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From LeverNews.com — Lever Time is the flagship podcast from the investigative news outlet The Lever. Hosted by award-winning journalist, Oscar-nominated writer, and Bernie Sanders' 2020 speechwriter David Sirota, Lever Time features exclusive reporting from The Lever’s newsroom, high-profile guest interviews, and expert analysis from the sharpest minds in media and politics.
David Sirota: [00:00:00] Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Lever Time with me, David Sirota. On today's show, we're going to be talking about extraterrestrial science. While that may sound like an oxymoron, it's actually a very serious yet often derided field of, yes, real science. Today we're going to be speaking with the astrophysicist and Harvard professor Avi Loeb, who in 2021 created the Galileo Project, an international scientific research program which studies potential.
Extraterrestrial intelligence and technology underscore potential lobe was recently the subject of a major New York Times magazine profile. We discussed everything from the recent hearings held by the Mexican Congress about UAPs to how extraterrestrial research is conducted. And financed for our paid subscribers.
We're also always dropping bonus [00:01:00] episodes into our lever premium podcast feed. Coming up next week is our interview with attorney Jeffrey Simon, who is part of the legal team that won the historic 2 billion settlement from pharmaceutical giant Johnson and Johnson for that company's role in the opioid epidemic.
Now, Jeffrey is suing 17 fossil fuel companies for their contribution to a 2021 heat wave that killed 69 people in Oregon.
If you want access to our premium content, head over to levernews. com and click the subscribe button in the top right to become a supporting subscriber. That gives you access to the Lever Premium podcast feed, exclusive live events, even more in depth reporting, and you'll be directly supporting the investigative journalism that we do here at The Lever. but let's get to our main story. Today we're going to be talking about the science and the scientific research behind the search for extraterrestrial life.
Here's the background. In October 2017, a telescope in Maui [00:02:00] discovered an interstellar object that defied traditional astronomical categories. Astronomers named it Umuamua. which is Hawaiian for scout or messenger. Its strange characteristics included its elongated shape and unusual acceleration as it approached the sun, not explained by gravity alone. So that's when Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb suggested a controversial hypothesis that Oumuamua might be an extraterrestrial light sail, a thin metallic sheet that could harness sunlight.
For propulsion, Loeb's suggestions stirred widespread attention and skepticism across the globe. Still, he continued to advocate for the possibility of extraterrestrial technology and the need for scientists to investigate astronomical anomalies and what's known as unidentified aerial 2021,
Avi [00:03:00] Loeb co founded the Galileo Project, which seeks to apply scientific rigor to eyewitness testimonies and other evidence related to potential alien technology on Earth. Loeb's outspoken views have made him a very prominent figure in astronomy, attracting attention from both supporters and critics.
Some have championed his scientific approach in the face of the stigma attached to any research into potential extraterrestrials. Others have accused him of distracting from legitimate astronomical discoveries and misleading the public. So for today's interview, myself and journalist Laura Krantz spoke with Avi Loeb about his scientific approach.
We also discussed the recent hearings in the Mexican Congress, which purported to have revealed a mummified alien cadaver. Which many critics have since scoffed at. We also talked about how NASA's own technology for monitoring and exploration hasn't really been [00:04:00] modernized according to a new report from NASA itself.
And we talked about how the quote unquote stigma around extraterrestrial study often hampers any meaningful progress.
We're joined today by Avi Loeb. Hello, Avi.
Avi Loeb: Hi. Good to be with you.
David Sirota: Thanks for being with us. We're also joined by journalist, Laura Krantz who hosts the great podcast, Wild Things. Hey, Laura.
Laura Krantz: Hi, nice to be here.
David Sirota: So let's start with the, with the news of the week, uh, on the overall topic of the search for, non human life, or at least off planet life.
the Mexican Congress held a hearing on, uh, UAPs this week with one witness purporting to show Corpses of mummified extraterrestrials back in the United States. NASA issued a report noting, this, it said, quote, the negative perceptions surrounding the reporting of UAP poses an obstacle to collecting data on these phenomena.
Now, this echoed a recent Pentagon report saying that quote, sociocultural [00:05:00] stigmas and sensor limitations remain obstacles to collecting data on UAP. Reputational risk may keep many observers silent. Okay, so let's, let's start there. Avi Loeb, what do you make of this so called negative perception and stigma, and how do you believe that stigma is hampering scientific Uh, exploration and inquiry into the possibility of non human life.
Avi Loeb: So let me start by saying that there is a common thread to the stories you mentioned. and that is Oscar Wilde's quote. imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. So in the case of the Mexican Congress, and by the way, they asked me to speak for a few minutes. Uh, I had to run, uh, after that, after 15 minutes, I had to run to give a lecture at the Smithsonian, and I didn't really know what they are about to discuss.
And, uh, in this case, what I [00:06:00] saw later was that, uh, these mummified bodies looked very much like E. T., the film. And, uh, to me, that, uh, implies immediately that they're not very credible. I mean, they did look like humans. Uh, you know, there is a church near the Sea of Galilee in Israel that shows portraits of Jesus.
And, uh, uh, those portraits drawn in Africa make him look like an African. Those drawn in Europe, you know, make him look blonde, you know, and beautiful. So the point is... Uh, we tend to make, uh, you know, images, based on our experience. And the minute you see, you see that, you immediately know that they are not, you know, the real images.
Because why would they resemble so much what we, uh, experience? Uh, first of all, I wouldn't expect biological creatures to survive interstellar travel. The journey is very long. Uh, there are many, uh, hazards out there. You know, [00:07:00] it makes more sense to send the. Artificial intelligence astronauts, AI astronauts that could be autonomous, they could, they never get bored, they can be dormant until they reach the target.
So I, you know, in my imagination, I would expect something technological rather than biological, but nevertheless, these look too much like humans. And, the other. Uh, thing, of course, NASA coming up with the study that was actually triggered by a white paper that I wrote to, the head of science at NASA two years ago and suggested that they look into it because it's the only way for us to figure out the nature of these unidentified anomalous phenomena rather than.
Uh, you know, uh, ignore it. I mean, obviously, military personnel and intelligence and the director of national intelligence at the time talked about it, and she was she was trained as a physicist. Avery Haynes in the University of Chicago. So, you know, we need to figure out the nature of these things.
They [00:08:00] could be a national security threat, like the balloon that was shut down that was made in China, Even if one in a thousand came from outside of this earth, it would be a huge revelation. So let's just study it scientifically and figure it out. And unfortunately, as you alluded to, the scientific community had a stigma ridiculing it.
The general public had all kinds of beliefs. We thought none of these parties was seeking evidence, you know, in the way that science does. And so, when NASA never got back to me, I established the Galileo Project. And that is to build an observatory. We already have it at Harvard University that is monitoring the sky 24 seven.
We also had an expedition that we can talk about to retrieve materials from the first interstellar meteor. And the context here is that. Now, NASA comes two years later and basically reiterates the narrative [00:09:00] of the Galileo project. So once again, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I'm very glad they joined, this narrative of admitting that science should be applied to it.
Uh, we already are doing that. you know, um, if you look back a thousand years, there were people saying the human body has a soul. Therefore, it shouldn't be operated and imagine modern medicine with that belief, uh, system or a scientist ridiculing the idea of dealing with this, the human body, just because some people say nonsense about it.
that's not the way to get a better view of reality. And then, you know, if this is a subject that is of interest to the public and interest To to government. It's the duty of scientists to clear it up and move on. If it's nothing, let's just clear it up and move on. If it's something , then it would affect the future of humanity.
Laura Krantz: So I'm going to jump in here real quick with a question. You know, NASA's report noted that the government's own technology [00:10:00] for monitoring and exploration hasn't really been modernized. I mean, they've been screwed over by budget things and they're kind of behind the times a little bit. The report says, quote, at present analysis of UAP data is hampered by poor sensor calibration, the lack of multiple measurements, the lack of sensor metadata and the lack of baseline data, which seems kind of valuable.
So, what should the government be doing that it isn't doing right now
Avi Loeb: Well, they should be doing what the Galileo project is doing, which is uh, if you look
Laura Krantz: imitation and flattery.
Avi Loeb: Yeah, there are. There are obs observatories that were constructed by astronomers. You know, we all know about telescopes looking at the sky. The problem is that they're looking at a small portion of the sky at the time.
And moreover, the, astronomers train their telescopes to look at very distant sources of light that don't move much. Uh, and, uh, if a, an object flies overhead, astronomers ignore it. So we decided to build a new type of observatory [00:11:00] from scratch. We designed it, we assembled the parts, they're off the shelf, and we will make the data.
Available to the public to other scientists. And the idea here is to monitor the sky 24 7 all the time using a set of infrared cameras, optical cameras, radio. receivers and the audio sensors and we are analyzing the data using machine learning software and that's much better than humans looking at it because it has to be done in real time and we have a zoom camera that focuses on objects of interest and the machine learning algorithms are trained to identify balloons, drones, airplanes, Birds birds are very common.
Uh, and, uh, frankly, I don't care about how birds look like in a high resolution image. Um, I will be glad to deliver those images. To zoologist. [00:12:00] Uh, also, if we identify the label made in China on any of our objects, I'd be glad to deliver it to Washington, D. C. because it's boring as far as I'm concerned.
And so that's the way it should be done. And of course, one can look at these objects from above. NASA has some access to some, uh, satellites. And, uh, obviously the Department of Defense has access to many more resources. So I think really that the meat if the government has any useful information, it's actually classified and it's not in, uh, in the hands of those NASA.
People that talked about it today because they were referring to open data. And so, uh, I would like to know if the government has information about anything interstellar because it shouldn't be, uh, limited to discussions about national security. It should be. Open to scientific discourse. We should allow everyone to be aware of [00:13:00] whatever came from outside the solar system because the trip of that thing took millions to billions of years.
We did not exist on Earth humans at a time that the senders decided to send it. And frankly, Far away. They don't care how we split the land on this rock that we were born on, and we keep being focused on that, uh, you know, dealing with conflicts and military, budgets and so forth. And so it's a very limited mindset to say, Oh, it should be the preview of the U.
S. President of the government to know about things that the public doesn't know about if it came from outside. The solar system. So I very much hope either that maybe they don't have anything, but if they do that, they will release it so that scientists like myself could look into it. But I don't, I'm not waiting for them because it feels like waiting for Godot in Samuel Beckett's play.
You can wait forever. It will never come. And the sky is not classified. The [00:14:00] oceans are not classified, we can explore them, I don't, you know, it may be easier to get the truth about interstellar space from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean than it is from Washington, D. C.
David Sirota: And we're going to talk about that. But, but before we get to your exploration of, an area of the Pacific Ocean, I want to rewind a little bit further back to 2017, when a Maui telescope in Hawaii detected something that had entered, it seemed to have entered our solar system from somewhere else, uh, from outside the solar system, It was a weirdly shaped, uh, object. There wasn't a great explanation for it. Uh, and you began looking at this, and you suggested, and it got a lot of attention, that it, it could be, what you call a, a light sail. So, that seems to me, as far as, as far as I know your story, that, that's where you started looking at all of this.
So, Tell us what a light sail is, why this object known as [00:15:00] Umuamua is so important. Uh, and if it was a light sail, what that might mean.
Avi Loeb: Yeah, so first let me say, uh, it feels like, the, the kid in, uh, Hans Christian Andersen's, uh, who said, uh, you know, the emperor has no clothes. And all the adults around that kid, they said, don't you see the clothes? Of course they are invisible, but they are beautiful. And the kid said, no, I don't see any clothes.
and so, this object, Oumuamua, which means the scout in the Hawaiian language, didn't have a cometary tail, the way comets do. So here the emperor is that object and the claws are the cometary tail. And I said, well, you can't have a comet without a cometary tail because that's the defining signature. How can you talk about a comet?
So then people said, oh no, well, maybe it's a comet of a type that we've never seen before. It has an invisible cometary tail made of hydrogen, nitrogen. [00:16:00] Or maybe it's a dust bunny. And, you know, to me, it didn't sound right, okay? So, I actually suggested that it's being pushed by the reflection of sunlight.
And, um, the same way that a sail on a boat is pushed by the wind. Except that. So if you make a sail thin enough, even light can push it. And three years after Oumuamua was discovered, there was another object that shared the same qualities. It was pushed away from the sun by reflecting sunlight, no cometary evaporation, and it was called 2020SO.
And it was discovered by the same telescope in Hawaii, except that a few weeks later, the astronomers realized, oh, it's actually a rocket booster that came from Earth that NASA launched in, uh, 1966, uh, in a lunar landing, lander, uh, mission. And, uh, it was made of stainless steel and had thin walls, and that's why it was pushed by reflecting sunlight.
So here you have it, a [00:17:00] technological object. Nature didn't produce it. We produced it and, uh, we know that. Uh, so the question is who produced ua? And, uh, you know, in a couple of weeks there is a play that was written about my research starting with ua, uh, on this subject, uh, that was written by the playwright, uh, Joshua Vetch.
It's called the A Piece of Sky. uh, it tells the story. it's really interesting because around the time that Oumuamua was discovered, both my parents, uh, passed away and I decided the hell with it. You know, I, I will not surrender to peer pressure. If this object looks strange, I will talk about it, because we live for such a short time, that we better focus on substance.
But I encountered a very similar response to the one presented. In your film, don't look up. as far as I'm concerned, we, we must look up, My, uh, uh, immediate response was we need more data on the [00:18:00] next Oumuamua. And, uh, fortunately, uh, I was able to trace an object that came from interstellar space in a meteor catalog that NASA compiled that was detected in 2014.
And then, you know, we can... Learn more about it by going to the explosion site. And so that was the follow up on a more more. . you know, to me, I'm used to opening new frontiers like that. I worked on black holes, imaging black holes. I'm not deterred by peer pressure.
I don't have any footprint on social media. A simple way to think about me is I'm just like a curious farm boy. I grew up on a farm. And I don't pretend to know more than I actually know,
Laura Krantz: So it's, uh, you may not remember Professor Loeb. We spoke in 2019. I interviewed you about Oumuamua for Wild Thing, my podcast. And at that time you were talking about this object that had exploded off the coast of Papua New Guinea. And you were trying to get, you know, more intel [00:19:00] from the DOD about it, more intel about meteors in general, about it, uh, meteors in general that were coming potentially from interstellar space.
This particular meteor, the one that landed off the coast of Papua New Guinea, you were convinced that it wasn't just any old meteorite. Can you explain what was different about it and why you went looking?
Avi Loeb: right? So it was spotted by U. S. government satellites, the fireball from it as it exploded in the lower atmosphere of the earth. And what was unusual about it is it was moving very fast. In fact, it was trailing the earth in its orbit around the sun. And even though he was coming from behind us, it had a speed relative to earth of 45 kilometers per second.
And that's more than the escape speed from the sun. So we calculated that. Not only it came from outside the solar system, but in fact, it was moving at 60 km per second, relative to the [00:20:00] local frame of the Milky Way galaxy, the so called local standard of rest. And that's faster than 95 percent of the stars in the vicinity of the sun.
And we also calculated based on the Fireball, uh, uh, data that the U. S. government released that, this object had material strength tougher than even iron meteorites. It was tougher than all 272 space rocks. Uh, that, uh, were, uh, cataloged as meteor by NASA over the past decade. So then it raised the possibility in my mind that, um, you know, if it's, uh, tougher than usual and faster than usual, it could be, uh, a Voyager like meteor.
Just imagine our spacecraft Voyager leaving the solar system and colliding with another planet like Earth appearing as a meteor of unusual strength and unusual speed. And as a result, I decided to lead an expedition to the Pacific Ocean. We wrote a paper [00:21:00] that my colleagues, uh, uh, blocked from publication because they said, we don't believe the U S government.
And amazingly, after the two of us spoke, I was able to approach.
David Sirota: go
Avi Loeb: security fence and a person from the White House reached out to the U. S. Space Command under the Department of Defense and the Department of Defense came to my defense. They issued the formal letter. To NASA confirming at the 99.
99 percent that this object came from interstellar space and that allowed my paper to be published. and also allowed us to realize that, uh, we need an expedition to figure out. the composition of this object. So I started planning for that expedition. At first, I announced it and, uh, the cost was estimated at one and a half million dollars.
And fortunately, within a few months, a donor came along and said, you have the [00:22:00] money. uh, we designed the sled with magnets on both sides that we dragged on the ocean floor at the, the Meteor site. and, um, it, the region localized by the Department of Defense was seven miles in length. Uh, and, the ocean is, uh, more than a mile deep.
And we were looking for more than droplets from the surface of the object. it was exposed to the immense heat from the fireball that was generated as a result of its friction on air. And amazingly, we found 700 such, uh, spherules. Uh, we brought the materials back to Harvard and analyzed the 10 percent of them so far, with a mass spectrometer.
And we found that there is an excess of spherules, uh, along the meteor path, the, the, the expected meteor path. And moreover, the spherules found near the meteor path have a composition that was never seen before, never reported in the scientific literature. that's the way that we've dealt with the spherules, [00:23:00] So we wrote a scientific paper submitted for publication.
but the amazing thing is, uh, before I went there, um, my colleagues said, why would you go there? You will not find anything. It's a waste of time, waste of energy. And I said, I'm not asking you to do anything. You just sit back and relax and, you know, I, I'm doing the heavy lifting here. And we went there.
And when I was on the, on the ship that was fittingly called Silver Star, I wrote diary reports. And then my colleagues complain, why is he writing about the process of doing science? Uh, you know, usually you are supposed to get the paper accepted for publication, and only then you make a press conference.
And I said, no, I want the public to see how science is done by trial and error, because it's a human process. It's, it's like a detective story. And I got, you know, there were millions of readers of my diary reports at medium. com that they were translated to Spanish. So then [00:24:00] when I, on my way back with the spherules, uh, I realized, oh, there is a.
paper just published in the astrophysical journal by experts on meteors claiming that the US space command measurement was wrong. And in fact, the speed is three times slower than, than in third. And, and moreover, this was a stoney meteorite, it's just a stone. And at the time, already knew that that cannot be right.
'cause these ferrows that we collected were made mostly of iron. and that now we published the scientific, or posted the scientific paper and. Immediately the response was negative to say, Oh, maybe there is a place in the solar system that produces such a composition. But the composition is so unusual that we are confident that it's not from Earth, not from the moon, not from Mars, not from asteroids.
And nevertheless, you get this negativity. so, um, it's just reiterating the point of don't look up.
David Sirota: Let me ask a question about those, [00:25:00] about those who've argued for alternative, theories about what's been going on. Some scientists, for instance, have argued that Umuamua was just a different kind of comet like body. Other scientists have said, uh, suggested that the spherules you found in the Pacific Ocean from that, uh, uh, meteorite, uh, could be explained, uh, as you've alluded to, with other explanations.
One, one suggested, for instance, I read one suggested it might be from nearby nuclear testing sites in the Pacific, in, in various Pacific, uh, uh, islands.
Avi Loeb: We already ruled that out.
David Sirota: Well, but my question is more general. Do you feel that the questions that have been raised about Those events, those sightings, et cetera, et cetera. Do you feel that they have been raised in a, in a legitimate, earnest and healthy way?
And in the, in the same way we look at. Peer reviewed science or the scientific debate, or do you believe that the questions that have been raised about some of [00:26:00] your research and others research? Do you believe that they represent the so called stigma that NASA and the Pentagon have talked about?
Avi Loeb: Well, they're worse than stigma. They represent the Twitter mob, and they represent people who are seeking negativity and suppressing innovation, because all I'm doing is following the scientific method. These people, as was, they were cited in two articles in the New York Times that appeared during the past month and a half.
There was another one in the Guardian a couple of days ago. Uh, another, you know, so they are being quoted as saying what Avi is doing goes against the scientific method. Now what I'm doing is exactly the scientific method because I am, not just arguing that the data must be wrong because it doesn't fit.
Our model for stones. I call that the stone age of science where everything in the sky must be stones. Uh, [00:27:00] instead I'm going, I'm putting an effort to go to the Pacific Ocean, was a lot of work. I didn't sleep much except for a few hours in between runs that we were going back and forth, you know, crisscrossing that region, a lot of work.
We ended up collecting materials. It was not obvious there will be anything in it. We check it, we find those spherules, we bring it back to Harvard. It was not clear that these are not background spherules or maybe atomic explosion spherules. We check them, the composition, with the best instrument the world has to offer, okay?
I collaborated with a colleague of mine at Harvard that, who is a very conservative, uh, highly regarded, uh, geochemist, Stein Jacobson. I especially chose him because he has no bias. He was looking for spherules from the solar system. And then he comes to me and says, This was never seen before. We must give it a new name.
So that's the way he came to me. And yet, all these people on Twitter, or that speak to the reporters, they [00:28:00] just are full of negativity, they call me names, they are not even professional in the way they express their negativity. And they say that I'm not following the scientific method, when I'm exactly following the book of how science should be done.
By collecting evidence, writing a scientific paper, submitting it to a prestigious journal where it will be peer reviewed. And they just don't like the answer or don't like the activity. They want to step on any flower that rises above the grass level. And that is damaging. It doesn't damage me because by now, you know, my skin is a titanium.
I, I, I don't care much about what they do or say. Uh, I don't give them the respect they don't deserve, but, it is damaging because young people, young scholars are seeing it and they say, well, in order for us to get a job, we better not deviate from the beaten path. We must dance to the tunes. Of selection committees and so [00:29:00] basically what this does is suppress innovation and you ask yourself, how can we be in that reality in academia when four centuries ago, Galileo was put in house arrest by people who said, we don't want to look through a telescope.
They basically said, we don't want to see any evidence. That's what they said. Because they wanted to believe, or maybe they, they wanted their politics to advocate that we are at the center of the universe. Doesn't matter what their motivation was, they refused to look at evidence that may falsify their, their notions.
And you would think that that was the... An epiphany for humanity to realize the scientific method of collecting data should be the way we proceed. Four centuries later, you have academia with a tenure system that allows professors to deviate from the beaten path with job security. Yet you don't see any deviation.
And moreover, that's even worse. I mean, people can have their [00:30:00] choices to get awards, honors and not deviate from the beaten path just by impressing their peers. But for them to attack. Someone that is studying, using the scientific method, uh, making an effort to use the best instruments in the world to figure out something, for them to attack it as non scientific.
To me is a violation of the definition of our profession. They are not behaving as real scientists. I must say that. And, um, I hope, I mean, I get a lot of emails of support from many people who say they are inspired, including scientists who say that they are inspired by, uh, my work because they see the same phenomenon in many other, uh, areas of, uh, science and, uh, academia.
Laura Krantz: So, we're talking about the scientific method, we're talking about gathering evidence to sort of support hypotheses. You know, doing that, doing what you just did in the Pacific Ocean, like, these are big, ambitious missions. And that was just on Earth, trying to do something out in space is even [00:31:00] bigger and probably more expensive.
So... It seems like funding for these types of projects will always be an issue. And I'm thinking back to 1994 when Congress basically told NASA it couldn't use federal money to look for signs of alien life anymore. So they stripped it out of the budget and it ended NASA's SETI programs. Funding from the government therefore carries this sort of risk of political interference, but getting funding from private individuals always.
Seems a little risky too because they can dictate what direction the projects take or and they can pull funding whenever they get bored and moved on to the next shiny object. How do you deal with this as you're thinking about gathering evidence and finding more information about extraterrestrial
life?
Avi Loeb: Well, I was very fortunate, you see, because when my book, extraterrestrial, came out, several multi billionaires came to the porch of my home and offered me money. One even did not tell me, but I received a note from the department administrator [00:32:00] of the astronomy department at Harvard saying, You have, uh, 200, 000 in your research account and I said, what do you mean?
Who gave it? And, uh, when I got the name, I contacted the person and I got another million after speaking with, uh, with him. Uh, so, um, I was fortunate to be funded, by people who were inspired by the vision You know, it's not always the case, because not always you get those people who recognize ahead of time the promise of a research area.
And I think that, unfortunately, federal funding right now is allocated based on committees, which are populated by people who argue that we should take a conservative approach of knowing in advance What the investigator will find. That's a contradiction. If you are innovating, you don't know what you will find.
You are exploring the unknown. And these people say, well, we don't want to waste. Taxpayers money. But then I asked them, what do the taxpayers want? Did you [00:33:00] ever ask a taxpayer? They will tell you that, finding whether we have a neighbor or partner out there is the most important question that we could answer.
More so than extra dimensions, the multiverse, the nature of dark matter. These are subjects that are funded right now. And I say, this particular question of whether we are alone is of more interest and it's not funded at all. And so something is wrong in the way that academia operates and listens to the public.
I think there is a sense of superiority, intellectual superiority. We don't want to hear what the public cares about. We know what we want to study. And then, uh, that of course results in many people in the public thinking of academia as an occupation of the elite.
David Sirota: I want to, I want to ask you about about the question of of funding in the sense of If you have private funders now, let's be clear. I think government funding also comes with, with, [00:34:00] with other, other issues as well. But if you have private funding, is there a pressure on you or other researchers who are funded by that private funding to deliver results?
In other words, do you, do you feel a pressure? Somebody comes to you after you write the book extraterrestrial. Somebody comes to you and says, I want to give you money to study this. And there's sort of like. Is there a fear that if after a while you haven't found something after a year, two years, three years, that that person's going to say, well, I guess there's nothing out there or I guess I'm bored now.
Right? Right. Like, is there an
implicit pressure?
Avi Loeb: you know, my experience was I will maybe I was fortunate, but there were no strings attached whatsoever. So, in fact, as I mentioned, the first donor didn't even reveal the fact that he's giving me money. Just wanted the research to be done without. So, obviously, under these circumstances, I don't need to submit reports the way you do with federal grants.
uh, in all other cases, uh, there was even a foundation, the Brinson Foundation, that approached me [00:35:00] out of the blue and they said, we want to support a postdoctoral fellowship, that, uh, we want you to mentor a young person to innovate. I, I was, uh, you know, uh, extremely happy because they are very prestigious.
so there are some, uh, organization foundations and individuals who see the light. And realize this is the way to innovate. but unfortunately, uh, it's not, uh, the way the system is constructed within academia, within the federal agencies. And that's unfortunate. Uh, I, I'm much more in favor of supporting individuals that have a track record of innovation, uh, than telling them what to do.
Uh, because, um, discoveries are never expected, uh, but without searching, you will not find anything. And, you know, a lot of people say extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. that is only true if you were to seek the evidence. But when you don't seek the evidence, then it's a [00:36:00] circular argument.
You will never know. And, uh, you know, what Enrico Fermi said, where is everybody about extraterrestrials? That was also a lazy proposition because, uh, uh, at the time he was not seeking, he was not looking through telescopes. We all know that if you are single and, um, you want, um, to, um, find a partner, you cannot just stay at home and say, I don't see anyone around me.
Where is everybody? Which is what Fermi said. You, you need to go to dating sites. You need to look through your windows. You must, you must leave your home. Uh, and then. You know, that, that requires an effort. Uh, nothing falls into our lap. Uh, we have to invest. For money and the time in in in the search and so I claim that extraordinary evidence requires extraordinary funding
Laura Krantz: so my, I think my question here is, how do you encourage people to think about this in the way that you is important to you and the [00:37:00] way where you know, the possibility of extraterrestrial life. People are taking it seriously, but they're still remaining scientific about it because it's one thing to discuss the possibility that aliens might be out there, and it's definitely something that scientists should be considering, but there are so many opportunities for false stories or speculations that have no scientific backing.
I'm sort of thinking about, you know, this, this story that just came out of Mexico. How do we explore this in a way that he was the line between science fact and science fiction?
Avi Loeb: I was trained in cosmology, the study of the universe. And as I mentioned, one of the things we don't know is. what is most of the matter in the universe? And 83 percent of the matter in the universe is of a substance we've never witnessed in the solar system. So you ask yourself, well, how can I search for it?
I don't know what it is. Well, the way it was practiced, and that's the way I was trained, is to imagine possibilities. Maybe the dark matter is made of weakly interacting massive particles. [00:38:00] That satisfies supers symmetry. Maybe it's made of axions and other type of particles. And for each of these possibilities, there was an investment of billions of dollars.
And so that's the way science is done.
You have to imagine something in order to engage in the search, including in this case, and then you have to invest a lot of money to search for it. Uh, and so the way I think of, um, of this is exactly the same way. If you don't imagine anything. Then, first of all, you are boring, and, uh, I should say, one of my colleagues spoke with the Harvard Crimson and said, uh, you know, there is, indeed, there is some jealousy at the attention that Avi Loeb gets, but it's about time that reporters pay more attention to boring science.
And I thought to myself, why is he asking reporters to pay attention to boring science? Why not do something that is exciting instead, if he's frustrated, uh, which means it needs to resonate with the [00:39:00] public. He can do the scientific way. So the way it's done is in the context of these unidentified anomalous phenomena.
You build observatories in the context of the interstellar. Meteor, you go there, collect materials by using microscopes, not telescopes, and then you analyze the composition and try to learn more about it. That's the scientific way. But you have to first be intrigued by the fact that there are interstellar objects that do not resemble rocks.
You can't insist that the data is wrong because your model for a rock doesn't fit it. That goes against discovery. In order to allow new knowledge, you need to give up. On your loyalty to what we already know, you can't just say everything in the sky is, is stones because we know that the dark matter is not made of stones.
How can you say that?
David Sirota: let's finish this conversation. The final question we have for you is about how you think we would [00:40:00] ultimately actually discover. Extraterrestrial life. You've looked at, you've studied a lot of this. You obviously know a lot about, uh, the science of, of, uh, astronomy, cosmology, et cetera, et cetera.
My question is, do you think it would be like, for instance, the film contact or the book, the three body problem, where we get kind of a live message traveling across light years, or do you think we'll find some remnant of an ancient? Machine or civilization, or is it going to be us finding algae or microbial life in the soil of Mars or on one of the moons of Jupiter?
the question is having studied all of this, knowing what you what, you know, what is the most promising area of study? And how do you think ultimately, if we hit that day where we find something, if you had to guess, what's the most likely scenario?
Avi Loeb: Yeah, this is an excellent question. for 70 years, we've been searching for radio [00:41:00] signals, a method pioneered by Frank Drake and followed up by many others. And, this is just like waiting for a phone call at home. You need the counterpart to be active. At the time that you're listening and, um, nobody may call you, uh, there is simply because a lot of those civilizations may have died by now.
The radio signals are billions of light years away. the other approach, which I think is much more likely. For an encounter is, uh, finding, um, packages, in our backyard because those keep accumulating over time, uh, just like plastics in the ocean, they're bound by gravity to the Milky Way.
And if we just search around for interstellar objects, we might find one of them that is technological. So the way I envision it, uh, is that we will find an object that, uh, appears to be based on its structure, uh, technological. Now, it could come in two, packages. One is, uh, space trash.[00:42:00] there could be objects like the ones we send to interstellar space, uh, Voyager, Pioneer, New Horizons, that will not be functional once they...
Exit the solar system, and they would be just trash. So we are polluting the galaxy with trash. And that may have been done by a lot of civilizations that are dead by now, but we can find that trash and infer that there used to be some, just like doing archaeology. you find evidence for civilizations, cultures that are not around anymore.
the other type is functioning devices, and I imagine those as A. I. Astronauts, perhaps with 3D printers. Frankly, as a scientist, I don't want to imagine what we might find because we are imagination is limited to what we have on earth right now. A. I. Is the most sophisticated technology, but maybe they had developed something much better than that.
And so I just want to distinguish between rocks, birds, drones, balloons [00:43:00] that we produce. And anything else we find it once I know that it's not any of the familiar objects. I want to learn from it. So just like a kid, you know, like an adult says from a distance says, I know pretty much what this object is.
And I don't have energy to go out and check it. But the kid says, let me see what it is. And. Touches the object and moves it around and figures out what it is. That's why if you know, a cave dweller were to find a knife, a cell phone, the cave dweller would say, it's a rock of a type that we've never seen before.
Uh, which is what my colleagues said about Oumuamua. Whereas if this cave dweller has a kid, I bet you the kid would take that rock and start pressing it and realize that. You know, this cell phone is something completely different. I want to be that kid.
David Sirota: Professor Avi Loeb is an astrophysicist and a professor of science at Harvard University. He's the author of numerous research papers and books, including the latest book called interstellar, [00:44:00] the search for extraterrestrial life and our future in the stars. Professor Loeb, I want to thank you for taking time to, to talk to us about all of your research.
I also want to thank, uh, Laura Krantz. Laura Krantz, uh, is the host of the terrific podcast, Wild Thing. Uh, she is known for her work in exploring topics related to the unknown. Uh, she has a new book out called, uh, Is There Anybody Out There? The Search for Extraterrestrial Life. From amoebas to aliens, I should mention it's due to be released this fall.
It's not out just yet, but it will soon be out. Professor Loeb, Laura, thank you both so much.
Avi Loeb: Thank you. It was a real pleasure. I really enjoyed the conversation
Laura Krantz: Thank you.
That's it for today's show. As a reminder, our paid subscribers who get LeverTime Premium, you get to hear next week's bonus episode, our interview with attorney Jeffrey Simon, who's part of the legal team suing 17 fossil fuel companies for their contributions to a 2021 heat wave [00:45:00] that killed 69 people in Oregon.
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And check out all of the incredible reporting our team has been doing over at LeverNews. com. Until next time, I'm David Sirota. Rock the boat.
The Lever Time Podcast is a production of the Lever and the Lever Podcast Network. It's hosted by me, David Sirota. Our producer is Frank Capello with help from Lever producer, Jared Jacang Mayor.