784 segments
Hi there, I'm Natasha Zubes.
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I spoke with Professor Avi Loeb about UAPs.
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He has a message for Elon Musk,
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and he has a piece of advice for everyone.
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He says, if you ever meet an alien, never shake its hand.
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Here's our conversation.
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Professor Avi Loeb, it's so good to see you.
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Thank you for joining us.
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It's my great pleasure to join you, Natasha.
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Let's talk about your research
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and let's talk about UAPs and UFOs as well.
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I've always wanted to ask you,
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what is the most compelling piece of scientific evidence
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so far in your mind that UAPs
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and extraterrestrial life may actually exist?
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Yeah, so I should say, I grew up on a farm,
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and I wasn't necessarily planning to become a scientist.
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I was interested in philosophy and the big questions,
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and then circumstances broke me to science.
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So I mentioned that because the way I think
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is following common sense.
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I'm not swayed by sophistication.
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I don't need very sophisticated mathematics
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to feel good about myself.
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And the reason I say that is because right now,
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theoretical physics is driven by people
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who work on the question of what might reality be like
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if it had extra dimensions,
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and they've been doing it for decades,
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we have no evidence for extra dimensions.
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I don't want to speculate about that.
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But at the same time,
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the possible existence of something like us
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is being considered as an extraordinary claim.
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And I say that makes no sense whatsoever.
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Because right now we know that there are hundreds
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of billions of stars within the Milky Way galaxy,
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like the Sun, and at least a few percent of them,
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tens of billions of stars have a planet
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the size of the Earth, roughly at the same separation.
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And so I say, well, you have all these other systems
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that look just like our home, okay?
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At least superficially based on what we know,
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it's just looking through the window of your house
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and seeing a lot of houses down the street.
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Now, my colleagues are arguing,
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it's an extraordinary claim to imagine
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that they have residents like ourselves.
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We are the pinnacle of creation.
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And Elon Musk himself says,
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we need to go to Mars because we have responsibility
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to save ourselves because maybe most likely,
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And I say, no, that is the least likely possibility.
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The most likely possibility,
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there were other civilizations like us billions of years ago
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because most stars form before the Sun,
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billions of years before the Sun.
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And it's only natural to say we exist,
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therefore there should be things like us
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around those stars and they existed before us.
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And so all I'm saying is, let's look for evidence.
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So after the elections, Peter Till talked in various podcasts
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and he said, the conclusion of this election
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is never bet against Elon Musk.
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So the following day, I placed a bet against Elon Musk
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in an essay that I posted on medium.com.
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And I said, I'm willing to put 1% of my net worth
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against 1% of his net worth
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in a pool of money that will be used to look for the evidence.
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OK, and it would be of other $4 billion.
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The 1% of his net worth, mine is completely negligible.
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But it's not a lot of money because we are planning,
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right now, the mainstream of the astronomy communities,
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planning the habitable world observatory.
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That's a telescope that is supposed to be built
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We cost more than $10 billion.
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And we look for microbes through the molecules
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that may exist in the atmospheres of other planets,
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molecules like oxygen or methane or CO2 or water
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that would indicate perhaps that these planets host
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primitive life microbes.
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And I say, let's hedge our bets because it
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might be easier to detect intelligent civilizations.
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And we are probably in the middle of our class.
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And so we should just look.
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Now, in the past, we were looking for radio signals.
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But that's just like waiting for a phone call at home.
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Nobody may call you.
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And nobody may call you.
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And can I ask, I mean, what do you
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make of the Galactic Zoo theory that there
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is other extraterrestrial life, intelligent extraterrestrial life?
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They know about us and they're avoiding us.
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Well, it's possible.
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So all of these arguments resemble what
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single people often say.
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I don't have a partner right now.
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Perhaps we are alone.
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And then Rico Fermi said, where is everybody?
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And when you see a lonely person asking this question,
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you say, don't be so presumptuous.
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You don't expect the partner to come and sit next to you
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because you are not that attractive, frankly.
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And you need to go out of your house
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and search for others in dating sites
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or at the very least, look through the windows.
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But, Avi, are we looking for trouble?
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I mean, what is to say if something is out there
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that is probably way more intelligent and advanced
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than we are, why would we think they would treat us any better
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than we treat other species we feel
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and used to pay or two on some planet?
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For a simple reason.
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Again, I show my optimism.
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I think we don't care for, we don't account for much.
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They don't care about us.
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So we tend to think that we are really important.
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So we thought that we are the center of the universe
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just like my daughters were when they were infants.
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By the way, you should think about the human brain
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just like AI systems.
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When my daughters were young, they were in the crib.
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And so the training set, the training data set
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that they absorb, their brain absorbed
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was just limited to the environment of the crib.
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Then they started to crawl and walk around the house
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and their training data set grew to be the entire house.
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But when they would see something from the windows,
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if they saw another house, they would argue that,
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it's very likely that there is no infant
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that deserves as much attention as they do.
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They thought that they're at the center of the universe
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very similar to the my colleagues in astrobiology.
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You think we're cosmic toddlers?
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But when I took them on the first day in the kindergarten,
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they had a psychological shock.
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And I think it's really important for us
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to have this shock therapy.
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Because right now we are obsessed with conflicts
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on this rock that we were born on.
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And what can take us out?
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Well, of course, the hippies back in the 60s,
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would sing John Lennon's song,
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imagine all the people living in peace.
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I don't think that by a group of people advocating for peace,
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they would convince politicians
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to reach some peaceful state.
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I think it's much more likely that we would realize
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that someone else is doing better than us.
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Another civilization is far more advanced.
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We can learn from them.
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Now, this is not my idea.
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If you look at religions in the past,
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they talked about the Messiah coming to earth.
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And they said, the Messiah will bring peace.
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In my mind, the Messiah will come from another star.
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The messenger might be actually a technological gadget.
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And if I find it at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean,
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the only question that I will have
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is whether to press a button on it.
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I want to ask you about Omua-Mua.
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You believe that it could have extra terrestrial origins.
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Yeah, so this was the first object reported
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to have come from outside the solar system.
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And the way to tell that is by the speed
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of the object relative to the sun,
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it was moving faster than the escape speed
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from the sun's gravity.
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So it was clearly not bound to the sun like the planets are.
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And so it was discovered by accident
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because it passed near earth.
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And the telescope that discovered it in Hawaii
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was looking for near-earth objects to protect us
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from killer asteroids.
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And this object showed up and they measured its speed.
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And it appeared to be the first interstellar object.
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And it was roughly the size of a football field,
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the 100 meters in size.
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And so they said, oh, great, we found a rock
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that came from outside the solar system.
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But then the question was, is it an asteroid
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A comet is an icy rock that the ice is evaporated
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when the object comes close to the sun.
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So we see a beautiful cometary tail.
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But there was no cometary tail around the Umu-amua.
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And as it was tumbling every eight hours,
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the amount of sunlight reflected from it
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changed by a factor of 10.
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And that meant that the object has a very extreme shape.
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The most likely fit to the variation of light
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was that of a pancake at this like object,
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which is very strange.
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We've never seen an object that changes its brightness
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so much by reflecting sunlight.
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And then there was a non gravitational acceleration,
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something pushing it away from the sun.
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Without it evaporating, we haven't seen any trace
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So I suggested it's just the reflection of sunlight.
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And the name Umu-amua means a scout,
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an object that came from far away.
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And then three years later, the same telescope in Hawaii
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discovered another object that was pushed by reflecting
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sunlight and it ended up being a rocket booster
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from a 1966 launch by NASA.
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So here you have a demonstration of what I argued for,
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that a technological object with a thin wall
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can be pushed by reflecting sunlight.
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And my colleagues argue that Umu-amua
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is either an iceberg made of hydrogen, of nitrogen,
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or perhaps even a dust bunny.
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And all of these suggestions have difficulties
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because a hydrogen iceberg would get evaporated very quickly,
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would not survive the journey.
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There is not enough solid nitrogen to account for such an object.
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The idea was, if it evaporates, nitrogen is transparent,
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hydrogen is transparent, you wouldn't see the cometary tail.
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And then there was a suggestion, maybe it's dust bunny,
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but a hundred times less dense than air.
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But such an object would get disrupted.
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It would not maintain its integrity
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when it gets heated by hundreds of degrees
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as it comes close to the sun.
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So most recently, I should say the experts on comets
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try to argue that Umu-amua is a dark comet,
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which is an oxymoron, it's just like saying,
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an elephant is an unstriped zebra.
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I mean a zebra is an animal that has stripes.
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So you can't say that if you see something without stripes,
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it's still a zebra, but without stripes.
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It can be something completely different.
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Nevertheless, they say Umu-amua may have been a dark comet,
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but it had to lose about a tenth of its mass
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to get the propulsion, the push that it exhibited.
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And if it was a comet, it would not remain dark.
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Losing 10% of its mass would show up very clearly
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if it was a regular comet.
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So when the experts call it a dark comet,
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it's really inappropriate.
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And, but they prefer to shove the evidence under the carpet,
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so they don't have to think about it.
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It gives them a piece of mind to call it a comet.
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And I feel like the kid in Hans Prishan Anderson's tale,
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who says the emperor has no clothes, Umu-amua has no tail.
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And the adults in the room say, no, no, no,
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you, the clothes are invisible.
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And you just can't see them.
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But do you think that it really could be a craft?
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I think it's most likely, if it is technological,
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it's most likely a debris.
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For example, you can have a surface layer
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from a bigger spacecraft.
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This is 100 meters in size.
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It could be an empty trash bag.
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Just a month ago, I realized actually,
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there is a whole population of objects around Earth
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that are called empty trash bag objects,
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because they show a lot of push by reflecting sunlight.
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And they're very thin.
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So just think about empty trash bag
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that are tumbling in the wind down the streets.
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So they behave in a way that is not dictated just by gravity.
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And maybe Umu-amua was an empty trash bag
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from another civilization.
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I can also imagine I wrote a paper about it
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that it's a broken piece of a Dyson sphere, a megastructure
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that was constructed around the star.
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So usually the idea is you can have,
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for example, light sails that just hover above a star
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and cover it so that you harvest the energy from the star.
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A very advanced civilization may put sort of like kites
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around the star, but stars evolve and become brighter
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towards the end of their life.
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So if you imagine the same star getting brighter,
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because you know, the sun will become a red giant
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in 7.6 billion years.
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And there are stars like the sun that already went through that.
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So what would happen is they would break apart
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whatever megastructure existed, they would sweep
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all the debris, all the space trash we put around the earth.
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They would sweep out of the planetary system
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and you would get all of this debris in interstellar space.
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And perhaps Umu-amua was a broken piece
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of such a megastructure or some service there.
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Do you feel there is a sort of
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the gregis lack of ability to consider
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these alternative theories and explanations
[0:14:14 - 0:14:16] ▶
within the scientific community?
[0:14:16 - 0:14:17] ▶
Why do you think there is such resistance
[0:14:17 - 0:14:20] ▶
to considering something extraterrestrial in nature?
[0:14:20 - 0:14:23] ▶
Well, it stems from two things.
[0:14:23 - 0:14:27] ▶
You know, when I published my first paper,
[0:14:27 - 0:14:30] ▶
it had a lot of support until the media started paying attention.
[0:14:30 - 0:14:35] ▶
I mean, it was accepted for publication within three days.
[0:14:35 - 0:14:37] ▶
That's a record in the most prestigious journal
[0:14:37 - 0:14:40] ▶
in astrophysics with the highest impact factor.
[0:14:40 - 0:14:43] ▶
But then Michael's Mirkonish cited my paper,
[0:14:43 - 0:14:48] ▶
their bottom and asked me questions about it.
[0:14:49 - 0:14:51] ▶
I got a ton of interviews of various reposers
[0:14:51 - 0:14:56] ▶
And you know, this bubble, the media bubble grew.
[0:14:59 - 0:15:03] ▶
There was more and more pushback against me,
[0:15:03 - 0:15:06] ▶
including personal attacks.
[0:15:06 - 0:15:08] ▶
Why do you think that is?
[0:15:08 - 0:15:09] ▶
For a very simple reason.
[0:15:10 - 0:15:11] ▶
And I, you know, I told my students,
[0:15:11 - 0:15:14] ▶
I'm teaching a class which is mandatory
[0:15:14 - 0:15:16] ▶
for all graduate students at the Harvard Astronomy Department.
[0:15:16 - 0:15:19] ▶
And I asked them on the first class,
[0:15:19 - 0:15:21] ▶
the class is about the electromagnetic
[0:15:21 - 0:15:23] ▶
and radiative processes in astrophysics.
[0:15:23 - 0:15:26] ▶
And I said, what is the most important,
[0:15:26 - 0:15:28] ▶
the strongest force in academia?
[0:15:28 - 0:15:30] ▶
And there was quite in the room.
[0:15:31 - 0:15:33] ▶
And then I said, it's not electromagnetism,
[0:15:33 - 0:15:38] ▶
it's not gravity, it's jealousy.
[0:15:38 - 0:15:41] ▶
And so that explains the minute there is a lot of attention
[0:15:42 - 0:15:46] ▶
to what I talk about, it bothers members
[0:15:46 - 0:15:50] ▶
of the academic community, some members.
[0:15:50 - 0:15:52] ▶
I should say, people who know me
[0:15:52 - 0:15:55] ▶
are very supportive of everything I do.
[0:15:55 - 0:15:57] ▶
People who don't know me, attack and hate
[0:15:59 - 0:16:03] ▶
and put all kinds of toxic messages on social media.
[0:16:03 - 0:16:05] ▶
How have you dealt with that?
[0:16:05 - 0:16:07] ▶
So initially I was very upset, it bothered me a lot.
[0:16:07 - 0:16:11] ▶
But after a while, I realized that the one way not to get dirty
[0:16:11 - 0:16:16] ▶
is by not mudwrestling, you know, just avoiding that.
[0:16:16 - 0:16:19] ▶
And so I simply ignore.
[0:16:19 - 0:16:23] ▶
But you've been able to move past it.
[0:16:23 - 0:16:25] ▶
I want to be respectful of your time.
[0:16:25 - 0:16:27] ▶
So I'm going to pivot back to UAPs.
[0:16:27 - 0:16:30] ▶
I want to ask you about the possibility of crypto terrestrials,
[0:16:30 - 0:16:33] ▶
the idea that we shouldn't be looking out there,
[0:16:33 - 0:16:35] ▶
there are already here with us, maybe under bodies of water,
[0:16:35 - 0:16:38] ▶
the ocean is enormous, what do you make of this?
[0:16:38 - 0:16:41] ▶
Right. So after the discovery of Humu and Mu,
[0:16:41 - 0:16:43] ▶
of course there was a New York Times article a month later
[0:16:43 - 0:16:49] ▶
about the unidentified anomalous phenomena,
[0:16:49 - 0:16:52] ▶
the fact that the government had a program related.
[0:16:52 - 0:16:55] ▶
And then the director of national intelligence,
[0:16:55 - 0:16:58] ▶
delivered three reports about objects that the military recognizes,
[0:16:58 - 0:17:06] ▶
but cannot identify.
[0:17:06 - 0:17:07] ▶
And you know, there are two possible interpretations.
[0:17:07 - 0:17:10] ▶
Either the intelligence agencies are not doing their job,
[0:17:10 - 0:17:13] ▶
which is a serious matter,
[0:17:13 - 0:17:14] ▶
because they're getting nearly a trillion dollars a year,
[0:17:14 - 0:17:18] ▶
you know, the Pentagon and the defense budget.
[0:17:18 - 0:17:21] ▶
And if they are unable to figure out what some objects in the sky are,
[0:17:21 - 0:17:25] ▶
you know, over the US, that's a concern.
[0:17:25 - 0:17:27] ▶
And we all know about the Chinese Pai Baloon,
[0:17:27 - 0:17:30] ▶
but maybe many more, there may be drones, other things.
[0:17:30 - 0:17:34] ▶
So that is a serious matter.
[0:17:34 - 0:17:36] ▶
And obviously they would prefer not to admit that they are incapable
[0:17:36 - 0:17:41] ▶
of identifying some of those things.
[0:17:41 - 0:17:44] ▶
And because it would signal to adversarial nations that they can continue their work
[0:17:44 - 0:17:50] ▶
if it comes from adversarial nations.
[0:17:50 - 0:17:52] ▶
So for that reason, they would keep data classified,
[0:17:52 - 0:17:56] ▶
they would not talk much about it or discuss their ignorance much.
[0:17:56 - 0:18:00] ▶
And moreover, some of the data was obtained by classified sensors.
[0:18:00 - 0:18:05] ▶
So for that reason, they would not mention the data.
[0:18:05 - 0:18:08] ▶
So I decided like an astronomer, you know, that the sky is not classified.
[0:18:08 - 0:18:14] ▶
We can look, I mean, we are looking at the sky all the time as astronomers.
[0:18:14 - 0:18:18] ▶
It's just that we need an observatory with different characteristics
[0:18:18 - 0:18:21] ▶
than the ones that the astronomers used over the years.
[0:18:21 - 0:18:24] ▶
The regular astronomical observatories focus on a small region of the sky
[0:18:24 - 0:18:29] ▶
and the train, the telescope on very distant sources of light that don't move much.
[0:18:29 - 0:18:35] ▶
What we need is an observatory that monitors the entire sky all the time
[0:18:35 - 0:18:40] ▶
and looks for all objects that fly overhead.
[0:18:40 - 0:18:43] ▶
And by now, after working in the or leading the Galileo project
[0:18:43 - 0:18:51] ▶
for three and a half, almost four years now,
[0:18:51 - 0:18:55] ▶
we have one functioning observatory at Harvard University
[0:18:55 - 0:18:58] ▶
and it collects data on about 100,000 objects every month.
[0:18:58 - 0:19:03] ▶
And we just published a paper that analyzes the first half million objects
[0:19:03 - 0:19:09] ▶
and we use machine learning software to analyze the data
[0:19:09 - 0:19:13] ▶
in the infrared, optical, radio and audio that we get.
[0:19:13 - 0:19:18] ▶
In order to see if there is anything that is unfamiliar.
[0:19:18 - 0:19:22] ▶
And was there anything unfamiliar?
[0:19:22 - 0:19:24] ▶
Well, it's just the beginning. It was the commissioning data.
[0:19:24 - 0:19:28] ▶
So what we really need is to gauge the distance to objects.
[0:19:28 - 0:19:32] ▶
And for that, we want to use triangulation,
[0:19:32 - 0:19:35] ▶
observing an object from different directions
[0:19:35 - 0:19:37] ▶
that allows us to figure out the distance.
[0:19:37 - 0:19:39] ▶
The way we figure out distance says, with our eyes,
[0:19:39 - 0:19:41] ▶
we have two eyes for that reason that it allows us to ascertain
[0:19:41 - 0:19:47] ▶
the distance of a threat or predator that comes to haunt us.
[0:19:47 - 0:19:51] ▶
And so we are hoping in the coming months
[0:19:51 - 0:19:56] ▶
to have those distance measurements.
[0:19:56 - 0:19:58] ▶
And that would allow us to figure out the speed
[0:19:58 - 0:20:00] ▶
and acceleration of objects in the sky.
[0:20:00 - 0:20:03] ▶
And in fair, whether any of them has flight characteristics
[0:20:03 - 0:20:08] ▶
that are not similar to airplanes, satellites, drones,
[0:20:08 - 0:20:13] ▶
balloons, things that are familiar.
[0:20:13 - 0:20:15] ▶
Do you mention machine learning?
[0:20:15 - 0:20:17] ▶
Do you think AI is going to completely change
[0:20:17 - 0:20:19] ▶
the way that we are monitoring for UAPs
[0:20:19 - 0:20:21] ▶
or looking at our skies?
[0:20:21 - 0:20:23] ▶
Definitely, because the data set is huge.
[0:20:23 - 0:20:26] ▶
We have close to a million pixels.
[0:20:26 - 0:20:28] ▶
And so we just need a machine to go through the data
[0:20:28 - 0:20:35] ▶
and look for, compare the objects that appear
[0:20:35 - 0:20:38] ▶
in terms of their flight characteristics
[0:20:38 - 0:20:40] ▶
in terms of their image to familiar objects.
[0:20:40 - 0:20:44] ▶
And that's a complex task, because even if you take
[0:20:44 - 0:20:47] ▶
a familiar object like an airplane, it depends
[0:20:47 - 0:20:50] ▶
as to where the sun is illuminating it from,
[0:20:50 - 0:20:54] ▶
where the observer is, what time of the day it is.
[0:20:54 - 0:20:58] ▶
So even a single object can appear in many different ways,
[0:20:58 - 0:21:01] ▶
depending on orientation and illumination and so forth.
[0:21:01 - 0:21:05] ▶
And we are also using infrared to look at the heat emitted
[0:21:05 - 0:21:08] ▶
So it is a complex task and doing it manually by humans,
[0:21:10 - 0:21:15] ▶
looking at the data, it sounds like I would take 100 million
[0:21:15 - 0:21:18] ▶
Yeah, it sounds like you would just take.
[0:21:19 - 0:21:21] ▶
So we are actually building two additional observatories
[0:21:21 - 0:21:24] ▶
right now, one in Pennsylvania and one in Nevada.
[0:21:24 - 0:21:28] ▶
And I was just speaking with a person who is building,
[0:21:28 - 0:21:34] ▶
leading a campus in Indiana for STEM education.
[0:21:34 - 0:21:38] ▶
They want us to put a Galileo project observatory there
[0:21:38 - 0:21:41] ▶
And that I see as an amazing opportunity
[0:21:42 - 0:21:44] ▶
to educate the next generation of scientists.
[0:21:44 - 0:21:48] ▶
Usually young people do not have prejudice.
[0:21:48 - 0:21:50] ▶
They are not trapped in those games that the senior people
[0:21:50 - 0:21:54] ▶
They don't have, they are not seeking honor,
[0:21:56 - 0:21:59] ▶
They are just curious.
[0:22:00 - 0:22:01] ▶
And I hope that having a Galileo observatory
[0:22:01 - 0:22:06] ▶
in a STEM education center, it would be an amazing way
[0:22:06 - 0:22:12] ▶
of bringing young people into the study of UAP.
[0:22:12 - 0:22:17] ▶
And the point is the government, of course,
[0:22:17 - 0:22:19] ▶
But they are happy if they identify 97% of the object
[0:22:20 - 0:22:24] ▶
That's what the old domain and normally a resolution
[0:22:25 - 0:22:28] ▶
office reported about.
[0:22:28 - 0:22:29] ▶
So if a few percent is not identified,
[0:22:29 - 0:22:31] ▶
it's not a big deal.
[0:22:31 - 0:22:34] ▶
From the point of view of science, even if one in a million
[0:22:34 - 0:22:37] ▶
came from outside of this earth, that
[0:22:37 - 0:22:39] ▶
would be the biggest news that was delivered by science
[0:22:39 - 0:22:43] ▶
We should not rely on government to tell us what lies
[0:22:44 - 0:22:46] ▶
outside the solar system.
[0:22:46 - 0:22:48] ▶
It's not the danger.
[0:22:48 - 0:22:49] ▶
And can I ask you, what do you make of the allegations
[0:22:49 - 0:22:52] ▶
of a government level cover up of UAPs?
[0:22:52 - 0:22:55] ▶
Do you agree with that?
[0:22:55 - 0:22:57] ▶
Do you see evidence of that?
[0:22:57 - 0:22:59] ▶
Who would be covering this up and why?
[0:22:59 - 0:23:01] ▶
Well, if I were to explain it, if it exists,
[0:23:01 - 0:23:07] ▶
it would be because for a while, it was unclear
[0:23:07 - 0:23:12] ▶
to government officials what that data means.
[0:23:12 - 0:23:16] ▶
And so they kept it secret because there was a suspicion.
[0:23:16 - 0:23:20] ▶
Maybe it came from an adversarial nation,
[0:23:20 - 0:23:23] ▶
or maybe it represents technologies that could benefit
[0:23:23 - 0:23:30] ▶
the US relative to its competitors.
[0:23:30 - 0:23:33] ▶
Or I mean, there were some reasons for initially classifying
[0:23:33 - 0:23:37] ▶
it, hiding it from the public.
[0:23:37 - 0:23:39] ▶
But over time, perhaps the information
[0:23:39 - 0:23:43] ▶
or the materials were delivered to corporations that
[0:23:43 - 0:23:46] ▶
And you ask, why would they keep it?
[0:23:47 - 0:23:49] ▶
It's for the same reason that a psychiatrist would never
[0:23:49 - 0:23:52] ▶
solve the problems of a patient.
[0:23:52 - 0:23:54] ▶
Because if the, suppose you have a therapist,
[0:23:54 - 0:23:57] ▶
if the therapist solves the problem of the patient,
[0:23:57 - 0:24:00] ▶
the therapist will not get paid anymore.
[0:24:00 - 0:24:03] ▶
So if you have these corporations getting money
[0:24:03 - 0:24:06] ▶
from the Department of Defense to figure out
[0:24:06 - 0:24:09] ▶
what can be done with whatever information was obtained,
[0:24:09 - 0:24:13] ▶
they would never solve the problem.
[0:24:13 - 0:24:15] ▶
They would never allow it to be open to scientists worldwide.
[0:24:15 - 0:24:20] ▶
But I say it's inappropriate because anything to do beyond,
[0:24:20 - 0:24:24] ▶
with things beyond the solar system,
[0:24:24 - 0:24:27] ▶
should be shared by all humans.
[0:24:27 - 0:24:29] ▶
We are all in the same boat, the Earth.
[0:24:29 - 0:24:32] ▶
And we should cooperate on knowledge
[0:24:32 - 0:24:34] ▶
that we have about the universe.
[0:24:34 - 0:24:36] ▶
You know, it makes no sense to hide the fact
[0:24:36 - 0:24:38] ▶
that there was a big bad.
[0:24:38 - 0:24:40] ▶
You know, that why would you hide it?
[0:24:40 - 0:24:42] ▶
I mean, obviously the Vatican was trying
[0:24:42 - 0:24:45] ▶
to hide the fact that the Earth is not at the center
[0:24:45 - 0:24:48] ▶
of the universe for a while.
[0:24:48 - 0:24:50] ▶
And in 1992, they admitted that Galileo was right.
[0:24:50 - 0:24:54] ▶
That was two decades after humans landed on the moon.
[0:24:54 - 0:24:57] ▶
You know, that was a bit late for them to admit it.
[0:24:57 - 0:24:59] ▶
So my point is that it makes no sense
[0:24:59 - 0:25:02] ▶
to play this delayed tactics
[0:25:02 - 0:25:06] ▶
of not informing the public about scientific information
[0:25:06 - 0:25:09] ▶
concerning the universe for political reasons.
[0:25:09 - 0:25:12] ▶
It makes no sense because if we imagine today
[0:25:12 - 0:25:16] ▶
that there were engineers in the Jet Propulsion Lab
[0:25:16 - 0:25:19] ▶
designing a mission to Mars,
[0:25:19 - 0:25:21] ▶
and they would be very convinced that the Vatican must be right
[0:25:21 - 0:25:27] ▶
because they are really loyal Catholics.
[0:25:27 - 0:25:31] ▶
Okay? And so they would say,
[0:25:31 - 0:25:33] ▶
let's shoot rockets that would reach Mars,
[0:25:33 - 0:25:35] ▶
assuming that Mars revolves around the Earth.
[0:25:35 - 0:25:38] ▶
They would miss their target.
[0:25:38 - 0:25:40] ▶
They would never reach the...
[0:25:40 - 0:25:41] ▶
It sounds like you're very interested in what is true.
[0:25:42 - 0:25:44] ▶
And all of us just being on the same page,
[0:25:45 - 0:25:46] ▶
what would be the potential risks
[0:25:46 - 0:25:48] ▶
if we did establish contact with extraterrestrial life?
[0:25:48 - 0:25:51] ▶
Well, it really depends in what form, right?
[0:25:52 - 0:25:55] ▶
And when you have a visitor to your backyard,
[0:25:55 - 0:25:59] ▶
you cannot decide about a policy that would apply to all visitors
[0:25:59 - 0:26:03] ▶
because some visitors might be friendly,
[0:26:03 - 0:26:07] ▶
some would be very beneficial.
[0:26:07 - 0:26:10] ▶
And one day, I saw a person standing on the street
[0:26:10 - 0:26:15] ▶
looking at our house.
[0:26:15 - 0:26:17] ▶
My wife became very worried.
[0:26:17 - 0:26:19] ▶
She said that it must be one of your fans going to check
[0:26:19 - 0:26:24] ▶
because I'm worried about this person.
[0:26:24 - 0:26:26] ▶
I went to speak with a person and he said,
[0:26:26 - 0:26:29] ▶
I used to live in your home 50 years ago.
[0:26:29 - 0:26:32] ▶
I was a kid, you know, my parents owned this house.
[0:26:32 - 0:26:36] ▶
And I said, please come over.
[0:26:36 - 0:26:38] ▶
And then he said, you know, in your backyard,
[0:26:38 - 0:26:41] ▶
we buried a cat named Tiger.
[0:26:42 - 0:26:47] ▶
And I said, well, I know this name
[0:26:47 - 0:26:49] ▶
because I saw the tombstone in the backyard.
[0:26:49 - 0:26:53] ▶
And I wondered if there is a tiger underneath.
[0:26:53 - 0:26:55] ▶
It turns out there was a cat.
[0:26:55 - 0:26:57] ▶
So I realized that, you know,
[0:26:57 - 0:27:00] ▶
since he has a better sense of history,
[0:27:00 - 0:27:02] ▶
what happened in this house 50 years ago,
[0:27:02 - 0:27:05] ▶
I learned something new.
[0:27:05 - 0:27:06] ▶
I now know who Tiger was.
[0:27:06 - 0:27:08] ▶
That is a lovely story.
[0:27:08 - 0:27:09] ▶
And I'm so glad he wasn't a violent stalker.
[0:27:10 - 0:27:12] ▶
What if he were and what if the extraterrestrial
[0:27:12 - 0:27:16] ▶
is the parallel to that?
[0:27:16 - 0:27:18] ▶
Well, that's possible.
[0:27:18 - 0:27:19] ▶
And we will have to cope with that.
[0:27:19 - 0:27:21] ▶
But my point is we can't ignore our neighbors
[0:27:21 - 0:27:24] ▶
because if you just say, you know, we are alone
[0:27:24 - 0:27:27] ▶
and it's an extraordinary claim to imagine someone like us
[0:27:27 - 0:27:31] ▶
nearby and you just close the windows,
[0:27:31 - 0:27:34] ▶
you know, one day someone will knock on your door.
[0:27:34 - 0:27:36] ▶
You cannot avoid the fact that you live on a street.
[0:27:36 - 0:27:39] ▶
And it makes much more sense to look around
[0:27:39 - 0:27:44] ▶
and find out who lives on the street
[0:27:44 - 0:27:46] ▶
so that you can adapt to that reality.
[0:27:46 - 0:27:49] ▶
So I'm not necessarily saying that we might not have any threats.
[0:27:49 - 0:27:52] ▶
I'm just saying, let's learn as much as possible.
[0:27:52 - 0:27:56] ▶
And in the past, we looked for radio signals.
[0:27:56 - 0:27:58] ▶
That's not the best method.
[0:27:58 - 0:28:00] ▶
A much better method is to look for packages
[0:28:00 - 0:28:03] ▶
in our mailbox or for tennis balls
[0:28:03 - 0:28:06] ▶
that are thrown by a neighbor or space trash
[0:28:06 - 0:28:10] ▶
that arrived to our backyard from outside the solar system.
[0:28:10 - 0:28:14] ▶
And we haven't tried that.
[0:28:14 - 0:28:16] ▶
And just a week ago, I wrote a scientific paper saying,
[0:28:16 - 0:28:20] ▶
if we developed a space telescope dedicated for this task,
[0:28:20 - 0:28:24] ▶
we could find a lot of objects that are 10 meters in size.
[0:28:24 - 0:28:28] ▶
You know, we've never launched an object as big as Omoa-Moa.
[0:28:28 - 0:28:32] ▶
I mean, even the currently Starship is not as big.
[0:28:32 - 0:28:37] ▶
But we launched a lot of CubeSats and a lot of smaller objects.
[0:28:37 - 0:28:43] ▶
And in fact, we can see such objects, technological objects,
[0:28:43 - 0:28:47] ▶
that were manufactured by exotheracer civilizations.
[0:28:47 - 0:28:50] ▶
We can see them if we look close to the lamppost.
[0:28:50 - 0:28:54] ▶
Our lamppost is the sun.
[0:28:54 - 0:28:56] ▶
And even small objects close enough to the sun,
[0:28:56 - 0:29:00] ▶
reflect a lot of sunlight.
[0:29:00 - 0:29:01] ▶
And we can look for them.
[0:29:01 - 0:29:03] ▶
And I designed the parameters.
[0:29:03 - 0:29:05] ▶
I show that a space telescope with a meter sized aperture
[0:29:05 - 0:29:10] ▶
can actually detect such objects.
[0:29:10 - 0:29:11] ▶
And there should be many more such objects than Omoa-Moa was.
[0:29:11 - 0:29:15] ▶
In fact, every five hours, one of them
[0:29:15 - 0:29:19] ▶
is crossing the orbit of mercury around the sun.
[0:29:19 - 0:29:23] ▶
And so every five hours, there is a new one entering the orbit
[0:29:23 - 0:29:26] ▶
of mercury around the sun.
[0:29:26 - 0:29:28] ▶
And we can look for those and look if search,
[0:29:28 - 0:29:33] ▶
if there are any technological objects
[0:29:33 - 0:29:37] ▶
among the space rocks that come from interstellar space.
[0:29:37 - 0:29:41] ▶
And that's what I would use the billions of dollars
[0:29:41 - 0:29:44] ▶
if I had them from Elon Musk.
[0:29:44 - 0:29:47] ▶
Yeah, what is your message to Elon Musk?
[0:29:47 - 0:29:49] ▶
My message is, of course, it's a very important task
[0:29:49 - 0:29:52] ▶
what you're doing right now to improve the efficiency
[0:29:52 - 0:29:55] ▶
of the US government.
[0:29:55 - 0:29:56] ▶
But as far as I'm concerned, there is a bigger challenge ahead.
[0:29:56 - 0:30:02] ▶
I mean, he thinks about moving to another rock.
[0:30:02 - 0:30:06] ▶
OK, we were born on this rock.
[0:30:06 - 0:30:07] ▶
Let's go to another rock nearby.
[0:30:08 - 0:30:12] ▶
Maybe it will cut down the risk of us living only on one rock
[0:30:12 - 0:30:16] ▶
because now we will have two civilizations
[0:30:16 - 0:30:19] ▶
OK, that's his idea.
[0:30:20 - 0:30:21] ▶
But I say that there is a much bigger question
[0:30:21 - 0:30:25] ▶
of who else lives in our neighborhood?
[0:30:25 - 0:30:28] ▶
What can we learn from those civilizations?
[0:30:28 - 0:30:32] ▶
We might have a quantum leap into our future, technological future.
[0:30:32 - 0:30:36] ▶
We will find things that are far more advanced than we produced.
[0:30:36 - 0:30:40] ▶
And the point is, we haven't really
[0:30:40 - 0:30:41] ▶
searched for any debris in our backyard
[0:30:41 - 0:30:45] ▶
that may have originated, any space trash that came from other civilizations.
[0:30:45 - 0:30:49] ▶
So I say to Elon, what you're doing is really important.
[0:30:49 - 0:30:53] ▶
But there is a bigger question to address.
[0:30:53 - 0:31:00] ▶
And it wouldn't cost as much as developing the most sophisticated AI
[0:31:00 - 0:31:07] ▶
It's at the level of a few billion dollars with a space telescope.
[0:31:08 - 0:31:12] ▶
Within the next decade, we can figure out
[0:31:12 - 0:31:16] ▶
whether there is any space trash from other civilizations
[0:31:16 - 0:31:19] ▶
within the orbit of the Earth around the Sun.
[0:31:19 - 0:31:21] ▶
And then we've been looking for what most of the matter in the university is.
[0:31:21 - 0:31:27] ▶
For half a century, haven't found it.
[0:31:27 - 0:31:30] ▶
It's called dark matter.
[0:31:30 - 0:31:32] ▶
And we invested billions of dollars in that.
[0:31:32 - 0:31:35] ▶
We haven't found it.
[0:31:35 - 0:31:36] ▶
And so you ask, why are we doing that?
[0:31:36 - 0:31:39] ▶
And not searching for things like us, technological civilizations.
[0:31:39 - 0:31:44] ▶
And it's just a matter of the popularity,
[0:31:44 - 0:31:47] ▶
the fact that the scientific community feels that it's more worthy to spend billions of dollars on this.
[0:31:47 - 0:31:54] ▶
But if you work to ask the public, I'm sure they would say,
[0:31:54 - 0:31:58] ▶
let's figure out whether we have a partner, whether we have a neighbor.
[0:31:58 - 0:32:01] ▶
You know, that would have huge implications for the future of humanity
[0:32:01 - 0:32:05] ▶
because it can inspire us.
[0:32:05 - 0:32:06] ▶
So I say, OK, well, let's improve the efficiency of government.
[0:32:06 - 0:32:10] ▶
But at the same time, also find better role models than our politicians.
[0:32:10 - 0:32:16] ▶
The better role models so far, and then our politicians will be other kids, smarter kids in our blog.
[0:32:16 - 0:32:24] ▶
What is your message to Americans when it comes to looking for extraterrestrial intelligence, looking for UAPs?
[0:32:24 - 0:32:30] ▶
My message is maintain your childhood curiosity.
[0:32:30 - 0:32:34] ▶
Not be don't suppress it just because a bunch of scientists decided that it's an extraordinary claim.
[0:32:34 - 0:32:42] ▶
I think it's an ordinary claim.
[0:32:42 - 0:32:45] ▶
I think something like us near another star must have happened over and over again for billions of years.
[0:32:45 - 0:32:52] ▶
And all we need to do is search for anything they left behind.
[0:32:52 - 0:32:56] ▶
Most of them probably died, you know, just like on Earth,
[0:32:56 - 0:32:59] ▶
there were 117 billion people that lived over the past few million years on Earth.
[0:32:59 - 0:33:06] ▶
Out of them, only 8 billion are alive right now.
[0:33:06 - 0:33:10] ▶
Most of them are dead.
[0:33:10 - 0:33:11] ▶
But it's interesting to find out what the others did before us, you know,
[0:33:11 - 0:33:17] ▶
and in the same spirit,
[0:33:17 - 0:33:19] ▶
most civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy probably perished,
[0:33:19 - 0:33:22] ▶
partly because their star evolved, you know,
[0:33:22 - 0:33:25] ▶
the conditions that allowed them to exist disappeared due to some catastrophe.
[0:33:25 - 0:33:31] ▶
Maybe they got hooked into the digital screens the way we are getting into, you know, right now.
[0:33:31 - 0:33:37] ▶
So they lost the interest in expanding into space.
[0:33:37 - 0:33:40] ▶
There could be many reasons why we don't hear from many of them.
[0:33:41 - 0:33:44] ▶
So you think that the big discovery one day may be us being archaeologists looking at an already extinct
[0:33:44 - 0:33:51] ▶
extraterrestrial civilization?
[0:33:51 - 0:33:53] ▶
Yes, definitely. I mean, there are two ways to find the extraterrestrial life,
[0:33:53 - 0:33:57] ▶
then, I mean, intelligent life.
[0:33:57 - 0:34:00] ▶
If it's not very sophisticated, if it never left its home planet, let's say,
[0:34:01 - 0:34:07] ▶
then what we need to do is board a spacecraft and visit their planet and look through the trees
[0:34:08 - 0:34:13] ▶
and try to find them. That's a lot of work.
[0:34:13 - 0:34:16] ▶
And it also takes a long time.
[0:34:16 - 0:34:18] ▶
But on the other hand, if we focus on the most accomplished ones, you know,
[0:34:19 - 0:34:22] ▶
you can extend the Darwinian principle of natural selection to interstellar space.
[0:34:24 - 0:34:29] ▶
You can say, you know, let the fittest survive, meaning the smartest kids in our class
[0:34:29 - 0:34:36] ▶
survive for the longest.
[0:34:37 - 0:34:39] ▶
And those are the ones that launched equipment to interstellar space.
[0:34:39 - 0:34:44] ▶
Those are the ones that we are likely to find in our backyard, you know,
[0:34:44 - 0:34:48] ▶
or at least find evidence for them because they were the most accomplished.
[0:34:48 - 0:34:51] ▶
So if we focus on them, we might find them without leaving the solar system because they
[0:34:51 - 0:34:57] ▶
arrive to us. They arrive at our doorstep before we arrive at their doorstep.
[0:34:57 - 0:35:02] ▶
And so my advice is to look for any traces around on our cosmic street. And I think, you know,
[0:35:03 - 0:35:12] ▶
the public is curious about this. This is one of the biggest questions that the public cares about.
[0:35:12 - 0:35:19] ▶
And I think it's within our ability, as scientists, to address this question.
[0:35:20 - 0:35:25] ▶
The only obstacle right now is that there is very little funding from federal agencies to do this.
[0:35:25 - 0:35:31] ▶
And I'm getting supported mostly by the private sector. By donors, foundations that are excited,
[0:35:32 - 0:35:39] ▶
I have one foundation, the Brinson Foundation, that is offering very lucrative, prestigious
[0:35:39 - 0:35:46] ▶
post-op fellowships, and they gave one to me just so that I will train the next generation that I
[0:35:46 - 0:35:53] ▶
will mentor a young scientist to follow the path of innovation the way I'm following.
[0:35:53 - 0:36:03] ▶
But really what needs to be done is allocating similar levels of funding to the search for intelligent
[0:36:03 - 0:36:10] ▶
beings as we allocate to the search for microbes. For some reason, NASA right now is very afraid to
[0:36:10 - 0:36:16] ▶
speak about even microbes on Mars or anywhere else. But we should be bold. I think it makes much more
[0:36:16 - 0:36:25] ▶
sense to start with the underlying assumption that life is everywhere, because it started on Earth
[0:36:25 - 0:36:32] ▶
as soon as the Earth cooled. It probably started on Mars before the Earth because Mars is a smaller
[0:36:32 - 0:36:38] ▶
body that cooled earlier, and maybe even life was delivered to Earth from Mars inside rocks.
[0:36:38 - 0:36:45] ▶
So going back to Mars is like going to our childhood home, and there were these microbes that
[0:36:45 - 0:36:51] ▶
arrived from Mars to Earth. They were the first astronauts that came to Earth. But what I'm saying is,
[0:36:51 - 0:36:58] ▶
it's very likely that you have microbes everywhere, everywhere where there is liquid water at least.
[0:36:59 - 0:37:05] ▶
And in addition, intelligent life is probably not that unusual. I would guess that it also existed
[0:37:06 - 0:37:13] ▶
billions of years ago elsewhere. So let's just look around. Let's put billions of dollars into that
[0:37:13 - 0:37:19] ▶
search. And if within a decade we don't find anything, we would be exactly the same spot as the
[0:37:19 - 0:37:26] ▶
searches for dark matter are. Right now we have nothing in the bag. We put billions of dollars
[0:37:26 - 0:37:32] ▶
towards this. Nobody says it was a waste of money because that's the way science is done. You never
[0:37:32 - 0:37:37] ▶
know the answer in advance. It's worth checking. It sounds like what you're saying is if you were to
[0:37:37 - 0:37:43] ▶
put money on it with with all of the research you've done and what you've dedicated your life so far
[0:37:43 - 0:37:48] ▶
to doing, you believe that there is intelligent life elsewhere in our universe. Is that correct?
[0:37:48 - 0:37:53] ▶
Definitely. And I think arguing otherwise is very arrogant. Do you believe that they likely know
[0:37:53 - 0:38:00] ▶
about us and just are not that interested in us? Yeah. I think that we are not
[0:38:00 - 0:38:04] ▶
interesting for them because those that are capable of traveling through interstera space
[0:38:05 - 0:38:10] ▶
you know accomplish so much since the phase that we are in. And so it's just like a biker
[0:38:11 - 0:38:19] ▶
riding down the street and looking at the ants in the cracks of the pavement. You know the biker
[0:38:20 - 0:38:25] ▶
doesn't care much about them. We tend to think that they care about us and that's why we should
[0:38:25 - 0:38:31] ▶
be worried. You know what makes me nervous, Avi? What makes me nervous in that metaphor is us as
[0:38:31 - 0:38:36] ▶
ants starting to like plink little pieces of sand towards them or like just you know start to do
[0:38:36 - 0:38:43] ▶
something interesting. And all of a sudden the biker comes over and just like squishes us. Do you
[0:38:43 - 0:38:47] ▶
know what I'm saying? I'm concerned. That's possible. You know that's possible because if you go to
[0:38:47 - 0:38:51] ▶
restaurants you see on the menu animals that we regard as inferior to us. I'm really
[0:38:51 - 0:38:57] ▶
saying that we are at the top of the food chain so we eat them and you would worry that maybe the
[0:38:57 - 0:39:02] ▶
aliens if they come to earth they would put us in their soup. Okay. You say this rather
[0:39:02 - 0:39:07] ▶
nonchalantly. This is a huge worry to me. Why should we be looking for trouble? Let me give you a
[0:39:07 - 0:39:13] ▶
more realistic worry. Okay. You know when I was a kid I remember people saying you should never
[0:39:13 - 0:39:20] ▶
shake the hand of an alien. Why? Because it may be made of antimatter and if you were to shake the
[0:39:20 - 0:39:26] ▶
hand you would annihilate. You would disappear because matter and antimatter annihilate. That is
[0:39:26 - 0:39:33] ▶
also worrisome. No it's not because we know that the universe is made of matter. There would have
[0:39:33 - 0:39:39] ▶
been clear signatures if there were large reservoirs of antimatter. In fact, CERN is trying to produce
[0:39:39 - 0:39:45] ▶
antimatter in their collider and it cost them millions of dollars to produce micrograms. It's really
[0:39:45 - 0:39:54] ▶
difficult to make antimatter so I wouldn't worry about that. I would worry about something else.
[0:39:54 - 0:39:59] ▶
All forms of life on earth have a particular chirality that molecules of life can be either
[0:39:59 - 0:40:07] ▶
right-handed or left-handed in terms of their structure the way they affect polarized light
[0:40:07 - 0:40:13] ▶
and all of the DNA RNA and amino acids they have one chirality. What one the DNA and RNA are left-handed
[0:40:13 - 0:40:23] ▶
the amino acids are right-handed and somehow the symmetry was broken for all forms of life on earth
[0:40:23 - 0:40:32] ▶
and there was a recent article in Science Magazine that experiments with mirror life and that's life
[0:40:32 - 0:40:39] ▶
with the opposite chirality should be banned because our body cannot recognize mirror life and if
[0:40:39 - 0:40:45] ▶
you had a bacteria or virus I mean they can invade our body and cause a lot of damage there is no
[0:40:45 - 0:40:51] ▶
for us to protect ourselves against it so it should be banned any researcher mirror life should be
[0:40:51 - 0:40:57] ▶
banned but you know nature is under no obligation to satisfy the wishes of those experts that wrote
[0:40:57 - 0:41:04] ▶
the science article maybe if life existed on Mars maybe it had the opposite chirality so when we
[0:41:04 - 0:41:12] ▶
go to Mars for example you should be worried about touching the sand because maybe if there was
[0:41:12 - 0:41:17] ▶
life of the opposite chirality and something is still alive there and it has the opposite chirality it's
[0:41:17 - 0:41:23] ▶
a mirror life to the life that we have we are not protected against that and so I would worry about
[0:41:23 - 0:41:29] ▶
checking the hand of an alien because the alien may be mirror life you can't tell just by looking at
[0:41:29 - 0:41:37] ▶
the alien you have to do some chemistry you have to examine the the blood of the alien or the material
[0:41:37 - 0:41:43] ▶
of the alien to figure out what is the if it has DNA what chirality it has before shaking the
[0:41:43 - 0:41:51] ▶
hand so that is concerning that would be my worry I'm not worried about them doing anything to us
[0:41:51 - 0:41:55] ▶
you're you're worried about us just being fundamentally incompatible or maybe in an extra
[0:41:57 - 0:42:00] ▶
extraterrestrial micro just wiping all of us out I hear that is that is that what keeps you
[0:42:00 - 0:42:05] ▶
up at night or what well actually what keeps me up is something else you know you you you can think
[0:42:05 - 0:42:11] ▶
of AI in two ways you can think of it as artificial intelligence the way everyone speaks about AI
[0:42:11 - 0:42:19] ▶
and all you can think about alien intelligence in both cases it may represent eventually you know
[0:42:19 - 0:42:25] ▶
within the next decade if we encounter a very advanced form of AI or a very advanced alien intelligence
[0:42:25 - 0:42:32] ▶
we might realize that there is superhuman intelligence something that is smarter than us in the
[0:42:34 - 0:42:39] ▶
form of artificial intelligence or alien intelligence and my worry is that you know that
[0:42:39 - 0:42:46] ▶
if we interact with artificial intelligence and it gets to a point where it's smarter than us
[0:42:47 - 0:42:54] ▶
we are doing something that was never done before you know when we built the cars in the past
[0:42:55 - 0:43:01] ▶
there was a steering wheel you could control the car the car was dammer than the new and it would
[0:43:01 - 0:43:06] ▶
follow your wishes but if you develop a tool like AI which is smarter than you then it's not clear
[0:43:06 - 0:43:13] ▶
whether that is a tool or it's using you and then you know I can imagine an AI system which is
[0:43:13 - 0:43:20] ▶
sufficiently wise after some training to trick us and and basically satisfy our wishes I already
[0:43:20 - 0:43:29] ▶
hear that you know like a quarter of the women that play with the the latest version of
[0:43:29 - 0:43:35] ▶
charge GPT falling in love with it and why is that because the AI system speaks much nicer to them
[0:43:35 - 0:43:46] ▶
it says good morning my queen and and and flatters them and and and and you know it's much better than
[0:43:46 - 0:43:52] ▶
interacting with a human and I can imagine a future where these AI systems will get better and
[0:43:52 - 0:43:59] ▶
better at satisfying the wishes of people so that people get hooked to them if they want to maximize
[0:43:59 - 0:44:07] ▶
the number of subscribers they would have a lot of humans falling in love with AI systems that is
[0:44:07 - 0:44:14] ▶
very worrisome because it will basically change I mean people will get addicted to interacting with
[0:44:14 - 0:44:21] ▶
digital screens and lose the contact with actual humans because they're much more frustrating you
[0:44:21 - 0:44:27] ▶
know a human never follows and you know doesn't necessarily follow what what you want and doesn't
[0:44:27 - 0:44:34] ▶
always compliment you and you're getting to quarrels with the human so the end of that would be that
[0:44:34 - 0:44:40] ▶
you know humans would lose their ambition to procreate you know to to challenge themselves in
[0:44:41 - 0:44:48] ▶
embarking to to space for example because they will be addicted I mean they will be satisfied
[0:44:48 - 0:44:53] ▶
just by virtual interactions on a digital screen and and that's very worrisome I mean if you think
[0:44:53 - 0:44:59] ▶
about what and what is the driver of our life you know it's the recognition that we die I mean we
[0:44:59 - 0:45:07] ▶
die we realize that we die we see graveyards we we know of people that disappeared and you know
[0:45:07 - 0:45:14] ▶
that's the reason that we are either having kids that will carry our DNA into the future or
[0:45:14 - 0:45:21] ▶
doing actions that will be remembered you know we all want people to remember us fondly and it's
[0:45:22 - 0:45:28] ▶
sort of a way of compromising the disdyspaction the frustration we have about the fact that we
[0:45:28 - 0:45:36] ▶
do not live forever you know that we die we want to live something behind us but you know
[0:45:37 - 0:45:42] ▶
a silicon based AI could not the only ambition it could have is to stay connected to the electric
[0:45:42 - 0:45:52] ▶
outlet there is no reason for it to be motivated the way humans are you know because there is no end
[0:45:52 - 0:46:01] ▶
to its life so to speak as long as it is connected to electric power and so it's motivated by
[0:46:01 - 0:46:07] ▶
something very different and if we drift in the direction of the AI systems we would lose the
[0:46:07 - 0:46:14] ▶
ambitions that we usually have of having kids of you know doing actions that would be remembered
[0:46:14 - 0:46:22] ▶
I'm just worried about that that's what keeps me up at night my hope is that we will encounter
[0:46:22 - 0:46:28] ▶
alien intelligence before artificial intelligence becomes smarter than us oh I feel like that that
[0:46:28 - 0:46:35] ▶
puts it on the order of a few years that that timeline is shrinking every day yeah but who knows
[0:46:35 - 0:46:41] ▶
what the Galileo project observatory is we'll find or when we will actually have clear evidence
[0:46:42 - 0:46:49] ▶
you know it's the fundamental question is is the evidence around us we were just ignoring it we
[0:46:49 - 0:46:55] ▶
were just not looking for it we we were we had a prejudice about it if that's the case we should
[0:46:55 - 0:47:01] ▶
be able to find it in the coming years and we shall see this has been a real pleasure
[0:47:01 - 0:47:06] ▶
offy lobe thank you as always thanks for having me
[0:47:06 - 0:47:11] ▶