In court, people are convicted of crimes and sentenced to prison terms based on eyewitness accounts. However, scientific evidence is held to a higher standard. For a scientific claim to be considered credible, it must be based on quantitative data from fully mastered and mastered instruments. Unlike these measuring devices, eyewitness testimony could be biased by wishful thinking, hallucinations, or ulterior motives. Like Winston Churchill Notedthe story depends on who writes it, which makes it difficult to extract a balanced description of physical reality based solely on reports from humans.
four centuries ago, Galileo was placed under house arrest. This act was intended to hide from public view the apparent evidence through the eyepiece of his telescope that the Earth is not at the center of the Universe. This act of censorship, of course, did not change the Earth’s orbit around the Sun, but it did allow mainstream dogma to dominate society until the evidence was impossible to hide because it was backed up by data from many other telescopes.
In today’s popularity contests, it’s important to remember that reality is what it is, no matter how many likes it gets on Twitter. We don’t get any “on-demand” version of reality we want as easy as uploading it to a streaming TV service; instruments similar to Galileo’s telescope do not change their readings based on popularity, preference, social pressure, prejudice, or ego.
While the legal system often encounters one-time events that cannot be replicated, science aims to verify empirical evidence by repeating experiments with ever better instruments and improved accuracy.
The underlying principle of modern science, founded by Galileo’s approach, is that a “Pooh” the interaction between the studied object and the measuring device, can be quantified and reproduced because devoid of the subjectivity inherent in human experience. The alternative “I-It” and “I you“the interactions discussed in the 1923 book”I and youby the philosopher Martin Buberapply to interactions with humans and are less straightforward to interpret than the quantifiable interaction between purely physical objects.
There are examples in which the human experience was later verified by a quantitative experimental setup. For example, the blue light emitted by charged particles when they travel faster than light through a medium was seen in 1934 through the eyes of Pavel Cherenkov and later confirmed by laboratory detectors.
Instruments are a reliable substitute for humans, not only for sensing and measuring processes, but also for analyzing data and drawing conclusions. In the future, data analysis may be dominated by artificial rather than natural intelligence, as it is less biased. The use of artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms is already widespread in the analysis of large data sets at the frontiers of scientific research, and it could extend to medical or legal evaluations. Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman suggested that “AI is going to trump” human assessments in all walks of life, and “how people are going to adapt to this is a fascinating problem.”
The distinction between eyewitness testimony or anecdotal evidence of compromised quality was the primary motivation for establishing the Galileo Project, inspired by Galileo’s approach of looking through telescopes to find evidence. Against the background of numerous reports on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) in the sky from eyewitnesses and low-quality equipment, the project aims to collect new data based on a suite of fully calibrated and controlled state-of-the-art instruments. Data analysis will be performed by automated AI algorithms to minimize human bias.
As is routine in scientific research, the data will be open to the global community and the results will be published in peer-reviewed journals. The shift from anecdotal reports to scientifically rigorous data collection from well-understood instruments is a fundamental shift in UAP research, necessary to bring it into the mainstream of science.
The Galileo Project the team will test and calibrate its set of instruments In the coming months. Once the tests are complete, the research team will deploy the detection system to the desired location and collect new data by filming the sky in infrared, optics, radio and audio, starting in the spring. 2023.
The experimental team members met in the backyard of my house this weekend. It was gratifying to hear the latest update on the status of the project’s instruments. One of the most valuable members of the team that designed our audio detectors, Andy Mead, wrote to me after the meeting: “I am more convinced than ever that the Galileo Project is on the right track – I am extremely proud to be part of a team conducting this study in the right way, letting the scientific method and genuine curiosity drive the ship, sailing smoothly past the Twitterverse on our way to a data-driven destination. He added, “Allowing my curiosity to flow through my technical work on this project has been a highlight of my professional career to date.”
Andy’s grandfather was part of a secret World War II unit that was recently awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. The unit, named “The Phantom Armywas responsible for using science, technology, and creativity to deceive the German military about troop movements. In other words, this unit took advantage of the dubious nature of the human experiment, once again demonstrating that humans are not reliable scientific detectors. Andy’s grandfather was an electrical engineer in charge of audio part of the project. He then published an article “The Sonic Deception Facet of Electronic Warfare” in the Armed Forces Journal in 1981. The unit is estimated to have saved 15,000 to 30,000 lives through its use of technology.
The Congressional effort for the gold medal intensified around Andy’s initial involvement in the Galileo Project. Andy noted, “I didn’t miss the opportunity to help audio part of an extremely important project. Likewise, I work alongside an exceptional group of scientists, engineers, and creatives akin to the group that surrounded my grandfather… It is often said that history rhymes, and I am grateful to be able to honor sonic endeavors of my grandfather. with my own audio work on the Galileo project.
Although Andy’s lyrics reflect a “I-It” and “I you“perspective is the future”Pooh“data from his instruments that will be exciting to retrieve as evidence of what the UAP side of”This” could be. And in case some UAP represent sentient devices with AI, its related interaction with the Galileo Project the detectors would be even more interesting, potentially leading to our AI system interacting with their AI system. This would constitute a newAI-AIcategory which was not even imagined by Martin Buber.
Avi Loeb is head of the Galileo Project, founding director of the Harvard University – Black Hole Initiative, director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and former chairman of the astronomy department of the Harvard University (2011 -2020). He chairs the Advisory Board for Project Breakthrough Starshot and is a former member of the President’s Advisory Council on Science and Technology and a former Chairman of the National Academies Board of Physics and Astronomy. He is the bestselling author of “Extraterrestrial: The first sign of intelligent life beyond Earth» and co-author of the manual «life in the cosmos”, both published in 2021.
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