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Avi Loeb: I didn't say aliens are coming within 16 days – but one of the Pentagon's UFO videos shows birds

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Avi Loeb, an astrophysicist at Harvard University, denied in a blog post that he had predicted that extraterrestrials could reveal themselves within 16 days. In the same post, he disclosed that, at the request of U.S. intelligence, he leads a 20-member scientific UAP council, and that according to the council, the six dots seen in one of the Pentagon's released UFO videos are actually a flock of birds.

A false quote

Avi Loeb, an astrophysicist at Harvard University, has been one of the best-known and also most controversial UFO researchers of recent years. He leads the Galileo Project, which searches for unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) with its own observation stations, and he was the one who suggested at the time that the interstellar object called Oumuamua might be of extraterrestrial origin.

On October 9, he published an unusually personal post on his Medium blog. In it, he refutes a post by Complex, an American media account with 2.6 million followers, according to which Loeb believes that extraterrestrials could reveal themselves within the next 16 days. Loeb says he never said this, yet the post received more than a hundred thousand views. In his response, he wrote that the claim in that post was false and did not accurately reflect either his views or his scientific work.

He added that in the future he will publicly correct anyone who spreads claims in his name that he did not make. In the post, he also reports that a YouTuber launched attacks with an antisemitic tone against him.

The scientific UAP council

The more interesting part of the post is about Loeb's current work. According to him, shortly after the Pentagon began releasing the UFO files in May 2026, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) asked him to create and lead a scientific UAP advisory body. POLITICO and the New York Times had also reported this earlier. According to Loeb, the body assists the White House, the Pentagon, the intelligence community and the FBI, and it currently has 20 members.

According to Loeb, they are also working on a collaboration that would allow scientists, with the government's help, to install instruments at locations where UAP sightings are regularly reported. The goal would be to directly measure the propulsion, energy source and material of the phenomena. He did not write about the details of the agreement.

The six dots: birds

The council published one of its first results in a scientific preprint (arXiv:2610.08692). According to it, the six dots seen in one of the videos released in the Pentagon's PURSUE program are not alien technology but a flock of birds. According to other reports, this is an infrared recording. The sixth batch, released on September 18, included a 2025 infrared video showing six small, spherical objects above a U.S. military platform, but Loeb did not specify exactly which video he was referring to.

The Galileo Project

Loeb also reported on his own project. The Galileo Project has three operating UAP observation stations, and a fourth is planned in Ithaca, New York, at Carl Sagan's former house. It would search for "orbs" in the sky with radar, and take high-resolution images and spectra of them with a large, fast-slewing telescope. Another recent study of theirs (arXiv:2610.06922) describes how the distance of a UAP can be measured by triangulation, using observations made from multiple directions.

The sober take

Loeb's post is interesting for two reasons. First, it shows how easily false "predictions" spread in the UFO field: a fabricated quote received ten times more attention than the media account's other posts. Second, it shows that the first result of a body led by a scientist who is explicitly open-minded and not averse even to the extraterrestrial explanation turned out to be a mundane explanation: birds.

The bird explanation is not surprising. On an infrared camera, birds' bodies are warmer than the cold sky, so they appear as bright dots. If the distance is not known, the speed and the motion can easily be overestimated. In the case of the Pentagon's previously released "GoFast" video, NASA experts showed that the object only appeared very fast because of perspective, and in reality it was drifting slowly with the wind.
What Loeb claims, and what others do. The existence of the council and Loeb's role were also reported by POLITICO and the New York Times. His statements about the "orbs" – which, according to him, known drones, missiles or aircraft could not imitate – are, however, so far claimed only by him, without independent verification.
Measurement is the key. Loeb's most important goal is to study the phenomena with instruments, not just with witness testimony. If this is realized, it would indeed be a step forward: as we also saw with the French GEIPAN cases, most mysteries come down to a missing measurement or recording.

In summary: the "16 days" was a false story. The real news is that a scientific body operating at the government's request has begun analyzing the Pentagon's UFO videos, and its first result is a flock of birds.

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