Global Courant 2023-04-15 11:00:00
ufos aliens space pentagon us sean kirkpatrick harvard – SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY RF
A Pentagon official who heads a secret unit that studies unidentified flying objects has speculated that recent sightings in US airspace could actually be alien probes from a mothership sent to study Earth.
Sean Kirkpatrick, head of the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), has claimed in a new academic paper that the objects, which appear to defy all physics, may be “probes” from an alien “mother craft.”
The draft paper, co-authored by Harvard professor Avi Loeb and seen by Politico, that interstellar objects like the cigar-shaped “Oumuamua” that scientists saw flying through the galaxy in 2017 “could possibly be a parent craft that releases many small probes during its close passage to Earth.
The authors liken the probes to “dandelion seeds” that can be separated from the mother craft by the sun’s gravity. The probes could use starlight to “recharge their batteries” and Earth’s water for fuel.
“Habitable planets would be particularly attractive to extraterrestrial transmedium probes, which can move between space, air and water,” the authors write in the March 7 paper.
“From a great distance, Venus, Earth or Mars would be equally attractive to probes. But on closer inspection, the Earth would show spectral characteristics of liquid water and vegetation.”
A photo released by the Pentagon last year, officials say was taken by Navy personnel
The paper, which has not yet been reviewed by peers, proves this the Pentagon is open to scientific debate of the origin of UFOs, Politico reports, an important signal to send to academia.
Professor Loeb has a privately funded academic effort to search for UFOs called The Galileo Project.
He and Mr. Kirkpatrick, himself a respected scientist who has worked in the Department of Defense and the US Space Command, speculate about the motive for aliens to send exploratory probes to Earth.
“What would be the overarching purpose of the trip? In analogy to real dandelion seeds, the probes could spread their senders’ blueprints,” the authors write. “
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Founded last summer, AARO has already received hundreds of reports of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs).
The office works with other federal agencies to detect objects of interest near military installations or other areas of interest and is required to report regularly to Congress.
Interest in UFOs peaked in recent weeks after the US shot down what it described like a giant Chinese spy balloon entering US airspace. US fighter jets then shot down three unidentified flying objects in rapid succession, two in the US and one over Canadian airspace.
The incidents triggered the Pentagon to get a better look at other objects in the sky.
However, David Jewitt, a professor of astronomy at the University of California Los Angeles, said some of the paper’s claims are “highly questionable” and called the fact that Mr. Kirkpatrick is a co-author “strange”.
“The Air Force is very good at bombing things, but as far as their investigations into UFOs go, I think I would trust them as far as I can go,” Mr Jewitt told the website.
“It is not clear whether air power and military capabilities are best suited for the study of extraterrestrials.”
