The White House has chosen Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb to lead a UFO advisory council, which aims to make sense of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) captured by the U.S. military. Loeb believes the council was formed because federal officials are baffled by the many unidentified objects the U.S. military has captured over the past several decades.
Loeb's team of over a dozen scientists is currently reviewing four batches of public UFO sighting disclosures released by the Trump administration in recent months. The council's mission began in early June when an official from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) visited Loeb's home and asked him to form a group of experts to study UAPs.
The U.S. government has tasked Loeb's council with reporting its findings to the UAP Governing Board, a recently established body under the direction of ODNI. Loeb and his colleagues will only be reviewing already declassified materials on UAPs, although he has requested additional information from the Pentagon and other agencies.
Loeb has asked for 50 videos, images and other documents related to known UAP incidents, but the custodian agencies have so far refused to provide them due to national security concerns. Loeb believes that the U.S. government is hesitant to reveal the kind of sensors being used to detect UAPs, as this information could be valuable to adversarial nations.
Loeb's ultimate goal is to determine whether UAPs originate from other nations or if they are of extraterrestrial origin. If the latter is true, it would be a groundbreaking discovery, and Loeb believes the U.S. government has the opportunity to usher in a new realization about the presence of alien life.
However, Loeb has also cautioned that many of the phenomena they are studying could turn out to be mundane, such as space junk or broken satellites. He emphasized that unless these objects maneuver in ways that cannot be explained by gravity, they should be assumed to be space debris.
Loeb praised the White House for its push for transparency on this issue, and his council aims to recommend better sensors to capture UAPs with more confidence in the future. This would not only help the U.S. government understand the nature of UAPs but also enhance national security by allowing the detection of unusual drones or other objects.
