Pentagon chief and Avi Loeb analyze physics of 'highly maneuverable' UFOs

Professor Avi Loeb, the theoretical physicist renowned for his view that the 2017 'Oumuamua asteroid was a machine built by extraterrestrial intelligence, has joined forces with Sean Kirkpatrick, director of the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO).

The two submitted a new draft paper that has yet to be peer-reviewed. In it, they discuss the physics of "highly maneuverable" Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs), or UFOs. The latest paper adds to the growing literature on UFOs, with many contributions from Loeb.

A new analysis of UFO archive footage

In their new paper, Loeb and Kirkpatrick determined that recent UAP observations defy the laws of physics. They explained that "the friction of UAP with the surrounding air or water is expected to generate a bright optical fireball, ionization shell, and tail — implying radio signatures." Notably, many of the UAPs they analyzed did not show signs of these signatures.

Of, course, Loeb and Kirkpatrick delved deeper and didn't take the first anomaly they observed as proof of alien origin. Instead, they explained that the anomalies may be down to the fact that our instruments simply aren't sensitive enough to capture the full picture.

"The lack of all these signatures could imply inaccurate distance measurements (and hence derived velocity) for single site sensors without a range gate capability," the authors wrote in their paper. "Typical UAP sightings are too far away to get a highly resolved image of the object and determination of the object's motion is limited by the lack of range data."

Applying the scientific process to UFO sightings

Loeb has also discredited other UAP sightings in the past, such as a report of sightings over Ukraine last year, which he attributed to errors in methodology. In that case, he cited inaccurate distance measurements carried out by a group of researchers who released a paper on the sightings.

Loeb courted controversy in 2017 by claiming the interstellar space rock 'Oumuamua may have been an alien spacecraft. He has also been vocal in his belief that the scientific community shouldn't turn its nose up at the study of UAPs and that it should apply the same scientific rigor to the phenomena as it does any other unexplained cosmic quantity. The Harvard scientist founded the Galileo Project in 2021, which is aimed at investigating and possibly capturing high-definition photographic evidence of UAPs.