Pentagon and Harvard researchers look into alien motherships to explain sky phenomena

In a paper draft, still unreviewed by peers, the Pentagon and Harvard suggested that an unidentified object found in 2017 could be a "mother ship" sending small probes to Earth, similar to a NASA mission to explore another planet.

The scientific pair calls for a more strict approach to evaluating unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAP, sightings in the document. UAP is a new term for what used to be known as UFO.

The paper also considers that "...an artificial interstellar object could potentially be a parent craft that releases many small probes..." the article reads.

"These 'dandelion seeds' could be separated from the parent craft by the tidal gravitational force of the Sun or by a maneuvering capability," it continues.

The paper attempts to use physics to rule out sightings of objects that seem "highly maneuverable." Researchers looked at Oumuamua, a UAP found in 2017 by the Pan-STARRS telescopes near the Earth.

Oumuamua defied the laws of physics by appearing to move in a direction and speed that seemed impossible: it didn't generate a fireball or radio signature in the radar, as it should have.

The paper also suggests an alternative possibility: equipment limitations and optical illusions. "The lack of all these signatures could imply inaccurate distance measurements (and hence derived velocity) for single site sensors," it says.

According to Forbes, Defense officials demonstrated how night vision goggles used with camera lenses could make an out-of-focus drone appear as a blurry triangular object in Congressional hearings last year. The Harvard author, Avi Loeb, acknowledged these options during an interview with NBC New Night.

Loeb, a Harvard astronomer, wrote the paper with Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, director of the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO).

The AARO opened in July 2022. According to Fox News, it is responsible for tracking objects in the sky, underwater, and in space.

Loeb, on the other hand, directs the Galileo Project at Harvard. The initiative aims to use scientific methods to evaluate hundreds of UAP sightings that have recently become public.

Loeb is a respected scientist, but he has also presented himself more as a believer in extraterrestrial activity than a debunker.

According to Forbes, the astronomer suggests that the first object detected in our solar system was an artificial probe sent by intelligent aliens in his book 'Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth.'

The magazine recalled that he has also argued that some meteorites that have hit the Earth might be interstellar and not from within our solar system.

The Galileo Project devised a plan for an expedition to retrieve 2014 meteoritic fragments from the ocean floor, from what it argues is the first detected interstellar object.

Loeb has an expansive vision of the matter: he believes that aliens are out there but also constantly reminds UFO enthusiasts that they can not deny the physics. They may be out there, but most weird things we see in our sky are not them.