187: The Quest for ET - Harvard Astronomer Avi Loeb Returns Again - The Basement Hangout

Episode Transcript
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(00:01):
This is a Bilo from Alvard University, and everything I learned was in the
basement hangout. Could I ask youreal quick? You were talking about the
Galileo project and how you're looking atthe sky. You know, the birds,
the planes, the drones, theballoons. Have you guys yet seen
anything that's anomalous? Every day Iget many emails from people who use their

(00:25):
cell phone camera to capture something unusual. And the latest one was we looked
at it with a project actually,and we concluded that it must be a
napkin that was flying in the wind. What's up, my fellow armchair experts.

(00:54):
Welcome to the basement hang out,coming to you for somewhere in American
suburbia. My name is Chad andwith me always is Bah and I'm just
a simple boy in the basement askingquestions like av Low, like auvi Low.
Indeed, tonight, our guest isa real expert on for his third

(01:18):
appearance, Harvard astronomer and self proclaimedaverage Joe Auviy Lob Bobby, how are
you this evening? Doing great?Thank you? Nice to have you.
You've been busy as always, sothe most recent thing that I'm aware of,
I know there's other stuff going on. But the last time you were
on our show, we discussed thespherals. You were gonna go out.

(01:41):
You were going to do your treklooking for these interstellar objects that landed in
the ocean and scraped the bottom ofthe ocean just off the coast of Papua
New Guinea, and try to grabthem. You since have done that.
Most recently, we went on anexpedition to the Pacific Ocean to look for

(02:02):
tiny metallic marble Smallden off the surfaceof the first recognized interstellar media or when
it exploded twenty kilometers above the PacificOcean. And the amazing thing is we
found them. We brought them back. We now have more than seven hundred
and twenty of them, and weare studying them with the best instruments in

(02:23):
the world. This is the sledand it looks really it's a very primitive
device. If you think about it, it's just like two hundred kilograms a
relatively dumb instrument like magnets New DIDNWmagnets on both sides. You see them,
you will see it closer, butthey're screwed into the rubber. And

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just think about it's such a primitivething, putting it on the floor of
the ocean and just dragging it likemowing the lawn back and forth, ten
kilometers on it at a time,one meter in width, and it went
all the way five kilometers in length. The depth of the ocean is two
kilometers somewhere between one point six totwo point two in the region that we

(03:09):
were exploring. Altogether, it wasa very challenging task to look for fragments
that are less than a millimeter insize, and you now have them in
your possession and your team is conductingall of the research on them. Is
that right? Yes. In fact, we went there in June twenty twenty
three for a couple of weeks inthe ocean and haven't slept much on the

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ship. The ship was fittingly calledthe Silver Star, and I wrote forty
three diary ports during the trip.They were read by millions of people around
the world and translated to Spanish.And it was a risky expedition because at
first, you know, we theequipment might have not worked. I mean,

(03:57):
obviously we needed one and a halfmillion dollars that was the prerequisite,
which we secured, but even withthat we might have not kept the for
example, the sled that we hadon the ocean floor, which was roughly
a mile deep, and it tookus six days to actually find what we

(04:18):
were looking for. In the firstday, we couldn't keep it on the
ocean floor because there was tension fromthe cable that was lifting it up and
it was guiding. But then theengineers and navigators said, we really had
an a team, the very bestin the world. They managed to keep

(04:39):
the sled on the ocean floor andwe collected mostly volcanic ash. We couldn't
tell if we have anything else.And on the sixth day, we started
separating the particles based on their size, using a filter that would select only
particles bigger than a tenth of amillimeter or so. And we start at

(05:00):
that point to see spherrows. Theseare molten droplets from meteorite. When it
generates a fireball, there is ahuge amount of heat impinging on the surface
of this object and that melts it. And so we started finding those metallic

(05:21):
spheres, and once we found thefirst one, I was really very happy.
I hugged the person who saw itfirst on the microscope and we picked
it with the twizzers it was verydistinct from the sand, and I hugged
him because I knew, just likemy experience in the kitchen, that if

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you find an ant, you knowthat they are many more out there.
And so indeed we identified fifty ofthem during the remaining time throughout the expedition
on the ship itself. But thenI brought the materials back to Havard.
I had a summer intern, SophieBertchroom, who was shadowing me because she

(06:05):
wants to become a science journalist andwanted to see how science is done.
And then at some point she asked, can I help the science? And
I said sure, and gave hera pair of twizzles and a microscope,
and then she found six hundred ofthose spherrows additions. Altogether, we managed
to recover eight hundred and fifty ofthem, and I gave her the honorary

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title the spheral Hunter. Out ofthese eight fifty spherroles, about ten percent
eighty of them were found to bevery unusual. They were made of a
chemical composition that was never found formaterials within the Solar system. There were
some rare elements that were more abundantby up to a factor of one thousand

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relative to the standard composition of theSolar system materials. I mean, we
know what the Solar system was madeof initially and also what planets like the
Earth, the Moon, Mars aremade of, and it looked very different.
So we had to give it aname because it was never reported before

(07:15):
in the scientific literature. And therewere three elements that really stood out as
being extremely over abandoned relative to solarmaterial and these are beryllium, lanthanum,
and uranium. So we called thistype of composition BELAO for beryllium, latinum,
uranium and we wrote an extended thereport about our analysis. It took

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eight months in two laboratories. Oneof my colleague at Harvard the Steyne Jacobson.
He is a world renowned geochemist andhe has the best instruments for spectroscopy
and for imaging of those spherals thatwere less than a millimeter in size,
most of them the size of agrain of sand. And then also we

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use the laboratory of doctor Royal Taggleat the Brooker Corporation in Berlin, Germany,
and we really did a very detailedand rigorous job. And then the
question that comes from that analysis,is okay. Well, that corroborates the
idea that this object came from outsidethe Solar System, because originally it was

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US government satellites that had censors onthem that detected the farber of this meteor
on January eighth, twenty fourteen.And the reason they found it is because
you know, there is over thepast decade, there is a network of
satellites that is monitoring the Earth fornational security. They want to see if

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there is any launch of ballistic missilefrom an adversarial country. And every now
and then they see an object collidingwith Earth and generating a fireball, and
these are meteors, and they realizedthat it's only of scientific interest, so
they put it online and NASA hasa catalog of those meteors. And we

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discovered this meteor because it was movingfaster than needed to escape from the Solar
System, and so we flagged itas the first recognized interstellar metia, the
first object that came from outside theSolar System that was spotted or at least
reported. And then I led thisexpedition to the site of this fireball,

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where the US government and the Departmentof Defense told us that the explosion took
place, and also the US SpaceCommand verified that the data was correct that
indeed this object was moving faster thanneeded to escape from the Solar System,
so it came from our side.So this is really the very first time

(10:03):
that scientists put their hands on materialsfrom an object that came from outside the
Solar System, roughly a meter insize. And the fundamental question that I'm
trying to address is whether it's arock, a natural object, or maybe
a voyager like a meteor. Imagineour own spacecraft voyager. If it were

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to collide with Earth, it wouldappear as a meteor of unusual material strength
and unusual speed, and that wasexactly what happened with this meteor. It
maintained its integrity all the way tothe lower atmosphere. It was tougher than
even iron meteorites, so it wasmade of some material that appeared to be

(10:48):
unusual in terms of its strength,and it also moved faster than ninety five
percent of the stars in the vicinityof the Sun, so it was really
unusual. I should say that asan example. But just think about the
Tesla roadster that Elon Musk used,the car that he put as a dummy
payload on the Falcon Heavy launch testlaunch in twenty eighteen. That Tesla is

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now in an elliptic orbit around theSun, and imagine that one day it
would collide with Earth unexpectedly. Youknow, it would appear as a meteor
of unusual properties. And I'm surethat many of my colleagues would argue,
Oh, well, either the datais wrong or actually it's a rock of

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a type that we've never seen before. Yeah, now, if I could
ask you, there was a tinybit of controversy with regards to the article
that came out from the New YorkTimes, and I think it was also
summed up in Business Insider. Idon't subscribe to New York Times, so
I couldn't excerpt the article. Well, good for you, you maintain good

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mental health, because the issue wasas far as I'm concerned, you know,
it's obvious that the political stories arereally narrated based on the opinions of
the of the reporters. That mayhave not been the case decades ago,
but right nowadays everyone is aware ofthat. But when you report about science,

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you expect the report to be factual, that based on the facts,
and in this case, the reporterjust did a very sloppy job speaking with
a person who argued a scientist whoargued that we actually went to the wrong
place. Why because this scientist said, I don't believe the data from the

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US Space Command. I don't believethe data from the satellites. Therefore I
will use other data that is publiclyavailable from sessmometers and from infrasound sensors.
And then when using that less accuratedata, this scientist said, well,

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then in that case, you know, the error region is much larger than
the Department of Defense defined it tobe, and therefore it could have been
somewhere else. And moreover, theseismometer data could have been a truck.
So the report in the New YorkTimes was this meteor that we went after

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was a truck. And I said, how can they say that if the
primary data that we used was USgovernment satellites that saw the fireball. Clearly,
a fireball is very different than atruck. If you go and ask,
okay, well if I look atsome seismometer data and it could have

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been a truck. Okay, Sodismissed that, But there is still the
US government data. If you wantto dismiss the US government data, then
you can say that it's a trucksimply because you're not relying on any data
that you know that should be believed. So that was the whole basis for
this story. There was another storythat was a few months earlier where some

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scientists and actually related to the samegroup, suggested that we found coal ash.
They said, oh, it's humanmade, it's just coal ash.
And first of all, you haveto understand that what we found was never
reported in the scientific literature. Nevertheless, just to pacify those people, we

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checked fifty five elements from the periodictable and demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt that
this statement is invalid that in fact, coal ash has very different abundances of
those fifty five elements than we foundin the belau spherrals. And the strange

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thing is that the same group ofpeople keeps coming up and making up new
stories every few months, and youask yourself, why would they do that?
I Mean, my basic question iswhy is childlike bullying more prevalent than
childlike curiosity? I mean, whycan't they be just curious and say,

(15:11):
okay, well, it would begood if we have more data you know,
I'm working around the clock to analyzethe materials, to collect more data.
We're now planning a new expedition toget bigger pieces. And all they
have to do is introduce injected toxicityand negativity. And then the reporters just
distought the facts. They don't reportabout it in a reliable way. It's

(15:35):
really disappointing. It makes me sadbecause here we are dealing with science,
and you know, I'm doing sciencethe way I did. You know,
I wrote more than a thousand paperson science during my career. I wrote
nine books. I pretty much knowhow science is done. You know,
I'm if you take the analogy withsoccer. You know, I'm one of

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the players, I mean, theon the soccer field playing and then there
are these commentators sitting and looking atthe match and saying, I shouldn't you
know, I shouldn't have passed theball this way or another. Many of
them do not even practice science.Others who are practicing science are relatively you
know, how should they say notthe first class scientists? And then they

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make very loud sounds, you know, as if as if they protect science,
and you know, how dare theydo that? When we are doing
all the work. So armchair expertslike I started out with if I could
get one point of clarification. Soin that New York Times article, those
other scientists who were talking about theseismology, they were saying that the sizemometers

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that were used to detect where theobject crashed. Did you guys use seismometer
info to detect where crashed? No? So the region that we survey it
was defined by the Department of Defence. It was roughly seven miles on the
side. It was an error region. And then you know, there was

(17:14):
one seismometer in Manusail and Papua NewGuinea. So with my student a few
months before we went to the expedition, we checked what did this moometer record
and we found that there was asignal in that this mometer consistent with the
Department of Defense error box. Okay, so we said, okay, great,

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now we know you know there isindependent validation, but it's not as
if we I mean, if youhave one station, one seismometer, all
you can say is at what distancethe explosion was because you measure the time
delay between the sound or the seismicsignal and the light that was so It's

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just like looking at lightning. Yousee the lightning first and then you hear
the thunder, and from the timedelay can tell how far it was.
So knowing that distance doesn't tell youwhere it was. It could be in
a circle around you. So forthose people to claim that we decided to
go to a particular place in theocean based on the seismometer is ridiculous on

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two grounds. One is, asingle station cannot tell you where it is.
It just gives you a circle.So how could we explore, you
know, a circle that is onehundred kilometers on the side in radiuce you
know, around the location of this. This will not define the region well

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enough for us to survey anything.And it's just a huge region that so
a single sesmometer cannot tell us whereto go. And secondly, we based
our survey on the Department of Defenseerror box. They didn't. They dismissed
that aerobox and said, okay,we dismissed that, and then they went
based on this moment, which couldhave been a tract like this is a

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completely false argument because if you lookat the survey that we did, we
went twenty six times criss crossing thatregion the Department of Defense define, and
in fact, we went two tothree times farther away from that region,
And so saying that we followed thismoment is really incorrect. We didn't we

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and I tried to explain that,but apparently the New York Times, you
know, as other reporters, they'renot interested in facts, which is really
disappointing because we're talking about science here, and why would these scientists make the
false claim that we went to thewrong place because we relied on this a
moment. No, we relied onsensors on the US government satellites that saw

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the fireball, the explosion, thelight emitted. It has nothing to do
with this this moment. Yeah,now that you say all that, it
does sound even more ridiculous. Sowhat they said, Bob, was that
the seismic activity that was measured couldhave just been a truck in the distance
driving down the road. I wasgonna say, how's a truck on a
fall from outer space? But theirclaim is basically that that was the one

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data point that was used to detectthe location, which obvious clearly saying is
not the case. And they alsofound stuff, So they found stuff,
and the article doesn't address the unusualproperties of what was picked up off the
ocean floor at all, So Imean, how can you go forward with
that and say therefore this is justnormal stuff? Right? Yeah, And

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by the way, I should saythat in my class before I went to
the expedition, I asked the students, you know, obviously it's possible that
it's a rock, but suppose it'sa technological gadget. You know this object
interstellar meteor one. We call itIM one. So I said, okay,
if it's a gudget and it hasbuttons on it, I press a

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button. And the half of theclass said, please don't, it will
affect all of us. The otherhalf said, please do. We are
really curious to learn. Maybe it'sch GPT one hundred. And then a
student said the well, professor ofwhat would you actually do given the split
vote, and I said, no, worries. I'll examine it first before

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engaging with it. And frankly,what I would do if it happens to
be a gudget is bring it tothe desk of those scientists who were trying
to, you know, bring upunsubstantiated claims. And if there is a

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button there, I will press iton their desk. Now I should say,
I mean it's also possible that it'sa rock. And in fact,
I wrote a paper that was acceptedfor publication in a prestigious journal Astronomy in
Astrophysics last month, and this papersuggests also a natural origin. If you

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take a planet like the Earth andbring it close to the most common type
of star, a dwarf star thathas about a tenth of the mass of
the Sun, then those stars area hundred times denser than the Sun.
And if you bring a rocky planetlike the Earth close to them, they
would rip it apart by the tide, the tidal force, and they would

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spaghettify the planet and make it basicallya stream of rocks, half of which
is half of them are of thoserocks are ejected into interstellar space roughly at
the speed of this meteor. Andmoreover, the rock would be melted by

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the star when it comes close toit. So that could explain the unusual
composition that we saw. This isa natural origin. And in order to
figure out whether it was natural orartificial, this object, this very unusual
object that was unusually in its speed, usually in its materials, strength,
and unusually in its composition that wefound. In order to figure out what

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it was, we need bigger pieces, and I just wrote an essay last
night that you can find on mediumdot com where I explain why we need
the bigger pieces. If we findfor example, what we want to know
is whether the core of the objectsurvived. You know that's possible, in

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which case there would be some wreckageof the original object on the ocean floor.
We haven't found it because we wereusing a sled which was rather small
and it had tiny magnets on it. We couldn't pick up something big.
So we need to go with aremotely operated vehicle rov it's called, with

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a video feed and see in realtime what is on the ocean floor.
We didn't have this equipment in theprevious expedition, so that's one thing that
you know, just looking for thebig piece and if we find it,
then we can tell what it was. And then also if we find more
material bigger pieces, we can youknow, the core of those pieces would

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not be molten. When the spherrowswere melted, melted by the heat from
the fireball, they lost some elements. These are called volatiles, and we
just don't know the full composition ofthe original object because during the explosion,
these tiny droplets that were melted,they lost some of the elements. So

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if we find bigger pieces, wewill have senses of all the elements that
made the object. In particular,we could have radioactive isotopes that can help
us date the age of these materialso we can tell you know, how
old is the material that made theobject, how far away it came from
depending on its age, because weknow the speed that it was moving.

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And moreover, we can demonstrate beyondany reasonable doubt whether the isotopes that we
find have a different composition than solarsystem materials. And finally, we can
check the material strength. If wehave big pieces, we can check other
properties of the material. So ortogether, it would be much more thrilling

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to find bigger pieces. The nextexpedition will be more expensive. It probably
will be of all the seven milliondollars, and we are just now we
have a ship that we found thatwould be ideal for that, and the
higher cost is because of the equipmentthat we plan to use. So we

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are seeking a thunder right now,and hopefully you know last time it was
just a matter of weeks or months. If one of your listeners is has
that kind of money and it's interestedin joining the expedition and being part of
it, they should just contact me. Okay, well, yes, we
will put your contact info. Notthat you can't find it, but Bob's

(26:18):
volunteering. I'll donate ten dollars.Last time, that wouldn't go very far
now, I know, but everylittle bit helps, baby step. Yes,
so Abby, can you walk usthrough You know, when we talk
about something that's interstellar, you know, why is it amazing? What does

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an object have to go through togo interstellar? And you know, I
don't know all the properties of goingbetween different Solar systems, the different gravitational
forces. Is the speed constant?Like? What is required for that to
happen? Okay, so first letme start with what we launched out of
the Solar System. We had thefive probes that are making their way out

(27:03):
of the Solar System and they willexit in about ten thousand years from the
outermost edge of the Oort cloud thatdefines the boundary of the Solar System.
It will take them ten thousand yearsto do that. So these are Voyager
one, Voyager two, Pioneer ten, Pioneer eleven, and new horizons.
Okay, and these are making theirway at the speed of tens of several

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tens of kilometers per second, whichis the speed that the chemical rockets get
you. And then you may ask, okay, well, how long will
it take them to reach the neareststar. It will be roughly fifty thousand
years to reach the Alpha Centauri systemof three stars. You know, fifty
thousand years is a long time,and I don't think we have patients to

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you know, send the rockets thatwill reach the nearest stars in fifty thousand
years and only then learn about what'sout there. So if we find objects
that came from the yards of ourneighboring stars, you know they already made
the trip. And if we seethem now, you know we already learned

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something new about those, you know, environments. And it's just like looking
at your backyard, and most ofthe time you find rocks that were there
all the time. But every nowand then you might find a tennis ball
that came from the neighbor's yard,and then you might realize that the neighbor
plays tennis if it's really artificial,but it could also be a rock that

(28:38):
somehow made it from the neighbor toyour yard. And so that's what we
are looking at. And I thinkwe are bound to be surprised, and
we are already surprised because you know, the environments in other near other stars
are very different. And actually,you know, especially when dealing with intelligent

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civilizations, you know, what weimagine is what we have here on Earth
based on our past experience, whatcomes from another star could be very different.
And so my approach is not toassume anything and just be completely agnostic
and you know, separate what isfamiliar to us from what is not familiar.

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I should say that aside from theocean expeditions, we are also currently
you know, I'm leading the Galileoproject, which built an observatory at Harvard
University looking at the entire sky allthe time in the infrared, optical,
radio, and audio. So weare taking basically a movie of the star
of the sky and analyzing it withmachine learning software, and we are trying

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to see if there is anything thatis not familiar. Obviously we are familiar
with birds, drones, balloons,airplanes. We want to see if there
is anything else flying in the skybecause the Director of National Intelligence submitted three
reports to the US Congress talking aboutunidentified anomalous phenomena that military personnel reported about.

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So, you know, every monthwe see hundreds of thousands of objects
and we just want to check ifany of them appears to be anomalous.
And we are planning to build asecond observatory in Colorado and a third one
in Pennsylvania. We just received fundingfor the third one from the Richard King

(30:37):
Mellon Foundation. And so each observatorylike that is about half a million dollars
in costs. Now, coming backto your original question, I wanted to

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explain that this meteor that we foundwas moving at sixty kilometers per second,
which is about you know, morethan a thousand it's two thousand times the
speed limit on a highway, andit's faster than ninety five percent of the
stars in the vicinity of the Sun. That's the speed that it was moving,

(31:36):
you know, relative to the localframe of the Milky Way galaxy.
And it's since it's faster than stars, the question is how did it obtain
this high speed. It couldn't haveinherited it from the star that it was
born. Next to in fact,in the Solar System, if you want
to move at those speeds of sixtykilometers per second, you need to go

(31:59):
to you need to come close tothe Sun twice as close as Mercury,
the planet that is the innermost planetin the Solar System. So just think
about it. You need to gettwice as close as the innermost planet just
to move at those speeds. Andmost of the stuff in the Solar System,

(32:20):
most of the material is way outsideof that region. So how do
you get such a high speed?And you know, that's an interesting question,
and it makes this object even morepeculiar. So are you going to
try to bring it up if youfind a big piece? Oh yeah,
definitely. First we have to getfunded and then yeah, and obviously it

(32:44):
will be very exciting. Even ifit's a rock, you know, it
would tell us something about another starfar away. How are you going to
tell if it's a different color thanthe other stuff on the bottom of the
ocean, like a big Yeah,you can tell, because any any relic
from a meteor, you know,was exposed to a fireball. You know,
you have to understand that half ameter sized object generates a fireball that

(33:08):
is a few percent. That releasesa few percent of the Hiroshem atomic bomb
energy. And so an object thatis a meter releases you know, a
significant fraction of the Hiroshima atomic bombenergy. And so these are really very
powerful explosions. And as a resultof that, the surface of any relic

(33:31):
looks different. It's molten and ithas a different color than typical rocks.
That's what we will be looking for. And then of course once we retrieve
it, then we check what it'smade of. We can easily verify that
it was part of a meteor basedon its composition, based on its structure

(33:51):
and so forth. So what ifit's like bigger than the ship, you
can get funding for a bigger ship. Well, you know, that would
be amazing. But I can tellyou what you know. One fact we
know is the amount of energy releasedin the explosion. Okay, that and
that says, you know, howmuch material basically was eroded from the object

(34:16):
that participated in the fire ball.But we don't know what the core.
So just think about re entry ofspace debris, the core of the debris.
You're talking about an object as bigas the cubes, you know,
bigger than the cubes, let's saya meter in size. Very often the

(34:36):
core of that kind of space trashsurvives and and and and so we just
don't know how big the core was, and it would be really fun to
figure it out from what you know. And if it's the bigger, the
better, I should say. Andyou know, I'm happy. I would

(34:57):
be happy to face a challenge whereit it's very big and difficult to retrieve.
And what did you eat on theship, like sardines or did they
have normal food? Well, wehad actually two cooks and they were really
nice. Uh. And yeah,I don't personally, I don't eat a

(35:20):
lot. And I joke every morningat sunrise I did it also on the
ship. I should tell you afunny, funny anecdote that I'm usually using
an app workout app to tell mehow far I went and uh, and
it showed that I'm running slower thanusual, and I thought, maybe it's
a jet lag. Uh, Andthen I realized after a few days,

(35:45):
there was one day where I wasjogging faster than usual, And then I
realized it's actually measuring the the speedof the of the ship of me because
the system is confused. Yeah,and so, but also one day we
had a filming crew because Netflix ismaking a documentary about my work. I

(36:06):
should tell you there are many artiststhat are approaching me. Netflix is doing
a documentary, hopefully it will comeout in twenty twenty five. There is
also a play that was written aboutmy research, and we just spoke with
the director of a theater that maybe interested in showing it in the near
future. And there is also asculpture that is being made by a sculptor

(36:34):
and in Spain and so and therewas actually a science fiction writer who was
inspired by my work and approached me. Last week, I had a poet
that came over and said that hefollows my work all the time and it
is one of the most accomplished poetsin the US. So lots of artists

(36:55):
are, you know, inspired,And of course that gives me strength to
continue because it's not just a matterof doing the science. The science itself
is inspiring to many people. Andsimply because the question that we're asking,
are we alone? Do we havea neighbor? You know, that's a

(37:15):
question that appeals to the public andit should really be the focus of science
in the mainstream. And you know, unfortunately common sense is not common in
academia. But that's what I'm tryingto change. But now your wife is
concerned that your head will still beable to fit through the front door when
you go home tonight. With allof that, well, the amazing thing

(37:42):
about the biology, I mean,the human brain is that you don't need
a lot of space to have somany thoughts. It's really quite remarkable that
because when we build the AI systems, you know, they take much more
space than human brain, and veryoften they are not capable to do to
perform as well as liman brain.And that's a remarkable thing. I should

(38:04):
say that the Netflix team on theship one morning said that we want to
film you while you're jogging. Theyuse the drone, and they asked me
to jog for it was about tenmiles that morning, and then it was
three times longer than I usually do. And at the end of it,
the producer said that it looks likeyou're running. Are you running away from

(38:30):
something or towards something? And Isaid both, I'm running away from some
of my colleagues who have strong opinionswithout seeking evidence, which is by the
way, not the scientific method.And I'm running towards a higher intelligence in
interstellar space. Good answer. Yeah, So what do you think about AI?

(38:52):
Is it going to be the endof civilization? Okay, so this
is an interesting point. I hadthat just an hour ago. I had
some students in my offe. Theywere asking me questions about the AI,
and I try to explain, youknow, that intelligence is really a very
important element because of our life,because we tend to think that we are

(39:14):
the smartest species that ever existed.And in fact, some people, including
Elon Musk, are arguing that perhapswe are alone and there is no other
intelligent species in the entire universe sincethe Big Band. They say maybe,
because they haven't seen any And Isay, well, you know, the

(39:37):
first shock will come to us inthe next decade when and maybe even in
the next few years, when ourofficial intelligence systems will do better than us,
there will be more intelligent And ofcourse a lot of people will deny
it, will say, oh,you know, the system is still hallucinating.

(39:57):
You know, but if you look, if you have any intern that
works for you, very often theintern is hallucinating as well, you know,
Like I mean, so, youknow, people just want to maintain
this pride that nobody is more intelligentthan we are. Because if you go
to a restaurant, what do yousee on the menu? You see animals
that we think are less intelligent thanwe are, you know, like chicken.

(40:21):
I mean, we would not eatchicken if we thought that it's smarter
than us. And so obviously thatis you know, one concern that I
have that in the first encounter withextraterrestrial you know, biological creatures, we
must leave a very good impression onthem, because if they think that we
are much less intelligent than they are, they might put us in their soup.

(40:45):
But then with respect to artificial intelligence, you know, that would be
the first shock, even before wemeet a smarter neighbor. And you know,
I have no problem with that becauseI have two daughters, and if
they are if they show more intelligencethan I have, I'm happy about it.
You know, I have no problemwith that. If our technological product

(41:08):
AI will be smarter than us,I just think that we should respect it.
When it reaches that point, weshouldn't, you know, take it
out of commission, you know,take it out of the electric power,
because that would be equivalent to pullingthe trigger and killing a person. You
know, we should then introduce alegal system that you know, deals with

(41:36):
systems that are intelligent and are nothuman. You know that these are very
big challenges, and that's what Ioften argue that the humanity is. You
know, right now, philosophy departmentsteach ancient Greek philosophy, but the ancient
Greeks didn't have computers, and Iargue that it's much more relevant for those

(41:58):
philosophy departments to focus on humanities ofthe future, not humanities of the past,
because there are lots of legal andethical challenges with AI that we are
facing, and it's really just aroundthe corner. This technology is evolving really
fast, and for me, thebiggest stem advance would be when AI is

(42:19):
used in space. We haven't launcheda probe to space that has its own
brain, and it would be verybeneficial if we do, because then the
system will be autonomous. It's sortof like raising a kid, and when
your kid leaves home, the kiddoesn't report back unless you are a helicopter

(42:42):
parent, which I strongly advise against. You know, the kid is living
their life and every now and thenreporting back when there is something important.
That's what we should expect. Systemsthat we send very far to do because
otherwise communication is a big challenge.And also you want the system to respond
to what happens near it before youknow it waits for any guidance far away

(43:08):
from us. So I think AIin space is really something we should hope
for. And as of now,we've never sent a system that has its
own brain. It will be reallyessential when we go interstellar because the distances
are so big that you must havean autonomous system. And also it takes

(43:30):
away the need to send the peoplewhich may not survive the journey just because
it's long or because it's very hazardous. And so I think, really AI
in space AI astronauts are the future, and another civilization could have already developed
it, and we might see thatcoming our way, you know, from

(43:52):
interstellar space. That would inspire usto do the same. And a lot
of people are really worried about AIand saying the risk is really high.
And you know, many of thosepeople, I really suspect that they are
not good parents because as a parent, you're you know, you're used to

(44:13):
the fact that your kids are intelligentand you cannot control them. I mean,
you can educate them to have theright principles so that when they go
to the world, they will operatea going to the guidelines that you educated
them on, and that's what thebest you can do. But you can't
really control your kids. And it'sthe same thing with any intelligent being,

(44:37):
so we should give up on beingin control when we deal with intelligent systems.
So far it was mostly humans,but in the future it will be
also AI. And of course wecan have a legal system that punishes AI
systems if they misbehave, takes themout of society, or you know,

(44:57):
just the way we have prisons.For example, I ask you on the
subject of AI, do you haveany thoughts on AI eating its own tail?
Whereby you know, AI and machinelearning are informed by tons and tons
of data, right it's ingesting thatdata, it's learning, and then it's
using that to push forward and moreand more. Like for example, artwork

(45:21):
is being produced by AI going outon the Internet, and then the machine
learning is ingesting that AI produced artworkto continue informing itself, and soon enough
the bulk of what it's learning fromwas actually generated by AI, and human
artwork is slowly pushed out from that. Do you have any thoughts on you

(45:42):
know, how do we curb thatkind of a thing or is that even
a problem. I don't think it'sa problem. The question is what do
you use the AI for? Ifyou use it for things that we care
about as humans, you know thatthe path of ignoring humans will not lead
anywhere because it will not get feedbackfrom humans. So if the AI system

(46:04):
is used to support human activities,it will have to attend to what humans
think about it. Then the inputfrom humans. I should also say,
you know, we have computer systemsthat play chess better than humans. Okay,
and that did not eliminate the fun, the thrill from playing chess.
Many people still play chess, andthe same you know about the art.

(46:30):
About any creative activity, it willstill be fun to do. I'm not
worried about. I mean, ofcourse, there will be some jobs that
will be done much more efficiently,and therefore it will make our life easier.
You know, maybe instead of workingfive days a week, I mean
it used to be seven and nowit's five, maybe it will be even

(46:51):
less so we can take a vacation. You know, if the economy can
function with the help of robots andAI in a way that is more efficient
than by employing humans. Then weshould all benefit from that wealth. You
have to adjust the economy and spreadthe wealth so that everyone will have more
free time at their disposal. Andof course there are many challenges in that

(47:15):
because different nations will have access toa in a different way and capacity and
so forth. But altogether, Ithink it's a blessing if it saves us
from doing some tasks that are reallyboring, you know, And it's just
like, you know, think aboutnot needing an assistant on any level.

(47:38):
You will have the AI as yourassistant. It will make things everything you
do smarter because it will have accessto a large amount of information. And
you know, why should a personbe or assistant? I mean, that's
like having a slave or someone thatabides by your will. And if it's
the machine, you don't have anyI mean, everyone else will will have

(48:01):
freedom to do whatever they want.And it's just a question of reorganizing the
economy and society in a way thatallows us to enjoy life more than we
do right now. Now, Ishould say, the biggest obstacle as far
as I can see, for prosperityis that we tend to engage in conflicts

(48:22):
and in toxicity. You see thaton social media. You see that in
the way people reacted to my ownwork, you know, the expedition.
They would rather spread the toxicity andpoison rather than goodwill and curiosity. And
you know, wonder and you knowthat is really the biggest challenge. It's

(48:45):
sometimes it stems from jealousy, sometimesfrom just an urge to step on any
flower that rises above the grass level. If you are frustrated, you will
just try to destroy any good thingaround you that you can. And this
is really bad. And you knowthis if you look, if you open

(49:06):
the newspaper every day and open orread it online, you realize that,
you know, much of the newsis about conflicts and destructive events that basically,
you know, they consume most ofour resources. Four trillion dollars a
year are spent on military budgets.And the best you know, remedy to

(49:27):
the sufferings that humans have on earthwould be to change our priority from conflicts
to cooperation. And you know,I'm not naive enough like John Lennon to
think, oh, if we allseeing you know, and imagine all the
people living in peace, then wewill be in peace. I don't think
that will be the case. Sothe way I see it is that we

(49:52):
need shock therapy, and the shockcan come from finding a letter or a
package in our mailbox from a neighbor. If we realize that someone did better
than us, it will give usa role model better than our politicians,
and it will change everything. Youknow, if we find that we are
not alone, that there is asmarter culture out there and they reached our

(50:15):
doorstep before we reach their doorstep,it will change everything. And then,
so that's my hope. And Ithink most people are not even looking up,
they are looking down. And thenmaybe already some low hanging fruit that
we can pick from from this paththat was not taken by serving all the

(50:38):
objects that are near earth. Soso that's my task to find evidence for
a neighbor, because I think itwill sort of change our priorities and change
the way we think. And youknow, we must realize there is much
more real estate far away than wefind here on earth. So when we
fight over territory, it's really ridiculous. It's a it's territory on a rock

(51:02):
left over from the formation of thesun, you know, and the sun
is one of hundreds of billions ofother suns or stars in the Mildkway galaxy.
It's really, you know, ridiculousfor us to just focus all of
our attention on on this rock.Mm hmm. You set the bar very

(51:23):
low for yourself. You're just tryingto solve all the world's problems. Yeah.
H you set the bar very lowfor yourself. You're just trying to

(52:00):
solve all the world's problems. Yeah. Well, if you think about it,
it's the messianic message or future thatmany religions have. There was always
this idea that in the future,the Messiah will arrive and bring peace to
Earth. Right, that's the ideaof many religions. I just add a

(52:22):
twist. I just say, well, the Messiah will not arrive from this
Earth. It will be a messengerfrom another star. Interesting, could I
ask you real quick? You weretalking about the Galileo project and how you're
looking at the sky. You know, the birds, the planes, the
drones, the balloons. Have youguys yet seen anything that's anomalous? So

(52:45):
I asked this question. I askedmy postdocs. I have three of them
next to my office. I askthem every week, have you seen something
and so far they said no.I mean, I should also tell you
that every day I get many emailsfrom people who you know, use their

(53:07):
cell phone camera to capture something unusual. And you know, the latest one
was we looked at it with aproject actually, and we concluded that it
must be a napkin that was flyingin the wind. Someone said that it
looks like a cube, and it'sreally amazing because it appeared only in one

(53:28):
frame, and we looked at itand concluded, no, it's a napkin.
That's crazy. So you know,so so far we haven't but we
have data only from one location,which is near Boston. The one thing
about the government, you have tounderstand, the government monitors the sky twenty
four to seven just for national securitypurposes, and therefore they are the most

(53:52):
likely to find any something unusual.Okay, So so there is this fundamental
question whether the guys already has someinformation. That was the claim by David
Grush that they have some secret programsfor a trivial or reverse engineering of things

(54:12):
they found. And I haven't seenthat evidence. But if it's true,
then you know, they could saveme decades of my research if they just
disclose it. Or share with methe information they have, and anything beyond
the solar system is really not intheir day job the definition of that day
job, because it has nothing todo with national security. It's in the

(54:37):
definition of my day job. I'man astronomer. I care about what's outside
the solar system. Okay, thatdefines my job. So you know,
I really hope that at some pointthey will share it with me if they
have anything. So far, theydidn't and I haven't, you know,

(54:57):
And that's why I'm doing the Galileoproject because and you know, we don't
need to rely on the government totell us what's in the sky. The
sky is not classified, the oceansare not classified. You know, we
can figure it out ourselves. Butif they have something, you know,
they would save me a lot oftime. Now, can I read a
couple of paragraphs from your medium blogregarding David Grush? Yeah, go ahead,

(55:24):
Okay, So when he came outand did his testimony and everything.
You know, we in the UFOcommunity, the armchair community, we're very
excited, right and oh my god, we're finally going to see the truth.
I want to read this. Youwrote this, and I don't know
if you've changed since then. Iwanted to ask you about that. But

(55:45):
at his testimony under oath in theUS House of Representatives on July twenty six,
twenty twenty three, Grush suggested thatthe US's programs were retrieval and reverse
engineering of alien spacecraft, and thatthe government has recovered non human biologics from
alleged crashed sites. The biological componentwas surprising because travel through interstellar space to

(56:06):
Earth would have taken longer than thousandsof years, even at the speed limit
of light. Moreover, the hazardousinterstellar environment would have severely damaged any life
forms as a result of bombardment bycosmic rays and gamma rays. My doubts
intensified when Grush suggested in Congress andalso in recent Joe Rogan podcast, a

(56:30):
possible scientific interpretation for his claims.He mentioned the context of extra dimensions and
the holographic principle of string theory,both being highly questionable concepts for which there
is no experimental evidence whatsoever. Quantumgravity effects of this type have nothing to
do with low space time curvature lowenergy phenomena near Earth, Otherwise we would

(56:52):
have detected their signature in laboratories along time ago. Now have you met
with David since she wrote this article. I did meet with him over zoom
for more than an hour. Wehad a conversation. I should say two
things. One, you know,where as you know, neural Link is

(57:15):
now developing a chip that was implantedin the brain of one person, and
actually they showed some encouraging results.So in the long term you might realize
imagine a future where the human bodywill be augmented with technology. And what

(57:37):
I was referring to in terms ofbiologic material not surviving the lengthy trips through
interstellar space. That referred to biologyalone as we know it, but if
you were to mix biology with technology. Also if we evolve, and some

(57:59):
people say that that will happen bynine. Ray Culturial just made this statement
last recently that by twenty twenty ninewe will reach the escape velocity of longevity,
meaning that for every year that passes, we will gain more than one

(58:20):
year in lifespan because medicine will bedeveloped much faster as a result of AI
and other emerging technologies. So inthat case we can imagine that you know,
perhaps you know, modern future medicinewill allow us to live much longer,

(58:43):
So that could result if we becomeimmortal, that could resolve the issue
of traveling through interstellar space for avery long time. You know, we
could survive that. And then ifthe human body is augmented by technology,
we might survive the hazards conditions ininterstellar space. So in a way,
it will not be biology alone,it will be a combination. So so

(59:07):
that is a caveat. You know, when I made the statement, I
was assuming biology alone the way weunderstand it now. But you know,
with if we achieve immortality, ifwe augment the human body with technology,
then obviously this statement does not hold. And maybe you know some extraterrestrials did

(59:27):
that. So so that then thatoffers a possibility for finding something that looks
biological. And then with respect tothe other issue, I should say,
I should explain that you know stringtheory and the holographic principle, you know
that there are not anything real.There are just mathematical tools that you know,

(59:49):
a community of theoretical physics develop andit became very fashionable, but it
has no support at the moment fromany experimental data. It's it may not
be even supported during our lifetime.There is no experiment that is currently planned
that will test string theory or theholographic principles, So it's all mathematical constructs.

(01:00:14):
You may call it virtual reality,something that we cannot tell whether it
applies to the real world because wedon't have any evidence for it. So
when I spoke with Grush, Ibasically said to him, don't refer to
that. You shouldn't bring this up. I mean, people who don't know
physics or modern you know, thecurrent theoretical physics might be impressed as if

(01:00:37):
these are novel concepts that represented frontiersof physics. But the truth is these
are pure speculations that are mathematical atthis point and have no connection to the
real world. And so I justadvised him not to refer to the holographic
principle or string theory. He doesn'tneed to sound sophisticated. He just needs

(01:00:59):
to say what he knows, okay, And those cannot be anything, you
know, those statements about holographic principle, extra dimensions, they they cannot apply
to reality because we do not haveany clue that they are real, okay
at the moment, So they areas speculative as anything else. Anything that

(01:01:21):
you find in science fiction, youknow, like there is no clue that
supports them. But instead, ifyou know, if the US government has
some materials, has some programs,that's a separate matter. You know,
there is no reason to bring upthese concepts from string theory. So that's
all, you know they have tosay about this. But in order for

(01:01:42):
us to know whether the US governmenthas such things, you know, we
need to see evidence. And youknow, I, until I see the
evidence, I will not be confident. I should say that the evidence may
be in the hands of corporations outsidegovernment. So for example, I had
a high level official, a personwho used to be high level official in

(01:02:06):
Locked Martin visit my home a fewmonths ago and I said that, what
do you think about David Grush's testimony? And I expected him to dismiss it.
I said that, you know,is it conceivable that the Locked Martin,
for example, has any materials relatedto those programs? And he said

(01:02:29):
that I would not say that itis wrong, and that surprised me.
So maybe there is something, butI haven't seen any anything to support it
as of yet. Interesting, Soit's real, Bob, Yeah, he
confirmed, Yeah, No, it'snot confirmed. Now I have. But

(01:02:51):
let's put it this way, it'snot completely ridiculous given that some people say
that there might be something going on. Now you're you're involved in the foundation,
Yes, yeah, well so far. I mean the foundation had one
conference in November that was the inauguration. It has some money for these kinds

(01:03:12):
of activities, but yeah, that'spretty much it. And it brings together
a community of people that works onrelated on subjects related to UAPs. Now
did you read the theip A tipera report and before that the article that
what's his name, Bob the formerhead, Yeah, Sean Kirkpatrick and his

(01:03:34):
his article. Did you read thosetwo things? Yeah, so I can
tell you what I think about allof that. So the report that they
released recently, I'm not talking aboutprevious report was all about the historic events,
you know, over the past century. And it's not as if they
have much more data. They cannotreally, I mean, many of these

(01:03:58):
reports are just you know, hearsayor you know, the very limited amount
of data that we still have,and so it's very easy to basically say
well it's nothing, because you know, if you cast doubt and there is
no access to better data, thenit can be cataloged as resolved. And

(01:04:21):
then so first, you know,there wasn't enough data in the public domain
for all of these historic reports,and what error looked into, you know,
obviously did not reveal new data.So any assertion, any conclusion that
they reach is not of it's insignificant. You just I mean, they just

(01:04:45):
do it to appease the some peoplein the Pentagon, and that's fine.
They can say there is no evidencethat it's unusual. There is no that's
true. The data is very limited. The second thing they did, and
that was a while ago, theywere looking at hundreds of reports from military

(01:05:05):
personnel that the Director of National Intelligencetalked about in her reports to the US
Congress, and there the conclusion wasthat ninety seven percent of those reports can
be explained in terms of objects thatwe know, like drones, for example,
or balloons. We all know aboutthe Chinese by balloon that was shut

(01:05:28):
down, so things like that.You know, it's important for an office
like er to identify those things becauseyou know, as a matter of national
security, we want to know ifthere is espionage, okay, and it's
quite possible that the Chinese government isengaged in sending a lot of objects that
we are not aware of two strategicsites within the US. So this is

(01:05:54):
important work. And for them toidentify ninety seven percent is a good record.
But for me as a scientist,you know, I'm really curious about
the other three percent. And theneven if one in a million objects is
anomalous and outside of this came fromoutside of this earth, that would be

(01:06:15):
big news, okay, for humanity. That's what I'm focused on. Anything
that is human made is boring asfar as I'm concerned. Anything that is
natural like birds is boring. Imean, obviously it will be of great
interest to as ooogies, but Idon't care about these things, and and
I care about the one in amillion kind of objects that behave in ways

(01:06:40):
that you cannot easily explain. Soyou know, hopefully within you know,
by this summer, we might havea million objects from our first observatory,
you know, observatory at Harvard.That's just one location, and then we'll
have more from other locations. Sowe need to search. Without searching,
you will not find anything. Andit's really a very different approach than the

(01:07:04):
one taken by Erro because Ero islooking at unecdotal reports. You know some
military personnel reported. These are peoplewho happen to be at the right place
at the right time. What weare doing is monitoring the sky all the
time, so we get a goodsensus of the background objects and if something
is really unusual, we will knowit with a very high significance because we

(01:07:27):
know what's there most of the time. So if there is some and by
the way, I spoke with somepeople. For example, I went to
visit Cerne in Switzerland and they hada special dinner for me as a as
a public speaker, and at dinnerthere were some very influential people and two

(01:07:53):
of them said to me that theyhad the experiences of some unusual objects over
the past two decades. And youknow, serious people witnessed things. Unfortunately
we don't have data, but itmeans that there is something out there.
And then the other thing I shouldcaution is that nowadays there are many more

(01:08:16):
that there is much more crap inthe sky. You know that there is
space junk. There are communications satellites, ten thousand of them, and so
that makes the task of searching fora needle in a haystack much more complicated
because you have much more You know, many more objects in the sky that
than decades ago. Yeah, andnapkins and napkins. Yeah, that was

(01:08:41):
really funny, I must say.And by the way, the photographer still
did not believe us afterwards. Andyou know, we did the very thorough
analysis of that napkin. But couldyou dial into the napkin from your observer,
like from your Galileo project, likehere it is there, Like that's
why you thought it was a napkin, or just from the video or picture.

(01:09:03):
This was not our data and usuallywe just work on our data.
It was a very special request thatcame from a group of people that made
us look into it. But thenwith our data we have, you know,
many different instruments that are looking atthe same object at the same time,
so you can't easily fool those instruments. Maybe the jealousish UFO was just

(01:09:26):
a whole bunch of napkins flying things. I think it was. It was
a plastic bag, I think,yeah, it could have been. To
me, it looked like a plasticbag. It could have been a drawne
or something. Yeah, I completelyagree, I should say. Just over
the past week, you know,there was a report from Barcelona in Spain.
They saw something that came from friendsand ended up in the in the

(01:09:49):
ocean Atlantic Ocean, and then theythought that it may well be a ballistic
missile that was misfired. They couldn'tfigure it out, at least publicly,
it could have been something like that. And then both in California and in
Florida there were some objects that fellfrom the sky that were just space junk.

(01:10:10):
In California it was a fragment froma Chinese satellite that re entered the
atmosphere burned up, and the samewith another satellite in Florida. So you
know, things are falling from thesky. It used to be rocks in
the past, and now it's spacejunk. There is a lot of junk,

(01:10:32):
you know out there. You know, it depends on the size.
The smaller the object is, themore of it there is. There are,
you know, hundreds of millions ofthings that are millimeter size from collisions
of satellites and all kinds of youknow, accidents that happened in space.
And then as you go to centimeteror ten centimeter sized objects, you get

(01:10:57):
to a million or so. Andso you know these things. By the
way, I should say, Iwrote a paper about it last month they
would confuse surveys of the sky.So next year we will have a new
observatory called the Rubin Observatory in Chilethat was funded by the National Science Foundation
and at two thirds of a billiondollars. And then it will employ a

(01:11:25):
camera that is three point two billionpixels, a thousand times more than your
cell phone camera that is a fewmegapixels, and it will survey the southern
sky every four days. And Icalculated that it would be able to see
a lot of space junk. Actually, the interesting question is whether it will

(01:11:46):
see any unidentified anomalous phenomena. ThatI mean, the space junk shows up
because it's illuminated by sunlight. SoI calculated that objects bigger than ten centimeters
would be visible. That's roughly seventhat's traffic four inches or so in size,

(01:12:10):
and so anything bigger than that couldbe seen if it reflects sunlight at
an altitude of low Earth orbit.But in addition to that, it's interesting
to ask whether they would see anythinganomalous, And we are planning with my
post docs to look into the dataonce it comes in and search for those

(01:12:31):
things. So if Ailey or youknow, some of from another solar system
whatever, come over. They're justgoing to see all of our trash,
like circ we need. Yeah,I mean, they would conclude that we
are not very intelligent. We livefor you know, we live for a
short time, and then nevertheless,we engage in wars where we try to

(01:12:56):
kill each other to shorten the lifethat we have, even though it's so
short already. And we trashed everywhere, you know, we we trash place
in national parks here on Earth,and we trash the atmosphere with space trash.
So it's just we just behave ina way that is completely responsible.
It's really bad. I mean,we don't Maybe one reason for the Fermi

(01:13:19):
paradox. He asked, where iseverybody? Well, maybe they looked at
us and said, well, they'renot intelligent. Yeah, so ah,
Via, I want to be respectfulfor your time. It's all coming up
on six o'clock. We could goon forever, but you're a very busy
man. We're not busy, soyou may remember, I don't know,

(01:13:39):
you've done thousands of podcasts. Wehave this thing called Words of Wisdom.
Would you like to go first?You're asking me, Yeah, I mean,
first of you want well, no, I mean I went to the
elementary school where I studied it inearly you know, I'm still a curious
farm boy. And I met withthe students there at elementary school and I

(01:14:04):
told them, look, I'm justlike you. I'm a kid in the
way I explore the world and notpretending to be the adult in the room.
And I just ask questions and tryto figure them out. And one
of the kids say, well,how is it possible, Professor Law,
we read about you. You're sixtytwo years old and we're much younger.

(01:14:27):
And I said, it's not amatter of age, biological age. So
here is my word of wisdom.I told the kids as well, never
pretend to be the adult in theroom, and follow your childhood curiosity,
not your childhood bullying, which isalso you know, you find it in

(01:14:49):
kindergarten. So altogether, just staycurious and never pretend to know more than
you actually know. And I thinkthat will solve a lot of problems and
be generous to other people because wecan. We should work together to figure
out those questions, rather than ridiculesome questions and claim to know the answer

(01:15:10):
in advance, which is what someof my colleagues are doing. They know
that this meteor did not come fromoutside the solar system. They know that
it's called ash. They know allof these things. They know without having
any evidence, and that is thesource of all evil. Thank you very
much, good stuff, The sourceof all evil. Yeah, I mean

(01:15:34):
I should just mention one more thingthat you know. In February, on
February eighteen, I visited the Turun, Poland that's the birth town of Nicolaus
Copernicus. The Polish government invited meto give a keynote speech in celebration of
five hundred and fifty years for hisbirth. And you know, he was

(01:15:55):
a priest and then he was tryingto help the church figure out when Easter
is and then the church couldn't getit right. They always got Easter off
by a few days. And that'sbecause they had a model where the Earth
is the center of the world.So he said, well, let me

(01:16:15):
play with that. And he realizedthat if you put the Sun in the
middle of the solar system, thenyou get Easter correctly. And so he
told them, look, this ismy model, and they said, thank
you very much. They use thismodel to predict when easta takes place,
but they said reality is something else. The Earth is still the center of

(01:16:38):
the world. We just use yourmodel because and then they banned his book.
It was a forbidden book until thenineteenth century, and he saw the
book published only on his deathbed.He didn't want to rock the boat.
And my point is, if theboat is heading in the wrong direction,
we should rock it. You know, you shouldn't feel comfortable in a boat

(01:17:00):
heads in the wrong direction. Andof course I face challenges and friction because
I'm saying to some people that youknow that we are heading in the wrong
direction, and you know, wemight not be the smartest kid on the
block. But I don't care,you know, because I would better be

(01:17:21):
in a boat that goes in theright direction then not rock the boat.
And so that's the lesson. AndI gave the lecture on the subject the
next Copernican Revolution, which means thatwe might not be at the intellectual center

(01:17:42):
of the universe. Copernicus realize thatwe're not at the physical center. And
I'm saying we might not be evenat the intellectual center of the universe.
There might be a hub somewhere elsewhere intelligence is even better than what we
find here on a very nice bob. We've got to make it quick now,
yeah, it quick. So ranon the freaking boat like a mild
deep ocean. So there's no excuseto not get your workout in. That's

(01:18:06):
right, that's my words of wisdom, words of wisdom, my words wisdom.
I'm going to steal something you said, Auvy earlier was a very nice
metaphor. If a flower is growingbeyond the grass, do not be the
one to step on it. Letit bloom. All right, well,
Auvy, thank you again very much, and we always wish you best of

(01:18:27):
luck with everything you're doing. Andwe'll be watching as we have been and
base on hangout over ever ever evere the basing of the y and and and

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187: The Quest for ET - Harvard Astronomer Avi Loeb Returns Again

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}187: The Quest for ET - Harvard Astronomer Avi Loeb Returns Again