IncidentThe Galileo Project (2021-)

Launched 26 July 2021 by Avi Loeb (Harvard) with co-founder/funder Frank Laukien, motivated by ‘Oumuamua and the June 2021 ODNI UAP report, the project pursues a systematic, transparent, peer-reviewed search for technosignatures via three branches: networks of telescope/sensor observatories that record the sky continuously and use machine learning to classify objects (separating birds, balloons, drones, aircraft, and satellites from genuine anomalies); the study of interstellar objects; and a search for possible alien probes near Earth. A first observatory was installed atop the Harvard College Observatory in 2022. In June 2023 the project ran a Pacific Ocean expedition off Papua New Guinea, using a magnetic sled to recover ~700+ sub-millimeter metallic spherules near the CNEOS 2014-01-08 fireball (‘IM1’), and Loeb’s team argued ~10% had a novel ‘BeLaU’ composition possibly indicating extrasolar/technological origin. That interpretation is heavily disputed: independent analyses argue the spherules are consistent with coal ash/industrial pollution, Desch & Jackson argue an interstellar meteor of IM1’s speed would have largely vaporized on entry, and IM1’s ‘interstellar’ status itself rests on unpublished CNEOS velocity uncertainties (with a seismic signal once tied to the impact later attributed to truck traffic). The leading academic, instrumented effort to study UAP/technosignatures - the scientific-search apparatus dimension complementing AARO (government) and the Disclosure Project (advocacy) - and a clean study in the scientization of the UAP question and the tension between rigorous method and over-interpretation.