Avi Loeb and Sean M. Kirkpatrick discuss the possibility of such a scenario in their recent article on UFOs.
Titled ‘Physical Constraints on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena’, the paper, which is still undergoing peer review, examines the alleged movements and capabilities of unexplained objects spotted by US Navy pilots off the coast of the United States.
Its authors are certainly no strangers to UFOs; Loeb is an astrophysicist who has been heavily involved in the search for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence, while Dr. Kirkpatrick is the director of the Pentagon’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO).
In a previous story about the paper, we reported that they concluded that the alleged capabilities of “highly maneuverable” objects detected by US Navy pilots are so extreme that the simple friction involved should have produced a visible fireball, as well as a corresponding radio signature that could be picked up on radar.
Now it appears the pair are also looking into the idea that an extraterrestrial mothership passing through our solar system could have released a series of smaller probes designed to enter Earth’s atmosphere and study us without our knowledge.
“[Interstellar meteorite impacts inspired me] to consider the possibility that an artificial interstellar object could be a mothership that releases many small probes during its close pass to Earth, an operational construct not unlike NASA missions,” Loeb told Live Science.
“These ‘dandelion seeds’… can be separated from the mother ship by the Sun’s tidal gravitational pull or by a maneuvering capability.”
In the paper, Loeb and Kirkpatrick suggest that these probes could reach Earth and enter our atmosphere without being detected by astronomers.
It is also possible, given the amount of time it would take to travel vast distances through space, that the civilization from which the mothership originated no longer exists.
