This report (by Pentagon) is different from past discussions on Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) or Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) in that it involves documented evidence collected by military personnel based on detection by multiple instruments (radar, infrared cameras, optical cameras), indicating the possible existence of objects which behave in ways that cannot be explained by the technologies we possess. Past top-level government officials who had access to this data (including former President Obama, former Intelligence Director John Ratcliffe, former CIA Director James Woolsey and former Senator Harry Reid) made statements that they believe these are real objects but do not understand their nature. It is possible, and likely, that most of the past reports on UFOs from the general public can be explained by human-made or natural phenomena or as illusions, but we need to pay special attention to the small number of reports where the evidence is strong. The key is to collect more evidence with our best recording devices.
It would be prudent to progress forward with our finest instruments, rather than examine past reports. Instead of declassifying documents that reflect decades-old technologies used by witnesses with no scientific expertise, it would be far better to deploy state-of-the-art recording devices, such as camera or audio sensors, at the sites where the reports came from, and search for unusual signals.
A scientific expedition focused on reproducing old reports would be far more valuable in unravelling the mysteries behind them. Personally, I will be glad to lead scientific inquiry into the nature of these reports and advise Congress accordingly. This could take the form of a federally-designated committee or a privately funded expedition. Its most important purpose would be to inject scientific rigour and credibility into the discussion.
The Pan-STARRS observatory in Hawaii can detect reflected sunlight from objects bigger than a football field, that pass within the orbit of the Earth around the Sun. The first interstellar visitor of such size was discovered by this telescope on October 19, 2017, and named ‘Oumuamua—a ‘scout’ in the Hawaiian language. The object showed many anomalous properties that made it different from any natural comet or asteroid that we had witnessed before in the Solar system, allowing for the possibility that it was manufactured artificially by an alien technology—as discussed in my new book, Extraterrestrial.
Even if ‘Oumuamua’ is an artificially-made ‘plastic bottle’—distinct from all natural rocks in the Solar system, it is most likely equipment that is billions of years old and out of commission. Most stars formed billions of years before the Sun, and the technological relics that their civilisations launched to space are probably too old to be functional. We can retrieve more information about technological relics by taking close-up photographs.
It is often said that “a picture is worth a thousand words”. In my case, a picture is worth 66,000 words, the length of my book. The missing image could have distinguished between ‘Oumuamua’ being a natural rock or an artificial object manufactured by an extraterrestrial civilisation.
Are we the smartest kid on our cosmic block? To find out, we should keep our eyes open. An intriguing photograph could motivate a follow-up mission of landing on the object and deciphering its purpose based on its composition. It would be particularly exciting to uncover a label stating “Made on Planet X” or to discover something like the Golden Record aboard the Voyager 1 and 2 missions that we sent out of the solar system.
Clearly, extraterrestrial affairs are not an imminent policy concern for any nation at this moment, and there is no international protocol issued by the United Nations for a response. The possible existence of extraterrestrials will not go away if we ignore them, just like the Earth continued to move around the Sun after the philosophers refused to look through Galileo’s telescope. We should keep in mind that most stars formed billions of years before the Sun and therefore technological civilisations that predated us had the opportunity to develop more advanced equipment than our century-old technologies.
We could learn from them even if most of the equipment they deployed in space is not operational after billions of years. Finding their relics in our backyard saves us the long trip to their point of origin. By putting our hands on such equipment and attempting to reproduce it on Earth, we can short-cut our own technological development. Our technological future may lie in front of our eyes if we can only master the will to harness the evidence. If we invest as much funds in the search for technological civilisations as we invest in the search for dark matter in the universe, we might find them before we understand the nature of dark matter.
The writer is Professor of Science at Harvard University and author of Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth