Nels Hoffman 

For millennia, humans have looked to the heavens for guidance, help, and hope. In 1959, Cocconi and Morrison* proposed a search for radio signals sent by a hypothetical advanced civilization on a planet "near some star rather like the Sun." Morrison, a veteran of the Manhattan Project and a student of Oppenheimer's, was looking for hope – hope that the discovery of an advanced civilization would show that scientific societies could survive the danger posed by nuclear weapons. Meanwhile Drake had secretly begun such a search at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. In 1975 the US government began funding NASA to carry out the radio search for extraterrestrial intelligence. The program would go on for nearly 20 years. Today SETI continues under private funding. Although not directly connected to SETI, unidentified flying objects (UFOs) or unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs) likewise conjure ideas of extraterrestrial intelligence. Also like SETI, UFOs and UAPs have  been the subject of government investigations, but motivated by national security concerns, under Project Blue Book (1952-1969) and more recently pursuant to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022, which requires the Director of National Intelligence to submit an annual report to Congress on UAPs.  The concept of UFOs continues to attract popular attention, a phenomenon which itself is garnering greater interest in academia, no matter whether the government is interested or not. Although not the subject of any government investigations, a host of angels -- celestial intelligence -- is affirmed to exist by many religious believers around the world, who regard the "watchers and holy ones" as active agents in human affairs. We'll consider the human propensity to look to the heavens, and compare and contrast SETI, UFOs, and angels as sources of guidance, help, and hope.

*Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison, Nature 184 (#4690), 844-846 (1959)