European Southern Observatory / M. Kornmesser via NASA.gov
A Pentagon official and a Harvard professor have theorized that mysterious aerial incursions could be alien probes from a mothership sent to study Earth, but an expert questions their findings, Politico reports.
Sean Kirkpatrick, who heads the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, and Harvard professor Avi Loeb, coauthored a draft paper that asserts the objects “appear to defy all physics” and may be “probes” sent from an otherworldly “parent craft.”
The draft paper has not been peer reviewed.
Among the interstellar objects is the cigar-shaped “Oumuamua” that was seen in in 2017 soaring through the galaxy.
Oumuamua, which in Hawaiian means “a messenger that reaches out from the distant past,” was spotted by the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope in Hawaii in October 2017.
CNN’s Steve George and Ashley Strickland report that “scientists have been at odds to explain its unusual features and precise origins, with researchers first calling it a comet and then an asteroid before finally deeming it the first of its kind: a new class of ‘interstellar objects.’”
The draft paper, dated March 7, speculates that the “probes” could charge their “batteries” from starlight and Earth’s water as fuel.
“What would be the overarching purpose of the journey? In analogy with actual dandelion seeds, the probes could propagate the blueprint of their senders,” Kirkpatrick and Loeb say in the draft paper.
“As with biological seeds, the raw materials on the planet’s surface could also be used by them as nutrients for self-replication or simply scientific exploration.”
At least one expert believes the paper’s findings to be dubious.
UCLA astronomy professor David Jewitt described the paper’s claims as “highly questionable” and said the role of a Pentagon official’s involvement in extraterrestrial study was “odd.”
Jewitt noted that a 1948 incident in which an Air Force pilot crashed while pursuing what was thought to be UFO that turned out to be the planet Venus.
“The Air Force is very good at bombing things, but as far as their research on UFOs, I think I’d trust them about as far as I can throw them,” Jewitt said.
“It’s not clear that the Air Force and military capabilities are best suited to the study of aliens.”
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