Harvard’s top astronomer says our solar system may be teeming with alien technology

If you could fly two billion miles in the direction of the Pegasus constellation, and knew where to look, you would find a thin, flat object, about the size of a football field and up to ten times more reflective than the average comet. If you watched it for a while, you would notice that it is tumbling as it moves away from the sun, turning end over end roughly every seven hours.

This object passed the Earth in October 2017. As it began its return to interstellar space, the Canadian astronomer Robert Weryk identified it among the images from what was then the world’s most powerful camera, a telescope in Hawaii called Pan-STARRS1. The astronomers in Hawaii called it ‘Oumuamua, a Hawaiian word meaning “first scout from a distant place”.

‘Oumuamua was the subject of great excitement. It was the first object humans have observed travelling through the solar system from interstellar space. But it also became controversial: its shape, the way in which it approached us, and the way it moved away are not consistent with the behaviour of an asteroid or comet. For 11 days, the world’s telescopes searched for meaning from this strange visitor.

A year later, the debate about ‘Oumuamua intensified when one of the world’s foremost astronomers, Avi Loeb, submitted a paper to the Astrophysical Journal Letters. In it, Loeb and his colleague, Shmuel Bailey, argued that ‘Oumuamua’s strange properties indicated that it was “a new class of thin interstellar material, either produced naturally, through a yet unknown process […] or of an artificial origin”. Since then, Loeb has maintained that the most rational, conservative explanation is that ‘Oumuamua was produced by an alien civilisation.  

We will almost certainly never see ‘Oumuamua again, because it is heading away from the solar system at 30 kilometres a second. But Loeb says scientists must prepare now for what happens when the next such object arrives, as he believes it will very soon. If he is right, these objects surround us in numbers that are almost unimaginable.

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THE DECADES-LONG UFO TABOO THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION WILL HAVE TO FACE

When Joe Biden is sworn in as the 46th President of the United States on January 20th, he will be embarking on an undoubtedly stressful tenure as commander in chief. A raging global pandemicescalating tensions with Iran; aggressive moves by China; increased Russian hacking; and, lest we not forget, that whole insurrection at the Capitol on January 6th. 

The soon-to-be president may not realize it yet, but there’s another challenge looming on the horizon involving a subject long relegated to society’s fringe. Viewed through the lens of history, however, it could end up defining Joe Biden’s presidential legacy. 

We’re speaking here of unidentified flying objects. Or in currently favored parlance, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP).  

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Why physicist Avi Loeb thinks there’s a “serious possibility” that ‘Oumuamua was an alien spacecraft

Are we alone in the universe?

It’s a question humans have been asking for thousands of years—but when a bizarrely fast, cigar-shaped interstellar object jetted past Earth on its trip through our solar system, Harvard professor Avi Loeb believes scientists weren’t ready to seriously consider that it was of artificial origin. But Loeb is beyond consideration — he says it’s very possible that ‘Oumuamua (pronounced “oh moo ah moo ah”) was an interstellar spacecraft. 

Back in October 2017, a postdoctoral researcher named Robert Weryk at the University of Hawaii was sifting through the usual data stream from the Pan-STARRS astronomical survey of the sky when he noticed an unexpected object. It appeared to be highly elongated, like a stick, with a long axis 10 times longer than its short axis — unprecedented for an asteroid. Some hypothesized that ‘Oumuamua swung towards our solar system as a result of a gravitational slingshot of a binary star system; others, that it might be an odd comet, though no tail was evident. Thus the search began to collect and analyze as much data as possible before it left our solar system.

Immediately upon discovering its physical properties, researchers realized its shape — which would minimize abrasions from interstellar gas and dust — would be ideal for an interstellar spacecraft. The idea understandably sent shockwaves through the scientific community and stoked controversy. Ultimately, scientists coalesced behind the idea that it was of natural origin, rather than artificial.  But Loeb, who is the former chair of astronomy at Harvard University, remains certain that it was something akin to a light sail — a form of interstellar propulsion — spacecraft created by an extraterrestrial civilization. So much so that he wrote a whole book about it.

That book would be “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth,” in which Loeb argues that the scientific community’s resistance to discussing the possibility of extraterrestrial life has hindered taking seriously his hypothesis that ‘Oumuamua was an alien light sail. Loeb reflects on how what happened with ‘Oumuamua was a bit of a missed opportunity, and that academia must invest more in the search for life in our universe to better prepare us for another interstellar visitor. But perhaps, most importantly, in a time when Earth faces an urgent global warming crisis, Loeb says that it could be finding extraterrestrial life that saves us from ourselves.

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CIA releases UFO ‘Black Vault’ documents early: How to see them online

Federal intelligence on extraterrestrial technology — at your fingertips.

By way of the Freedom of Information Act, thousands of the CIA documents on unidentified flying objects (UFOs) — or Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP), as the government calls them — are now accessible via download at the Black Vault, a website operated by author and podcaster John Greenwald Jr.

The CIA claims they have now provided all the information on UAP they have, though there is no way to know that’s true.

“Research by The Black Vault will continue to see if there are additional documents still uncovered within the CIA’s holdings,” Greenwald promised in a statement on his website.

The release comes months before the Pentagon was due to brief Congress on all they know about UAP — a date dictated in the most recent COVID-19 relief bill, of all places, which passed in late December.

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New Photos From Area 51. Is There Increasing Evidence Of Alien Aircraft?

Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says the government has been hiding details of UFOs for years. Former CIA Director John Brennan thinks there may be life on other planets too.

[I]s there other life besides what’s in the States, in the world, the globe? Life is defined in many different ways. I think it’s a bit presumptuous and arrogant for us to believe that there’s no other form of life anywhere in the entire universe. What that might be is subject to a lot of different views.

But I think some of the phenomena we’re going to be seeing continues to be unexplained and might, in fact, be some type of phenomenon that is the result of something that we don’t yet understand and that could involve some type of activity that some might say constitutes a different form of life.

The Covid-19 relief bill includes much that has nothing to do with Covid-19 or relief, from a ban on the postal service shipping e-cigarettes to $35 billion for zero-emission energy technology and wind and solar tax credits. It also requires “he Pentagon and spy agencies to say what they know about UFOs” within 6 months. People with the highest of security clearances think there’s something out there.

After the release of the navy pilot UFO videos this spring, there’s a real deluge of information coming out.

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A Harvard professor says an alien visited in 2017 — and more are coming

When the first sign of intelligent life first visits us from space, it won’t be a giant saucer hovering over New York. More likely, it will be an alien civilization’s trash. 

Avi Loeb, the chair of Harvard’s Department of Astronomy, believes he’s already found some of that garbage. 

In his upcoming book, “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), out Jan. 26, the professor lays out a compelling case for why an object that recently wandered into our solar system was not just another rock but actually a piece of alien technology. 

The object in question traveled toward our solar system from the direction of Vega, a nearby star 25 light-years away, and intercepted our solar system’s orbital plane on Sept. 6, 2017. 

On Sept. 9, its trajectory brought it closest to the sun. At the end of September, it blasted at about 58,900 miles per hour past Venus’ orbital distance, and then, on Oct. 7, it shot past Earth’s before “moving swiftly toward the constellation Pegasus and the blackness beyond,” Loeb writes in the book. 

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