One astronomy professor called the notions “highly questionable” and “odd.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/04/14/pentagon-ufo-alien-object-00092108

The paper explains that interstellar objects such as the cigar-shaped “Oumuamua” that scientists spotted flying through the galaxy in 2017 “could potentially be a parent craft that releases many small probes during its close passage to Earth.” | M. Kornmesser/NASA

ByLARA SELIGMAN

04/14/2023 01:06 PM EDT

Updated:04/14/2023 04:12 PM EDT

The official in charge of a secretive Pentagon effort to investigate unexplained aerial incursions has co-authored an academic paper that presents an out-of-this-world theory: Recent objects could actually be alien probes from a mothership sent to study Earth.

In adraft paper dated March 7, Sean Kirkpatrick, head of the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, and Harvard professor Avi Loeb teamed up to write that the objects, which appear to defy all physics, could be “probes” from an extraterrestrial “parent craft.”

It’s unusual for government officials, especially…