Avi Loeb

Avi Loeb is the Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science in the Department of Astronomy at Harvard University, director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and founding director of Harvard's Black Hole Initiative.¹ He wrote Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2021), which argued that ʻOumuamua, the first interstellar object observed in the Solar System (discovered October 19, 2017), could be an artificial object resembling a thin light sail or communications dish.² Inverse, citing Science, reported that wealthy donors contacted him after the book appeared and four of them gave about 1.75 million dollars to start the Galileo Project.³

Correspondence with Jeffrey Epstein

On October 14, 2015, Lesley Groff, assistant to Jeffrey Epstein, wrote to the Harvard mathematician Shing-Tung Yau that Epstein was coming to Harvard on October 16 and asked whether anyone else should be introduced to him. Yau answered that he would come at 2 p.m. with Conan Leung and would try to arrange other faculty at 3 p.m.⁴ At 9:15 a.m. on October 16 Yau wrote: "I shall also bring prof Avi Loeb who is chairman of astronomy in harvard at three pm." An itinerary sent to Epstein that day under the subject "Yau to bring Avi Loeb" listed, at Martin Nowak's institute in Cambridge, a 2 p.m. meeting with Yau and Leung, at 3 p.m. "Andy Strominger to join the Yau and Conan meeting," and at 3 p.m. "Avi Loeb to join the Yau, Conan and Andy meeting."⁵ At 11:27 a.m. Yau wrote to Groff: "It turns out that Loeb cannot come." He added that Andrew Strominger would be there at 3 p.m.⁶

On October 17, 2015, Loeb sent Yau a message titled "Exciting projects" with three attached project descriptions. The second, by his account, was "the establishment of the first research center for black holes (Black Hole Center)," and he wrote that "we currently have the technology to obtain an image of black holes within the next five years, with suitable funding." It closed: "Feel free to forward this message to Jeffrey Epstein." The message was forwarded to Epstein on October 24, 2015, with Groff copied.⁷ On October 20, Strominger wrote to Epstein that he was involved, "still in the planning stage," in "an interdisciplinary Black Hole Center with Avi Loeb, Peter Galison, Ramesh Narayan and the head of the Event Horizon Telescope Shep Doeleman," which "needs a 50 million endowment," and that Larry Summers had raised 7 million dollars for his black hole information paradox group about twelve years earlier, a sum that would be spent down by January 1.⁸

On February 16, 2016, Loeb wrote to "BHC colleagues" after meeting Harvard University's Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Mike Smith and Dean of Science Jeremy Bloxham. He reported that Smith said Harvard rules do not allow the word "Center" unless it is endowed, so for the time being the group should use the name "Black Hole Initiative"; that Smith objected to a 100,000 dollar rent payment to Yau in the proposal because "this will not withstand an audit"; that Smith asked him to compile a list of potential donors for Harvard's development office, to which Loeb would add "some people I know (like Yuri Milner)"; and that "the minimum endowment goal should be $20M, since it will provide us with an operating budget of $1M per year." The email also refers to a proposal to "JTF" and to a visit by Stephen Hawking on April 18 and 19.⁹ On February 17, Yau wrote to Groff: "Can you ask Jeffrey whether any of his friends have interest to fund a center on black hole ?it will take twenty million dollars," and on February 19 added that a center for computational biology in which Nowak "may play a key role" "may be much more expensive." Groff replied that she would forward the request to Epstein.⁹ None of the eleven documents in which Loeb is named records a reply from Epstein or a payment from Epstein or his entities to Harvard, the Black Hole Initiative, Loeb or Yau.

On October 5, 2018, Robert Lawrence Kuhn sent Epstein the October 2018 newsletter of Closer To Truth, which described filming at a fine-tuning conference in Crete with "old friends such as Avi Loeb, Bernard Carr, Fred Adams and David Albert."¹⁰

Galileo Project

Loeb heads the Galileo Project, announced July 26, 2021 and co-founded with Frank Laukien, chief executive of Bruker Corporation. Its funding sources, advisory boards and fellowships are set out on the project page; the gift route is a Harvard alumni giving form for a "Research Fund u/d Professor Avi Loeb," and the project's posted statement is that it receives no governmental or military funding.²¹¹ On October 30, 2021 he named Christopher Mellon and Luis Elizondo research affiliates. On April 26, 2024 he was quoted in the announcement of a 575,000 dollar grant from the Richard King Mellon Foundation: "This significant investment will enable the Galileo Project to expand our capacity to observe unexplained aerial phenomena in our own skies."¹²

IM1 and the 2023 Interstellar Expedition

The EYOS Expeditions release credits a 2019 paper by Loeb and the Harvard undergraduate Amir Siraj with identifying the meteor of January 8, 2014 (CNEOS 2014-01-08, "IM1") as interstellar, and says the identification was confirmed three years later by the United States Space Command to NASA. Loeb was chief scientist of the Interstellar Expedition of June 2023, which recovered 50 metallic spherules from about 2 kilometers depth near Manus Island, Papua New Guinea. The release states the expedition "was funded privately by American entrepreneur Charles Hoskinson"; Loeb wrote in his diary in The Debrief: "In the case of IM1, the Interstellar Expedition received funding at 1.5 million dollars and delivered the evidence we were seeking," set against the Large Hadron Collider "funded at ten billion dollars."¹³¹⁴ Loeb said on the expedition that the question was "whether the meteor was natural or technological in origin."¹³ New York Magazine reported in 2024 that Loeb "strongly disputes the coal-ash explanation" offered by critics of the spherules' provenance, that he says the composition shows a "pattern of elements from outside the solar system," and that he told the writer that some critics "behave like terrorists."¹⁵

Government and advisory roles

Loeb told The Harvard Crimson in July 2026 that he had previously served on the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology under Donald Trump, that the director of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office visited his home after taking office, and that government officials had approached him several times over the previous five years. He announced the UAP Science Advisory Council in mid-June 2026 after a representative of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence visited him at home; he told the Crimson the White House gave him a "free hand" in choosing members, that the council has no budget, and that he did not inform Harvard's president Alan Garber before agreeing to serve. He was also quoted: "I'm supporting the prosperity of the United States and the science I'm pursuing, and I'm not doing it on behalf of a political agenda."¹⁶ Charles Alcock, director of the Center for Astrophysics, was listed on the Galileo Project's Scientific Advisory Board.¹⁷ A draft paper dated March 7, 2023, "Physical Constraints on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena," listed Sean Kirkpatrick as director of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office and Loeb as head of the Galileo Project.¹⁸