"To the Stars" Downgrades Debris from "Extraterrestrial Metamaterials" to "Potential UFO Material," Warns Investigation Could Go "Nowhere"

​This week, To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science posted a new YouTube video teasing their investigation of debris that they used to claim had alien origins but are now much less sure about. Have you ever seen The Andromeda Strain? In watching the old men of To the Stars Academy playing with pieces of what they imply could be metal from flying saucers, I kept wondering why the only precautions they took against the possibility of extraterrestrial contamination—radioactive, biological, etc.—were a plastic freezer bag, some bubble wrap, and multicolored latex gloves. It just strikes me that if you genuinely thought you had a piece of a crashed flying saucer, you might want to be a little more cautious that you would be packing a used book to ship to an eBay customer.

​“We have multiple samples now from multiple sources,” former Pentagon UFO investigator Luis Elizondo said, “ranging a wide variety of, of, of integrity.” He clearly excited about obtaining the supposed alien metal samples that—if his own claims are to be believed—are similar to the supposed alien metal he used to investigate for the federal government. How is it, one might ask, that he is keen on experimenting with these samples and has no idea what he will find if he had already overseen research into the same as part of his government job? His next sentence says it all: “Even if the material goes nowhere, people are beginning to provide us things.” He adds that To the Stars “may be on the brink” of “something new,” which heavily implies that (a) the Pentagon program was basically an unproductive waste of time that uncovered none of the things Elizondo has implied, or (b) he is purposely lying about it for unexplained reasons. Otherwise, his To the Stars work wouldn’t be “new.” A plain reading, however, makes clear that as of today, they have no evidence of aliens but are happy to accept material from the public to keep the publicity machine oiled. After all, if they had proof of alien metal, they would have led with the news.
 
In one cute touch, they blur a sample one of the men is holding so that the viewer cannot see what it is while Elizondo’s voiceover says that they are looking for the equivalent of a “lost Picasso” in a barn full of “finger paint they did in high school.”
 
“The field out there is really filled with people that have opinions and thoughts and beliefs about what all this stuff means, and so on,” remote viewing enthusiast and longtime paranormal researcher Hal Puthoff says, “but TTSA has been put together on the basis of the mantra, you might say, ‘Let’s just follow the data and see where it goes.’” Hmm… That’s pretty different from Puthoff’s confident speech to a remote viewing conference in June proclaiming that he had evidence that the metals involved were metamaterials composed of an intricate matrix of magnesium and bismuth. Now, as Elizondo said, the research might go “nowhere,” and Puthoff can only offer a milquetoast bromide about waiting to see where the date go.
 
This looks a lot like walking back the grand claims of alien metals.
 
When To the Stars was announced nearly a year ago, cofounder Tom DeLonge went on a media blitz and told podcaster Joe Rogan about the near magical powers of the metal that was in the possession of To the Stars, including anti-gravity properties. Now, a year later, those claims are, as Nixon’s enablers used to say, “inoperative.”