Will This Project Finally Discover Aliens? | Unveiled

Will This Project Finally Discover Aliens?

For so long our minds have been filled with otherworldly images of creatures not from this planet. Despite the millions of living species already provided by the endless variety of nature just on Earth, we’ve continually looked to other planets with the hope, expectation, or sometimes fear that they might host their own nature as well… and that life there would be wildly different to life as we know it.

So, this is Unveiled, and today we’re answering the extraordinary question; will this project finally discover aliens?

The human interest (perhaps even obsession) with alien life seemingly knows no bounds. In modern times, it’s more than just an overused science fiction trope. Aliens have migrated from the pages of novels and from tv screens, so that now the search for them in the real world is a very serious business. In terms of organized groups, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (or SETI) is arguably leading the charge, but most national space agencies now have effective side-projects hunting specifically for ET life, as well. However, after decades of looking to the likes of NASA to serve us up a genuine alien being, the watching public has more recently turned its attention to the private sector… and one group is aiming to beat all others.

The Galileo Project is headed by the Harvard astronomer, Avi Loeb. Loeb is a famously controversial figure, well used to making the headlines for his seemingly outlandish statements and theories. But of all the claims that he’s thrown out there over the course of his career, those about the presence of alien life (and our efforts to make first contact) are the ones that have truly stuck. From meteor strikes on Earth to mysterious goings-on in the solar system, Loeb regularly offers an alternate explanation to the mainstream line. For his supporters, while the rest of science apparently wants to explain away all phenomena as anything other than alien… Loeb implores us to more seriously consider that aliens are out there.

The Galileo Project is, then, taking the search extremely seriously. With more and more UFO (or UAP) sightings coming to light in recent times, and with the growing feeling that an alien discovery could be just around the corner, Galileo is positioning itself as the group most likely to make that discovery. It leads with the tagline “daring to look through new telescopes” as a nod towards its intention to break through the status quo of stargazing, to take human knowledge to the next level. According to its homepage, its goal is to “bring the search for extraterrestrial technological signatures of Extraterrestrial Technological Civilizations (or, ETCs) from accidental or anecdotal observations and legends… to the mainstream of transparent, validated and systematic scientific research”. In short, it wants to break down the alien stigma. The Galileo Project wants to turn searching for ETs into a vast, credible and cutting edge scientific pursuit, and one that’s no longer dogged by the flightlier, conspiracy theory-type criticisms. It wants to prove that aliens exist, once and for all. And, to do that, it will predominantly focus on those “extraterrestrial technological signatures” - that is, physical evidence of alien life rather than non-physical, electromagnetic signals… as per most other SETI initiatives.

The project was actually launched in the summer of 2021, although much of its first year has been spent in preparation mode. The team has been busily sourcing, building and readying various instruments, including a wide network of small telescopes, aimed at the sky and primed to collect new data. The emphasis on new data is important for Galileo, as Loeb and his team are opting not to rely on past data sourced by other, perhaps government-owned facilities. The aim is for Galileo to be an open study, and for it not to become tangled up in what is (and isn’t) classified information. Therefore, anything it does find will be put forward for publication… which in itself could trigger a sea change between how things were done before and how things will be done in the future. When it comes to the search for aliens, nothing will be kept back.

In August 2022, the Galileo Project released a “Year-1 Anniversary Segment” update onto YouTube. The short clip, presented by Loeb, mostly serves to reiterate Galileo’s three primary goals: to image UAP across a variety of bandwidths; to meet with (and study) interstellar objects in space; and to search for interstellar objects (i.e. meteors) that are already on Earth. The first will see the team build up a fresh database of UAP sightings, enabling them to investigate the most compelling of those in deep and specific detail. The second is perhaps the most ambitious of all Galileo’s aims, with the intention being to one day locate and intersect an object in space that isn’t originally from our solar system. The most famous example of such an object found by humans up until now is the ‘Oumuamua object, discovered and briefly studied from afar in 2017. Finally, the third goal - interstellar objects already on Earth - involves scouring our planet for potential ET material that may have already landed here, with Galileo especially interested in a meteor that crashed into the Pacific Ocean in 2014. One plan, here, involves “scooping the ocean floor” to retrieve fragments of that meteor, for further study.

In the anniversary clip, Loeb underlines that the project is “just at the beginning”, while another speaker - Project Manager, Ezra Kelderman - emphasizes that “this is just a preview of what’s to come”. There’s a growing feeling of excitement from within the team, then, as they stand on the brink of going fully live with their study. And, from the outside, there’s a sense that perhaps Galileo really will be able to do things differently. Its findings should be free of the suspicion that has so often hurt other UFO cases in history, because they should be entirely without the influence of governments and state authorities. Whereas, in the past, the accusations of a “cover up” have never been too far away from whatever UFO or alien data gets released… the Galileo Project should pull the cover away. If it stays true to its four “project ground rules”, then it should finally bring ET study fully out into the light. Those rules include: not working with classified or unreliable past data; analyzing data based on known physics; freely publishing and archiving the data found; while only doing so through scientifically-accepted channels. For the Galileo Project’s supporters, it’s a new way of thinking and of working… and it could usher in a new golden age for space science.

So, what’s your verdict on the Galileo Project? Is it an exciting new approach, or a grand plan that could quickly fail? A true kick against the mainstream, or just another flash-in-the-pan idea? It’s certainly an initiative that can only be fairly judged once the results come in. Over the past year, it’s been as though Galileo is a race car jostling for position on the starting grid, and waiting for the green light to go. Over the next year, though, it’s hoped that its race will begin, and we’ll get to see whether it’ll zoom off into the distance, chasing aliens and changing our worldview forever… or if it’ll struggle to reach those heights. No doubt there will be budget restrictions and problems encountered along the way, but we could be at the beginning of a very interesting journey.

For a long time now, Avi Loeb has presented the world with a different way of viewing things. While the “powers that be” have arguably sought to dampen suggestions of alien life on Earth or in the solar system, Loeb has urged us to more seriously consider the ET possibility. And that’s why this project could well discover aliens, at last.