Talk about clickbait: insert the acronyms UFO and UAP into the lead paragraph of an academic research paper and have it jointly published by a team from Montana Tech and Harvard University.
More importantly, since its release last month, “The Cryptoterrestrial Hypothesis” is causing quite the stir — among humans and, for all we know, non-humans alike.
“Recent years have seen increasing public attention and indeed concern regarding Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP),” writes Montana Tech’s Michael Paul Masters and Harvard’s Tim Lomas and Brendan Case.
Previously, the three researchers point out, the hypotheses for these phenomena have fallen into two classes: a conventional “terrestrial explanation” (e.g., human-made technology), or an “extraterrestrial explanation” (i.e., advanced civilizations from elsewhere in the cosmos).
“However,” they now argue, “there is also a third minority class of hypothesis: an unconventional terrestrial explanation, outside the prevailing consensus view of the universe.”
Which would be?
One that reflects “activities of intelligent beings concealed in stealth here on Earth (e.g., underground), and/or its near environs (e.g., the moon), and/or even ‘walking among us’ (e.g., passing as humans).”
Yikes!
Now that you mention it, I’ve long been suspicious of “people” who’ve never once stepped foot into a doctor’s office. Would a simple check of their vital signs blow their cover? Are they so bionic that they’re incapable of getting sick?
And what about the old-timer (he claimed to be from Oregon) who sprinted past me on the most arduous of switchbacks to Siyeh Pass? No way on Earth that guy was human.
“Although this idea is likely to be regarded skeptically by most scientists, such is the nature of some UAP that we argue this possibility should not be summarily dismissed,” the researchers state, “and instead deserves genuine consideration in a spirit of epistemic humility and openness.”
And consideration it’s receiving, within scientific fields and military ranks alike.
International scientist and philosopher Bernardo Kastrup, for one, says the Montana-Harvard theory might seem “far out,” but it’s the “most reasonable scenario” for the existence of UAP and non-human intelligence.
Whereas world leaders have historically shied away (at least in public) from discussion of UFO’s and UAP’s, the paper points to “a dramatic shift in 2017, when footage of three US military encounters with UAP was published online, bringing the topic to wider attention, not only in the US but across the globe.”
Like many of you, I have repeatedly watched the aforementioned footage, which clearly captures a UAP traversing the sky in jaw-dropping speed and trajectory until diving with a “splash” into the Pacific Ocean.
“The military angle was especially significant, as it involves observers who excel in occupations that require the highest skill and training in visual perception and processing, and whose testimony is often triangulated with other information sources (e.g., radar),” the team notes.
The Pentagon, for once, had no choice but to declare the footage “genuine,” and even empaneled a federal UAP task force — the “All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office,” or AARO — to investigate these otherwise unfathomable encounters. The AARO has since published three major reports, two in 2023, focusing on 800-plus UAP sightings in “US airspace and waters,” most of them since 2019.
The Montana-Harvard team also reveals that the “A” in Unidentified Aerial Phenomena has been expanded to denote “anomalous” — given “some UAP are not only airborne, but capable of travelling underwater, a capacity which is central to the hypothesis considered here.”
Among the military officials serving on the UAP task force was retired Army Col. Karl Nell, who (and hang onto your hats here) was unequivocal in stating two months ago: “So, non-human intelligence exists, non-human intelligence has been interacting with humanity. This interaction is not new, and it’s been ongoing, and unelected people in the government are aware of that.”
If that’s not enough to shake our world, the former acting head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), retired Navy Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet, said earlier this year:
“I am totally convinced that we’re experiencing a non-human, higher intelligence. I am completely convinced because I know the people who were in the government programs … that oversaw both the crash retrieval and just the analysis of UAP data. And I’m very confident in these people — former intelligence, former DoD [officials] — and we are working as a team, behind the scenes, to advance disclosure.”
As for the long-held “terrestrial explanation” for the existence of UFOs/UAPs — that America’s foes somehow possess the technological capabilities to produce and pilot these anomalous craft with uncanny speed and precision — Gallaudet replied: “I know that our adversaries don’t have technologies like these.”
So who might you ask is Dr. Michael Paul Masters of Montana Tech?
An esteemed professor of anthropology, his years of research has focused on everything from juvenile-onset myopia in humans to pre-historic Montana archaeology, at one site utilizing ground-penetrating radar (GPR) to reveal stone fire hearths and associated sub-surface cultural remains.
Masters, at the same time, has been no stranger to conventional and unconventional UFO/UAP research. In his 2021 paper, “Ancient Astronauts, Anthropology, and Pseudoscientific Claims,” he critiqued “dubious” claims related to anthropology and archaeology as they pertain to the mystery of UFOs.
In a subsequent 2022 paper, “The Extratempestral Model,” he proposes in part that today’s “aliens” could be our future human descendants coming back through time to visit and study their own hominin evolutionary past.
But it’s this latest hypothesis — that intelligent beings concealed in stealth could actually be walking (and sprinting) among us on Earth — that has people talking.
And for that, the Montana professor is to be commended for going boldly where few men have gone before.
John McCaslin is a longtime journalist and author.