Pentagon UFO chief says alien mothership in our solar system possible
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The official in charge of a secretive Pentagon effort to investigate unexplained aerial incursions has co-authored an academic paper that presents an out-of-this-world theory: Recent objects could actually be alien probes from a mothership sent to study Earth.
In a draft paper dated March 7, Sean Kirkpatrick, head of the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, and Harvard professor Avi Loeb teamed up to write that the objects, which appear to defy all physics, could be “probes” from an extraterrestrial “parent craft.”
It’s unusual for government officials, especially those involved in the nascent effort to collect intelligence on recent sightings, to discuss the possibility of extraterrestrial life, although top agency officials don’t rule it out when asked.
More than half of the five-page paper is devoted to discussing the possibility that the unexplained objects DoD is studying could be the “probes” in the mothership scenario, including most of the page-long introduction. One section is titled: “The Extraterrestrial Possibility” and another “Propulsion Methods.”
Kirkpatrick’s involvement in the academic paper demonstrates that the Pentagon is open to scientific debate of the origins of UFOs, an important signal to send to the academic world, experts said. But they add that his decision to attach his name to a theory considered in most academic circles to be highly unsubstantiated also raises questions about AARO’s credibility.
The paper explains that interstellar objects such as the cigar-shaped “Oumuamua” that scientists spotted flying through the galaxy in 2017 “could potentially be a parent craft that releases many small probes during its close passage to Earth.”
The authors acknowledge that they do not know for sure that there are any functioning extraterrestrial crafts near Earth. But the Galileo Project, Loeb’s privately funded academic effort to look for UFOs, intends to investigate this possibility, they write.
Loeb acknowledged that there is no evidence to back up the notion that the unknown aircraft are alien probes. The Galileo Project does not receive funding from DoD, and he has no access to classified information, he said.
But he said the fact that Kirkpatrick came to him “out of the blue” suggests that “there is something out there they don’t understand, and scientists could potentially help.”
David Jewitt, a professor of astronomy at the University of California Los Angeles, said some of the claims in the paper, which has not been peer-reviewed, are “highly questionable.”
He called the fact that Kirkpatrick is a co-author on the paper “odd.”
“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, noting that in 1948, an Air Force pilot crashed while pursuing a UFO that turned out to be Venus.
“It’s not clear that the Air Force and military capabilities are best suited to the study of aliens.”
