White House UFO council will be led by Harvard professor known for controversial alien theories
Source: CBS News/AP
Updated on: July 1, 2026 / 8:23 PM EDT
A polarizing Harvard University astronomer known for splashy theories about alien visits has been tapped by the White House to lead a team of outside scientists to study the national security risks posed by UFOs.
Avi Loeb, a cosmologist who studied black holes and served as head of Harvard's astronomy department until 2020, was recently appointed to helm a new scientific advisory council tasked with investigating the origins of mysterious orbs and other objects reported by military personnel in recent years. It's part of President Donald Trump's push to declassify more information about the issue.
Loeb's team will report to a new White House panel focused on UFOs, now often referred to as unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAP. Loeb told CBS Boston on Wednesday that he's excited for the new opportunity and what a breakthrough discovery could mean for the world.
"If they were sure, confident that these objects are human-made, they would file these cases as classified reports within the Pentagon, within the intelligence agencies," he said. "The fact that they open up to the scientific community implies that there is a chance that perhaps one or more of these objects might be not human-made, in which case it would be the biggest discovery ever made by humanity with huge implications for the future."
Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/avi-loeb-harvard-ufo-council-aliens/
I suppose they would have picked Art Bell if he were still around.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb claimed to track down and find alien spherules on the ocean bottom. Here's the sober truth.
One of the most common, and unfortunately well-deserved, tropes is that of an arrogant physicist who shamelessly wanders into a field that’s new to them. Armed with their knowledge, experience, and problem-solving abilities, they falsely believe that their lack of familiarity with an entire field of science is no obstacle to making meaningful contributions that the “mediocre” scientists working in that inferior field would have no chance at making. It’s such a common theme that xkcd made a brilliant comic years ago whose text reads:
...
Continuing the long and storied traditions of physicists without shame in exactly this fashion, Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb dubiously claimed that:
an interstellar meteor struck Earth in 2014,
that meteor was possibly made of alien technology,
it landed in a specific place in the ocean,
and that his expedition recovered those fragments and determined that they are of alien origin from beyond our Solar System.
Unfortunately for Avi Loeb, actual scientists who understand how this type of science is done are on the case, and the result is clear. Loeb’s claims were baseless, and his position, on the basis of the scientific merits, is nothing but embarrassing.
...
Problem #2: the spherules collected, which most certainly were not related to any recent meteor falls, show strong evidence that they not only come from within our own Solar System, but come from the most familiar source of all, the Earth itself. After leading a dubious expedition, where the bottom of the ocean was raked with a magnetic rake and numerous 100 micron-to-1 millimeter metallic spherules were recovered from Loeb’s chosen location, Loeb analyzed these spherules and determined that they were, in fact, of interstellar origin based on the different element and isotope ratios seen inside of these samples.
...
Problem #3: Loeb’s claim that the presence of elements rarely found in common meteorites, like Beryllium, Lanthanum, and Uranium, as well as other rare elements, indicate not only an origin beyond our own Solar System, but a technological origin for these samples. Some of these spherules may be tektites, but perhaps others have a different explanation for their properties. The strongest candidate for being the real culprit? Believe it or not, it’s simply ash arising from the burning of coal: a very human activity that has taken place since the start of the industrial revolution, and has, in an aqueous environment, the ability to react with the spherules on the bottom of the sea floor. This was shown to be the case by Patricio Gallardo, who consulted the coal chemical composition (COALQUAL) database before finding a “smoking gun” match to the spherule contents that Loeb reported.
https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/truth-harvard-astronomer-alien-spherules/
(Problem #1 was that his claim to have tracked down the meteor from seismic signals turned out to have been a passing truck)
He was never considered because he has better hair than Trump.
(Identified Epstein Distraction).
Pathetic.
