The opportunity to encounter exotic phenomena makes life thrilling. In contrast, the boring routine is to meet the mundane. We crave for the exotic over the mundane. Because of this tendency, Richard Feynman warned: “We must be careful not to believe things simply because we want them to be true. No one can fool you as easily as you can fool yourself.” This pearl of wisdom cautions not to get carried away with the interpretation of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP).
Yesterday, a reporter from the New York Post sent me a video taken by a television news crew from a helicopter over Manhattan, showing a fast-moving ball of light during daytime. He asked: “Do you believe it is an object or a phenomenon of the camera or light? Does it appear to bear any resemblance to other types of UAP that have been reported to be seen around the world?”
I thanked the reporter for sharing the interesting video, and explained that the moving spot is most likely an optical artifact from the helicopter glass in front of the camera, namely a bright spot from reflection of sunlight as the camera gradually changed its orientation relative to the Sun and the ground. But even if this was a real object, its apparent speed is of order the speed of sound and not extraordinary.
The Galileo Project that I am leading just posted last week a new extensive paper that describes a detailed careful analysis of commissioning data on half a million aerial objects, collected over a period of five months. The paper was posted on this webpage. In the coming months, our research team will attempt to triangulate outliers and figure out whether they are exotic or mundane based on their measured distances.
Two days ago, the new director of the Pentagon’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, Jon Kosloski, stated in a U.S. Senate hearing: “We do have some very anomalous objects… Many reports resolve to commonplace objects like birds, balloons and unmanned systems, while others lack sufficient data for comprehensive analysis… only a small percentage of reports received by AARO are potentially anomalous.” Kosloski mentioned a UAP observed in 2013 near Aguadilla, Puerto Rico. The infrared video from a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol helicopter, shows the object flying above the ocean before disappearing into it, or possibly splitting in two. AARO assessed that the UAP was actually flying over the airport the entire time, and disappeared in the infrared imagery because it had the same temperature as the water behind it. The apparent splitting was due to two distinct objects that were close to each other, coming in and out of view.
Kosloski also reported that AARO explained the well-known GOFAST video, shot by a U.S. Navy fighter jet in 2016 off the coast of Florida. In that case, the object’s apparent speed in the video was actually due to parallax associated with the camera’s perspective. In another case from 2018, a drone flying over Mt. Etna “was actually 170 meters away from the plume — not flying through it.”
AARO’s new report examines UAP cases dated between May 1, 2023 and June 1, 2024 as well as historical incidents that were not included in previous reports. AARO’s ability to resolve cases “remains constrained by a lack of timely and actionable sensor data.” AARO’s 2022 report studied 510 UAP cases reported by government agencies and the U.S. military. Out of those UAP, AARO was not able to identify a minority of 171 objects and stated: “Some of these uncharacterized UAP appear to have demonstrated unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities, and require further analysis.”
Identifying most of the unidentified might be satisfactory for national security purposes. But even if one object in a million is exotic, that particular one could inspire a revolution in astronomy. This is why the Galileo Project is conducting a thorough and careful systematic study of the sky over many months rather than rely on anecdotal reports by those who happened to be at the right place at the right time. By summer 2025, we hope to have three operating observatories with triangulation capabilities for identifying distances to millions of aerial objects.
There is precedent for U.S. government data uncovering exotic phenomena while seeking the mundane, and as a result promoting new knowledge in astronomy. In 1967, gamma-ray bursts were discovered by the Vela satellites which were searching for flashes of high-energy photons from covert nuclear weapon tests above the atmosphere. After the bursts were identified as cosmic in origin, their existence was revealed to astronomers through a paper published in 1973 by a research team in Los Alamos National Laboratory. In 1997, the X-ray afterglows of the gamma-ray burst were linked to galaxies at cosmological distances. Long-duration bursts, lasting more than a few seconds, are now known to be emitted by relativistic jets piercing through the envelope of massive stars as their core collapses and gives birth to a black hole.
The possibility that some UAP might have been sent by intelligent cosmic neighbors is the reason that the public is fascinated by their existence. Following Feynman’s advice, we should let data guide us rather than wishful thinking. The nature of UAP will most likely be revealed by scientists, not journalists or politicians.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Avi Loeb is the head of the Galileo Project, founding director of Harvard University’s — Black Hole Initiative, 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.
