Trump Science Advisor Says Opening Fire on Extraterrestrials Is Risky

The head of the board advising President Trump on unidentified flying objects is warning the military to exercise caution in shooting the objects down, saying that aggressive acts could cause retaliation against humankind if the craft are indeed from other worlds.Professor Avi Loeb, the Frank J. Baird Jr. professor of science at Harvard University, took to YouTube last week to discuss unconfirmed reports the president had authorized the U.S. Air Force to engage Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) over the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.Mr. Loeb said that if the craft are in fact extraterrestrial in origin, pilots may have two possible motivations: benign intentions, in which case they should be left alone, or hostile intentions which would make engagement risky.“If their intention is benign, there is no reason to engage with them aggressively,” Mr. Loeb said. “Moreover, intelligent beings could retaliate and harm us after we engage in an offensive act.”The Israeli-born astronomer Mr. Loeb chairs the UAP Science Advisory Council, intended to provide scientific guidance to the United States government. His views have attracted controversy in the past, including positing that the comet 3I/ATLAS could be alien in origin and claiming that he had recovered possible alien spherules from the depths of the Pacific Ocean. He has also argued for the existence of compact stars formed within a black hole’s event horizon and against the existence of primordial black holes in our solar system.Still, he was chosen to head up the civilian advisory board investigating the origin of unexplained, mysterious objects in the skies and seas encountered by the American military over the past 80 years. After the first meeting of the council, his team sent a request to the Pentagon asking for more than 50 videos, images, and documents connected to UAP incidents for further study.“Reliable U.S. government sources who are focused on national security asked me to establish the UAP Science Advisory Council because they cannot explain UAP orbs in terms of humanmade technology,” Mr. Loeb said. “Given these circumstances, it is the duty of all genuine scientists to figure out who are these strangers visiting our backyard.”In his talk last Thursday, Mr. Loeb called UAP a “mixed bag” with many being explained away as natural phenomena like meteors or man-made objects like drones and classified, experimental aircraft. He said the evidence is not yet strong enough to associate the remaining UAPs with an extraterrestrial origin, which requires further study.“The only way to resolve their nature is by allocating resources to the collection of new data or materials from them,” Mr. Loeb said.While cautioning against direct action, Mr. Loeb also pointed out that the very act of downing a UAP would prove that it is not a naturally occurring phenomenon.“Physical vulnerability to directed energy rules out pure atmospheric phenomena such as ball lightning,” Mr. Loeb said. “Downing implies entities with a mass, structural integrity and a trajectory that can get interrupted.”“If UAP respond to human engagement and can potentially be downed by directed energy weapons, what does this tell us about their nature?” Mr. Loeb asked. “A response to human engagement implies a form of sensing but does not require a high level of intelligence.”On Super Bowl weekend in February 2023, following the downing of a spy balloon launched by China that floated over much of the United States heartland, then-President Joe Biden authorized the military to go on a spree of shootdowns, downing unidentified objects over Alaska, Lake Huron, and the Yukon in Canada.Later that same year, the Pentagon released footage of a U.S. fighter jet shooting down an object over Lake Huron. Mr. Loeb said the object appeared to be a balloon and that there was nothing especially mysterious about it. His criticism was not that the military had fired at it, but that the public should not assume every single newly released UAP video represents an extraordinary mystery.In fact, Mr. Loeb said last week, due to the vastness of space and the relative slowness of communication, alien civilizations attempting to contact mankind may be long gone from their own worlds and could be using methods of communication that are unfamiliar to modern-day humans.“No resident in our cosmic street may be calling us with the communication devices that we are using,” Mr. Loeb said. “For that reason, my approach over the past decade was to search for interstellar packages in our mailbox which may have been sent a long time ago.”Mr. Loeb cautioned that, in the absence of a verified origin of the unidentified craft, the safest measures to take would be to observe these phenomena from a distance.“The wise response to unrecognized visitors is to first figure out their intent and capabilities,” Mr. Loeb said. “This can be done passively by collecting data about them.”

Trump Science Advisor Says Opening Fire on Extraterrestrials Is Risky

Trump Science Advisor Says Opening Fire on Extraterrestrials Is Risky

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