Tuesday, June 16, 2026
Contact    |    RSS icon Twitter icon Facebook icon  
Unexplained Mysteries Support Us
You are viewing: Home > News > The UFO Phenomenon > News story
  
All ▾
Search Submit

The UFO Phenomenon

Just how difficult would it be to reverse-engineer alien technology?

By T.K. Randall
March 20, 2025
Dark secretive hangar at Area 51.
Image: AI-generated (Bing AI / Dall-E 3)
Is it perhaps naive to assume that we could figure out how a UFO worked even if we had possession of one?
In recent years we've heard multiple claims from government whistleblowers and insiders regarding alleged cover-ups of captured UFOs and reverse-engineered alien technology.

Assuming that the world's best minds really did have access to a UFO, however, how likely is it that they would be able to replicate its technology ?

An interesting recent article in Popular Mechanics looks into this very question by asking mechanical engineering experts what it would actually take to figure out how a UFO works.

"What you would try to do in such an advanced case is figure out what the function is that the original creators were trying to come up with here," Dr. Philip Voglewede of Marquette University in Wisconsin told the magazine.

"What is it supposed to do? Work backwards from that."

"I've been in tear-downs in which we encountered a part we'd never seen before and couldn't figure out what it was. Instead, we had to ask what we thought it was trying to do and to then analyze the physics of how it worked."
Engineering expert Dr Robert J. Stango echoed this approach by suggesting that if he was dealing with a completely unknown or exotic object like a UFO, the key would be to go back to basics.

"No matter how advanced or complicated a given process or object is, physics regulates everything," he said.

"Engineering is the applied variety of physics, so one would have to come to grips with the fundamental physics of a given operation. Without that, you're going nowhere."

Without the opportunity to speak to someone who might have worked on reverse-engineering a genuine piece of alien technology, however, it's difficult to know what doing this for real would be like.

Would it be the equivalent of a Neanderthal trying to figure out how a computer works or would we have at least some sort of fundamental understanding of how the device functioned ?

Unless such a scenario actually comes to pass, however, we may never truly know for sure.

Source: Popular Mechanics




Other news and articles
Our latest videos Visit us on YouTube
Our new book is out now!
Book cover

The Unexplained Mysteries
Book of Weird News

 AVAILABLE NOW 

Take a walk on the weird side with this compilation of some of the weirdest stories ever to grace the pages of a newspaper.

Click here to learn more

We need your help!
Patreon logo

Support us on Patreon

 BONUS CONTENT 

For less than the cost of a cup of coffee, you can gain access to a wide range of exclusive perks including our popular 'Lost Ghost Stories' series.

Click here to learn more

Top 10 trending mysteries
Recent news and articles