Resolving the Nature of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) by Scientific Evidence
Following the public announcement of the UAP Science Advisory Council in an article by DefenseScoop here and my essay here, I met today with the exceptional council members with the following expertise: Prof. Liberty Vittert Capito: data analysis and statistics; Prof. Carol Cleland: anomaly identification; Dr. Richard Cloete: data analysis and AI tools; Dr. Omer Eldadi: data management, AI, and social psychology; Dr. Tim Gallaudet: oceanography; Dr. Kevin Knuth: physics and instrumentation; Prof. Robin Hanson: statistics and economics, Ross Howard: communication; Ben Lamm: oceanography and biology; Dr. Devesh Nandal: numerical analysis and astrophysics; Prof. Garry Nolan: molecular biology and materials science; Dr. Michael Shermer: the study of anomalies; Dr. Peter Skafish: anthropology and human-UAP encounters; Prof. Matthew Szydagis: instrumentation and data collection; and Dr. Jennice Vilhauer: quantitative psychology.
In support of President Trump’s directive on UAP transparency, I was tasked by the White House, the Pentagon’s All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the Intelligence Community and the FBI, to establish and lead this team of advisors. The council will only review unclassified information that can be communicated openly to the public. This is a great benefit for open scientific deliberations.
My approach was to select a few young nerds with exceptional technical skills who are fluent with the latest AI systems, include members with expertise in physics, oceanography, psychology (since UAPs interact with humans), and statistics (since UAP are rare), add a member with skeptical views (to mitigate biases and tribal thinking), as well as a communication officer who will coordinate our interactions with the public and the media.
The unifying thread among all members is that I know them personally and can attest that they are all brilliant. This council is focused on science. We will keep our eyes on the orbs, not on the audience in social media.
The council will deliberate honestly and adopt the scientific method in seeking conclusive evidence that will allow to resolve the nature of UAP. This is a detective story that can be resolved with higher-quality data. We will provide advice to a higher-level UAP Governing board on how to obtain that data and help them fulfil their mission. The council will also provide independent scientific analysis of publicly available data.
The optimal size of the council was selected not to be too small, nor too large. A small group is sensitive to the opinions of its members. Large variations in opinions could trigger unbalanced decisions. Also, a small group does not have sufficient expertise to address all facets of UAP. On the other hand, a group that is too large would regress to the mean with little innovation. The central limit theorem implies that the fractional variation from the mean scales inversely with the square root of the number of team members.
In our first meeting, all council members admitted that it is their honor and privilege to serve the U.S. government and resolve the mystery of UAP in collaboration with it. Stay tuned to future updates.
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Tonight, I had the privilege of joining a Q&A Live Stream with the public about the UAP Science Advisory Council, black holes, dark matter, the vacuum zero-point energy and extra dimensions. I highly recommend listening to the concluding minutes. The conversation is available in full here.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Avi Loeb is chair of the UAP Science Advisory Council to the White House, Pentagon, FBI and intelligence agencies, director 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
