Mysteries intrigue the human mind. Things you don’t understand or can’t see. Mysteries draw you in, books, TV shows, real-life, even lingerie. You want to see, to understand.

I don’t mean stupid mysteries like algebra. I mean scientific stuff. Our country has just gone through a messy pandemic year full of scary scientific mysteries that government folks were afraid to admit they really didn’t understand (or, that they did, and why).

So, they pretended to understand this new mysterious virus and what to do about it. We were afraid, so fell for their charade of dictums–two weeks to flatten the curve. Then, maybe two months. Job-crushing, savings-draining lockdowns. Masks for everyone everywhere. Perhaps two of them. Other hokum.

As a result, now and for some future time, millions of us newly-trained cynics from the University of Covid will dismiss all kinds of government warnings. They may indeed prove accurate ultimately, but no one wants to be a sucker in this age of information and misinformation. So, they’ll be dismissed out of hand.

Now, we come to one mystery that has endured for decades. But wait. We may finally be on the verge of solving at least part of it.

Flying saucers. Unidentified Flying Objects. Or in Pentagon vernacular, Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.

Over the years thousands have claimed to see UFOs, weird objects, or lights in the sky that appeared to do things our minds can’t explain or grasp. Many such reports proved fraudulent, the product of vivid imaginations, light phenomenon, even too much Budweiser.

Incidents were catalogued and closed away in a secretive Pentagon, sparking conspiracy theories, as our Townhall Media colleague Jazz Shaw has written at HotAir. A couple of years ago two convincing Navy videos were leaked by experts then confirmed as genuine. Watch them here.

Caught by sophisticated gun cameras and radars near military equipment off both coasts, they show lighted objects moving and maneuvering at high speeds. They have no apparent engines, control surfaces, or cockpits. In one case the object plunges into the ocean at high speed, emerging elsewhere.

Two highly-trained Super Hornet pilots told of approaching the object, which maneuvered around them and then, poof, disappeared. Activate cloaking device?

Last December, while everyone’s mind was consumed by media’s panic porn of the virus from China and election results Donald Trump’s camp found non-credible, Florida’s Marco Rubio, then chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, inserted in the Covid relief bill a requirement for the Pentagon and intelligence community to finally draft an unclassified report detailing what is known and unknown about UFOs.

That report is due next month. There seem to be three possibilities:

These objects are either super-secret U.S. technology, foreign technology far beyond anything known to our government, or an unexplained, potentially alien presence. What’s not secret are the obvious national security implications that not even Will Smith could handle.

Gallup has done some polling about UFOs. It found, believe it or not, real bipartisan agreement: 30 percent of Republicans and 32 percent of Democrats agree these craft are alien from another planet or galaxy. Independents were even more convinced (38 percent). I’m kinda drifting in that direction too, to be honest.

A clear majority (60 percent) still believe there’s some other explanation for UFOs, probably human-related. Seven percent don’t know anything, like Adam Schiff.

However, many more Americans say they do believe there is life beyond Washington. No, I mean that there is life elsewhere in the universe. Three-quarters say there is “life of some form” somewhere. Nearly half (49 percent) think there are “people like ourselves” living on other planets.

Can you imagine one of NASA’s amazing planetary rovers transmitting images back to Earth? Scientists call them up on desktop screens. And there, from the farthest frozen reaches of space staring back into the lens, all grins, is an alien photobomber.