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An international think tank of physicists believes a famous UFO sighting in Chicago may hold clues to “faster-than-light” space travel.
At approximately 4:14 p.m. on November 7, 2006, an apron worker at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport saw a metal, saucer-shaped craft hovering in mid-air.
The sighting, which lasted five minutes and was witnessed by at least 12 United Airlines executives, made international headlines thanks to a tape of Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) radio communications released through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
While the FAA attributed the incident to a “hole cloud,” and astronomer Mark Hammergren, then of Chicago’s Adler Planetarium, agreed, the case has remained unsolved—and has been tantalizing UFO researchers ever since.
Now thirty PhD students from the privately funded research group Applied Physics believe the 2006 O’Hare UFO case shows telltale signs of a theoretical interstellar propulsion system called an “Alcubierre warp drive.”
The concept, a specific class of Star Trek-esque “warp drive,” first conceived by Mexican theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre in 1994, would flit between the stars by bending the fabric of space and time around itself.
Physicists working for the privately funded organization Applied Physics believe the 2006 UFO sighting at O’Hare Airport shows telltale signs of an interstellar propulsion system dubbed an “Alcubierre warp drive.” Above, an image taken via helicopter over O’Hare on August 13, 2018
At approximately 4:14 p.m. on November 7, 2006, an apron worker at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport saw a metal, saucer-shaped craft hovering in mid-air. Pictured: An image of the UFO, presumably taken from an airport employee’s phone
A total of 12 employees confirmed the sighting, which they say was a disc-shaped craft that was “clearly not cloudy.” Pictured: An image of the UFO, taken from an airport worker’s phone
Theoretical astrophysicist Alexey Bobrick, Chief Science Officer (CSO) of Applied Physics, first published his calculations describing the ideal shape of an Alcubierre propulsion vehicle in the peer-reviewed journal Classical and Quantum Gravity in 2021.
Bobrick theorized that the most energy efficient shape would be flat.
“Some warp-drive spacetime models suggest that the shape of the spacecraft and the resulting spacetime bending geometry could significantly reduce energy requirements,” Bobrick told the tech news site. The debriefing.
“Depending on the specific design of the warp drive,” said Bobrick, “the passenger craft may benefit from a saucer or spherical shape according to the laws of general relativity.”
The Applied Physics team noted that, like decades of classic UFOs, the 2006 Chicago O’Hare UFO was a traditional, iconic flat flying saucer: Witnesses described the completely silent object as anywhere from 22 to 88 feet in diametera size that could yield further energy benefits worthy of future research, the group suspects.
As first disclosed in the Chicago Tribune by columnist Jon Hilkevitch, the O’Hare UFO was “reported to the airline by as many as a dozen of its own employees,” and some of those same employees contacted airport air traffic control personnel.
The sound of that phone call — between a United supervisor, hoping the control tower had identified the mysterious disc-shaped craft hovering quietly over Concourse C of the United terminal — was later released by the FAA via FOIA.
Brandon Melcher, a physicist who studied cosmic “dark matter” at Syracuse University and contributed to the Applied Physics team’s analysis of the O’Hare case, noted that the UFO motions also matched those of an Alcubierre drive.
The Applied Physics team conducted the O’Hare study, they said, as a thought experiment and an opportunity to share their work for the group’s Advanced Propulsion Laboratory and the Physical Warp Drives project. Above the geometric shape of space-time during the warping of Alcubierre
“From the testimony, it seems reasonable to assert that a metallic object approximately 50 feet in diameter hovered approximately 1,500 feet above a passenger gate at an international airport within regulated airspace,” Melcher said.
“After some time, the object accelerated from 0 to about ~1,000-2,000 feet per second almost immediately.”
Compare that with the current Guinness World Record Holder for the fastest acceleration by a drone: 224 miles per hour, or just under 329 feet per second, less than a third of the top speed of the O’Hare UFO.
As the Applied Physics team pointed out, there is no known aircraft now and in 2007 that could rest in the air and then accelerate directly upward at thousands of feet per second.
Nevertheless, the physicists are the first to admit that their research cannot go beyond the category of mere informed speculation, because the evidence in the O’Hare UFO case is purely anecdotal.
“The only way to fully investigate these kinds of sightings is to collect more data,” Melcher noted, adding that “the degree of reluctance expressed by various witnesses should be cause for concern, and so we should remove dangerous stigma.’
“The pursuit of the truth should be the norm,” he said, “and not the suppression of facts and scientific debate.”
American Airlines planes, seen as passengers, wait at O’Hare International Airport in 2020
Melcher, Bobrick and the rest of the Applied Physics team undertook the O’Hare study, they said, as a thought experiment and an opportunity to advance their work for the group’s Advanced Propulsion Laboratory and its Physical Warp Drives projects.
But even the lack of recorded evidence in the O’Hara UFO case, they said, was in itself a sign supporting the feasibility of a warp drive-powered craft: specifically, the lack of a radar return, which would otherwise have been a hovering UFO. Verify. above hall C.
Ultimately, the FAA attributed the entire event to a bizarre “weather phenomenon,” an optical illusion created by a cloud of holes, citing the lack of radar data as the best evidence.
But the Applied Physics group is not so sure about that.
“A fascinating effect of warp bubbles is how they also explain the lack of radar signal,” Melcher told The Debrief. “Alcubierre’s warp drive also causes light rays approaching from behind to bounce off the bubble, but away from their original trajectory.”
In other words, virtually none of the airport’s radar bounced back to be collected as a “radar return,” giving the FAA the false impression that the radar beam was still traveling through the clear, empty sky.
“Light rays propagating from behind appear to diverge away from the center of the bubble, masking its detection,” Melcher said.
This would explain why there was no radar ping for the object reportedly hovering over the passenger gate at ORD. If the light is deflected from the object, there are no radar pings.’
The radar cross-section would be “incredibly small” for any device powered by an Alcubierre warp drive, based on Melcher’s analysis.
While all this reported behavior of the apparent flying disc bears a striking resemblance to the team’s understanding of how a warp-powered craft might behave, the lack of concrete evidence limits their ability to draw conclusions.
Moreover, since no human has ever come close to crafting an Alcubierre warp drive on their own, such a conclusion would raise far more questions than it answers.
“It is essential to note,” Melcher said, “that the proposal that the object seen (using a warp drive) during the Chicago O’Hare UAP (UFO) incident raises the question of its origin.”