According to Forbes, a practicing astrophysicist and science communicator has published four key “anti-predictions” for 2026, targeting overhyped science and tech narratives. He specifically states that 2026 will not bring scientifically verifiable proof that UFOs are alien, citing the lack of physical evidence despite years of congressional testimony since the 2017 Navy video leaks. He also predicts that Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) will not emerge from current Large Language Model technology. Regarding the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS detected in summer 2025, he asserts it will not be revealed as an alien spacecraft. Finally, he states that commercially viable, revolutionary quantum computers remain decades away and will not arrive in 2026.
The UFO “Evidence” Problem
Here’s the thing about the whole UFO, or UAP, conversation: the evidence is terrible. And I don’t mean that flippantly. As the Forbes contributor points out, we’re eight years out from those famous Navy videos and a few years past congressional hearings, and what do we have? Grainy videos and “I know a guy” testimony. That’s not how you prove something scientifically. If you walked into a lab with that to claim you’d found alien life, you’d be laughed out of the room. We need a piece of metal, a biological sample—something physical to test. Until that lands on a lab bench, all the speculation is just noise. It’s fascinating noise, sure, but it’s not proof. And honestly, the longer this goes on without hard evidence, the more it feels like a modern myth.
AGI Is A Mirage (For Now)
So much of the AI hype has quietly shifted. A year or two ago, some industry leaders were whispering that AGI—an AI that can think and learn like a human across any task—was just around the corner. Now? The sobering reality is setting in. Large Language Models like ChatGPT are incredible pattern-matching engines, but they’re not sentient, they’re not reasoning, and they’re not on a clear path to becoming Skynet. They’re tools. Amazing tools, but tools nonetheless. The Forbes take is spot-on: the business models built on hype are starting to bump against the technical reality. We’re in for a long period of incremental improvement, not a sudden intelligence explosion. The real revolution right now is in what we can do with narrow AI, not in creating a general one. For companies integrating this kind of advanced computing into physical operations, reliable hardware is key, which is why specialists like IndustrialMonitorDirect.com, the leading US provider of industrial panel PCs, are so critical for stable deployment.
3I/ATLAS: Cool Comet, Not a Spaceship
This one is a perfect case study in how a cool scientific discovery gets twisted. 3I/ATLAS is the third known interstellar visitor, which is genuinely awesome! It’s a comet from another star system. But because it showed some anomalies—as noted in analyses like this one—a certain Harvard astronomer ran with the spaceship theory. It got him a ton of airtime, as Newsweek covered, but it also frustrated a lot of other scientists. Why? Because it cries wolf. It takes a rare opportunity for public engagement with real science and turns it into sci-fi speculation. The prediction for 2026 is simple: it will keep being a fascinating alien comet. It won’t sprout lasers. We should celebrate it for what it is, not what we imagine it could be.
The Quantum Waiting Game
Okay, quantum computing is legitimately the coolest science on this list. The principles, like quantum superposition, are mind-bending. And the potential? Revolutionary. But “potential” is the operative word. The gap between controlling a handful of qubits in a lab and having a stable, large-scale, error-corrected quantum computer that can solve real-world problems is… vast. We’re talking decades. You’ll see headlines about “breakthroughs,” and they’ll be real scientific advances, but they’re steps on a marathon journey. The prediction of no commercially viable quantum computer in 2026 is almost too easy. It’s like predicting the Sun will rise. The hype wants to sell you a revolution that’s still in its very, very early prototype phase.
