International team of astronomers to look for evidence of alien technology

The project was announced a month after the Pentagon released a report about unidentified aerial phenomena, which stated that their nature was unclear. An international team of scientists led by a prominent Harvard astronomer announced a new initiative Monday to look for evidence of technology built by extraterrestrial civilizations. Given recent research showing the prevalence of Earth-like planets throughout the galaxy, “We can no longer ignore the possibility that technological civilizations predated us,” Professor Avi Loeb told reporters at a news conference. Loeb refers to such research as a new branch of astronomy he calls “space archaeology,” intended to complement the existing field of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, which mainly probes for alien radio signals. The project’s co-founder Frank Laukien, a visiting scholar at Harvard’s chemistry and chemical biology department, declared himself the “resident skeptic.” But he said that, rather than dismissing the ideas outright, it was necessary to “agnostically record and interpret the data according to the scientific method.”