Let Me Explain What THAT Harvard Paper Was Saying
In June 2024, Harvard researchers Tim Lomas and Brendan Case in collaboration with Montana Tech’s Michael Paul Masters published a (thankfully) very accessible paper that hit big. Why?
It was about aliens. Well, as multiple sources made it seem.
CBS News claimed that “Aliens could be ‘walking among us’ on Earth” in their headline. Newsweek backed up this claim. The Hill simply went for the jugular with the phrase “Hidden UFO civilization could be on Earth.”
Very gripping headlines. I love the possibility. But, I read the Harvard paper myself to get the full picture. Here’s what I found.
Raising the Likelihood Percentage
The paper, titled, “The cryptoterrestrial hypothesis: A case for scientific openness to a concealed earthly explanation for Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena,” could not have any further stated how much the researchers were emphasizing this as a slight probability. Opening the full-text reading, there’s a “NOTE” at the beginning stating that “this hypothesis [is] in all likelihood false, but nevertheless [we] believe it still merits scientific investigation” (Lomas et. al, page 1).
Here’s why they wrote the paper at all in the first place: the original likelihood possibility of a cryptoterrestrial hypothesis (CTH) was 1%. But, “in light of recent data…we would put [the likelihood] at around 10%” (5).
Such data includes credible testimonies from the likes of veteran government official David Grusch and Retired Army Colonel Karl Nell. This is setting aside the decades of witness testimonies from all around the world of UAPs (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena).
Increased efforts at treating such information with more seriousness even came from Congress’ attempt to pass the “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Disclosure Act” (3) in July 2023. Especially with more advanced technology at hand, military personnel are capturing more evidence of these UAPs in the air and underwater in recent years.
This paper isn’t about getting us to believe in aliens. It’s about taking these mysterious accounts more seriously by giving them a modicum of scientific credence. According to the paper, there’s a 10% chance that there’s truth to this. It’s low, but not low enough to ignore entirely.
But…Is It Actually Talking About Aliens?
No. Not in the traditional sense, anyway.
The paper’s focus was on explaining the existence of UAPs, objects that defy our current understanding of what can physically, possibly exist. Why are there objects that move in a matter of seconds without leaving any trace of force? Why do objects suddenly appear in the sky?
To that end, prevailing hypotheses have ranged between the terrestrial and the extraterrestrial. The paper, however, introduces an “ultraterrestrial” (1) explanation.
The ultraterrestrial, or cryptoterrestrial, hypothesis examines objects and beings that are living in a kind of stealth mode among us. This goes further than the possibility of alien life.
Instead, such explanations for UAPs as posited by the paper include but are not limited to the following:
- Ancient civilizations that have become “breakaway civilizations” underground or elsewhere and evolved outside of the modern world (7)
- Evidence of time travel (5)
- Travel between different dimensions (5)
- Advanced forms of human/humanoid creatures (7)
The paper delves more deeply into the hypothesis, and does look at the possibilities of an extraterrestrial explanation. However, again, these explanations are all possibilities. Hypotheses. Things to consider and give a little bit of merit to.
The paper does not focus on the idea of alien life forms coming in and visiting us. Its hypothesis is on the notion that there are already things on Earth that we are unaware of creating these mysterious phenomena.
Past, Present, and Future
What the CTH (cryptoterrestrial hypothesis) does well is look at explanations for UAPs not just across space, but across time. We are looking at “spacetime” — this is the plane of existence that the Universe operates on. The “space” element in the hypothesis comes from the exploration of there being underground civilizations and interdimensional travel. However, the CTH explicitly keeps the explanations on Earth.
Our understanding of the world is limited to a certain framework. From what I can gather, we know how things are by how they are a.) presented to us, and b.) how we are able to interpret what is presented.
As the paper explores (7), there are limits to what we know about the past. Proof of ancient civilizations lies in what has survived over time — as we have so far discovered. What lies beyond? What civilizations and cultures once existed that, perhaps, have since evolved out of the public eye?
We also have to look at stories that carried over from the past — mythology, accounts of cryptids and the paranormal, elves, angels, etc. Why did people in the past from around the world speak of such things? This isn’t of course to suggest that these things actually existed, but if there ever was any eyewitness account (as opposed to the result of imaginative ancestors trying to just make sense of the world), then some semblance of an explanation exists. We may have called a bright, warm orb an “angel,” but what is it really?
Such thinking leads to the present. What we don’t know happened in the past has nevertheless evolved into the present, were it to actually survive. This includes animal species.
According to the paper, anthropologist Robert Martin believes that there’s fossil evidence for “only about 5 percent of all extinct primates” (7). Keep in mind, that’s only accounting for primates.
Thus we lead to the future. We don’t fully know what exists now and, thusly, we have an even dimmer idea of what could exist in the future. Forget the fact that, for example, 100 years ago (a measly 100!), we couldn’t even have dreamed of the possibility of an Internet.
Closing Thoughts
It’s hubris to believe that we know everything there is to know about the Universe. We live in such a grand, infinitely mysterious place that we’re bound to come across things we can’t explain time and again.
I’m thankful that this paper exists to keep the conversation of the unexplainable alive. Again, there is no claim that any of the provided explanations are true.
However, to even explore the notion of even half of what the cryptoterrestrial hypothesis suggests would make the world so much more exciting. We don’t have any real way to prove the existence of time travel, other dimensions (or universes?), and advanced civilizations in stealth mode.
Yet, if something exists, there’s a scientific explanation. No matter how incredible.
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