The UFO mysteries scientists can’t solve

“The sky is not classified,” said Avi Loeb, a Harvard University professor leading the first major scientific study of what we mostly commonly know as UFOs, just a touch sharp.

The theoretical astrophysicist heading up the university’s Galileo Project hit the core debate in the search for extraterrestrial life: who investigates reported sightings, and who has the right to see all the cards? Can scientists navigate national security and classified information to find elusive answers?

There’s a gap to be bridged between government officials concerned with national security and scientists, and researchers insist that there need not be one, and the United States government is receptive. Both are pushing forward with efforts to find out if we are alone in the universe, but for the moment, we are left wondering if 2023’s intensified interest in UFOs and aliens will bear fruit anytime soon.

“Sometimes you encounter dead pilots”

It’s been a big year for UFOs, or, to use the Pentagon‘s term, unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP).

In June, former U.S. intelligence officer David Grusch claimed that “non-human” objects and “intact and partially intact vehicles” had been collected and hidden by the U.S. government. Grusch then told NewsNation that the U.S. government had “quite a number” of these non-human craft and that “sometimes you encounter dead pilots.”

Grusch, who had been at the helm of analysis on UAP until earlier this year, doubled down on his claims in front of Congress, telling the House Oversight Committee in July 2023 that he had been barred from secret investigations run by the U.S. government.

He also told lawmakers that he had not seen evidence of any alien spacecraft himself, but his testimony was based on interviews with “high-level intelligence officials.” The Pentagon has denied the accusations, saying it has not found “any verifiable information to substantiate claims that any programs regarding the possession or reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial materials have existed in the past or exist currently.”

An explosive and eye-catching claim, anecdotes ultimately “don’t have a lot of weight in science,” said Seth Shostak, a long-time investigator of extraterrestrial life. Grusch told politicians that he could not divulge classified information without risking jail time.

Shostak is one of three scientists who spoke to Newsweek about their research into extraterrestrial life and the many avenues it can take. Shostak is a senior astronomer for the SETI Institute and suggested Grusch’s comments were the biggest moment of 2023’s search for proof of extraterrestrial life, but they fundamentally lack any hard proof.

“If we as humans want to explore and identify, look for extraterrestrial civilizations, we need to put science at the forefront of every strange thing we observe,” agreed Ravi Kopparapu, planetary scientist with the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

Kopparapu is working to find liveable planets that could have either biological or technological life, searching for any indicators that civilizations have developed outside our solar system. Technological life can mean anything from signs of farming to technology far more advanced than our own.

In the last few years, this has meant looking for signs of the technology we use, including city lights, fossil fuel signatures or chlorofluorocarbons.

“It’s not science fiction anymore,” he told Newsweek. “It’s hard to detect intelligence. But it’s probably possible to detect technology.”

Loeb runs the Galileo Project at Harvard, applying rigid scientific analysis to UAPs and analyzing data from its observatory at the university.

“It’s the first time that such a systematic study is done,” he told Newsweek. “As a scientist, I’m really after the evidence that is of high quality. And without it, there is nothing for me to work with.”

The Galileo Project is scouring the sky with infrared, optical, radio and audio technologies; “we are basically taking a movie of the sky,” Loeb said.

Scientific evidence or not, Congress sat up with Grusch’s claims. Others came forward, too; ex-U.S. Navy pilot Ryan Graves insisted that U.S. military personnel and commercial pilots regularly saw UAPs.

If the public saw the information and footage he had, Graves told lawmakers, “our national conversation would change.”

Florida representative Matt Gaetz said he saw images of an object he was “not able to attach to any human capability, either from the United States or from any of our adversaries.” Earlier this year, Tennessee Congressman Tim Burchett told Newsweek that he believed “we have recovered a craft at some point and possible beings.”

“I think that a lot of that’s being reverse-engineered right now, but we just don’t understand it,” he added. Burchett said in early March, we will likely see a rise in reported UFO sightings in the future.

And while scientists are investigating, so is the Pentagon. In the past few years, we’ve seen the establishment of the UAP Task Force under the US Navy’s remit and the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) in July 2022.

The Office for the Director of National Intelligence has released two reports into UAP sightings, and a fraction of those in the latest publication “appear to have demonstrated unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities and require further analysis.”

National security overrides most other considerations for the U.S. government. Shostak said that less of a scientific curiosity prevails in the Pentagon, its officials more concerned with the potential technological lead America’s rivals could have.

“I don’t think any of them are terribly worried about aliens,” he said.

The U.S. government receives dozens of UAP reports each month, former AARO head Sean Kirkpatrick told CNN in October 2023, with “hundreds, if not thousands” more reports to soon arrive.

“There are some indicators that are concerning that may be attributed to foreign activity, and we are investigating those very hard,” Kirkpatrick said earlier this year.

Push for Transparency

Comments like those made under oath by Grusch raised very pointed questions about just how honest the U.S. government was about UAPs and extraterrestrial life.

“There are two possibilities” with UAPs, Loeb said. “Either these are probes that represent technologies developed by adversarial countries, like China and Russia,” national security threats of which the U.S. is unaware and incapable of fathoming.

“Or the alternative is that it’s from outside the Earth,” Loeb added, “that would be of interest to scientists. So either way, it’s important to get to the bottom of it.”

Earlier this year, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer introduced legislation to force transparency related to UAPs. They are “of immense interest and curiosity to the American people,” Schumer said, and “the United States government has gathered a great deal of information about UAPs over many decades but has refused to share it with the American people.”

“That is wrong and additionally breeds mistrust,” he added.

But it fell short, knocked back from a board intended “to work through the declassification of the many government records on UAPs,” in Schumer’s words, to ordering the U.S. government to eventually reveal some records about UAPs.

With any dramatic new disclosures from the U.S. government on UAPs unlikely, the possibility of extraterrestrial life will maintain its grip on our imaginations. There have been “steps in the right direction,” and it is “the civic duty of scientists to be engaged and help [the U.S. government] figure it out,” Loeb said.

The scientists who spoke to Newsweek also suggested a breakthrough could come within just a few short years, but it was hard to pinpoint when a moment of significant discovery would appear.

One thing is for sure, scientists say.

“When we are faced with some anomalous objects that we don’t fully understand, it’s just common sense to try and study them,” Loeb said. With just a century of scientific investigation, “there are a lot of ways you could fail, even if the aliens are really there,” Shostak said.

“If we don’t prove it’s aliens, then what we’re finding is evidence of other people doing stuff in our backyard,” said Kirkpatrick, who headed up the Pentagon’s AARO until his recent departure. “And that’s not good.”