Harvard professor begins new glance for alien spaceships in our skies
Harvard’s controversial astronomer Avi Loeb is leading a new initiative, dubbed the Galileo Project, to check Earth’s skies and the rest of the solar regulations for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence.
The longtime astronomy professor, who complete well-known for his belief that interstellar Fair Oumuamua was likely an alien probe, announced the details of his plan via a virtual boring conference Monday.
Officially, the initiative is described as “a strong scientific project to advance a systematic experimental search for cross-validated evidence of potential astro-archaeological artifacts or lovely technical equipment made by putative existing or extinct extraterrestrial technically civilizations (ETCs).”
Translation: The plan is to use a variety of telescopes to look for alien spaceships, probes or other debris left behind by intelligent people who weren’t born on Earth.
“What we see in our sky is not something that politicians or armed personnel should interpret because they were not trained as scientists,” Loeb told journalists. “It’s for the science community to figure out… based on non-governmental data that we will complete as scientists.”
The first phase of the project involves setting up a network of dozens of relatively tiny telescopes around the globe that will attempt to catch new images of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP, the newly favored and more inclusive acronym intended to replace “UFOs”).
A highly anticipated report released by the US Director of National Intelligence in June confirmed the years of a number of UAP, which the military and intelligence public can offer no certain explanations for.
“The goal of the Galileo Project is to bring the glance for extraterrestrial technological signatures from accidental or anecdotal observations and legends to the mainstream of strong, validated and systematic scientific research,” reads a statement.
New eyes on the sky
To do this, the plan is to focus solely on gathering new data and observations instead of analyzing past UAP sightings like those concerned in the recent DNI report. The new data will then be analyzed by algorithms and artificial intelligence to try to separate true UAP from birds, balloons, drones, satellites and spanking known explanations.
Project co-founder Frank Laukien, a visiting chemical biology gives at Harvard and CEO of scientific instrument maker Bruker, noted the Galileo Project won’t be considering any alternative physics-based explanations for new UAP observations.
“We will stick, scientifically, to known physics but will make the data available,” Laukien said.
Loeb has cause a polarizing figure in the astronomy community, especially sincere the release of his book outlining his Oumuamua hypothesis bet on this year, with a number of scientists accusing him of jumping to radical conclusions exclusive of appropriate evidence.
“Most scientists don’t discount the possible days of these types of civilizations (the universe is vast!),” Justin Cowart, a Ph.D. candidate studying Martian geology, tweeted Monday. “But most don’t jump on extraordinary claims exclusive of extraordinary evidence, which Loeb likes to do.”
Loeb rejects the premise “extraordinary claims obliged extraordinary evidence” but still hopes to collect some with his new project. Indeed, the nod to Galileo in the project name is a bit of a clap back at his criticizes by drawing a comparison to the famed 16th century astronomer who was imprisoned for his then-heretical suggestion the Earth revolved throughout the sun and not vice versa.
Looking further out, too
In binary to trying to spot UAP in the sky, the project also plans to use next-generation telescopes like the upcoming Vera C. Rubin Observatory to look for more objects in the solar controls like Oumuamua, as well as for potential alien probes orbiting Earth to check us out in a low-key way. A description of the project even leaves open the possibility of designing its own purpose-built status observatory:
“We will conceptualize and design, potentially in collaboration with alive to space agencies or space ventures, a launch-ready space citation to image unusual interstellar objects such as Oumuamua by intercepting their trajectories on their reach to the sun or by using ground-based survey telescopes to gawk interstellar meteors.”
All this is a potentially expensive proposition. Loeb told reporters he has received donations to his research fund at Harvard totaling over $1.75 million in the last two weeks with “no strings attached.”
He says the hope is to increase that give level by at least tenfold “to accomplish more rigorous study.”
As for when we could see new UAP images courtesy of the Galileo Project, Loeb said the team is selecting its telescopes and hopes to record “interesting results in the coming year.”
“It starts now,” he said.
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