Report from the Sol Foundation Symposium
The not-for-profit organization invited the people and nations of the world to join in the scientific study and democratic discussion of UAP.
More than 450 people from around the world came to the 2025 Sol Foundation Symposium held in the magnificent Grand Hotel Dino of Baveno on the shore of Lake Maggiore in northern Italy. It was a spectacular location for a historic event: the beginning of a formal, focused, funded and international effort to get answers to the questions posed by Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP).
Based in San Francisco, California, the Sol Foundation’s third symposium attracted some of the world’s leading lights in ufology, as well as a good number of physicists, psychologists, social scientists, engineers, architects, investors and journalists who wanted to learn what’s what and who’s who. By my count, 23 UAP investigators shared their work in a series of presentations and discussions.
Speakers included astrophysicist Dr. Beatriz Villarroel, PhD., who discussed “The Hunt for Nonhuman Artifacts Near Earth” and her work on Transient Stellar Like Objects. In her talk, Dr. Villarroel also brought up how she met Dr. Garry Nolan, PhD., Chairman of the Sol Foundation Board of Directors and a prominent researcher and innovator at Stanford Medical School, while both were hooded as they were transported by a “former NASA scientist” to a secret location where a UFO was purported to have crashed in the desert somewhere in the Southwestern USA.
Col. Karl Nell, (US Army, retired), contrasted the works of the “Five Good Roman Dictators” with the modern bureaucracies of the Western democracies in order to highlight the disappointing recent efforts to garner support in the US Congress for UAP Disclosure – the public revelation of top secret investigations by the CIA and US Air Force that stretch back at least 75 years. Col. Nell also discussed the importance of public awareness for getting movement by our elected representatives on an issue that impacts the lives of every human being on the planet.
Theoretical physicist Dr. Karl Svozil, professor emeritus of Technical University of Vienna, shared insight on “Stagnation in Physics, Inspiration from the Skies: Rethinking Science in the Age of UAP.” While he described the century long impasse between Einstein’s Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, he explained that we are beginning to see a new picture developing – one inspired by the scientific method and the possible technologies hinted at by actions — and human memories — associated with UAP.
This was just part of Saturday, the first full day of the symposium. That afternoon heard Dr. Jacques Vallée discuss his peer-reviewed scientific paper on an apparent UFO that irradiated a stand of trees in northern Louisiana, “Estimates of radiative energy values in ground-level observations of an unidentified aerial phenomenon: New physical data,” in 1966. The work was co-authored by Luc Dini, who also presented at the Sol Foundation Symposium, and Geoffrey Mestchersky. Click here for an article preview.
Dr. Vallee’s paper, here in PDF format, “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena: A Strategy for Research,” submitted to the French Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES), and their UFO study group, GEIPAN, could have been the blueprint for what I saw unfold in Baveno.
In his seminal 1979 work, “Messengers of Deception: UFO Contacts and Cults,” Dr. Vallée asked: “Where are the UFO detectives?” Had I the chance, I would have let him know: “Well, doctor, look around you — the UFO detectives are here. And all of them in attendance are here in large part to your pioneering work, Herculean drive, and saintly patience as the scientific world caught up to that you and your colleagues like Dr. J. Allen Hynek and Dr. James E. McDonald saw decades ago.”
The Residium posted a profile on Dr. Vallée and his work:
Jacques Vallée: Information Scientist
First among the eminent scientists to study the UFO phenomenon is Jacques Vallée. He received his Bachelor’s in mathematics from the Sorbonne, a Masters in astrophysics from Lille University, and his doctorate in information science from Northwestern University. There, from the campus in Evanston, Illinois, he assisted Dr. J. Allen Hynek and the work of…
My Aim and Warning
Over the coming weeks, I hope to detail as many of their presentations as possible, as well as the contributions made by other participants at this extraordinary conference. Of course, I will also freely provide my own 2-cents of personal observations and analysis, openly and clearly so-marked, based on more than 60 years following the subject of flying saucers, UFO and now UAP.
First, though, I must warn readers of The Residium and participants in the Sol Symposium alike – especially those who may feel they are being drawn quickly, as if irresistibly – into the “UFO Community.” Please remember and be aware that some, if not many, of the actors are not who or what they say they are. By that I mean that some are agents representing government, corporate, and private interests who do not necessarily share a commitment to democracy, open discussion of cutting edge ideas, or the well-being of participants in the study of UAP in their individual agendas.
The field is full of amazing information, as well as frightening facts and implications, and a big number of disinformation professionals. So, keep your cards close to your vest, be mindful with whom you share, and at all times remember that your critical faculties — your conscious and unconscious mind, your memories and feelings, and your reasoning and intellectual talents and abilities — are what matter most in all of this study.
One who has fallen afoul of insidious players was featured in the closing discussion of the conference: Mr. Jeffrey Nuccetelli. A retired US Air Force military police officer, Mr. Nuccetelli broke the official silence as a “whistleblower” in order to brief the US Congress on five UAP encounters with which he was involved officially at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Please click here to read Mr. Nuccetelli’s testimony to Congress in PDF format.
Mr. Nuccetelli and several of his colleagues who have gone public with their experiences have been targeted for silencing, often bullied through physical intimidation and threats to themselves and their families, been fired from their civilian jobs and otherwise ostracized simply for telling the truth to Congress about what they experienced while on duty — UAP near some of the most sensitive military installations and hardware in the US inventory.
An Addendum
Located in Southern California, Vandenberg AFB is the site of many historic and interesting UFO encounters. New readers may enjoy The Residium’s “The Vandenberg Incident,” featuring the extraordinary experience of US Air Force officers, 1st Lt. Robert Jacobs and Maj. Florence J. Mansmann, Jr., who saw what looked like a flying saucer toppled an Atlas ICBM in flight in 1964.
The Vandenberg UFO Incident
Evidence documenting one of the most significant events in UFO history remains classified Top Secret and unavailable to Congress and the public. It is a real shame. The data include high-quality movie film that alleges to show a flying saucer attacking and destroying an Atlas ICBM in flight.