Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Seen In Ukraine Skies Debunks by Astrophysics

A story recently reported by Science Times regarding pitch-black "phantom" UFOs throughout the sky over Ukraine has been debunked by the Ukrainian authorities as well as Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb.

Previous claims of unexplained aerial phenomenon (UAP) sailing across Ukraine's horizon have been formally dismissed, with Ukraine's national science agency identifying "serious mistakes" in the study's methodologies and conclusions.

The document, published in mid-September by astrophysicists at Kyiv's Main Astronomical Observatory (MAO), defined "a significant variety of objects whose essence isn't really clear," including numerous so-called "phantoms" that popped up completely black even against the sky and appear to zip through to the surrounding air at approximately to 33,000 mph (53,000 km/h) - roughly two times as fast as an intercontinental ballistic missile.

The authors of the research referred to those phantom object classes as UAPs, the science-based community's preferred choice for unidentified flying objects or UFOs; and yet it did not attempt to rule out more evident rationalizations, such as satellites, drones, or artillery used in Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine, which started approximately half a year before the report's publication.

Debunking Claim Due to Lack of Scientific Shreds of Evidence

The Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences (NASU) has already conducted its inquiry into the UAP study and formally invalidated it as amateurish and lacking scientific credibility. "The findings were processed and interpreted at an unsuitable factual level, with considerable inaccuracies in estimating ranges to the detected objects," a committee of NASU experts concluded in an initial comment.

The team also stated that such a paper "did not comply with the standards of professionals for publishing the findings of scientific investigation," and therefore demanded that the NASU's emblem be withdrawn from the publication.

The MAO researchers studied sightings of odd, rapid objects discovered from one of two space telescopes nearby Kyiv in their paper. Depending on the amount of background light each item seemed to be obstructing, the researchers deduced that several of the unusual things were about the dimensions of an airliner yet traveled through the sky at the pace of a spaceship.

According to the work of Avi Loeb, an astrophysicist at Harvard University published recently an essential paper on the Ukraine UAP document to the pre-print dataset, arXiv.org, by having to look only at information from a single telescope, exploring the potential to have imprecisely anticipated the speed and distance and places of those objects - and thus seriously underestimated the size and acceleration of the objects too though (The research hasn't been peer-reviewed yet).

(Photo : Getty Images)
The night sky over Kyiv, Ukraine, in 2020. A recent report claims there may be UFOs lurking in the skies of Kyiv, but the country's national science agency thinks otherwise.

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Missile or Meteorite Sighting Instead of UAP

"One right approach to determine locations is considered triangulation," Loeb confirmed to Live Science. "However, they do not have such knowledge."

If the mysterious objects had been as enormous, rapid, and up there in the sky as the Ukrainian scientists claimed, each of them would "create a gigantic fireball," just like a missile or meteorite does when it passes through the atmosphere, according to Loeb. The reality that all these objects were completely black shows that the astrophysicists misjudged the items' relative positions, as per Loeb.

Loeb stated in his assessment of the UAP study that the Ukrainian researchers likely overestimated the lengths of the phantom things by a factor of ten; if the shapes were 10 times farther from the camera than researchers stated, therefore the objects strangely resembled the speed and size of artillery rounds - a frequent missile observed in conflict areas such as Ukraine. Bring the items multiple times nearer to the camera, and they may be misinterpreted for gunshots.

"If you get something even closer, it may be bugs - like such a fly traveling at a fast speed inside the observatory, and it would seem darker," Loeb noted.

Following their study of the UAP claim, NASU seems to have come to a similar outcome, stating that the scientists not just made "major mistakes" in measuring the objects' ranges, but also neglected to rule out more obvious causes for the observations.

Possible Crumbs of Ukraine-Russia War

The NASU scientists suggest in their response, "The researchers do not present evidence suggesting natural phenomena or manufactured items of natural origin might be among the identified UAPs."

Although it's unclear what the Ukrainian astronomers saw - whether that was artillery, missiles, insects, or something completely different - the consequences of Russia's attack on Ukraine must not be overlooked. According to a study published in 2021 by the U.S. based on the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), at minimum, some UAP detected by American military members are "technology employed by China, Russia, foreign nations, or a non-governmental organization." Following the ODNI study, additional probable causes for UAP comprise "airborne clutter" such as birds or balloons, meteorological occurrences such as crystallites or top secret government activities.

Aliens are not included in the study. The US administration, meanwhile, is not ready to rule out this option for encounters in US airspace. The U.S. Congress authorized money for the Department of Defense to establish a new agency dedicated only to handling military claims of UFO encounters. Whereas if information exists out there, the authorities might be able to locate it.