to do this sort of work full-time, including the work I currently do with a New York company called Enigma Labs, where we have developed an app to take UFO reports and let people see what people are seeing and where. We are getting hundreds of reports a week.
I began this work as a journalism student. I was an aerospace engineering major. I wanted to work with NASA as a rocket scientist. But a friend got me to help her with the news at the college radio station, and I fell in love with journalism. My friend had a boyfriend for a short period who always talked about UFOs. I thought it was silly and made me feel frustrated. But when I looked more into what he was saying, I found there were a lot of high-level officials and people in high positions in the public sector who were highly interested in UFOs. I also noticed these stories were not making it into the media. Although skeptical, I saw it was a topic that was not getting the type of coverage it should. My focus as a writer was science, space, and sci-fi, but I began writing about UFOs, and it took off. Now, that is what I am known for. I often do mainstream news interviews on the topic.
My view now is that despite what we heard from the Pentagon in the 1970s until the late 2010s. They claimed they had no interest in the topic after closing official UFO investigations in 1969, the most well-known being the US Air Force’s Project Blue Book. However, there were over 700 cases they investigated thoroughly they could not explain. And there were factions inside the military taking the issue seriously all along. It was a group of UFO researchers in the intelligence community that brought this topic forward again recently that has started this resurgence in interest; the credible US Navy cases they presented have also inspired the US Congress to mandate new investigations, resulting in the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO).
The case that got everyone’s attention is a San Diego case. It is the most credible case on the record and is largely responsible for bringing new credibility to UFOs. In November of 2004, off the coast of San Diego, the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group was participating in a large, multi-day training event. During the exercises, radar personnel were getting strange readings of objects moving at high speeds and from very high altitudes falling to sea level quickly. Two jets were sent to take a look, and they reported seeing an area of the ocean that seemed disrupted as if perhaps a submarine had just submerged. Above that was a white, “Tic Tac” shaped object. The wing commander flew in to take a closer look. He said the object was as large as his jet, about 40 feet, and reacted to his approach. He tried to follow it, but it flew off very quickly.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Even though pilots are very credible witnesses, their experience amounts to anecdotal information regarding the scientific investigation of what they encountered. Pentagon and NASA scientists are saying they need hard data. This is the same conclusion scientific organizations I have worked with looking into this topic have come to, But how do we get that data when we don’t know when or where they may appear? That is where the Enigma app comes in. Almost all of us have a robust data-collecting device that we carry around all day: our phones. Enigma Labs has focused on exploiting that fact to collect data from the public for researchers to help solve the mystery. We are now receiving hundreds of sighting reports a week.
We have also created an alert network. Right now, users receive weekly and periodic notifications if something interesting is captured in their area. We are working on getting those alerts out as quickly as possible, and we will soon offer real-time alerts. Imagine getting a notification if someone in your area is seeing something, allowing you to get outside and catch a glimpse or, even better, get a video of the object in real-time. This feature will enhance our ability to capture and document these sightings.
Educating the public is another challenge. For instance, the term UFO means alien spacecraft to many. However, the US Air Force coined that term and used the word “unidentified” to indicate they do not know what they are and do not know they are aliens. We do not have enough data to settle on the alien conclusion. The misinterpretation of the term UFO is why mainstream and scientific organizations use the term UAP. It has the same definition as UFO but now represents the scientific investigation of the phenomenon.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
My work is to help with content on the topic. For instance, we have a robust library of articles related to UFOs that I curated. In the app, we marked places where historically significant sightings have occurred, and you can read well-sourced articles on the event. I also speak to the media, help educate and answer user questions, and guide our engineers in developing the app based on historical work on this topic.
What does success mean to you?
Success for me is that we can help eliminate the stigma on the topic and help researchers and scientists in their work researching UAP. Ultimately, I would love to see research papers discussed and debated in the scientific community, leading to novel discoveries. Whether it turns out there is an incredible technology leap that has been secretly achieved by some earthly organization or, more excitingly, the answer is more exotic, like visitors from elsewhere. Along the way, we can help in other scientific endeavors, such as assisting scientists to figure out more about novel weather phenomena or discovering more about different phenomena, such as ball lightning.
Pricing:
- Free
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.enigmalabs.io
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/enigmalabs/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/enigmalabsuap
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/enigmalabs
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@enigmaufosighting
