Avi Loeb, a Harvard astronomer tasked with leading a White House advisory council on unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), believes federal officials have reached out to scientists because they are "baffled" by the data collected over decades.
Loeb, who previously advocated for the possibility of alien spacecraft reaching Earth, stated that his newly formed group of over a dozen scientists is reviewing declassified UAP sighting disclosures released by the Trump administration. The initiative began in early June when an official from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) invited Loeb to assemble experts to analyze UAP data. The term UAP encompasses objects observed in the air, underwater, and in space.
"The U.S. government had me at hello," Loeb told Fox News Digital. "The fact that they are reaching out to scientists like myself indicates, in my mind, that they are baffled by what they are seeing, and they think that maybe it's not human-made."
Loeb's council will report its findings to the UAP Governing Board, a body established under ODNI. While the council is mandated to review only declassified materials, Loeb has formally requested over 50 UAP-related videos, images, and documents from the Pentagon and other agencies. These requests have not yet been fulfilled, with custodian agencies citing national security concerns related to the sensors used to capture the data.
"It's not so much the targets that are the issue. It's that the sensors that were used were for national security purposes. The U.S. government doesn't want to reveal to adversarial nations the kind of sensors being used. So that's the main obstacle right now," Loeb explained.
Loeb's objective is to determine whether UAPs documented by the U.S. military originate from adversarial nations or have non-human origins. "In the second case, if it's not human-made, then that's the biggest discovery ever made by science, and the U.S. government has the privilege of ushering in this new realization that we have a neighbor visiting us," he said.
However, Loeb cautioned that many phenomena might have mundane explanations, such as space debris or defunct satellites. He noted that UAPs should only be considered extraordinary if they exhibit maneuvers unexplainable by gravity. "Unless they maneuver in ways that cannot be explained by gravity, you should assume that they are space junk," he stated.
Loeb praised the White House for its commitment to transparency on the issue. In February, President Donald Trump directed the Pentagon and other agencies to declassify files related to aliens and UAPs due to significant public interest.
One key aim of Loeb's council is to recommend improvements to sensor technology. "If we are dealing with drones of some unusual qualities that the Chinese are using, it's good for the U.S. to have better sensors that can help it identify those. Right now, they are reported as orbs. They may not be drones, but I'm saying that at the very least, we will help national security," Loeb said.
Recent UAP material releases by the Department of War have included sensational items, but Loeb commented on one of the first batch of disclosures: photos from the 1969 Apollo 12 mission on the Moon. While these images showed five "unidentified phenomena," federal authorities have since concluded the blue flashes were likely cosmic rays.
Before 2020, Loeb chaired Harvard University's astronomy department, where his research focused on black holes, early universe star formation, and extraterrestrial life. In 2017, he publicly disputed findings about an interstellar object discovered in the solar system, proposing it could be evidence of alien technology. This led him to found the Galileo Project at Harvard, dedicated to searching for artifacts from extraterrestrial civilizations.