The branch of the Pentagon tasked with investigating UFOs published a new report on the origins of what’s long been thought to be a piece of an alien aircraft. Spoilers: it’s not.
The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO)—the DoD’s UFO investigators—sent a sample of an alleged extraterrestrial aircraft to Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 2022, according to a Thursday press release. Oak Ridge studied the material for two years and sent its report to the AARO in April, and the conclusion is that the sample is probably not alien at all. It’s likely just one in a long line of experimental materials from the 20th century crafted in an effort to make a lighter and stronger aircraft.
“This specimen has been publicly alleged to be a component recovered from a crashed extraterrestrial vehicle in 1947, and purportedly exhibits extraordinary properties, such as functioning as a terahertz waveguide to generate antigravity capabilities,” the AARO said in the press release. “Considering all available evidence, AARO assesses that this specimen is likely a test object, a manufacturing product or byproduct, or a material component of aerospace performance studies to evaluate the properties of [magnesium] alloys.”
According to the report, the speculated piece of a UFO aircraft is just a normal magnesium compound.
“Although the origin, chain of custody, and ultimate purpose of this specimen remain unclear, a modern and robust analysis of its chemical and structural composition and properties does not indicate that its origin is non-terrestrial, nor do the data indicate that the material examined ever had the pure single-crystalline bismuth layer that could possibly have acted as a terahertz waveguide,” Oak Ridge said in its report.
The source of the studied specimen is the To The Stars Academy, an independent research organization headed by Blink-182 frontman and UFO fanatic, Tom DeLonge. The organization said in a press release that “the material is clearly engineered with distinct layers of MgZn and Bi at structured thicknesses only microns thick” and “there is no precedent for this structured combination of materials.”
Oak Ridge agreed to look at the material after To The Stars consented to have it studied.
“Although the long chain of custody for this specimen cannot be verified, public and media interest in the specimen warranted a transparent investigation that adhered to the scientific method,” the report said. “The specimen’s physiochemical properties are claimed to make the material capable of “inertial mass reduction” (i.e., levitation or antigravity functionality), possibly attributable to the material’s bismuth and magnesium layers acting as a terahertz waveguide.”
The AARO and Oak Ridge say the material is likely an early test of new aerospace alloys from the 20th century. “There was widespread domestic research on [magnesium] alloys for airframes, engines, weapons, and delivery systems starting in 1915 and peaking during World War II,” the organizations reported.
“Many experimental [magnesium] alloys failed for reasons not well understood at the time of testing, e.g., stress corrosion cracking,” the AARO said in its press release. “Unsurprisingly, records of failed [magnesium] alloy designs are scant. Neither AARO nor ORNL could verify the specimen’s historical origin. Unverifiable, conflicting personal accounts complicate its undocumented chain of custody.”
Neither the press release nor the Oak Ridge report mention Roswell, New Mexico, but pinpointing the recovery date of the material to 1947 makes it likely that whoever gave the sample to To The Stars has claimed that’s where it came from.
The Roswell crash is a foundational myth among UFO fans and conspiracy theorists. The short version is that something crashed in the deserts outside of Roswell, New Mexico. The Air Force recovered pieces of it and said it was a weather balloon. But others have long believed it was an alien spacecraft.
That incident kicked off decades of panic and interest in strange lights in the sky. That interest picked up again in recent years after a number of high-profile sightings by U.S. Navy pilots and the publication of declassified videos of strange aerial phenomena. U.S. legislators tasked the Pentagon with figuring out why so many people reported seeing strange lights in the sky. In response, the Pentagon formed the AARO in 2022 and it’s been investigating what it called Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs) ever since.
It’s published several reports but has, as of yet, failed to uncover proof of extraterrestrial or interdimensional visitation of America.
