Avi Loeb Comments on the Alien DNA Claims
Below is a transcript of the latest interview I had last evening with Jesse Webber Live on NewsNation, which is also available in video format here. Jesse’s comments and questions are marked with JW and my answers are marked with AL.
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JW: Imagine taking a DNA test and finding out you’re not from where you thought you were, right? Maybe you grew up thinking you were Italian, but most of your DNA comes back as French. It happens all the time. But now I want you to imagine you’re not from the planet you thought you were from.
Maybe you already knew that. I know that sounds like science fiction, but the possibility is gaining a lot of traction in some UFO circles. Because on a recent podcast, science fiction writer and philosopher Jason Reza-Jorjani says he was told about a secret CIA program by former U.S. Army Sergeant Lyn Buchanan. And Buchanan seemingly claims that he’s a psychic spy who worked for the government’s remote viewing program during the Cold War and was approached by a group of Aliens known as the Nordics who have been hiding out in plain sight living quietly in small American towns. At least they’re hiding out for now. Because according to Jorjani, Buchanan claims a UAP researcher named Christopher “Kit” Green, a CIA analyst, believes he may have found a way to identify these secret aliens by searching for a specific non-human or hybrid genetic marker inside DNA databases like Ancestry and 23andMe. And on the pie chart listing ethnicities, there’s something sometimes called a wedge. It’s called “other”, which means unknown, unidentifiable. So, UFO theorists believe that could mean extraterrestrial.
Now, to be clear, I get it. I know this all sounds unbelievable, right? And yes, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. But as new UAP files continue to be released by the Pentagon, is it fair to at least ask whether some of these things that we once laughed off may deserve some serious scientific scrutiny?
You know who I’m bringing in: Avi Loeb, astrophysicist. Harvard professor, one of the leading voices pushing for a fact-based, evidence-first approach to the search for life beyond Earth.
Avi, always good to see you. Happy to separate fact from fiction. Is this a real thing?
AL: Thanks for having me. I don’t think it’s very likely to be a real thing. It’s possible that a CIA analyst or anyone else might have been curious about this question, but there is no scientific basis to lend any credibility to this possibility. Because, first of all, for biological beings to travel interstellar distances, requires a very unusual genetic engineering. As far as we know, these trips — even at the speed of light — would take tens of thousands of years. And they are very hazardous because of bombardment by cosmic rays and low gravity. Humans cannot survive for more than a few years on the surface of the Moon or Mars.
JW: I guess the question is, is there a genetic marker that you could search for, potentially?
AL: Regarding the origin of our species, of course there could be paths that led to humans that are not fully recognized. That definitely is possible. And you could also have markers within the DNA that indicate some effect of transfer of primitive forms of life from, let’s say, Mars to Earth, in a process called panspermia (as discussed here). You can imagine situations like that.
But the DNA is not necessarily universal throughout the cosmos. The kind of genetic code we find nowadays in humans was very different in the past history of Earth. If you go back a few billion years on Earth, there weren’t even complex cells with nuclei; eukaryotic genesis introduced nuclei in cells where the DNA is packaged. It only came about 2–3 billion years ago on Earth. That happened at roughly half the age of the Earth. Having someone visit us with similar DNA characteristics is extremely unlikely. There is also the possibility of chirality — the way the double-helix of the DNA is organized, being a mirror image of what we have. In that case, it would be catastrophic for us to even touch such beings, because we are not protected from their diseases (as discussed here). I recommend not shaking the hand of an alien if you find one.
JW: I’ll keep that in mind. Well, so the Nordic supposedly look like us, what do you make of that?
AL: There are Nordic people on Earth, right? Obviously, you can find them in crash sites of fighter jets or in battlefields. There could be a government program for retrieval and reverse engineering of materials from aircrafts that were manufactured by adversarial nations and some of them may be Nordics, while others may be of another ethnic origin.
The whole idea that there are four species of aliens visiting us is a rumor that possibly came out of retrieving pilots from crash sites that belong to different nations on Earth. But I think it’s extremely unlikely that indeed we’re dealing with beings that somehow mingled with humans and made babies out of that. That is ridiculous. [A more reasonable possibility is that an alien probe might capture lifeforms on Earth and 3D-prints versions of then that are recovered in crash sites.]
JW: You know what it is, Avi? Nobody trusts the government. So, this idea that they’re secretly looking through ancestry sites to try to map out if they’re extraterrestrials, I think that’s a part of this as well, right? Is the government being transparent?
AL: It may well be that someone in government had the idea of checking. That’s quite possible. But that idea itself is highly questionable, scientifically speaking. So, I would say this person, who thought about the idea of checking the DNA, is not very credible, scientifically speaking.
But more generally, there may well be evidence for extrasolar materials, and other information that the government holds under wraps. And these clues may be in corporations like Lockheed Martin, like MITRE. Yesterday, Representative Burlinson asked MITRE publicly here to respond to a related disclosure request.
So, yes, we should check what the government knows and help them figure things out as much as possible, because — apparently — they’re at a loss if they’re asking for DNA information of this nature.
JW: Something to think about. Avi Loeb, thank you so much for separating fact from fiction for us. I always appreciate it. Good seeing you.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Avi Loeb is the head of the Galileo Project, founding director of Harvard University’s — Black Hole Initiative, former director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the former chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University (2011–2020). He is a former member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and a former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies. He is the bestselling author of “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” and a co-author of the textbook “Life in the Cosmos”, both published in 2021. The paperback edition of his new book, titled “Interstellar”, was published in August 2024.
Professional website:
https://lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/~loeb/
Social media:
https://avi-loeb.medium.com/
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfessorAviLoeb
https://open.spotify.com/show/1zhndXkvSY2b8FdjspFpCd
https://x.com/ProfAviLoeb
