"We all know that UFOs are real. All we need to ask is where do they come from." — Astronaut Edgar D. Mitchell, after his Apollo 14 Moon flight in 1971

For centuries, the prospect of UFOs has raised countless questions. Are their occupants hostile or friendly? Do they have occupants at all? Is there a way to communicate with them? What source of power do they use to travel? Do aliens believe in God? What does their revelation mean for organized religion? The inquiries are seemingly endless.

But one question that has been finally answered is whether UFOs exist. As the world now knows, the Pentagon up until 2012 had spent $22 million on the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. Not only did researches in this program test theories about extraterrestrial craft interfering in our airspace, it reportedly collected physical evidence from some of them. According to Robert Bigelow, the billionaire investor of the project and a longtime UFO researcher, his company gathered video and audio recordings of reported UFO incidents for the U.S. military. One such video included a Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet surrounded by some kind of radiant glow traveling at high speed and gyrating as it moved. The Navy pilots can be heard trying to fathom what they are witnessing. "There's a whole fleet of them," one exclaims in a state of bewildered excitement. Astonishingly, Bigelow also claims that his company stored metal alloys and other materials recovered from unidentified aerial phenomena. In a CBS "60 Minutes" interview, he said, "I am absolutely convinced that aliens exist and that UFOs have visited earth."

The revolutionary significance of this admission cannot be overstated. Never before has the Department of Defense — in collaboration with the private sector and major news corporations — announced with such intentional solemnity that UFOs are real. This was the genuine article. It may be the closest our nation will ever come to official disclosure, and when we are ready to fully accept what happened, this disclosure will be a paradigm shift in the way that our species perceives our place in the cosmos. It will be the most remarkable discovery since Copernicus declared: "Finally we shall place the sun himself at the center of the Universe."

Everything is about to change. The speculation and ignorant denial that has plagued this topic for much too long is coming to an end. The time for honest research, purposeful communication and creative action is upon us. With this news, our global civilization has begun the steady and irresistible climb to the next level of self-awareness.

George Cassidy Payne is the founder of Gandhi Earth Keepers International, a SUNY adjunct humanities instructor and domestic violence counselor.