Overview of the Galileo Project

Brief

Founded in July 2021 by Abraham Loeb and Frank Laukien at Harvard, the Galileo Project deploys multi-modal, multi-spectral all-sky observatories to study UAP, mines future LSST/Vera C. Rubin Observatory pipeline data for anomalous interstellar objects, and plans an ocean-floor expedition near Papua New Guinea to recover fragments of CNEOS 2014-01-08, a ~0.5 m interstellar meteor with material strength exceeding iron. Two of the first three detected interstellar objects display properties anomalous relative to known solar system bodies, motivating the search. Three binding ground rules prohibit use of classified data, restrict analysis to known physics, and mandate peer-reviewed publication, explicitly positioning the project as a counterpart, not a complement, to government UAP programs that operate on classified evidence.

Metadata

Category

Phenomenon

Venue

Journal of Astronomical Instrumentation

Type

Peer-reviewed

Year

2023

Authors

Abraham Loeb, Frank Laukien

DOI

10.1142/S2251171723400032

Access

Open access

Length

846.4 K

Programs

Galileo Project

Instruments

Galileo Observatory (all-sky, Harvard College Observatory rooftop), Pan-STARRS, JWST NIRSpec/photometry, Vera C. Rubin Observatory / LSST

Data sources

CNEOS meteor catalog, ODNI UAP Preliminary Assessment (2021), Pan-STARRS survey data, US Government sensor network (CNEOS 2014-01-08 detection)

Tags

SETI, technosignature, UAP-physics, interstellar-objects, space-archaeology, astrobiology

Key points

• CNEOS 2014-01-08, detected January 8, 2014 by US Government sensors near Papua New Guinea, measured ~0.5 m in diameter and exhibited material strength exceeding iron meteorites, placing it in the fastest 5% of local stellar velocities and below the 5th percentile for space-rock material strength.p.2
• ʻOumuamua (1I/2017 U1) showed an excess non-gravitational acceleration declining as r⁻², no cometary outgassing, extreme flat geometry, high reflectivity, and an origin in the Local Standard of Rest, consistent with a hypothetical planned trajectory toward inner habitable planets.p.2
• 2 of the first 3 confirmed interstellar objects appear to be outliers relative to familiar solar system asteroids or comets; only 2I/Borisov was definitively natural in origin.p.2
• The probability of encountering a civilization at exactly humanity's current technological phase is estimated at roughly 1 in 100 million, the ratio of the age of modern science to the age of the oldest Milky Way stars.p.3
• ISOs in the CNEOS 2014-01-08 size class are approximately one million times more abundant near Earth than ʻOumuamua-class objects, yet were entirely undetectable by the Pan-STARRS survey.p.7
• The project's three binding ground rules: (1) unclassified data only, (2) analysis confined to known physics with results published openly, (3) no pre-publication disclosure of hardware/software specifications.p.5
• LSST pipeline software is being developed to flag ISO targets of interest from Vera C. Rubin Observatory data, enabling design of an intercept or rendezvous space mission for the next ʻOumuamua-class object.p.8
• The paper proposes a Drake-equation substitute for physical artifacts: N = n·V for volume surveys and R = n·v·A for atmospheric 'fishing net' surveys, where artifact abundance grows over cosmic time unlike transient radio signals.p.7

Verbatim

• “But even if only one object is of extraterrestrial technological origin among the clutter of many natural or human-made objects, it would represent the most consequential discovery in human history.”

  p.3

• “we might ¯gure out the nature of UAP before we understand dark matter, if we would only be brave enough to collect and analyze UAP data publicly, based on the scienti¯c method.”

  p.8

Most interesting

• 2020 SO, another object showing anomalous excess push with no cometary tail, was ultimately identified as a 1966 NASA rocket booster being accelerated by solar radiation pressure on its thin walls, illustrating that unusual acceleration signatures are not inherently exotic.
• An ocean-floor expedition to recover CNEOS 2014-01-08 fragments is estimated to cost roughly one-thousandth of a dedicated space mission to the same object, making interstellar meteor archaeology an unusually cost-efficient alternative.
• The Galileo Project explicitly excludes all classified government data on principled grounds, findings restricted to cleared personnel cannot be peer-reviewed, meaning the project is structurally incompatible with intelligence-agency cooperation even when that data might be relevant.
• The 2010 Astronomy Decadal Survey listed none of that decade's three major discoveries, gravitational wave detection (2015), ʻOumuamua (2017), and the M87 black hole image (2019), as high-level priorities, a precedent the authors invoke to argue systematic UAP study is similarly undervalued.
• Advanced propulsion methods such as light sails could theoretically reach the speed of light, four orders of magnitude faster than chemical rockets, meaning fast-moving interstellar objects may have been systematically missed by past surveys tuned to asteroid and comet speeds.
• Self-replicating probes, as analyzed by John von Neumann and operationalized by 3D printing and AI, could produce an 'extremely large' population of interstellar artifacts without requiring any currently living sender civilization, decoupling artifact abundance from contemporary transmitter counts.