← Planet Tyrus
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- [00:02]
Podcast Advertiser
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- [00:16]
Avi Loeb
It could be a Trojan horse. It could be something that looks natural and another civilization planted in it. You know, a capsule that is technological
- [00:25]
Podcast Host
might be an awesome trade treaty. When is it going to be closest to us for like, better observation?
- [00:31]
Avi Loeb
You know, there is much more real estate out there than here on on planet Earth and I think we should just approach it like a blind date. You know, you never know who is on the other side.
- [00:48]
Podcast Host
What it is. This is a very special edition of Planet Tyrus. And yes, I did look off to the side to see what the name said because I just got out of the gym and I'm still kind of getting it together. But speaking of getting it together, this is a very special Planet Tyrus podcast because this is our first return guest and I could not be more excited because the great Avi Loeb is a theatrical astrophysicist. My old job at Harvard University, he is the Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science in Harvard's Department of Astronomy and serves as director of the Institute of Theory and Compilations at Harvard Smith and Sonian Center. Woo, that's a mouthful. Last time he was on, we were talking about this comment that is making its way with some really strange movements. Typically I'm saying a comment, but it could be something else. There's been, we'll say, theories that it is possibly a ufo. We've heard theories it could be something new and it could just be an anomaly. So he's back with us today to discuss his most recent findings as of March. And I'm extremely excited to find out what the hot take is on. Are we heading for another Cretaceous period type asteroid coming to Earth or is it just something cool? Either way, let's roll up our sleeves. Oh, got my color back. I'm feeling good now, so we're ready to do this. Got my color back. That's funny. Never lost it. Anyways, well, I guess if I was on the cnn, they take my blackness away, you know, by the way, just off the. What would I be if they. Mongolian. I'm gonna go with Mongolian. Yeah, I'm me. I'm me. Yeah, there's no blinders, but anyways. Focus, Tyrus, focus. All right, without further ado, the one, the only Avi Loeb. Hey, boss, how are you?
- [02:52]
Avi Loeb
I'm doing great. I was yesterday in Las Vegas having a podcast interview of four hours with AJ Gentile. And then I arrived back to Boston at midnight. And this morning, well, I first had another interview, this time from the other side of the globe, but about three eye atlas, the interest stellar object that we will discuss. But more Interestingly, there were two papers that appeared overnight about 3i ATL that indicate that it has another anomaly associated with it, and that has to do with isotopes. Okay, so let me explain what an isotope is.
- [03:35]
Podcast Host
Basically, it's a little critter, isn't it?
- [03:38]
Avi Loeb
Sorry?
- [03:38]
Podcast Host
It's a little critter, isn't it?
- [03:41]
Avi Loeb
No, no. I mean, everything, all matter that we know of, the ordinary matter, is made of atoms, okay? And they interact with each other based on how many electrons they have, okay? And these atoms are neutral. So the number of electrons they have that are negatively charged is balanced by the number of protons that they have that are positively charged. So, so an atom has a certain number of protons, and that's the way that, you know, it interacts with the other atoms and all the chemical reactions. The chemistry that we know about is atoms interacting with each other based on the number of electrons that each atom has, okay? Now, in addition to protons, nuclei of atoms could have neutrons. These are neutral particles that don't change the charge, but they change the nucleus. And so isotopes are atoms that have different number of neutrons, but are the same elements irrespective of the number of neutrons. So the thing about that is, you know, you can imagine, for example, the solar system being made of a cloud of gas that collapsed to make the sun and all the planets. This cloud of gas had the same abundances of elements across it and the same abundance of isotopes. And you can use those isotopes as a fingerprint of the solar system. But if you have a visitor from another star, all bets are off. You know, it could have different isotopes because those isotopes were produced in a different environment by a different massive star that exploded, or the material was exposed to cosmic rays differently than the solar system. Or you could imagine two neutron stars merging closer to that region than to the solar system. So all kinds of sources of different isotopes could be different. And it's just like, you know, finding a rock from your neighbor's yard. It may look different than the rocks that you have in your yard ordinarily. So the point is that for the first time, there were two reports this morning about isotopes of 3I atlas and they indicate that it's very different than solar system comets in terms of, for example, the isotopes of hydrogen, of nitrogen, of carbon, and. And they conclude that it came from a very Unusual environment that had very low abundance of heavy elements. That's one of the early stars that existed 10 to 12 billion years ago. So much older than the sun. And the problem with that is I just did a calculation based on the latest results, and it looks to me like it's untenable to associate reat atlas with an ancient star because there aren't many like that. You know, most of the stars from later, not very early, when there were no heavy elements, and it just doesn't work, you know, that those early stars that have very low abundance of heavy elements, they. They just don't have enough material to produce a population of objects like twere atlas. So here is another anomaly we don't understand. There are many others. You know, I summarize them. A few weeks ago, most recently since the last time we Talked, there were 40 images from the Hubble Space Telescope. High resolution, the best resolution we can have. What we did with a colleague of mine from Italy, Tony Scarmato, is there is a glow around the three atlas of scattered sunlight by probably dust particles. You remove that glow, that the circularly symmetric, spherically symmetric glow around 3 atlas. And. And what do you find when you remove that? You find three jets that are separated equally from each other by 120 degrees. Very symmetric system of jets. And, you know, the fundamental question is, are we looking at the system of thrusters, you know, technological thrusters, or could it be just a coincidence that there happen to be pockets of ice on the surface of an iceberg that are situated symmetrically? You know, these mini jets coming from the nucleus, they are not oriented in the direction of the sun. You might say, oh, maybe the sun selects a preferred direction because it illuminates and warms up those icebergs and produces these jets. But no, these are three jets pointing in other directions. Why is it so symmetric? I mean, it looks. I got actually a paper from a colleague that says, well, that's a way of maintaining stability of a spacecraft.
- [08:37]
Podcast Host
Right. Even I know that. I mean, anyone who watched Star wars knows that. I can tell by your level of excitement. Is it the. No matter what this turns out being, it's going to be something new that we have never encountered before. And I think that's the exciting thing. And all the possibilities, I think, are amazing and astounding.
- [09:01]
Avi Loeb
Yeah, exactly. The problem is that most of my colleagues who are calling themselves comet experts, they just want to interpret that in terms of what they already know. You can think of them as large language models or AI systems because the Quality of the answer you get from an AI system if you ask it something the depends on your training data set, right? If it's trained on limited data set, it doesn't give you good answers. And so these comet experts are, were trained over decades just to interpret icebergs or rocks that came from the solar system. And I just say, you know, they should be a little more imaginative because we know that there are space objects that we launched to space. Right. In addition to the natural rocks that are out there, there are technological objects that we launched. So I would advise those comet experts to expand their training data set because otherwise they would make mistakes. You know, like on January 2nd, 2025 last year, there was a near Earth object that was interpreted as a rock. So they, the Minor Planet center that catalogs these things, put it in a catalog saying it's a near Earth asteroid. And then a day later they realized that actually it moves along the path of the Tesla Roadster car that was launched by SpaceX in 2018. So they said, oh, sorry, it's not a rock, it's actually a car. But just think about it. If Elon Musk was not the most accomplished space entrepreneur since the Big bang, there could be someone else that sent a car to interstellar space. And the same comet experts would say, you know, it's just a rock of a type that we've never seen before. That's the kind of response you would get from a cave dweller that finds a cell phone.
- [10:53]
Podcast Host
Isn't it, isn't it one of those. And I think you could take it in everyday life when people have that like they have what they consider the constant, like it's either we've, and we've, we've always kind of at one point we believe that, you know, you could never fly human being, we can never fly a plane. Right, right. Horses were the way to go. And then somebody came up with something new and then, oh, a car is where we can't we'll ever do this. And it seems like once they have locked into almost a false sense of security and arrogance to where, oh no, no, no, I already know what it is because I know what an asteroid is. And instead of being saying why when did we as a people become so fascinated on knowing everything instead of explore this, don't even name it this. And it just, it's an anomaly. It could be a million things. The worst case scenario, we sent, we pissed off somebody and we sent them something that they didn't want to hear. So they sent a rocket Back to us, you know, with bad intentions or they loved our songs or whatever. It was the Beatles song. And they were flying all over here asking, hey, can we get a mixtape? We don't know what it is. And I yeah, and it also could just be a type of metal or rock completely foreign to any of our knowledge or technology. You know, all the Marvel movies, they have that special titanium and uranium. So the possibilities are endless.
- [12:18]
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- [12:47]
Avi Loeb
It could be a Trojan horse. It could be something that looked natural and another civilization planted in it. You know, a capsule that is technological.
- [12:55]
Podcast Host
Their story, their history.
- [12:57]
Avi Loeb
If we just dismiss it. I mean, that's the whole point about the Trojan horse, that from the outside it looked completely innocent. And so we should be obviously open to that kind of purpose. And I say all the Hollywood scriptwriters for science fiction, again, they have a limited data set that they were trained on, which is on Earth. You know, a visitor, alien visitor from another star probably, you know, is very different than we imagine in science fiction stories because the training data set includes other stars. You know, there is much more real estate out there than here on planet Earth. And I think we should just approach it like a blind date. You know, you never know who is on the other side. And it could be a friendly partner out there and it could be a serial killer, who knows? So if we do discover for sure, if we have a high resolution image that indicates an object must be technological and it's not produced by us, then I think immediately it would raise the question of how to defend the planet, because you don't know the identity. You have to collect as much data as possible to figure out the nature of this object. And at that point, I think we will start investing in space exploration huge amounts of money. It could actually bring us to a better place because instead of, you know, trying to kill other people or prevent others from killing us, you know, we would decide that we should all come together. We are all in the same boat.
- [14:21]
Podcast Host
You know, might be an awesome trade treaty. You know, I. My thing is in when is it going to be closest to us for, like, better observation. Are we looking at years?
- [14:37]
Avi Loeb
So Three Eye Atlas came closest to Earth on the 19th of December, but it wasn't very close. It actually passed the closest to the sun on the opposite side of the sun relative to Earth. Sort of like it was trying to avoid us in some sense. So it doesn't pose a risk to Earth. But in a week on March 16, it will pass closest to Jupiter within a distance where Jupiter's gravity dominates over the Sun's gravity. So that's a very special distance. And you know, in addition to the fact that it moves in the plane of the planets around the sun, which is an unusual coincidence, in addition to the fact that it's rotating in the direction of the sun, in addition to the fact that it came from the direction of the wow. Signal from 1977, an enigmatic radio signal that we've never figured out and maybe it was related to it. In addition to all of these things, it arrives close to Jupiter and we should see if it deploys any objects, any probes there.
- [15:36]
Podcast Host
Yeah, I was going to say that will be interesting to see how if the object is. Let's just for the sake of this one little conversation, let's say this would be our best theory or hypothesis to say it's technological. If we know Jupiter's gravity, how strong it is, if it's able to just kind of roll through it and the gravitate, the gravitational pull does not affect it, which then would support thrusters of some sort.
- [16:04]
Avi Loeb
You know, there are, there are various ways of inferring that an object is technological. I'm often asked, how would you know? Well, it's very clear. If the object, for example, produces its own light, if it has artificial light, in principle, we can detect it at very large distances. You know, I once did a calculation that with the Hubble Space Telescope, we should be able to detect a city like Tokyo all the way to where Pluto is, you know, the most distant, one of the most distant objects that we can see. And so if, if the object has artificial light, so you can tell the difference between reflected sunlight from the surface of the object and artificial light. Because if it's like a light bulb, it gets brighter when it approaches us more slowly than if it's just reflecting sunlight. Because when it reflects sunlight, it depends on how much illumination is falling on its surface. So it brightens up as it approaches us more rapidly than a case of a light bulb approaching us. In addition to that, if we have a high resolution image of an Object, we can tell if it has buttons on the surface, we can definitely say whether it's a rock or not. And unfortunately, you know, there was the Juno spacecraft around Jupiter that could have intercepted, it could have crashed into it if it had the initial amount of fuel that it started with. But the team that operates it told me that unfortunately they used most of the fuel. And representative Anna Paulina Luna wrote a letter to NASA. She's a great supporter of the science and encourage them to observe as much as possible through AI, ATLAS and even in the radio. They have a radio antenna on Juno and we should see if they detect anything. But altogether, I think it raises important questions about the fact that we are not ready because we didn't have an interceptor mission that we can deploy so that we can come close to it, get a high resolution image. In the future we should plan to have such a spacecraft. And as long as we get the alert early enough from the Rubin Observatory in Chile, for example, we would do much better. There would be dozens of new interstellar objects, dating partners in the coming decade. And we should learn as much as possible about them with a Rubin Observatory first and then after that, you know, perhaps sending a spacecraft that will come close to their path.
- [18:41]
Podcast Host
You know, I was, as we were talking, I was thinking about trying to category this or to name this without all the information. And as far as a life being just on our planet, you take a jellyfish compared to a human being. Now a jellyfish, some species are basically immortal. They just reproduce themselves over and over again. They don't have a brain, they don't have lungs, they don't have heart. They are just a living, a completely. And that's just on our planet. That's just this. For all we know, this entire thing could be a living thing that has learned to feed off the energy of the sun. Energy is the fuel of food and how it feeds off planet. I mean we just, it's exciting to think about just based off what we have here on this planet as far as life diversity. And we're still finding new things all the time. Everything we think we know, I mean we thought dinosaurs had scales, turns out they were just big ass seagulls. You know, it's like, it's just, it's exciting.
- [19:44]
Avi Loeb
Yeah. And we don't know when, you know, intelligent technological life really started because we see enormous constructions in the form of the pyramids. So we don't know exactly when things started.
- [19:57]
Podcast Host
Yeah, that in itself, not to cut you off, but whenever I hear someone talk about how man built the pyramids or these other Inca temples or a lot of these temples all around the world. We still have yet to duplicate it. We can't cut edges like that. We can't move things like that. And I feel at some point we have to say, I think it's safe to say there was some help because we don't. That's quite possible. We've been on this planet, you know, we're relatively babies, we're in an infantile stage on this planet. We've had five mass extinctions and you know, will we be six or not? Is this six? But the thing is, is like, I just feel like it's incredibly ignorant to cast theories or dispersions on this thing, right? It's just too early and we do not know.
- [20:44]
Avi Loeb
And also you just look at the direction we're heading, you know, there could be a lot of self inflicted wounds that will kill us, right? Like for example, the accelerated development of AI could, who, who knows what it will bring to, to society. And another civilization like ours could have, you know, basically went extinct as a result of self inflicted wounds maybe hundreds of millions of years ago. You know, that's just 5% of the history of Earth. We wouldn't even know about it. And everything was potentially buried through geological activities. We don't know by the way, if, if in the future we disappear from the surface of Earth, there would be nobody that would mourn us, you know, like nobody cares that we, it would
- [21:32]
Podcast Host
just be next, next, next organism up.
- [21:36]
Avi Loeb
And the only way for us to produce monuments that would remind the historians of the Milky Way galaxy that we existed. You know, the only way for us to do that is to become an interstellar species, to send a spacecraft that carries our descendants. You know, and it's possible that with AI assisted medicine extend the human life to very long journeys. You know, right now we are capped at 100 years or so. But maybe in the future, you know, you could put human pilots with augmented instrumentation into their bodies that will last for millions or billions of years. And in that case, you know, we should send a space platform. Now how would we be inspired to do that? And let's say to allocate a fraction of the military budgets to space exploration. You know, that's a huge amount of money by the way. It's $2.4 trillion a year that we invest in either killing other people or protecting us from others, killing, attempting to kill US. And the US spends about a trillion dollars in 2026 in the defense budget. So if we were to decide to allocate similar funds to space exploration. I believe that within this century we can put the best architects, the best engineers, the best scientists on such a mission and have a by the end of the century. And this could potentially bring us to interstellar space and potentially also help us be remembered in the long term, let's say billions of years from now, you know, in a billion years the sun would brighten up and basically evaporate all of the oceans, all of the liquid water on the surface of Earth. The Earth will become a desert just like Mars. We cannot stay here for very long. It's only 20% of the age of the Earth that we have left for it to be habitable. So we should have a plan B and instead what we do is fight each other, engage in conflicts, which is very narrow minded
- [23:46]
Podcast Host
when you look at life on this planet. It's hard to think that we're the only species that thinks above the daily survival instincts, you know, and that in itself makes you go, how did that come about? What makes us so different? You don't ever see your dog looking out the window going, I wonder if we're ever gonna get to the moon. You know, like they just, it's, it's an instinctual waste of time because they're there for, you know what I'm saying? They're there for a certain. We think beyond, we have a much, you know, and then people, you can bring religion to it or whatever, but in terms of science, it feels like ourselves are possibly engineered.
- [24:28]
Avi Loeb
Yeah and that could have been an interstellar gardener, someone else that put us here. And you know, we tend to think the dinosaurs were killed by a giant asteroid that could have been a missile 66 million years ago. But perhaps whoever, you know, put life on Earth was disappointed by the outcome of the dinosaurs were relatively dumb animals roaming around and controlling everything. So they sent sent an asteroid in the direction of Earth to reboot the
- [24:54]
Podcast Host
system or easier because you're not going to be eaten by a T. Rex or a raptor or trampled by a triceratop. But then it kind of reboot and then other animals, more controllable, got their shot and a little naked ape showed up and started eating everybody.
- [25:11]
Avi Loeb
The essay that I wrote on my flight back to Boston last night started by quoting Immanuel Kant. He was a philosopher, German philosopher. And he said that we will likely understand the cosmos the most, the movement of matter and radiation, let's say within the cosmos from simple laws of physics before we understand the origin of life. And I think this is very likely to be true because as you just pointed out, we are quite ignorant about how things started here on Earth. I mean, a lot of scientists think that we started from a soup of chemicals. But at the same time, when you tell those scientists, okay, let's assume that we started from a soup of chemicals, and we know about billions of Earth sun analogs in the Milky Way galaxy alone. So you could have had similar soups of chemicals on those planets. And that means that we are not special or unique because you would get this, a similar outcome from the same soup, right? And then you tell them, okay, so let's search for those intelligent beings. And what you would hear from astronomers, the mainstream of the astronomy community, they would say, no, no, no, no, no. This is too speculative to imagine something as good as us out there. We are probably at the top of the food chain, and therefore we should search for microbes. And my response to that is, you know, when you go on a blind date, of course, the most common daters, the most common dating partner that you will find are, you know, mediocre people. Why should you aim low? Why should you go to find microbes, lower life forms, rather than aim high and try to find a being that is more intelligent than you are? When I dated my wife, I was really delighted to find someone more intelligent or as intelligent. And so in a way, you know, it's a way for us to learn something new. If we were to invest right now, you know, the funds of $10 billion are allocated by the astronomy community, the search for microbes. And I say, let's invest billions of dollars in the search for technological signatures. Why not hedge our bets, you know?
- [27:30]
Podcast Host
Do you think a lot of the pushback is almost a fear? Because I would never. And again, I'm not a scientist, I would never pretend to be one. But it just feels, with all due respect, dumb to say we're the top of the food chain here. We are. But we needed weapons and superior intellect and fire to do these things. And we've had a good run over a lesser species. But let's just say all. Let's just say all the galaxies have the same soup, right? But let's say one soup started 10 billion years ago.
- [28:12]
Avi Loeb
Exactly.
- [28:13]
Podcast Host
So the beings that we are related to, maybe they're just forms of energy now, you know, like, we just. It's embarrassing. It's embarrassing to be like, we're top of the food chain. That's some. But that's like in every movie, you know, like, they always Say shit. And then they go on and on, but we're the only one. And then lo and behold, they're standing there at the end going, oh, I had no idea.
- [28:34]
Avi Loeb
If we keep insisting on that, we will remain ignorant to things that are more intelligent than we are. Now. My biggest fear, you know, I was asked by Natasha Zuves, a journalist from News Nation. She. She said, you know, she's worried about the encounter with intelligent beings, and should we be worried about the risks from that? And I said, no, I mean, I'm optimistic that we could learn from them because there is an opportunity for us to get better. So she asked me, what are you worried about when you go to bed in that case? And I said, I'm worried about people getting even dumber now because of the addiction to artificial intelligence agents, you know?
- [29:25]
Podcast Host
Yeah, Chat. BTG does all the thinking for you.
- [29:28]
Avi Loeb
Exactly. It's just like having.
- [29:30]
Podcast Host
I've never used any of that, and I'm very proud of it that I've never, ever done it.
- [29:34]
Avi Loeb
Me too. But the point is, you know, if you have public transportation, you. Many people decide not to walk. And when technology can replace you, you lose muscle. And the brain is a very similar thing. Now AI systems can feed you with junk food, intellectual food. And I was really struck because a few months ago, a number of people decided to make money by creating fake YouTube channels with videos speaking in my voice, looking like me. Oh, yeah, and Facebook.
- [30:09]
Podcast Host
I deal with that.
- [30:09]
Avi Loeb
Old. I pretty much ignored it until an old lady that is 82 years old came to my office at Harvard, and she said, my name is Abby Rockefeller. I'm the daughter of David Rockefeller. She's 82 years old. And she said that I saw one of your videos, and I was really delighted because I agreed with many things you said. And then I sent it to all my friends and they told me that this was fake. And at that point, I decided to create my own YouTube channel, because the only way I can fight false content generated by AI is by creating authentic content that I approve of and then basically telling the YouTube authorities to remove that fake. And I think it's a big problem of the. The future. You'll get a lot of nonsense, a lot of misinformation that can be easily manufactured. It's just like junk food, you know, it can be easily manufactured, being fed to the public because it tastes good, you know, just like a lot of sugar. It tastes good, but then it's not good for your mental health. And so that's the thing. I lose sleep about, and if we find another, you know, some package from another civilization in our backyard, to me, that's a recipe for our salvation because we would realize we have a sibling that is far more accomplished than we are, that could serve as a role model for us.
- [31:31]
Podcast Host
Isn't that where our, our instincts kind of betray us because we're such an aggressive species, you know?
- [31:42]
Avi Loeb
Right.
- [31:42]
Podcast Host
But I mean, when you look at, for example, like I, I watch a lot of stuff on chimpanzee society, right. Because I feel like that kind of echoes. I learn more about people watching those behaviors because they're unbridled, they're, they don't, they don't mask, you know, but in, in with them. Once one leaves the tribe, he leaves the, the family group goes to another one. The next time those two groups have, they will murder each other.
- [32:13]
Avi Loeb
Yes.
- [32:13]
Podcast Host
Over a tree with fruit. Yeah.
- [32:16]
Avi Loeb
So by the way, it's, it's because of zero sum competition. You know, you have a certain amount of resources, and if, if someone takes that, the other one does not have access to it.
- [32:28]
Podcast Host
Right.
- [32:29]
Avi Loeb
And the same is true about, you know, territories in Ukraine. If Putin gets it, then the Ukrainians don't have it. So we are used to those fights of zero sum games, you know, where the total is present. But the point is, that's because we were restricted to environments that nature gives us. Okay? Like the amount of land, like the amount, the number of bananas.
- [32:53]
Podcast Host
We're at Earth's. We have a lease with Earth. And then eventually, because Earth isn't very friendly to life. Earth is not a big fan of life.
- [33:02]
Avi Loeb
The point is, there is much more real estate beyond Earth.
- [33:05]
Podcast Host
Yes.
- [33:05]
Avi Loeb
And once you realize, and also, you know, with science, you can make things far more abundant than naturally. You know, you don't need to let nature make food for you. You can grow it in ways that produce much more and even more than you need. You can have the food delivered to your front door. You don't need to fight for it. So the point is, once you recognize that it's not a zero sum game, that, for example, with science you can have an infinite sum game where everyone benefits, you know, or if you go beyond Earth, you, you have a huge amount of space where you can find resources much more than here on Earth. When you engage in those infinite sum games, you know, then, then it makes sense for us to, to just work together rather than fight. So my hope is that we will see the light because otherwise we deserve to perish on this planet because we are not intelligent enough to recognize that there is much more beyond that or not.
- [34:08]
Podcast Host
We don't understand what our responsibility is as being the gatekeeper for Earth because we are in our own arrogance and our own greedy. When you know everything, you can't learn anymore and you are of no use to a higher being. Let's just or even let's split the diff. Let's say we're both on the same playing field. Everyone we both got to where we are around the same time. We look a little different because of environments, weather or whatever. But if our reaction is missiles and attack off jump, then there is no benefit to interact with us. And I and again and like I said, I feel like if you again, when I look at our history of this on this planet, when I look at our artifacts and ancient it seems very based on location and how places that there was no Internet, there was no cell phones, there was no, not even a can with a string. There was very simple mirrored all over the thing. I think maybe at one point we were visited.
- [35:08]
Avi Loeb
Yes.
- [35:09]
Podcast Host
And they left for a reason. And maybe now they're coming back to just drive by to see are they still attacking and eating each other. They are. So we're not. We'll just keep driving. They're not ready yet.
- [35:23]
Avi Loeb
There is an interesting question of how to find any relics from a more advanced civilization before us. And of course, if it happened, you know, hundreds of millions of years ago, much of the material was buried now because the surface of the earth was mixed with the interior over these timescales by geological processes. However, if they created any satellites, for example, you know, if the dinosaurs were to produce satellites that are in geosynchronous orbits, those satellites would still be around. You could find them because there is no friction on air that will bring them down.
- [36:01]
Podcast Host
Right.
- [36:01]
Avi Loeb
Even if the Roman Empire built, you know, would launch communication satellites out to 1200 kilometers altitude, those would start burning in the Earth's atmosphere. Just now we would see Roman satellites falling down. Instead of digging the ruins to find the Roman relics, you know, they could come from the sky. We don't see Roman satellites. They never had that. So my point is it's possible that people talk about the unidentified anomalous phenomena. Former President Obama discussed. It said aliens are real a month ago and President Trump responded to that and directed the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies to release any related information that should not be classified for national security purposes. It's possible that these unidentified anomalous phenomena are related to to a previous civilization that existed on Earth. And the only relics from it are still flying around the Earth. You know, they're not in archaeological digs, they are actually around here. But it's also possible that we're being visited. And as you say, whoever visits us is just monitoring the situation. It's just like putting, you know, monitors in a baby room. You just want to see what's going on with the baby without doing anything. And until, until something happens that you don't really want to happen. So at that point we'll hear from them. So and, and also you could have, you know, spacecraft in some parking spot in the outer solar system. We cannot detect objects of the size of starship, you know, the biggest rocket that we built beyond 10 times the Earth sun separation. So there could be a lot of objects out there that we don't detect with existing telescopes. And we just are, as you say, we are ignorant. And I think the best way forward is to be open to the possibility that we are not at the top of the food chain. We are being potentially visited. Let's just look out, let's invest billions of dollars in the search. Let's figure out what these uap, the unidentified anomalous phenomena are. If the US government has in fact information, it should share it with scientists like myself. I would be delighted to help in figuring out the implications. Instead, you know, I don't know if they have anything, but if they do, they are hiding it or delivered it to corporations. And it doesn't look like, you know, the, the top scientists are engaged in, in trying to interpret it.
- [38:46]
Podcast Host
Let me hypothetical question. How do you think it would change the general public's worldview if, let's say this thing turns out being a ship of some sort and a visitor or a communication or even a radio signal goes back and forth. Do you think that would change? Because I always hear like the public can't handle it. You know, it would be hysteria. I don't think, I don't think, I don't think they're even. I'll be honest with you. I think we have become so self absorbed, I don't think it would make the number one pay. I don't think it would lie. I think you and I would be doing cartwheels going, can we send a, how do we get a message, you know, like, can I get a selfie, you know, like please take me to your leader.
- [39:30]
Avi Loeb
Like, by the way, most people will continue their routines until it becomes a big, until there is a real danger, you know, to their daily routines. Until then, they would say we should focus on what happens here on Earth, you know, why should we care about it? You know, I would go even farther that if. If I'm part of a team that discovers some alien technology near Earth, you know, and the Nobel committee decides to award the Nobel Prize for this discovery, I would play the Bob Dylan card. I would just not waste my time on cocktail parties in Sweden. Who cares about it?
- [40:09]
Podcast Host
Right.
- [40:10]
Avi Loeb
Because this is extremely important for our future. It could be inspirational for us in terms of guiding us what to do in order to survive. Because, you know, there must be a lot of mediocre civilizations out there that didn't really leave their plan or didn't make it. Didn't make it. And. But, but the most accomplished ones are the ones that managed to reach us. You know, the. And. And those are the ones we want to learn from. And so I. I would dedicate the rest of my life to that study of. Of what we can learn from them. And I don't care what other humans, you know, really make of it. I think it will change everything. It will change the perception of our place in the universe, you know, And I had a group of theologians visit me at Harvard, and they asked what would be the implications to my. To their religious beliefs if we find extraterrestrials? And. And I said, you know, I have two daughters, and when the second one was born, it didn't take away any of the love that I have to the first one. So imagining that God is a parent that can attend only to one child is very limiting.
- [41:19]
Podcast Host
Yes.
- [41:19]
Avi Loeb
And it's quite likely that there are things like us near other stars. We should get used to it. We might get jealous at siblings that are far more accomplished than we are, but that's okay. And I don't think it will have a huge impact on the religious beliefs.
- [41:35]
Podcast Host
No, because it shouldn't. Because if, you know, even when the Bible's vague when it says made in his image, well, we don't know what his image is. His image could be a lot of different things. You know what I mean? Yeah. You know?
- [41:45]
Avi Loeb
Yeah. We make AI systems in our image, by the way.
- [41:49]
Podcast Host
We do. And we make. Depending on your skin tone, your Jesus is usually your skin tone color. So we're kind of known like, you make everything more comfortable. And to understand that maybe. And just here's a perfect example. If God created all things, then there's a good chance the octopus is in his image too, and the llama, you know, so we don't. That. The only thing would be awkward, I think, is if. Let's say an advanced species came like of the dodo and they said, hey, our ancestors, we had them, we left a gift for you on the island. These are very special and they can cure their feathers. Where are they? And we're like, we ate them, you know, and then talks break down and they're like, you know, well, we're taking our ball and going home, you know, you just don't know.
- [42:35]
Avi Loeb
By the way, we tend to think that a higher intelligence is a guarantee for survival. That's not obvious. No, I think a guarantee for survival is having the right principles to guide you. You may be not as intelligent, but you, instead of investing in developing atomic weapons to kill other people, you invest in cooperation and you know, in ways of survival by, by leaving your planet and things like that. You know, it may well be that the most, the longest lived life forms are crocodiles living on exoplanets, horseshoe crabs.
- [43:09]
Podcast Host
Got it figured out. I mean, they've seen them all of us come and go because they can
- [43:14]
Avi Loeb
survive under harsh circumstances. And you know, or, you know, there are all these animals that can survive even an atomic explosion, you know, like cockroaches. And maybe cockroaches are this in a way that they are the fittest to survive. And therefore whatever survive is not necessarily the most intelligent, you know, because we as intelligent beings, you know, we're guided by, as you, as you said, by false narratives. And that could bring our doom, you know, because we will develop the means for our own destruction. And the nearest one on the horizon right now is AI And I'm worried more about AI affecting the human brain than about anything else.
- [43:54]
Podcast Host
Yes. Because we just become piles of goo. You know, we're sitting in a chair watching a screen, not moving. You know, everything you do, everything you do is, is there's, you don't have. Everything's here. Here. There was a. I think there was a. There was a Disney, I think it was Pixar and Disney. Wall E, I think was the, it was one of my kids favorite thing. But in that the human race, we traveled, we burnt up Earth and everybody was obese, floating in a chair and they couldn't even get out of it. And eventually they had to. When they came back to the planet and them getting out of their chairs, everyone was falling, rolling around. They didn't know what to do. They had no strength. And so it's not out of the realm of, of possibilities that we could, that could be a route for us. But here's the thing. And again, I'm on This extinction kick because I've been just everything dinosaur lately in terms of there's a lot of research out there and documentaries and stuff. But in all of our extinctions, the top being got wiped out. The reptiles ruled, they got wiped out. Dinosaurs got their shot, then the dinosaurs got wiped out. Mammals got their shot, then we showed up. All the large mammals are pretty much gone, with a few small exceptions. You have what's last of rhinos and elephants and a few whales. But if it were to happen again, it would be us out and then what would be next.
- [45:19]
Avi Loeb
By the way, it reminds me that there was a study of a group of chimpanzees and there was always the alpha male, the leader of the group. And obviously his main objective was to have as many offsprings as possible. So he was mating with, with the women and fighting the other men so that he can get access to the females among the chimpanzees. And because of that, because he was fighting, he lost a lot of precious time. At the same time there was one of the chimpanzees that was always in the background, not very prominent, who didn't fight with anyone and then had more time with the females. And so it turned out that he won in the genetic pool. He had more descendants as a result of having more time. So as you say, whoever is at the top may actually get kicked around and not accomplish longevity or will not accomplish the task that this leader, individual
- [46:30]
Podcast Host
achievement was more important than the overall agenda. Whereas you know, he could have formed bonds with lesser males and he could have been in power longer, which we see a lot happens in the larger tribes where males form. The alpha male has his two right hand guys and you know, they, they all, they all take shares of keeping everybody in line and that's just, and you want to see those things. But again, when you're the, when you're focused on yourself, you miss the big picture. And I think maybe that's what we're kind of, we're so focused on our own bullshit that we're not seeing what could potentially be a, a civilization changing opportunity or it could be a rap. But I mean either way we should be looking at it with, with, not with no blinders on. We should be accepting every possibility and maybe planning for worst case, best case, you know, things like that. But we're not, we're not doing any of that.
- [47:28]
Avi Loeb
You know, we definitely need a wake up call. There is no doubt about it. And my hope is the wake up call will come from us recognizing some alien Visitation. And of course, the way that the dogmatists, those that believe that everything in the sky is rocks, the way that they approach it is to say everything in the sky is rocks. We shouldn't even look for anything other than rocks. And when you mention in a scientific paper that the possibility that we might detect technological equipment, they immediately bring it down, cut it out. I had an editor that was basically insisting that I remove any sentence that has to do with alien technological equipment. And, and he was fighting on it. And, and my point is that if you don't allow yourself the opportunity to learn something new, if you block, you put blinders, as you say. This is very unfortunate because you are securing your ignorance. It's sort of like the Church putting Galileo Galilei in house arrest when he looked through his telescope and saw moons moving around Jupiter. So he said, not everything is revolving around the earth. And then 350 years later, in 1992, the Vatican admitted that Galileo was right. That was two decades after we arrived to the moon and it was a bit too late.
- [48:51]
Podcast Host
Are you going to get an email from Galileo from the other side saying, hey, thanks, you know?
- [48:55]
Avi Loeb
Yeah, he was dead for 350 years.
- [48:58]
Podcast Host
Yeah.
- [48:59]
Avi Loeb
And it's very embarrassing for an institution like the Vatican to go through that. And the way to avoid it is to be open minded. So you might say, okay, well now we have science and scientists should be open minded. That's not the case.
- [49:12]
Podcast Host
No. When did that happen? When did scientists become authoritarians and, and the taking the easy way out and just going with whatever gets them funded? I guess.
- [49:23]
Avi Loeb
Yeah. So it has several roots. The worst among the roots of this problem is that in order to get stature, honors, awards and grants, you basically have to dance to the tunes of selection committees. And so what you're trying to do is satisfy a lot of other people so that there is sort of this pressure on you, basically going along the beaten path and doing whatever everyone else is doing. Because otherwise if you go outside of that, they would say, oh no, that's too risky, we don't approve that. And so that's one aspect of it. The second is that most scientists, just like any other person, you know that they are mediocre, they don't have imagination. So then they see it as a personal attack on them if they have missed something, question someone.
- [50:11]
Podcast Host
Yeah.
- [50:12]
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- [50:41]
Avi Loeb
you tell a person who is specialized in studying rocks in the sky, if you tell them, oh, these anomalies may indicate the technological object, they would feel it as a personal attack because you're basically telling them you're missing something important. Despite the fact that you think of yourself as an expert, you are really not getting the point that this is something else and they feel under threat and therefore they want to dismiss any opportunity to learn more. So they would argue not to fund any research related to that. They would argue that the data is incorrect or they would argue the data means. I'll give you an example. When 3 Atlas showed a lot of nickel around it with without any iron. This is an anomaly because all the objects in the sky that we looked at before had iron and nickel with similar amounts because both nickel and iron are produced by exploding stars. The only place where you don't find it is in industrial production of nickel alloys where we remove the iron in order to make the material stronger for aerospace applications. So what did the writers, the authors of this paper that reported about the data said? They said, oh, we know that in our industries we produce nickel alloys with very little iron through some chemical pathway called the carbonyl pathway. So maybe nature itself has the same pathway. They didn't say, oh, maybe it's an indicator for technological origin. They said, maybe nature has the same pathways. You can always basically bend any data in the direction that would satisfy you because that is consistent with your past knowledge. But my point is, just like in the case with Galileo, once you have a lot of data, it will be impossible for even the experts to shove it under the carpet of traditional thinking.
- [52:35]
Podcast Host
So do you.
- [52:35]
Avi Loeb
And that's.
- [52:36]
Podcast Host
Do you think with what's coming up here at the end of the month when it's closest to the gravitational pull, that we'll get a much better look at what's going on up there? And I'm sure it would still be, oh, it's fine. It's the people who have decided they already know what it is. I don't think it will move the needle. But in terms of you, that will give. Do you think that will give you more of a. Obviously it's not going to give you the whole answer, but it's going to, it's going to shed more light on some of the theories. You can maybe cross some things out potentially.
- [53:08]
Avi Loeb
Well, if it shows an anomaly, then definitely it would be. If it shows the behavior that is not what we expect, then definitely that would be a great hint about the nature of the object. But most likely this object will remain ambiguous because we never intercepted its path, we never got a close look of it. And the lesson to learn is that for future objects, we should do a better job. And rather than assume in advance what they are, we should study them to learn something new. Because a lot of things. I listed 18 anomalies, not counting the isotope measurements of this morning. There were lots of things we don't understand. And the problem about, you know, editors and, and reviewers of scientific papers is that they are not willing to attend to the anomalies. They just ignore them. So the same is true with NASA officials. They would say it's a comet, but then they would not explain the unusual behavior of the comet. Why is this comet coming in the plane of the planets around the sun? Why does it have an anti tail pointed at the sun rather than away from the sun the way comets do? Why does it have three jets that are symmetrically separated from each other around the nucleus? Why does it have nickel without iron? Why, why does it shed the methane, which is an organic molecule, after it passed closest to the sun? Is there life on it? You know, we saw organic molecules coming from it. Is it some kind of an interstellar gardener trying to seed life in the solar system as a result of its passage? Lots of interesting questions that I listed. But when the NASA officials talk about it, they don't address the anomalies. They just make a statement as if they educate the public. This is what it is and you should just believe that. And frankly, that's not very believable. And the public doesn't necessarily follow that. So my hope is we can learn the lesson of being more sincere when objects are unusual in the future. And hopefully we'll find many more of them and intercept them. And believe me, if you see a high resolution image of an object that has buttons on it, nobody would argue that it's a rock. Just a few days ago, I wrote an essay and made a YouTube video that became viral. Because the Curiosity rover that was going across the surface of Mars, it took images. It has images on from its cameras. And in one of the landscapes that it imaged, you can see a cylinder with a top, an end that is flat, so it looks like a cylindrical Object. Object with a flat end. And it just looks like an artificial object. No doubt about it. You look at the environment, it's full of rocks and sand and regolith. But this thing sticks out. It's partly embedded in the regolith and it sticks out as a cylinder with a flat end. It's clearly looking like an artificial object. And the fundamental question is whether this object came from the Curiosity rover or from its approach or some other human made object or maybe it's something else now, right? This was imaged in 2022 and it's. You just look at my essay and you will see the image definitely shows something that looks artificial, not natural. And NASA didn't even comment on that. They didn't make any. They just ignored it. And my point is, right now this rover is 8 kilometers away and with its maximum speed of 160 meters per hour, it can go back to that site within a couple of days and check what this thing is. Don't you think that should be a high priority for NASA to. I would think back and check what this thing is.
- [57:15]
Podcast Host
Should be a high priority for our military as well. This is, I mean, this is. Again, this is learnable data. Now listen, I'm going to ask it now after it passes through, will you come back on and we talk about it?
- [57:30]
Avi Loeb
Oh, definitely.
- [57:31]
Podcast Host
You guys heard it. Lock it in. Lock it in, Harry. Now before I let you go, where can everyone find this YouTube channel? Because literally as soon as I get off this, I'm going to go watch your YouTube stuff. I'm gonna go down the rabbit hole that is Loeb. And I'm gonna be super prepared. And I'm also gonna challenge my B team to have some, some questions and stuff because you know what, I'm, I've been on this planet half a century, so I guess I'm old, you know, I'm old school. I'm curious to think what, what the younger generation, if they're even interested in this.
- [58:05]
Avi Loeb
And oh yeah, I, I get much more response from younger people. That's my hope, actually, because I gave up on.
- [58:11]
Podcast Host
No, no, no offense, I. Listen, it's my peer group, by generation X, we just know everything, but we don't know.
- [58:17]
Avi Loeb
You know, my hope is that, you know, these. I, I got the emails from lots of parents who told me that their kids now want to become scientists after hearing me and.
- [58:27]
Podcast Host
Beautiful thing, because you know what? I would rather my child come to me and say, daddy, I want to be a scientist one day than saying, I'm going To be an influencer, you know, like that. That's, you know, that's the last thing I want to hear because.
- [58:39]
Avi Loeb
Exactly. So. So my hope is that the future of science will be much better than the past because young people with not without any prejudice would enter it with an open mind, you know, and without contaminating the way they approach it by, you know, not taking risks, by being attached to their ego and so forth. That's my hope. And in terms of my YouTube video link and. And you can just look for avi-loeb.medium.com that's where my essays are. And at the end of each essay, I give the links for all my social media that I didn't have a month ago. I just started producing it in order to fight false content, you know, fake content produced by AI.
- [59:28]
Podcast Host
I have to deal with that a lot on.
- [59:29]
Avi Loeb
I hope you will enjoy it because the cylinder on Mars is becoming viral right now.
- [59:35]
Podcast Host
Yes. And it should. And we should be asking questions. And I think that's worst case scenario with this whole situation is I think it's going to make science sexy again. You know, it's going to be, you know, everybody wanted to be, you know, suddenly being an actor isn't what it is anymore. And being entertainment, being a scientist again, I think, I hope it inspires people, it inspires me. I'm gonna learn as much as I can because it's just.
- [60:00]
Avi Loeb
By the way, it also inspires artists.
- [60:02]
Podcast Host
Yeah.
- [60:02]
Avi Loeb
Because you can see next to me.
- [60:04]
Podcast Host
Yeah. Oh, what is that? You got some new stuff in there.
- [60:07]
Avi Loeb
Yeah, so that's from an artist in Florida who sent it to me a few weeks ago. It basically, I mean, it was so heavy and big, bigger than me, I had to carry it to my office. And it says, history awaits. Basically, that was inspired by my work. So hopefully, if we find something, it will make history. And I have two bronze sculptures of Galileo Galilei in another office that I have at Harvard that were donated by an artist, Greg Wyatt, and he also made the 51 watercolors that he donated. And there is a singer called Ollie Swan from the UK that wrote a song called the Aliens Are Real that he sent me, and a poet that sent me a book that was inspired by my work from New Zealand, the Alan Wagstaff. And you know, and actually there is a new painting just above History Awaits. And the name of that one is, it's a freaking spaceship with an exclamation mark. And that was sent to me by a different artist, Denning. And So somehow my work is inspiring to artists.
- [61:20]
Podcast Host
It's inspiring to me, myself. It has given me something else to focus on. It has given us something interesting to talk about besides of who you're voting for, you know, so. And it's an exciting time, and I cannot wait to. To see some of this data come back because the thrusters thing, I feel, is going to be really hard to say. It's just a glacier. I. I just feel like that's going to be a really tough, tough sell, especially if it is little impact with the. With the gravitational pull. So I'm, I'm excited to see it, to talk about that, and I think I'll, I'll set up. I think it's great that you're inspiring. Not just artists, young people, old people like myself. People are having conversations again. And I think it also is nice to think about things that might be greater than yourself again, that you are not the center of the universe, no
- [62:17]
Avi Loeb
matter how much you want to be. That was the traditional narrative of religions thinking that there are things bigger than us.
- [62:24]
Podcast Host
Yes.
- [62:25]
Avi Loeb
I get it just from being embedded in nature. Every morning I jog three miles before sunrise and I enjoy the company of ducks, rabbits, you know, wild turkeys and birds and.
- [62:39]
Podcast Host
Yeah, I'm with you there. They're the best company because they never have the best boring conversations.
- [62:44]
Avi Loeb
Exactly. And they're not motivated by ego like my colleagues in academia. I really enjoy that. And so there is something bigger than us. We just need to appreciate it.
- [62:54]
Podcast Host
Yes.
- [62:54]
Avi Loeb
And learn from it. And presumably, if we allow that, we. We will find it. And so, you know, when Enrico Fermi asked, where is everybody? That's. That's a question that every lonely person asks. And what you tell them is, you know, you should. You should seek others. You. You can't expect. You are not that attractive. Don't be so presumptuous.
- [63:14]
Podcast Host
Yeah, I think Rico Fermente would be rolling over in his grave right now. Just rolling over in his grave, just ass up right now with the amount of ridiculousness. And that's a question that was the
- [63:23]
Avi Loeb
answer, the simplest answer to his question. Where is everybody? Might be that they are here, you know, and we just need to open our eyes and look for it. Another answer is that maybe many of them were addicted to AI and got completely discouraged from doing anything in their life. You know, like, as you said, becoming bags of oatmeal.
- [63:46]
Podcast Host
We end up becoming. We end up becoming that soup we came from. Absolute pleasure, man. Thank you so much for coming on. And again, we got it. He's coming back. Because we're going to get that data. We are going to stay on the front line of this. Thank you so much, sir.
- [64:02]
Avi Loeb
You have me at hello.
- [64:03]
Podcast Host
Oh, there we go. That was two movie references, by the way. Rico Fermente was from Something about Irene. And then you had me at hello, of course is from Maguire. All right, man, you are a rock star. Thank you so much, boss.
- [64:16]
Avi Loeb
Thank you. Bye Bye. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same Premium Wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today. I'm told it's super easy to do@mintmobile.com
- [64:45]
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