Final Product (FOIA 23-F-0010)

through direct imaging. Once an Earth-like planet is targeted, an interstellar device can plunge into its
atmosphere. In principle, a multitude of tiny devices can be released from a mothership that passes
near Earth.
At a final speed of 30 kilometers per second, a probe would cross twice the distance of the Sun from
the Milky-Way center within a time of half a billion years. The fraction of all Sun-like stars that host
Earth-like planets in their habitable zone is in the range 3- 100%. This implies that self-replicating
probes could reach ten billion habitable planets around Sun-like stars in less than a billion years.
Since most stars formed more than a billion years before the Sun, it is possible that other
technological civilizations predated ours by the amount oftime needed for their devices to reach
Earth. My paper points out that any supersonic
motion of such devices through the Earth's atmosphere would inevitably be accompanied by optical
em1ss1on.
I showed that an object with a frontal cross-sectional area of 10 square meters, moving at a supersonic
speed of 10 kilometers per second must create a bow shock in the Earth's atmosphere and dissipate a
mechanical power of 1.5 terra-Watt at an elevation of 10 kilometers. Data on meteors implies that
about a tenth of the kinetic power which is radiated away in the optical band implying that the
reported properties ofthe Phantom objects above Ukraine would result in a fireball ofvisible
luminosity above 150 giga-Watt. For a path length 10 kilometers, the emission would last at least a
second and cannot be missed.
I concluded that the reported speeds and sizes ofthe ' 'Phantom" objects would have generated
fireballs of detectable optical luminosity at their suggested distances, and so these objects could not
have appeared dark. However, if the Phantom objects are ten times closer than suggested, then their
angular motion on the sky corresponds to a physical velocity that is ten times smaller, 1.5 kilometers
per second and their inferred transverse size would be 0.3-1.2 meters, both characteristic of artillery
shells.
The inferred fireball luminosity scales with distance to the 5th power, and is reduced to a modest level
of a few MW if the distance is shorter by a factor of ten than suggested by the Ukranian astronomers.
Ifthe artillery shells have a frontal diameter ofonly 10 cm, then the inferred fireball luminosity is
merely 10 kilo-Watt, which at a kilometer distance would appear extremely faint like a 100-Watt light
bulb at a distance of 100 meters.
The Ukrainian astronomers also identified a luminous and variable object at an altitude of 1,170
kilometers, which was detected through two-site observations above Ukraine. This object is likely a
satellite.
Altogether "down to Earth" explanations can account for the reported UAP above Ukraine. But in
salute to my colleagues in Ukraine, let me conclude with a quote from Oscar Wilde:
"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
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