President Donald Trump has appointed Avi Loeb, a Harvard cosmologist known for high-profile alien theories, to lead a new scientific advisory council to study UFOs and potential national security risks. The decision folds Loeb’s controversial approach into a W
When the White House announced it had chosen Avi Loeb to lead a new scientific effort on UFOs and unidentified anomalous phenomena. the choice didn’t land quietly. Loeb is a Harvard-trained cosmologist who has long pursued splashy ideas about alien visits—and he’s also a figure many mainstream astronomers say doesn’t follow the norms of evidence they rely on.
Now. as President Donald Trump presses for more transparency about the issue. Loeb is set to helm a team of outside scientists tasked with investigating mysterious orbs and other objects reported by military personnel in recent years. The council will report to a new White House panel focused on UFOs. a term increasingly paired with the government’s own wording for unidentified anomalous phenomena. or UAP.
“It’s like a detective story,” Loeb said in an interview. “It’s a lot of fun, as long as you don’t pay too much attention to the critics.”
The work comes amid a broader effort to declassify more material connected to UFOs. The Pentagon has already released three batches of files—ranging from decades-old FBI reports to more recent military videos showing orbs darting or soaring through the sky.
Loeb’s council is part of that momentum. His team will meet behind closed doors. but he has promised to brief the public and create a website to share findings. After its first meeting last month. the group sent a request to the Pentagon asking for more than 50 videos. images and other documents related to known UAP incidents.
The White House’s vision for the process also points to the political tension around Loeb’s presence. His work will be folded into a governance structure created after Trump directed more transparency earlier this year. That directive led to the creation of a UAP Governance Board. overseen by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The board met for the first time in June and is supported by Loeb’s team and several other advisory groups. the office said.
Critics see a different story.
Steve Desch. an Arizona State University astrophysicist who has challenged some of Loeb’s theories. said Loeb uses flawed methods to reach sweeping conclusions about alien life while avoiding a more established branch of science that seeks life beyond Earth. Desch said the decision to put Loeb at the center casts doubt over the entire endeavor.
“I don’t know what’s going to come of this, but we’re not going to get any closer to answering these questions with him in charge,” Desch said.
Loeb disputes that framing. He brushes off his critics by saying they lack the imagination to consider new ideas. For the White House’s UAP work. he is promising a grounded approach and says his analysis will start with an assumption that UAP are the work of humans. while framing it as a national security problem.
He also argues that better data collection could settle the debate over what the objects are.
“If the government invests in better data collection on UAPs, Loeb said, it could settle the alien debate once and for all,” the account says.
Still, several names attached to the team show how far Loeb’s project stretches beyond traditional academic boundaries.
His hand-picked group includes more than a dozen scientists and UFO activists. Among them is Timothy Gallaudet. a retired rear admiral who has warned about UAP controlled by “nonhuman intelligence. ” and who has claimed the United States has recovered crashed aircraft. The team also includes Ben Lamm, a billionaire working to revive extinct species.
And while the council’s purpose is framed in terms of science and security, its personnel have already sparked concern inside the scientific establishment.
Sean Kirkpatrick. a physicist who previously investigated UAP at the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office. said Loeb is “not viewed favorably” in the scientific community and lacks national security experience. Kirkpatrick said the makeup of Loeb’s team suggests the White House is more interested in fringe theories than hard science.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment about the criticism.
The political pressure around UFO claims is not confined to the administration. A bipartisan group in Congress has pressed the White House to go further on the issue, and some Republicans have amplified claims that the U.S. is hiding evidence of alien encounters.
Trump’s administration, for its part, has encouraged anyone with information to come forward. At the same time, a Pentagon office that investigates UAP says it has seen no evidence of alien life.
Loeb says he does not buy cover-up theories.
“My impression is the government is baffled by not being able to infer the nature of some of these objects,” he said.
Loeb’s appointment brings his long-running pursuit of extraterrestrial possibilities into a White House structure designed to study national security stakes. For the last decade, he has been scanning the skies and seas for evidence of intelligent alien life.
He began the quest in 2017 after scientists puzzled over an interstellar object soaring by Earth. While other explanations pointed to a comet or ice chunk, Loeb argued it could be a thin “light sail” detached from an alien spacecraft.
His theories have earned support in UFO circles, but they have also repeatedly put him at odds with academic peers. Other astronomers criticize him for making exotic claims with little evidence and for skipping peer review processes and bringing claims directly to the public.
His prominence grew beyond theory as well. In 2023. Loeb’s team used magnets to retrieve hundreds of small spheres from the floor of the Pacific Ocean. near the possible site of a 2014 meteor crash. After analyzing metallic “spherules,” Loeb suggested they came from a distant planet or, alternately, from alien technology. Other scholars challenged the claim, saying it was probably volcanic rock or coal ash.
Before his UFO-related fame, Loeb was known as a respected cosmologist. He authored hundreds of papers specializing in black holes and the birth of galaxies. He served as chair of Harvard’s astronomy department until 2020, a role he held for nearly a decade.
For him, the new assignment is a chance to focus on the government’s UAP records while trying to sidestep the culture-war noise that follows every alien claim.
“At a time when science is not so much celebrated, this is an opportunity to actually do good for all sides involved,” Loeb said.
He is also drawing a line around what he wants to be judged on.
“Let’s keep our eyes on the orbs,” he said, “not the social media.”
United States politics Trump administration White House UFO UAP Avi Loeb Harvard Office of the Director of National Intelligence Pentagon national security Congress transparency