Avi Loeb poses for a portrait at his home on 28 October 2023, in Lexington, Massachusetts. Photograph: Kayana Szymczak/The GuardianView image in fullscreenAvi Loeb poses for a portrait at his home on 28 October 2023, in Lexington, Massachusetts. Photograph: Kayana Szymczak/The GuardianThe Harvard astronomer dubbed Trump’s chief alien hunter starts by assuming UFOs human-madeAvi Loeb’s White House panel has asked the Pentagon for videos and files on unexplained aerial sightings
A controversial Harvard University cosmologist who has suggested alien lifeforms could be sailing into the solar system disguised as meteors is leading the Trump administration’s secretive new scientific advisory panel on security risks posed by UFOs.
Avi Loeb and his hand-picked committee have already begun looking into the origins of mysterious flying craft, now known as unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and last month asked the Pentagon for dozens of videos, images and documents of reported encounters and incidents, the Associated Press reports.
The panel, which meets in private, will report its findings to the White House, which has already begun opening the government’s UFO files with three public releases so far of previously classified material.
Loeb, an Israeli-American astrophysicist who previously led Harvard’s astronomy department, told the Associated Press that he saw his appointment as a chance to educate a notoriously science-averse administration into what could be perfectly logical explanations for UAP.
“My impression is the government is baffled by not being able to infer the nature of some of these objects,” he said.
“At a time when science is not so much celebrated, this is an opportunity to actually do good for all sides involved.”
He did, however, tell the AP that he was starting his work as Donald Trump’s chief alien hunter with the assumption that UAP was the work of humans, and approaching the task from a national security perspective.
Some analysts say Loeb’s unconventional thinking about alien life, and fringe theories including a hypothesis last year that a comet passing close to Mars was a relic from a civilization in another celestial neighborhood, make his leadership of such an important and influential committee questionable at best.
“I don’t know what’s going to come of this, but we’re not going to get any closer to answering these questions with him in charge,” said Steve Desch, professor of astrophysics in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University, and a long-time Loeb critic.
In a 2023 interview with the Guardian, Loeb, who also used to lead Harvard’s Black Hole Initiative studying one of the least understood astronomical objects, said his critics were merely jealous.
“Childlike bullying is more prevalent than childlike curiosity in academia,” he said. “People just try to step on every flower that rises above the grass level. This negativity is very damaging because it suppresses innovation.”
Even so, it is not only Loeb’s presence that concerns observers. Like health secretary Robert F Kennedy’s choice of fellow vaccine skeptics to mold a government health advisory panel on immunizations to his way of thinking, Loeb has surrounded himself with apparently similar minds.
One panel member is Timothy Gallaudet, a retired navy rear-admiral who is convinced UFOs of alien origin have visited Earth.
“The nonhuman intelligence that operates them or controls them are absolutely real,” he said in April.
“We’ve recovered crashed craft. We don’t know if they’re extraterrestrial in origin.”
In 2024, Gallaudet told a congressional oversight committee that in 2015, while he was commander of the navy’s meteorology and oceanography operations, UAPs were interacting with humanity almost at will.
“UAP-related information is not only being withheld from senior officials and members of Congress, but elements of the government are engaging in a disinformation campaign to include personal attacks designed to discredit UAP whistleblowers,” he said.
Also on the panel is Ben Lamm, a 44-year-old billionaire and entrepreneur best known for his genetics company’s efforts to revive long-extinct animals such as the dodo, the Tasmanian tiger, and the dire wolf.
Lamm also has a history of trying to find UFOs, using satellites pointed towards Earth. His outside-the-box scientific thinking fits well with Loeb’s unorthodox approach and decades-long quest for alien life, detailed in hundreds of papers, and a bestselling book, Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth.
For example, Loeb’s mission to Papua New Guinea, ostensibly to determine if a meteor discovered in 2014 was part of an interstellar spaceship, epitomized his perspective. Ultimately, an object Loeb theorized could be of “extraterrestrial technological origin” turned out not to be, and spherules – tiny glassy beads of metal and rock – he recovered from the ocean floor were unconnected to the meteor, at least in the view of other scientists.
Perhaps most alarming to critics is that Loeb and his team might have access to sensitive Pentagon materials. Sean Kirkpatrick, a physicist who previously investigated UAP at the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, said Loeb is “not viewed favorably” in the scientific community and lacks national security experience.
He said the makeup of Loeb’s team suggests the White House is more interested in fringe theories than hard science.
Ultimately, however, Loeb’s background and unconventional theories might not matter if the committee can present new information to satiate a curious public.
Eight in 10 respondents in a CBS News/YouGov poll published last month said the government knew more than it was telling about the existence of extraterrestrial life, 63% believe there is life on other planets, and more than one in five is convinced aliens have already visited Earth.
