Pajarito Astronomers Invitation, May 20, 1986 — Department of Energy File
A letter to the members of the Pajarito Astronomers club regarding an upcoming meeting featuring a presentation from a Los Alamos National Laboratory-affiliated physicist, Dr. John Warren, titled “Why Should a Scientist be Concerned about UFOs?” The referenced event was not officially hosted by…
Incident Overview
On May 20, 1986, in New Mexico, the Department of Energy preserved a documentary record that was declassified and published on May 22, 2026 as part of the second tranche of the Department of War’s Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE).
What the government released
A letter to the members of the Pajarito Astronomers club regarding an upcoming meeting featuring a presentation from a Los Alamos National Laboratory-affiliated physicist, Dr. John Warren, titled “Why Should a Scientist be Concerned about UFOs?” The referenced event was not officially hosted by Los Alamos. The laboratory has no record of the subject matter discussed at the meeting.
Status of the case
Records released under the PURSUE program are designated unresolved by the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, which means the federal government has not concluded the events were anomalous, has not concluded they were conventional, and has not ruled out either possibility. Where AARO has offered a likely source for an item — an infrared sensor aboard a military aircraft, a commercial camera, or a known optical effect — that attribution is the agency’s working assessment rather than a final determination. Conventional candidates such as drones, balloons, flares, satellites, parallax and forced-perspective artifacts, and ordinary aircraft remain on the table for any unresolved case absent better data than a single sensor pass or a witness recollection.