(Bonus) Harvard's Top Astronomer Avi Loeb On Oumuamua
In 2017, scientists sighted the first interstellar object, the first thing we definitively know came from outside our solar system… something that was not bound to the gravity pull of our sun. But that was just the beginning of the oddness exhibited by the object known as Oumuamua. It didn’t behave like a comet. It didn’t seem to be made of materials we expect. It was shaped in a way that nothing in nature should be shaped like. And as it curved around our sun, it actually accelerated in a way that we couldn’t account for by the laws of physics. In his new book, Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth, which comes out Avi Loeb, Harvard’s top Astronomer, argues that Oumuamua was most likely an alien craft, or artifact of some kind. It likely had some sort of solar sail mechanism, and actually, suggests it might be functioning as some sort of interstellar buoy. We’re going to get into that in this episode, but stay to the end, because forget small satellites, do you know we could shoot a super small probe, about the size of a small satellite, attached to a solar sail and pushed by a laser right now, today? Humanity could reach another star for the first time in just 20 years… in all of our lifetimes, and we could get the data and pictures back within 24 years. Avi is working on this with the backing of Yuri Milner and Mark Zuckerberg among others. So, come for Oumuamua, and stay for the crazy space project that, in my opinion, should be the one we all band together to pursue.
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#154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua
Avi Loeb is an astrophysicist at Harvard. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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EPISODE LINKS:
Extraterrestrial (book): https://amzn.to/39xdnkT
Avi’s Website: https://astronomy.fas.harvard.edu/people/avi-loeb
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OUTLINE:
Here’s the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.
(00:00) – Introduction
(10:08) – Are we alone in the universe?
(14:23) – Consciousness
(19:01) – Sending digital copies of humans to space
(23:38) – Oumuamua
(45:42) – Alien space junk
(49:41) – What do aliens look like?
(1:06:58) – Drake equation
(1:08:00) – Industrial polution from aliens
(1:19:52) – UFO sightings
(1:27:48) – How long will human civilization last?
(1:30:28) – Radio signal from Proxima Centauri
(1:33:49) – Breakthrough Starshot project
(1:36:49) – Space race
(1:42:00) – Human space exploration
(1:47:15) – Social media is a threat to society
(1:52:04) – Are humans ready for discovering an alien civilization?
(1:56:15) – Mayans used astrology to wage war
(1:57:31) – Black holes
(2:16:20) – Stephen Hawking
(2:19:59) – Grigori Perelman
(2:24:24) – Theory of everything
(2:31:23) – Dark matter
(2:34:06) – Advice for young people
(2:37:10) – Memories of my father and mother
(2:41:38) – Existentialism
(2:43:52) – Mortality
(2:46:27) – Meaning of life