American Cosmic
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🗓️ Event
Contents 7
| Date | 20 February 2019 |
|---|---|
| Topics | Beings & bodies (topic) |
| People | Diana Walsh Pasulka, Garry Nolan |
| Testimony | Shellenberger testimony, p. 192 |
| Year | 2019 in UFO history |
| Timeline | 2019 on the UAP Timeline |
| Sources | 4 |
American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology is a 2019 book by D. W. Pasulka, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, published by Oxford University Press. It examines belief in UFOs as a modern religious phenomenon, based on years of interviews with scientists and believers.[1][2]
"Tyler D."
A central figure is an anonymous scientist Pasulka calls "Tyler D.", to whom she dedicated the book. He is described as a former aerospace engineer who worked on the space shuttle, later an entrepreneur with more than forty patents, who said an unseen force gave him inventive ideas and who claimed to have handled non-human artefacts. His real identity has been the subject of much speculation.[2]
The New Mexico trip
Pasulka describes Tyler taking her, blindfolded, through a remote desert no-fly zone in New Mexico to a site where a craft was said to have crashed in the same year as Roswell, and giving her a specially configured metal detector. A companion, a Stanford biologist called "James" in the book, recovered a piece of material he later concluded was not of earthly origin. In her follow-up book Encounters: Experiences with Nonhuman Intelligences (2023), Pasulka revealed him to be immunologist Garry Nolan.[2]
Reception
American Cosmic attracted mainstream attention as a scholarly study of UFO belief.[3] Reviewing both books in The New York Review of Books in 2024, novelist Nathaniel Rich argued they read as a "conversion memoir disguised as an ethnographic study", in which Pasulka abandoned scholarly neutrality, and that they sat uneasily between science and theology.[2]
Status
Tyler's identity and claims remain unconfirmed, and the book does not claim to prove them.[1][2]
People and topics
- Diana Walsh Pasulka — Religious studies professor and author of American Cosmic.
- Non-human intelligence — A term for intelligent beings of non-human origin, used in UAP legislation.
- Unidentified flying object — An object in the sky that can't be identified; the older term for UAP.
- Garry Nolan — Stanford immunologist who studies UAP-related injuries and claimed materials.
On the Timeline
- Burroughs and Kit Green's meditation advice (12 December 2018) — Rendlesham witness John Burroughs says Kit Green suggested meditation practices to him.
- InterNASA lawsuit (26 February 2019) — A TV producer sues former officials over a company called InterNASA.
See every 2019 event on the UAP Timeline →
References
- "American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology", Anomaly Archives · anomalyarchives.org · archived copy
- Nathaniel Rich, "Ufologists, unite!", The New York Review of Books (18 Apr 2024) · nybooks.com · archived copy
- "American Cosmic", Publishers Weekly · publishersweekly.com · archived copy
- silvarecord.com · silvarecord.com · archived copy
This page was last edited on 29 October 2026. Articles are written in our own words from the sources listed under References; disputed claims are attributed to the people who made them.
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