Pentagon's "Alien Mothership in Solar System" Warning

Submission 6,499

Part of a series on Aliens. [View Related Entries]

About

The Pentagon's "Alien Mothership in Solar System" Warning refers to a draft report and warning statement from the U.S. Pentagon and Harvard about the possibility of an "alien mothership" UFO being present in the solar system that could reportedly send small probe spacecraft nicknamed "dandelion seeds" to Earth in March 2023. The official warning came after multiple UFO incidents in early 2023, such as the Lake Huron UFO and the Alaska UFO that were both shot down with missiles by U.S. Air Force fighter jets. The warning caused a stir on social media sites like Twitter and Reddit, predominantly after Fox News reported on the matter a few days after its official release.

History

During early 2023, the U.S. Air Force followed through on multiple takedowns of unidentified flying objects in American airspace, starting with the Chinese Spy Balloon and progressing to both the Alaska UFO and Lake Huron UFO, among others (such as one taken down over Canadian airspace).

On March 7th, 2023, Sean Kirkpatrick (director of the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office) co-authored a report with Abraham Loeb (chairman of Harvard University’s astronomy department) that was published on Harvard.edu^[1] and suggested, among other things, that an "artificial interstellar object" was possibly in the solar system and that it could be "a parent craft that releases many small probes during its close passage to Earth, an operational construct not too dissimilar from NASA missions." The report nicknamed the potential small probes "dandelion seeds."

On March 8th, NBC News covered the draft Harvard and Pentagon report on live TV and uploaded the segment to YouTube,^[2] where it received roughly 492,500 views and 5,400 likes in one week (shown below, left). On the same day, NBC News anchor Lester Holt discussed the draft report during his segment, which was also posted to YouTube^[3] on March 8th, earning roughly 954,000 views and 8,400 likes in one week (shown below, right).

On March 9th, 2023, the news outlet Military Times^[4] published an article that highlighted the draft report. A few days later, on March 14th, 2023, Fox News^[5] reported on the draft report in an article. Soon after, many news outlets started publishing articles online about the matter.

Online Reactions

On March 10th, 2023, TikToker^[6] @bobdank69 reposted Lester Holt's coverage of the draft Pentagon and Harvard report, earning roughly 1.3 million plays and 41,700 likes in six days (shown below, left). On March 11th, TikToker^[7] @babymothra posted a video, stating that the Pentagon was "soft launching" their "alien mothership" warning. The TikTok received roughly 789,900 plays and 122,600 likes in five days (shown below, right).

On March 11th, 2023, Twitter^[8] user @davenewworld_2 highlighted the Military Times^[2] article in a tweet that read, "An alien 'mothership' could be in our solar system and nobody bats an eye," and earned roughly 1,000 likes in five days (shown below, left). Following Fox News' coverage of the draft report, the Twitter^[9] account @DailyLoud tweeted about the headline on March 15th, earning roughly 20,000 likes in less than a day (shown below, right).

Viral discourse and memes surfaced on Twitter about the draft report thereafter as more Twitter accounts with large followings like RapTV and the New York Post posted tweets^[10]^[11] about the matter. Virality spread to other sites like Reddit, where on March 15th, 2023, the draft report was posted to /r/Holup^[12] by Redditor SoLostCantFunction, earning roughly 2,900 upvotes in less than a day.