In this episode of the Joe Rogan Experience, the comedian and podcaster talks with astrophysicist Avi Finan about the mysterious object known as Amuamua, and why he thinks it may have been discovered by some other civilization. Also, Avi talks about his new book, The Dark Side of the Sun: A Guide to the Most Beautiful Object in the Solar System, which is out now, and is out for pre-order! This episode was produced and edited by Alex Blumberg. Additional editing was made by Annie-Rose Strasser. The show was mixed and produced by Matthew Boll. Our theme song was written and performed by Micah Vellian and our ad music was provided by Mark Phillips. Additional music was performed by Mark's band, The Weakerthans, which you can find on SoundCloud here. Thanks to our sponsor, VaynerSpeakers, for sponsoring this episode. You can expect weekly episodes every available as Video, Podcast, and blogposts. If you like what you hear, please consider becoming a patron patron and/or become a patron. Subscribe to the podcast by clicking the patron patron! Subscribe on iTunes, Rate/subscribe in Apple Podcasts, and leave us a rating and review on iTunes if you like the podcast! Thank you for supporting the show! , and share it on Apple Podcast, too! or wherever else you get your listening pleasure! Thanks for listening and sharing it! - The Joe Rogans Experience Podcast by Night All Day, All Day All Day by Night, by Day, by Night - All Day. - by Night by Night! - by Norma - By Norma's Podcasts by Night all Day, By Night by Day by Day - By Night, By Day, All Day By Night - By Day All day All Day? by Night By Night -- by Night's Podcast by Day Allday All Day all Day by Grace, by Grace and Night by Grace's Podcast, by Gratitude by Grace & Grace, by Grace Thanks, Grace and Grace, Thank You, By Grace, Thanks, Thank you, Grace & Gratavie, Thank You for listening to Meghan Mclean? - Thank You For Listening to Meals and Gynn? -- By Grace & Gellie? , By Grace and Glynis?
00:00:58.000You came on my radar when you were discussing Amuamua, which is an object that we detected in space that you believe could possibly have been extraterrestrial in origin,
00:01:15.000meaning from some sort of a civilization.
00:01:20.000Please explain to people what Oumuamua is, why it's so extraordinary, and why you think it's possible that it came from some other intelligent civilization.
00:01:39.000You have some anomalies, some things that don't quite match what you expected, and you're trying to find an explanation.
00:01:48.000The thing about Oumuamua is that it was discovered on October 19th, 2017. A little more than three years ago.
00:01:57.000And it was the very first object that visited our vicinity in the solar system from outside the solar system.
00:02:05.000It moved too fast to be bound to the Sun.
00:02:08.000Very first object that we have found coming to us from interstellar space, from other places.
00:02:13.000And at first, astronomers said, oh yeah, it's probably just like the objects we had in our solar system, all the rocks that we have seen before.
00:02:44.000An asteroid is just rock without much ice on it.
00:02:47.000Actually, the first person to explain what comets are was at Harvard, the university that I am affiliated with.
00:02:55.000And the story goes that, I mean, it was Fred Whipple that he went to Harvard Square and saw all the slush during the winter day, you know, and came up with the idea that it's just...
00:03:07.000Icy rock or icy rocks or, you know, rocky ice.
00:03:56.000Then the problem was that it exhibited an extra push away from the sun.
00:04:01.000And usually you get it from the rocket effect.
00:04:04.000When you make the cometary tail, it pushes the object in the opposite direction, just like a jet plane.
00:04:12.000A jet plane works by throwing gas out, and that's pushing you forward.
00:04:18.000So a comet has an extra push when it But there was no cometary tail, so why did it show an extra push?
00:04:28.000That was the key question in my mind, at which point I started thinking, maybe it's not a comet and not an asteroid, something else, you know?
00:04:36.000And the other strange thing about it, it changes its brightness by a factor of 10 or more, and the brightness of the object, the light that we see, is simply reflected sunlight, right?
00:04:49.000So just think about it, think about a piece of paper, razor-thin piece of paper, tumbling in the wind, and changing the area that we can see, the projected area of that piece of paper, by a factor of 10 as we look at it.
00:05:05.000That's exactly what we inferred from this object, spinning around every eight hours, but changing its brightness by a factor of 10, meaning that the area projected on the sky That we see that reflect sunlight changed by a factor of 10. So that means it has an extreme geometry,
00:05:23.000most likely flat, if you try to interpret the light that it reflected over as it was tumbling around.
00:05:31.000And so a flat object about the size of a football field That has an extra push.
00:05:38.000If it were a comet, it needed to lose about a tenth of its weight.
00:07:49.000Because it's a hollow, it's a very thin structure.
00:07:52.000So here is an example where we can tell it's artificial, and we know that we made it.
00:08:00.000But Oumuamua could not have been made by us because it was passing near us just for a few months, very quickly, faster than any rocket that we can launch.
00:08:08.000That's why we couldn't really chase it when it was receding away from us.
00:08:12.000And it came from outside the solar system.
00:08:14.000So, you know, I just do one plus one equal two.
00:08:36.000They were very upset that this possibility was even mentioned.
00:08:39.000You know, we had a seminar, a lecture about this object at Harvard, and a colleague of mine, after the lecture, said, this object is really weird.
00:10:33.000There is a student at Harvard that, as a result of my book on this subject that is about to come out in a week or so, She was inspired to do her PhD on the theme of my book.
00:10:49.000So she invited me to a thesis exam just a couple of months ago, and one of the examiners, a professor, asked her, do you know why Giordano Bruno, an Italian guy, was burnt at the stake?
00:11:05.000And she said, well, he was an obnoxious guy.
00:11:07.000He irritated a lot of people, which is true.
00:11:57.000People are not really open-minded about the heavens, as you said.
00:12:02.000Well, they're not open-minded when it comes to saying something that could make you an outcast or that could align you with an outcast or open you to ridicule.
00:12:40.000Now, it may well be that I'm wrong, that this is really an unusual object that is of natural origin.
00:12:46.000And by the way, some of the mainstream astronomers try to explain it, but they always came up with an explanation that is the first object of its type that we have ever seen.
00:12:57.000So all I'm saying is, if it's nothing that we have seen before, Why not contemplate also the possibility that it's artificially made?
00:13:10.000And besides, science is about evidence.
00:13:14.000So let's look for other objects and not always assume that we know the answer in advance.
00:13:20.000If you took a caveman and showed the caveman a cell phone, a modern cell phone, the caveman would think that it's a rock, just a shiny rock.
00:13:29.000And I can understand the response of my colleagues, but on the other hand, I would expect them to be more open-minded.
00:14:12.000Some of these people that are very vocal about it, some of them I think of as just like this congressman that for many years was making anti-gay statements.
00:14:23.000And then in March 2020, he confessed that he's gay.
00:14:28.000So I believe that some of them, deep inside, are really intrigued by this possibility.
00:14:33.000And they speak out in a way that is against it.
00:14:39.000They will jump ship as soon as the evidence becomes undisputable.
00:14:44.000To me, it's just a possibility that we should entertain because it affects the way we behave in the future.
00:14:50.000If we search for other objects of the same, we might find even more conclusive evidence.
00:14:56.000If we don't look for unexpected things, we will never discover them.
00:15:02.000You know, if we put blinders on our eyes.
00:15:04.000So all I'm saying is, it's a reasonable possibility for this, a reasonable interpretation for the evidence we have for this object, which is unusual, because all the natural interpretations also assume something that we have never seen before.
00:15:18.000Okay, so let's consider the possibility of a message in a bottle.
00:15:22.000You know, when you walk on the beach and you see most of the time seashells or rocks that were naturally produced, every now and then you encounter a plastic bottle that was artificially made.
00:15:33.000And perhaps Oumuamua was the first plastic bottle, you know, that carries some message for us.
00:15:39.000And that would change our perception about our place in the universe.
00:15:45.000Also, I don't think that we are the smartest kid on the block, if you ask me.
00:15:49.000I think that we are probably quite typical because half of the stars, like the sun, have a planet the size of the Earth, roughly at the same distance, that could have liquid water on the surface and the chemistry of life as we know it.
00:16:05.000Now, you open a recipe book for cakes.
00:16:09.000You can see that you can make very different cakes out of the same ingredients, depending on how you mix them.
00:16:20.000What's the chance that if you took the soup of chemicals that existed on Earth and put them together in some random fashion to get the life as we know it...
00:16:54.000And at the same time, we might learn from them.
00:16:57.000So if we approach this from a modest perspective, that we are not really the sharpest cookie in the jar...
00:17:06.000Then, by looking at the sky, we may learn something about more advanced technologies that we can bring here, for example.
00:17:14.000Suppose we see a technology that we didn't even dream about.
00:17:18.000It would be a better investment of our time to learn about it than to go to Wall Street or to Silicon Valley.
00:17:23.000Instead of us developing it over hundreds of years, suddenly you see something that we can use here.
00:17:29.000Well, let me push back on a couple of these things.
00:17:31.000First of all, I don't think if people do believe that there is alien life, I don't think they necessarily think that we are the best of life in the cosmos.
00:17:42.000I think most people agree there's room for improvement when it comes to the human race.
00:17:46.000But we are clearly the most advanced animal that we're aware of, that we can prove it.
00:17:56.000We're not perfect, but we're far more...
00:18:02.000The word intelligent is a rough word, right?
00:18:04.000We're definitely more intelligent than a lot of other animals that we can observe.
00:18:08.000But what we can do that is interesting is we can radically change and manipulate our environment.
00:18:14.000And I think it's preposterous to think that that wouldn't be interesting to another species.
00:18:19.000Now, if you're thinking of something that's infinitely more advanced than us, millions and millions of years more advanced than us, it probably won't be impressed with us.
00:19:08.000First of all, the only thing that can happen as a result of interaction with us is that they will downgrade their lifestyle, the quality of life.
00:19:15.000So the only way for us to learn about them is from the trash they throw out.
00:19:19.000Just like investigative journalists looking through the trash of celebrities in Hollywood to find out what are they doing.
00:19:29.000But I don't think they will care much about us.
00:19:33.000Let me offer you up another possibility.
00:19:35.000What if they have recognized that all life, regardless of the ingredients in the cake and how they're put together, that all life seeks innovation and seeks to advance, and that this is a constant throughout the universe.
00:19:48.000That things go from single-celled organisms to multi-celled organisms to interstellar travelers.
00:19:54.000And that they continue along this path as long as they don't fall into a few possible scenarios that could lead to ultimate destruction, like nuclear war, like climate change, like all the things that we're involved in right now.
00:21:05.000A sign of intelligence is working together, dedicating all the resources that we have towards a better future such that we can benefit from it.
00:21:16.000You know, just to give you an example, in my book I talk about Winston Churchill.
00:21:20.000Winston Churchill in 1939 wrote an essay about the fact that There could be life on other planets, around other stars, and we should search for it.
00:21:32.000Now, he didn't have a chance to publish it because he became prime minister and then had to fight the Second World War against the Nazi regime.
00:21:42.000If that money was allocated to the search for extraterrestrial life the way that Churchill envisioned it before the war, We might have known the answer by now.
00:21:53.000And what I'm saying is this is just an example for how non-intelligent we are.
00:21:58.000We are not working together towards a better future.
00:22:16.000I think there are massive problems with people, but I think we are far better than the human beings that lived 2,000 years ago in that regard.
00:22:23.000And I think that we will probably be looking back on this day and age and mocking how stupid we are when we are more advanced 2,000 years from today.
00:22:32.000I really hope so, and that's I think we're moving in that direction.
00:22:35.000Well, that's what I'm trying to promote, but I'm not necessarily as optimistic as you are.
00:22:40.000I think our cake is still in the oven.
00:22:56.000I think there's conflict, but I think for whatever reason, the way human beings operate, we oftentimes need conflict in order to make improvements.
00:23:50.000And we are, you know, it's wired into our DNA. Now, my problem is, why couldn't science, given that...
00:23:58.000You know, there are billions of Earth-Sun systems within just the Milky Way galaxy.
00:24:04.000And then a trillion galaxies like the Milky Way in the observable volume of the universe.
00:24:09.000You know, why can't the mainstream of astronomy simply say, conservatively, you know, just assuming the most conservative, not speculative assumption.
00:24:22.000Conservatively, we are the middle of the road, you know, kind of life.
00:24:27.000It's very likely that we're not unique and special.
00:24:30.000And let's just look for evidence, you know, search for it.
00:24:33.000Why should there be a taboo on discussing this subject?
00:24:38.000For example, astronomers are now thinking, contemplating new telescopes of the future that will cost billions of dollars to taxpayers, okay, that would search for oxygen.
00:24:51.000In the atmospheres of other planets around other stars, because oxygen could be indicative of life, microbial life.
00:24:58.000I say it will never be conclusive, such as such, even if it costs billions of dollars, because the Earth, for two billion years, the first two billion years of the Earth's history, didn't have much oxygen in its atmosphere.
00:25:13.000There were microbes, but the oxygen level was quite low.
00:25:17.000And then it suddenly rose after two billion years, half of its life.
00:25:20.000So not finding oxygen doesn't mean there is no life.
00:25:23.000And then if you find oxygen, it can be produced by many natural processes like breaking water molecules or other things.
00:25:40.000For CFCs, these are the molecules produced by refrigerating systems, by industries.
00:25:46.000If you find evidence for that, there is no way that nature can make these very complex molecules naturally.
00:25:52.000So I say to the mainstream of astronomy, use the same instruments and motivate them by this question of, can we detect industrial pollution?
00:26:12.000So how can the scientific community shy away from a question that it can address with existing technology, you know?
00:26:22.000When the public is very interested in that, how can there be a taboo on this question?
00:26:27.000That's the thing that really puzzles me.
00:26:29.000Now, you know, I wasn't working in this area until the last five years or so.
00:26:34.000I was working in studying black holes, studying the universe, and I came across a number of ideas that led me into this rabbit hole, into this subject.
00:26:47.000Now I'm about to publish this book at a popular level, but also a textbook, Six months later, that describes all the science that we have related to the search for life outside Earth, far from Earth.
00:27:00.000And I'm just amazed that it's not part of the mainstream.
00:27:05.000You know, it's really surprising to me.
00:27:07.000And I think it's inappropriate because you look at physics, theoretical physics.
00:27:12.000There are lots of speculative ideas in it, like people talk about extra dimensions, the multiverse, supersymmetry, superstring theory.
00:27:21.000All of these have no evidence to their credit.
00:27:25.000There is no experimental test, not even...
00:29:00.000If you work on ideas that will never be tested against data, against evidence.
00:29:06.000So if you work on superstring theory or on extra dimensions or on the multiverse, you can do intellectual gymnastics and impress your colleagues that you're smart.
00:29:15.000And you will get jobs, you will get recognition, you will get awards.
00:29:20.000If that's your goal, that's a completely legitimate framework.
00:29:25.000But I see it as a violation of our commitment as physicists to understand nature.
00:29:51.000I just talk about it the way I would talk about any other anomaly.
00:29:55.000And people were asking, you know, why isn't he backing down?
00:29:59.000Well, I will back down as soon as there is evidence.
00:30:02.000You know, if I saw a photograph showing that it's a rock, or if I saw some other objects like it, that we definitely have clear evidence that they are naturally produced, then I will give up on it.
00:30:14.000You know, that's part of any work on the frontiers.
00:30:17.000This is my thoughts on the quantum physics aspect of this.
00:30:22.000I think there's not enough people that understand what they're doing to criticize them, so there's no social pressure.
00:30:28.000The difference between that and the concept of exploring extraterrestrial life is extraterrestrial life is inexorably connected to nonsense.
00:30:37.000It's connected to crazy people that think that they're talking to aliens.
00:30:43.000They're channeling people from the other planet.
00:32:13.000They weren't like the most popular person.
00:32:15.000And social interactions with them, you know, maybe they were bullied.
00:32:19.000Maybe they're like Dr. Carl Hart, who's an academic who was on a couple days ago, was actually talking about this very subject.
00:32:25.000And that a lot of academics, they try to undermine other people's work.
00:32:31.000And they do so in kind of a bullying fashion.
00:32:34.000Yeah, because it's all about the ego, you see.
00:32:36.000I was asked by the Harvard Gazette, the Harvard University Gazette, which is the Pravda of Harvard, you know, this official newspaper of Harvard.
00:32:46.000They asked me, what is the one thing you would like to change about the world?
00:33:01.000You know, I was mostly curious about the world.
00:33:03.000I would not be afraid of making mistakes.
00:33:06.000I wasn't worried about my ego or my something...
00:33:10.000Really strange happens to those kids that take risks and are not worried about themselves so much.
00:33:17.000Something bad happens to them when they become tenured professors in academia.
00:33:22.000Tenure is supposed to give you the freedom to explore directions that may turn out to be wrong.
00:33:29.000That's what Einstein demonstrated at the end of his career.
00:33:33.000So You would expect people to take advantage of that but instead once professors become tenured for life meaning that there is no risk to their job They are starting to pursue honors and awards,
00:33:52.000They build these echo chambers where they have students and postdocs repeating their mantras so that their voice will sound louder, so that they will get even more recognition.
00:34:04.000Now, I say the scientific inquiry is not about us.
00:34:11.000It's about the dialogue with nature, trying to figure out what nature is.
00:34:16.000It's not about elevating our status, our image.
00:34:18.000You know, we will all die in several decades.
00:35:41.000If you want a deeper sort of satisfaction, I think understanding the world is what humans are capable of doing.
00:35:48.000And that's really a deeper level of enjoying life, so to speak.
00:35:52.000Well, there's a lot of examples of professors going out on a limb, being incorrect, and then being punished, being ridiculed, losing their status in the community, or even being correct, but not having the support of your peers who turn on you and turn against you,
00:36:10.000and then it turns out ultimately they were correct, but there's very little...
00:36:53.000There are many examples for unborn babies in science where people were ridiculed and ideas were never pursued or delayed.
00:37:02.000For example, looking for planets around other stars.
00:37:06.000That was something that was suggested in 1952 by an astronomer called Otto Struve, who said if you take Jupiter, the planet Jupiter, put it close to the Sun, then it will move the Sun back and forth A lot.
00:37:22.000And you could tell if there is a close-in Jupiter near other stars by looking at their motion.
00:37:28.000Or looking as it occults the star, comes in front of it, transits in front.
00:37:32.000He suggested that 1952, for four decades, astronomers ignored that.
00:37:39.000Because they said, we know that Jupiter in our solar system is far away, and we understand why it's far away, and therefore we shouldn't waste our time even looking for something like that.
00:37:52.000Then, in 1995, a couple of astronomers found a hot Jupiter, a Jupiter close to a star, and they got the Nobel Prize a couple of years ago for that.
00:38:02.000So my point is, this is an example of a baby that was eventually born.
00:38:07.000So people would say, oh yeah, science works, you see, eventually it was found.
00:39:31.000I have more than 800 papers that I published and eight books.
00:39:38.000In all of these, I talk about anomalies.
00:39:42.000Over the years, I talked about anomalies in other contexts, like in the early universe and And when I mentioned speculative ideas in other contexts, there was no pushback.
00:40:15.000Working on this subject the same way I work on other subjects, and I get this response that...
00:40:21.000Now, the only reason the two of us are speaking, you know, and I get a lot of media attention is because my colleagues are not behaving the same way.
00:41:22.000And I was recruited to a special program that allowed me to finish my PhD at age 24. And then I worked on, not on astronomy, but then I visited, I actually led the first project that was funded by the Star Wars initiative of Ronald Reagan back in the 80s.
00:41:44.000So General Abramson came to visit Israel and we presented the project to him.
00:41:49.000I was the theorist leading that project and he liked it a lot.
00:41:53.000So it was the first project to be funded outside the U.S. related to SDI, the Star Wars initiative.
00:42:00.000So that brought me to visit Washington quite often because we were funded by the U.S. And in one of the visits, I went to Princeton because I heard that Albert Einstein was at the Institute for Advanced Study and wanted to see the place.
00:42:15.000Someone introduced me to John Bacall, who was an astrophysicist there, working mostly on the sun for his career.
00:42:25.000I didn't know how the sun shines when I met him.
00:42:29.000Eventually, he invited me for a month-long visit and then offered me a five-year fellowship.
00:42:34.000And at that point, I said, okay, I have this offer.
00:43:07.000But then they promoted me to tenure in three years, and I became the chair of the department a decade and a half later.
00:43:14.000So I was the longest serving chair between 2011 and 2020, so that's three terms.
00:43:21.000So, you know, I'm in a way part of, should be regarded as part of the establishment, because I was the chair of the Harvard astronomy department for nine years, three terms.
00:43:31.000And I also chair the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies.
00:43:35.000And I was a member of President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology in Washington.
00:43:42.000And I'm also chair of the Starshot Initiative of the Breakthrough Foundation.
00:43:48.000I have a lot of leadership, and I'm the director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at Harvard and the founding director of the Black Hole Initiative, which is a center just focusing on black holes.
00:44:00.000So I have all these leadership positions, but fundamentally, I'm just like a kid.
00:44:16.000Now, to go back to Oumuamua, you were saying that it was moving at a speed that was inconsistent with something that's being thrown from the sun and that it moved faster than any rocket that we can shoot out.
00:44:34.000It was moving when it went close to us, over 50 kilometers per second, which is, you know, think about it, well, of order, 30 miles per second, second, not hour.
00:44:49.000Now, by the time we spotted it, It was already moving away from us.
00:44:55.000So it's just like seeing a guest for dinner and then noticing that the guest is weird once it left through the front door into the dark street.
00:45:57.000We didn't expect it because I wrote a paper about 12 years earlier saying...
00:46:06.000That this telescope in Hawaii that discovered Oumuamua, and that's why it has this name, by the way, because it means a scout in the Hawaiian language, a messenger from far away.
00:46:34.000They didn't spot Oumuamua when it was approaching us at that time.
00:46:39.000They spotted it only in October that year when it was receding away.
00:46:44.000If we would have known about it when it was approaching us, we could have in principle sent a CubeSat, a satellite, with a camera that would meet it.
00:46:57.000Not only that we didn't spot it approaching us, but we also didn't suspect that it's something special.
00:47:02.000Now, there was a second object that came later called Borisov.
00:47:08.000It's called after a Russian amateur astronomer, Gennady Borisov.
00:47:13.000They discovered it by chance, and it looked just like a comet, a typical comet with a cometary tail, also came from interstellar space, just what we expected.
00:47:23.000So then people came to me and said, okay, you see, this one is a comet, it's interstellar as well.
00:47:29.000Doesn't it convince you that Oumuamua was also natural in origin?
00:47:34.000And I said, you know, when I went to the first date with my wife, I thought that she's special and unique.
00:47:43.000The fact that I met a lot of women since then didn't change that opinion.
00:47:49.000So the fact that we saw Borisov, like a typical, regular, usual comet, after we saw Muamua that didn't look like a comet, doesn't change my opinion.
00:47:59.000So you think they were just hastily looking to dismiss your observations?
00:48:03.000Well, it was not my observation, but they were trying to make the case that it's also natural.
00:48:08.000So, you know, the community as a whole, there was a group of astronomers that came together and said, it is natural.
00:48:14.000It is unusual, but it's probably natural.
00:48:18.000And it reminded me of a story about in the early 1930s, there was a group like of 30 physicists that decided to write a book showing that Einstein's theory of relativity is wrong.
00:48:33.000So when Einstein was asked about it, he said, you know, why do you need 30 physicists to write such a book?
00:48:41.000You know, one of them would be enough.
00:48:42.000You know, if he makes a good argument, that would show that my theory is wrong.
00:48:47.000So, a kid can make a good argument and show that something is wrong.
00:48:51.000The only reason you need a group of people is if there is sort of a herd, you know, just like in Africa, if you have a group of lions coming together, then they feel much more strong, you know, and so it's just a sign of authority.
00:50:04.000And you can generalize it and say also that we are never at a special time, okay?
00:50:08.000So if we saw this object over a period of a few years that the survey of PanStars was going on, In the region of the Earth's orbit around the Sun, that means that there are many more out there.
00:50:24.000You know, you can't just be lucky that over a few years you see the only object that passes in our vicinity over billions of years.
00:51:13.000Now, this object you also deemed, when you were talking about its reflective surface, that there's something about it that is much more reflective.
00:51:25.000I believe you said 10 times more reflective than the average...
00:52:09.000And then you can infer how much reflectance it should have so that you see as much light, as much sunlight coming off it as we saw.
00:52:18.000And it's at the shiny end of the objects that we have seen before.
00:52:23.000I mean, it's not completely unprecedented.
00:52:25.000There are objects that are as shiny as this one, but it's not, you know, one of the dark objects, you know, like middle-of-the-road kind of objects.
00:53:06.000And the comets that show as much push as this object exhibited, they have very clear cometary tails.
00:53:15.000So I say, you know, okay, suppose it represents 10% of the objects that show one anomalous property, and then 10% of the objects that show another anomalous property, and then 10% of the objects that show another anomalous property.
00:53:29.000You multiply all these probabilities, you get a very small likelihood.
00:53:38.000So how come the very first interstellar object, or maybe one out of two if you include Borisov, how come it's so unusual relative to the objects we have seen in the solar system?
00:53:49.000So my point is, let's Let's be open-minded.
00:53:56.000Why assume that we know the answer in advance?
00:55:06.000What do they think about things like Commander David Fravor's interpretations of the experience that he had off of the coast of San Diego, where something moved from 60,000 plus feet above sea level to one in a second?
00:55:20.000On that, I would say, on unidentified flying objects, I think the scientific community should invest some effort at examining these reports.
00:55:33.000Basically, you can deploy a whole set of instruments.
00:55:37.000In the ocean where the Nimitz carrier was and search for objects similar to the reports and do a scientific study of this rather than dismissing it and moving on to work on extra dimensions.
00:55:58.000Given that the public is so curious about these issues, I just find it inappropriate not to listen to the...
00:56:04.000By the way, I don't think of science as an occupation of the elite.
00:56:08.000It's not something that is supposed to elevate you to a higher status.
00:56:12.000You know, when a plumber comes to my home to fix a problem with the toilet or with the pipe, you know, I help the plumber and we figure out what the problem is based on all the clues that...
00:57:36.000It's completely human to make mistakes.
00:57:38.000We should show the public that it's okay.
00:57:41.000The public will understand that because it's part of our experience.
00:57:46.000And then when scientists have enough evidence to conclude something, The public will believe it now because they see how the process goes, that as you collect enough evidence, eventually it's clear.
00:57:58.000Instead of forcing scientists to be quiet until the last moment, and then they look like teachers in a class coming out with a press announcement of some result, and every now and then those press conferences end up being wronged.
00:58:15.000So their quarrel with you is that they think that your assumption that it's alien in nature is incorrect or hasty?
00:58:24.000No, we shouldn't discuss it because the alien interpretation could be contemplated in many other occasions.
00:58:49.000The public is interested, so what's the problem?
00:58:51.000I don't see any problem with discussing this possibility, putting it on the table, and looking for more evidence.
00:58:57.000Why would there be a taboo on this subject?
00:59:00.000What is their interpretation of the evidence?
00:59:03.000When you lay out all the things you said about the shape of this object, the speed of it, where it's coming from, all these variables that are very unusual.
00:59:12.000So they say each of them is indeed unusual.
00:59:17.000But probably there is a natural explanation.
00:59:20.000And then they say, it's within my comfort zone to just ignore it.
00:59:25.000The first ever interstellar object moving twice as fast as any comet we've ever observed with no tail, with a shiny reflective surface that has an extremely unusual shape that's ten times longer than it is wide, and they just want to ignore it.
00:59:42.000And it's flat, most likely flat, according to this.
00:59:45.000Yeah, I mean, look, I'm telling you that, frankly, I don't benefit from this exchange with my colleagues.
00:59:55.000On the contrary, I'm sure that behind my back they are saying bad things.
01:00:00.000But the way I see it is when I served in the military, and I did some training in the paratroopers and so forth, There was this saying that sometimes a soldier has to put his body on the barbed wire so that others can pass across.
01:00:19.000And the way I see it is that I'm trying to create an atmosphere, an intellectual atmosphere that would be...
01:00:27.000More open-minded that would allow younger people to have a better future and discuss these subjects.
01:00:35.000To me, I also think that it's just inappropriate, unhealthy for science to speculate about extra dimensions, about all these things, while avoiding even the discussion on technological signatures.
01:00:50.000They're not the same people, though, right?
01:02:54.000Then there was another suggestion that it's frozen hydrogen, like a hydrogen iceberg, that evaporates, but hydrogen is transparent, so you can't see the cometary tail.
01:03:07.000The problem with that is we showed in a scientific paper that it would not survive the journey because hydrogen can easily get evaporated by starlight impacting on its surface.
01:03:19.000So, you know, these are the kinds of ideas that were...
01:03:21.000And then there was another idea that maybe it's a piece of an object that was...
01:05:45.000Well, it's not that sad because, you know, a lot of people are discussing it because of the fact that you have the courage to talk about it openly.
01:06:19.000I would say that you are open-minded, and you are much more forward-looking.
01:06:25.000Yes, I think the public is more forward-looking when it comes to extraterrestrial life, but also less informed.
01:06:31.000You know, they believe things they maybe shouldn't believe.
01:06:35.000And it's a complex, very bizarre issue.
01:06:40.000But my point is, unless you look, you will never discover those things that you have convictions about.
01:06:45.000So if the scientific community shies away from this subject, obviously there will be no news, and the public is starved.
01:06:52.000The reason I get this attention is the public is starved, really wants to know more about it.
01:06:58.000The scientific community has the ability to explore it, but they shy away from it.
01:07:03.000So I'm sitting in between, you know, in this very awkward, strange situation.
01:07:07.000I told my wife, you know, when this story broke out, I said, look, this is, I just cannot believe this, that it's so obvious that the scientific community needs to explore it because the public funds science and its common sense.
01:07:20.000You know, I just apply common sense to it.
01:07:22.000And yet my colleagues do not agree with me.
01:07:29.000I think it's also part of the thing that they didn't come to the same conclusion.
01:07:33.000Even if your data and your interpretation of the data makes sense to them, if they didn't come to that conclusion on their own and you are also in the same field as them, they might want to just diminish their findings.
01:08:01.000And are we the smartest kid on the block or not?
01:08:06.000And the only way to find out is by collecting evidence.
01:08:09.000So let's look for more objects of the same.
01:08:12.000And that's all I'm trying to advocate.
01:08:15.000Let's be modest, not say that we know the answer in advance because that would resemble those philosophers that put Galileo in house arrest.
01:09:09.000This is called the Vera Rubin Observatory.
01:09:11.000And it's even more potent than the VLT. It's a telescope that will survey the sky.
01:09:17.000The VLT is focusing on a small region of the sky.
01:09:21.000This is a survey telescope that would look through the sky.
01:09:24.000Now the purpose of PANSTARS or this telescope was originally defined by Congress that said astronomers should find all the objects that are endangering life on Earth.
01:09:35.000All the killer asteroids that could wipe us out because the dinosaurs were killed by a giant Stone, you know, a rock, the size of a big city like Manhattan, you know, tens of kilometers in size.
01:09:50.000And it must have been an amazing sight to be a dinosaur back then because you see this rock coming at you and then boom, and you're gone.
01:10:01.000The dinosaurs didn't have science, so they couldn't really forecast this day.
01:10:08.000We have science so we can at least alert ourselves to that danger and perhaps deflect, nudge those killer asteroids that are heading our way.
01:10:18.000And, you know, there are various ways to nudge them off.
01:10:21.000You can evaporate part of their surface, just give them a little kick so that they miss the Earth.
01:11:20.000The telescope will produce the deepest, widest image of the universe, 27-foot mirror, the width of a single tennis court, 3,200 megapixel camera.
01:11:33.000That'll be on the new Samsung Galaxy phone.
01:11:58.000Up to 10 million alerts, a thousand pairs of exposures.
01:12:02.000So the only risk I should say to this survey comes from the communication satellites, these constellations that, you know, at the tens of thousands that SpaceX is planning to put in space.
01:12:14.000And At first they were not really aware of their risk.
01:12:21.000But then the astronomers told them, look, you are contaminating our images.
01:12:25.000And so now they're thinking about coating those communication satellites so that they are dark enough, they don't reflect as much sunlight.
01:12:33.000We're trying to work together with them, but obviously they have a commercial incentive to put these things out.
01:12:39.000They do, but what if it puts us in danger?
01:12:41.000What if we don't see asteroids because they want to get, you know...
01:13:15.000Yeah, because of all the self-inflicted wounds.
01:13:19.000But the way I see it is also like the printing press of Gutenberg.
01:13:26.000Once it was established, it produced many copies of the Bible.
01:13:30.000Before that, there were very few copies, and each of them was extremely precious.
01:13:35.000But after the printing press by Gutenberg, there were many copies, so if one of them got damaged, you wouldn't worry too much.
01:13:42.000So I think that we should produce what we have here on Earth.
01:13:46.000Currently, all our eggs are in one basket on Earth.
01:13:49.000But if we spread them in space, in other places, like going to Mars, going to the stars, then if something bad happens on Earth, It wouldn't be that bad, you know.
01:14:24.000And by the way, the dimensions of the ark are mentioned explicitly in the Bible, and they are very similar to the dimensions of Oumuamua, but by coincidence.
01:14:33.000Anyway, so he put the animals on it and saved them.
01:15:33.000Wouldn't you think that if some civilization got that advanced, that they wouldn't be satisfied with the design that we currently experience?
01:15:40.000Like the design of the animals, the design of the people.
01:15:43.000Wouldn't they want to make that better?
01:16:10.000What that is is some sort of an advanced version.
01:16:14.000Of intelligent life, like that life, as life becomes sort of immersed in the world of technology, it becomes, they have these symbiotic relationships where their parts get replaced by artificial parts, which we see now with people.
01:16:31.000We see artificial limbs and artificial...
01:16:34.000And I think, you know, any form of life, even biological life that we find on another planet, we will be shocked when we see it.
01:16:42.000For example, the nearest star to us is called Proxima Centauri.
01:17:22.000Now, my daughters said that, you know, the real estate value would be highest in between the day side and the night side because you would have a permanent sunset strip there.
01:17:32.000And, you know, if you want a home, that would be a perfect...
01:17:37.000But if you think about the animals that may exist on the day side and on the night side, they would be very different.
01:17:45.000And also the ones on the day side, since the star is much colder than the sun by a factor of two or so, it's cooler, like 3,000 degrees instead of almost 6,000 degrees for the sun.
01:17:58.000Then most of the light emitted by the star is infrared.
01:18:03.000So these animals would have infrared eyes.
01:18:27.000I think even if we find evidence for biological life, it would be shocking to us not to speak about...
01:18:36.000You know, technological instrumentation, you know, if they are much more advanced than we are, it would look like magic to us, you know, an approximation to God.
01:18:45.000It will do things that are really crazy for us.
01:18:47.000So, when you think about taking a 3D printer and genetic material and recreating life on other planets, I mean, it sounds crazy to say today, but no crazier than a cell phone would be if you put it in the hands of someone who lived in the first century AD. It's not completely crazy because there is a colleague of mine,
01:19:11.000a Nobel laureate at Harvard, Jack Shostak, has a laboratory in which he's very optimistic that he will produce synthetic life, meaning starting from building blocks, chemical building, and making...
01:20:08.000No, so I can tell you, maybe a decade ago, I was working on detecting radio waves from hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe, from early cosmic times.
01:20:23.000And astronomers built observatories To test the calculations that I've worked on.
01:20:29.000And then one of the problems was that radio stations, TV stations, would introduce interference to these observatories because they operate at the same frequencies.
01:20:39.000So I said, oh wait, if we are producing interference, can't we use these telescopes to also look for, to eavesdrop on other civilizations?
01:20:51.000You know, I Love Lucy, radio transmissions, you know, with the same instrument.
01:20:55.000So that was my first paper on the subject.
01:23:26.000I mean, here in astronomy, we're talking about real things out there.
01:23:30.000And light pollution prevents us from seeing them every day.
01:23:34.000Yeah, if you go to the Big Island, right, they have those diffused lights in their streetlights.
01:23:40.000It's a different kind of lighting that doesn't interfere with the light that you can see from the sky so that it doesn't screw up the observatory.
01:23:47.000But when you do manage to see the heavens for the way they are, it's one of the most spectacular things you could see.
01:24:45.000You have to be modest when you see how big the universe is.
01:24:50.000If you are an emperor or a king and you conquer a small piece of land on earth, a lot of alpha males, white alpha males, were extremely proud.
01:24:59.000I conquered this piece of land on earth.
01:25:02.000Even if they conquered the entire earth, They were not more significant than a single ant hugging a grain of sand, a single grain of sand, in the landscape of a huge beach.
01:26:23.000Not assume that we are unique and alone in the universe.
01:26:27.000Let's just, you know, find out the answer.
01:26:30.000I think the public and I think even you could tell me whether the scientific community agrees with this, but I think people are more apt to believe in the possibility of extraterrestrial life today than ever.
01:26:44.000And I think part of that has to do with some of the stories that have been published like in the New York Times in 2017 and then accounts from people of experiences with unidentified flying objects like Commander David Fravers and some other people that are very reputable people that also are fighter pilots and people that understand what they're looking at and then are using Not just their eyesight,
01:27:09.000but they're also explaining that this thing jammed their radar.
01:27:17.000These revelations, I think, have led people to relax some of their skepticism.
01:27:24.000Me, personally, I could say from my own personal experience, I never denied the idea that alien life is possible.
01:27:32.000I just had extreme skepticism at the people that proclaimed that they had experiences because I know people love to be special.
01:27:43.000And they love to be special without putting in a whole lot of work.
01:27:45.000And one of the best ways you can be special without putting in a whole lot of work is to have a special experience that only you get to have.
01:27:53.000Whether the aliens chose you or the angels chose you or, you know, whatever it is.
01:27:58.000Those people are, you should always be very skeptical of people who claim to be special without having put in any work because it's just a part of human psychology.
01:30:42.000And there were a few administrators at the National Science Foundation that decided that this is a worthy cause And there was a leader of the experimental effort, Ray Weiss, that was pushing for it.
01:30:56.000And he got the Nobel Prize together with two other people.
01:31:34.000It's very difficult to detect a spacecraft, for example, because it sends very little power in your direction.
01:31:39.000So I don't know what the signal is of a technological civilization, but once we reach a sensitivity, we might find The universe humming, you know, the galaxy humming with living, you know.
01:31:52.000Or there is another possibility that most of them are dead by now.
01:31:55.000But we can still do archaeology and find evidence for them because that would help us avoid the mistakes they made and try not to share their fate, you know, not destroy ourselves.
01:32:08.000Have you spent much time thinking about the various kinds of technology that these different civilizations in the universe could possibly have created?
01:32:21.000Meaning they might have a completely different atmosphere, a completely different Understanding of gravity, a completely different combination of elements on their planet, and that our perception or our contemplation of what could be possible is really just based on what we've already observed and experienced,
01:32:41.000which is such a small portion of the universe.
01:32:44.000Now, what we can imagine is based on our experience.
01:32:48.000And when you go on a date, You look at the mirror and you imagine the other person being genetically similar to you.
01:32:59.000And that's not a bad assumption because we all share the same heritage as humans.
01:33:05.000But when you meet another life from a completely different planet that had nothing to do with Earth, For the first time, there is a chance that it would look nothing like we are familiar with.
01:33:18.000As you say, the conditions are different.
01:33:22.000The cake that was baked out of the same chemical soup ended up looking very different.
01:33:29.000It's a chocolate cake, not a cheesecake.
01:33:32.000And when a chocolate cake meets a cheesecake, It wouldn't really figure out what's going on there.
01:33:39.000It's also possible, right, that they could have a different kind of environment that doesn't lend itself to the sort of territorial behavior that we have.
01:33:58.000Speaking about that, I was asked to participate in a debate about Whether the space race between the US and China Is bad or good for humanity?
01:34:11.000It was organized by IBM and Bloomberg News.
01:34:15.000And all three debaters, the other debaters, were talking about the military risks that space poses.
01:34:24.000If you put satellites or things that hover above the Earth, it's a military threat.
01:34:30.000And therefore, we should reach international agreements so that we don't explore space too much.
01:34:36.000And I was just puzzled by this because, you know, we live on a two-dimensional surface of the Earth.
01:34:42.000And of course, there are risks from things hovering above the surface.
01:34:45.000But space is all about going in the third dimension, far away from Earth.
01:34:49.000So if you go to Mars or you go to the stars, as, you know, we are contemplating in the Starshot Project...
01:34:57.000There is no military threat to Earth from doing that.
01:35:01.000It's very narrow-minded to think that space is all about military threats.
01:35:05.000You know, there is also interest from the commercial sector, you know, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, to go to Mars.
01:35:52.000So it's not about one nation capturing a piece of land or getting ahead of other nations.
01:35:58.000It's about all of us working together.
01:36:00.000I agree with you, but you also know that the way most nations think about military superiority, they think about technological superiority.
01:36:10.000They think about having the ability to do something that these other nations can't do, and that would put you at some sort of a tactical, strategical advantage, like having some sort of a satellite with nuclear weapons that's hovering above a city.
01:36:22.000Like that they could do things like this that we can't do yet, or that having the ability to go to Mars and return before any other nation would show that they have extreme technological superiority.
01:36:35.000They can actually go to other planets.
01:36:37.000I agree with you, but why can't we work as one team?
01:36:40.000So if we find, for example, evidence for another civilization, don't you think that would give us a sense that we are part of the same team?
01:36:49.000Because now there is another team out there.
01:36:51.000That was the old Ronald Reagan speech.
01:36:55.000I think that would open up our eyes and it would be very humbling, in fact.
01:37:01.000Yeah, so here is another advantage to working on this subject.
01:37:05.000How do you think people would handle undeniable extraterrestrial visitation?
01:37:12.000Like if there was a mothership that hovered over the White House and just sent some sort of a message that we had to interpret and made some sort of a very clear demonstration of its presence?
01:37:28.000Well, if it says, take us to your leader, we have to say, wait until January 20th.
01:38:03.000They're run by different people in different styles.
01:38:05.000We have different philosophies and we have very different political climates in different parts of the world where some people can't speak up.
01:38:12.000Some people are completely under the thumb of their own government and their military.
01:38:17.000And it would be really weird to see if it's possible For human beings to have a sort of a universal reaction to superior intelligence.
01:38:27.000Oh no, I think it's very naive to expect humans to behave the same way.
01:38:34.000And I don't think there is a protocol because The United Nations never thought about designing a protocol for dealing with a situation like that.
01:38:44.000And many people say, ah, let's not think about it because we have problems that are much more serious here on Earth.
01:38:50.000And to them I say what Oscar Wilde used to say.
01:38:54.000He said, we are all in the gutters, but some of us are looking at the stars.
01:39:00.000Don't you think that's a fitting statement?
01:39:03.000The idea that we have bigger problems is kind of hilarious, too.
01:39:07.000Because if they came down here and they decided to do whatever they wanted, that would be our biggest problem.
01:39:13.000I mean, if you have something that's capable of interstellar travel with a giant ship that has, you know, millions of little aliens on it that just decided to take over, that's our biggest problem.
01:39:31.000That's something that demands our attention.
01:39:33.000But you know, we were careless for a century because we transmitted radio waves.
01:39:38.000By the way, the brightest transmissions that we produced were anti-ballistic missiles, radars.
01:39:46.000You know, we produce very bright emission in the radio wave, and it's now progressed to a distance of about 100 light years.
01:39:54.000So there is this bubble of radio waves that we produced, and if they have, if there is any civilization with radio telescopes similar to what we have, they can detect us.
01:40:05.000And, of course, it will take a while for them to respond, but we already shouted into this room of strangers without being careful.
01:40:15.000And that is a sign of not being intelligent, by the way.
01:40:18.000Well, I don't know if it's a sign of not being intelligent.
01:40:20.000It's a sign of not understanding the ramifications of what you've created or the actions.
01:40:25.000Yeah, but we may suffer the consequences decades from now.
01:40:29.000Or we may get a visit from the anthropologists of the space.
01:40:33.000I mean, that's what I would hope, that something would come down here that understands what we're going through, that has probably gone through a very similar path.
01:40:45.000I know that there's different cakes and there's different ingredients for cakes, but at the end of the day, they're all cakes.
01:40:51.000And we can go, oh, that's a cheesecake.
01:40:55.000I would imagine that something that's so intelligent, it can come here from another planet, probably understands the variables, the possibilities of life.
01:41:20.000Well, in that case, it's actually been proven by history that every single time a civilization has been visited by a far more advanced civilization, it's been disastrous for the original civilization that gets visited.
01:41:36.000Whether it's the Americas or, I mean, you can go throughout time.
01:41:41.000This has always been the case in history.
01:41:44.000With the Aztecs, it happened with everybody.
01:42:04.000There's some pretty good visitation movies.
01:42:10.000I don't enjoy most of the literature on science fiction, most of the films, because they violate the laws of physics.
01:42:17.000So when I see something that doesn't make sense according to what I know about physics, I cannot enjoy it because, you know, I stop there and I say, well, forget about the storyline.
01:44:04.000Well, I read some of the stories and I'll tell you what my concern was that, you know, 50 years ago we had some cameras and some recording devices that were not very sophisticated.
01:44:19.000So if 50 years ago we saw fuzzy images of saucers and things like that, by now, with modern cameras, you should get very crisp images of the same things.
01:44:30.000So I'm worried that these were artifacts of the instruments that were used back then.
01:44:38.000What I would like to do instead is have a scientific study of the reports that are recent.
01:44:46.000Go to those sites, the ocean, where the Nimitz was, and try to examine this.
01:44:55.000Now, the reason it's important is because there is also a national security element here, which means that perhaps other nations have technologies that we don't know about.
01:45:17.000Like, if there is something that can do what Commander David Fravor experienced, but it's not extraterrestrial, it's actually from China or from Russia, that puts them at a significant advantage, a crazy advantage.
01:45:29.000We can't even imagine something that's that sophisticated.
01:45:33.000But they don't believe that's the case.
01:45:36.000They think our understanding of physics is pretty universal, right, in terms of, like, the highest intellects in various continents, right?
01:45:44.000Yeah, these looked like very peculiar maneuvers that they reported about.
01:45:49.000And all I say is that we should use scientific instruments to record it again with much better data and examine this.
01:45:59.000Yeah, but who would fund something like this?
01:46:00.000You know, if you have a monster in front of you, I want to look at it straight in the eyes and figure out what it's about.
01:46:09.000Other people say, ah, there is no monster, forget about it.
01:46:14.000Well, I mean, who would fund something like this?
01:46:18.000If the government funds it, then they could deem what gets released, what the public can handle, what they can't handle, and whether or not there's a military application.
01:46:27.000Well, the same funding agencies that fund scientific research, open scientific research, can allocate a small fraction of their funds.
01:46:38.000You don't think it would be very expensive?
01:46:39.000No, because we study the environment in many different ways, you know.
01:46:42.000And you just deploy a set of instruments with sensors in the geographical locations of where the reports were.
01:46:51.000And you put the best sensors you have and systematically study the region and figure out what's going on.
01:46:58.000The thing is, you would have to get the approval of the military.
01:47:01.000Like if you wanted to go to where the Nimitz is, you wanted to go to any of these offshore areas that are in international waters, you would have to get some sort of approval.
01:47:11.000I mean, in principle, if they want to figure out what the reports are about.
01:47:15.000I don't know if they do want to figure it out.
01:47:16.000The way Commander Fravor explained the experiences they were having off the coast of San Diego, he said they were basically just at a loss for words, didn't understand what these things were, but had been experiencing them on multiple occasions, and had just shrugged their shoulders and said,
01:50:33.000But, again, the Copernican principle would say that the fact that they were noticed at one time, in one place, Why do you say that though?
01:50:54.000But it could be a privileged circumstance if there's an exploratory mission.
01:50:58.000Like if someone goes to a place in the world and visits an uncontacted tribe, that uncontacted tribe is uncontacted, meaning no one has visited them.
01:51:08.000So that time that they go there is a very unique time.
01:51:11.000Now, we're talking about on one planet.
01:51:14.000But if something comes from another planet and visits us with the same spirit of trying to find things and visit things, but it's only done it once, It could be a unique experience.
01:51:25.000It could be, but the chances for that would be small because what is the chance that the pilots would be at the right place at the right time and that they would be the target?
01:53:03.000The only thing I'm surprised by is that other people didn't say it already.
01:53:08.000When you get into the real spectacular hypothesis or theories about extraterrestrial life, one of the more spectacular ones is interdimensional travel.
01:53:21.000And that these are interdimensional beings that visit us using some completely different understanding of how the universe works.
01:53:30.000Have you ever thought about these or looked into these?
01:53:33.000Okay, so I can speak only from the point of view of a scientist.
01:53:36.000And space and time in physics are currently described by Einstein's theory of gravity.
01:53:47.000As of now, we don't know how to move faster than light between two points in space.
01:53:53.000But there are ideas about a wormhole, for example, connecting.
01:53:58.000We don't know if there are other dimensions.
01:54:01.000People talk about them, but we have no clue.
01:54:04.000So I would say, if I had to summarize the scientific literature, which is quite extensive on these issues, I would say that as of now, we have no clear idea whether this is possible.
01:54:50.000At the moment, they're working, actually, in a space-time that is called anti-deceiter space, which is not shared by us.
01:54:57.000This is not the space-time that we work in, you know, that we inhabit.
01:55:02.000But the reason they work there is because they can solve the mathematics in that space.
01:55:07.000It's sort of like looking for your keys under the lamppost.
01:55:10.000You can find them under the lamp, but they may not be there.
01:55:13.000So there is a whole community of People that do mathematical gymnastics in a space-time that is not represented in reality.
01:55:22.000And they talk about extra dimensions and give each other awards and feel very smart about themselves.
01:55:28.000But I say, look, let's be realistic here, you know, until you demonstrate that what you're doing is connected to reality, until you find experimental evidence.
01:56:26.000And that's one of the criticisms that I've heard about people in quantum mechanics and quantum physics that when people talk about it, they say, God, it sounds kind of cultish.
01:56:34.000Well, there is quantum physics which is rooted in experiments, you know, solid state physics.
01:56:48.000Yes, so quantum physics has aspects that connect directly to experiments and they are very well documented and part of the standard practice of physics.
01:56:57.000The way I see it is just like this oath that medical doctors take.
01:57:04.000They take an oath that represents their profession.
01:57:07.000I think that physicists should take an oath I think?
01:57:32.000That physicists brag about because they say, irrespective of what the experiment will show, the theory will be valid.
01:57:38.000It's like not putting any skin in the game, you know?
01:57:45.000So there is a student at Harvard, a graduate student, in the English department, And she was inspired by my book, which didn't appear yet, but she knows about it, to do a PhD on that theme that I explore.
01:58:03.000And she invited me to the PhD exam, the first exam.
01:58:09.000And there was an examiner in the room who asked her, do you know why Giordano Bruno was burnt on the stake?
01:58:22.000And she said that he was obnoxious and irritated a lot of people and he corrected her.
01:58:29.000No, it was because he imagined that life exists on other planets.
02:00:01.000There was a seminar at the Black Hole Initiative That mentioned an implication of string theory to cosmology, to the study of the universe.
02:00:54.000Are you intrigued at all about ancient depictions of what some people interpret as extraterrestrial vehicles or flying saucers, whether it's Ezekiel's story in the Old Testament or some of the other, the Vinmanas and the Hindu scriptures?
02:01:09.000Well, we're back to the story of Abraham.
02:01:11.000If there was a recording device that could give us The picture, I would examine it and say something more conclusive about it.
02:01:21.000But the lack of evidence doesn't allow us to say anything.
02:03:08.000I think if Trump knew about it, he'd tell everybody.
02:03:10.000I don't think he can keep his mouth shut.
02:03:12.000Maybe we have to wait until January 20th until he gets out of office.
02:03:15.000But do you think this guy have a motivation for saying this?
02:03:20.000I mean, what is his position in the military?
02:03:23.000He used to occupy an important leadership position, but I'm not sure what happened to him, and I don't know him personally, and I would just dismiss it and move on.
02:03:35.000If he had a reason for saying what he said, he should have produced the evidence.
02:03:39.000And I think at the late stage of his life, something may have gone wrong.
02:04:35.000I mean, one of them is literally a reality show contestant or host who's possibly...
02:04:42.000A sociopath who was running the planet, or running at least this country, they would hope that there's going to be some sort of intervention by some hugely intelligent species from another planet.
02:04:54.000That they're going to come down here and they're going to go, listen, listen, listen.
02:05:09.000Do you think that all of the, like when you see the, have you ever seen the Go Fast video, the FLIR video of where these fighter pilots are tracking this thing?
02:06:18.000Sometimes these compelling conversations and sometimes books like yours and the statements that you've made about that object, like it could inspire people to take action.
02:06:31.000And if someone did I would collect reputable scientists with state-of-the-art instrumentation.
02:06:51.000And put it together, deploy it where necessary, based on the most credible reports.
02:07:09.000We should be guided by evidence and not by our prejudice.
02:07:12.000That's the message that comes through from all...
02:07:16.000The history of science, that on many occasions we were putting blinders, saying something doesn't exist, we ended up being wrong.
02:07:23.000The only way to educate ourselves, to be modest enough to admit that we don't know everything, is by collecting evidence, a dialogue with nature.
02:07:32.000Let's listen to nature, see what it tells us, and then say what this thing is.
02:08:17.000Just like there are dozens of physicists working on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
02:08:22.000Now, if you have this bullying going on so that young talent, you know, there are young people that are extremely interested in these questions, but if they're afraid about their job opportunities, afraid of speaking out, afraid of being engaged in this,
02:08:38.000then obviously And there is no funding for this, then obviously there will be no results.
02:08:44.000And the situation will continue to be the same way.
02:08:48.000Now, it's just the way that science was suppressed in the Middle Ages.
02:08:52.000You know, people just didn't look for a revision in the way they look at the world around them.
02:09:13.000Do you think that having these kind of conversations and you coming out and being public about your struggles with other academics about this can lighten people up?
02:09:26.000As I said, I'm doing what I'm doing, not expecting anything, but I will be pleasantly surprised if the common sense that I'm trying to advocate, and by the way, I was a farm boy, I speak just the way I would speak as a kid.
02:10:55.000So I would first examine all these reports and isolate the most credible ones or one, you know, the thing that is most striking among them.
02:11:23.000The same type of activity that he reported.
02:11:26.000We'll be looked for with much superior instruments than the ones that he was using.
02:11:31.000So what kind of instruments would you use to try?
02:11:34.000I have to look at the details of the evidence that he reported, but I will choose the instruments that are most sensitive right now with our best technologies right now.
02:11:42.000Because he had some instruments that were for other purposes, not for this.
02:11:49.000So instead, I will use the very best instruments that exist right now To look for the kind of signals that he saw, so that we are much more sensitive than he was, and for us it will be a piece of cake.
02:12:03.000The signal will boom in our instrument, if it's there.
02:14:37.000Right, and also when you're thinking about the private sector is getting involved in space travel now, you know, with Jeff Bezos' company and Elon's company, and I'm sure more to come.
02:14:47.000Maybe that would be something that, look, just imagine the PR power and potential of approving extraterrestrial life.
02:14:58.000So actually, in my book, I call it Oumuamua's Wager, which goes back to Blaise Pascal.
02:15:05.000He was a philosopher arguing about God.
02:15:09.000He said, well, as a mathematician, there are two possibilities, either God exists or not.
02:15:17.000If God exists and you don't do the right thing, consequences are much greater.
02:15:21.000So he put a wager that there is a much, you know, bigger implications to one of the possibilities than the other one.
02:15:30.000And that convinced him that you need to take it seriously.
02:15:33.000Now, I say Oumuamua or the possibility of extraterrestrial life more generally is It poses exactly the same type of wager because the consequences of finding evidence would be huge.
02:15:47.000And if it's not a very expensive task to examine it, if it's something we can do with existing technology...
02:15:55.000It's a missed opportunity not to even consider doing that, and to have a taboo, and to silence everyone that wants to speak about it.
02:16:23.000You know, the article that appeared in Haaretz's newspaper about my work and in the New York Post, they were, each of them separately, completely differently,
02:16:39.000separation of a couple of years, were the most read online stories in the history of these newspapers.
02:17:36.000By the way, Carl Sagan was a junior faculty at our department at Harvard.
02:17:46.000He was not tenured there, so he moved to Cornell where he got tenured.
02:17:50.000But he also lived in the same town that I live in.
02:17:54.000And when I bring my clothes to the dry cleaner, The dry cleaner says that there is someone, his son probably, or someone related to his family that brings the clothes to the same dry cleaner.
02:19:24.000Like, if we are alone, boy, what a mess.
02:19:27.000You know, the story about my paper broke out just around the time of the State of the Union address by Donald Trump, 2018. And it was more popular than what he said on the Washington Post or whoever reported it.
02:19:43.000And I was asked, why do I think that's the case?
02:19:47.000And I said that people look for uplifting news from the sky because our situation on Earth is not very promising.
02:19:59.000We've got a lot of shit that's going on that's not so fun.
02:20:02.000But I think we're all hoping that our civilization is going to get better and evidence that it's possible to get past this weird period of conflict without destroying ourselves.
02:20:19.000It would be great if we saw a civilization that has achieved that.
02:20:22.000And that's what I think we hope for when we think of some intergalactic civilization that comes to visit us.
02:20:27.000But I think also it changes the way we see ourselves.
02:20:31.000If we are Part of the human species, rather than fight on borders, feel superior relative to each other based on superficial things.
02:20:41.000Let's come together, build a better future for all of us.
02:20:53.000It should be The thing that everyone wants to do.
02:20:57.000I think it's the thing that most people want to do.
02:21:00.000I just think that what you've experienced is this weird thing that's going on in academia.
02:21:06.000I think you're experiencing this resistance from people that either they don't want to look foolish or they're upset that you're the one who's come up with this and then they can't argue against it rationally.
02:21:19.000There's no real logical The reason why what you're saying is incorrect, where they could prove it, like here, this is why.
02:21:43.000And it didn't look natural to many physicists.
02:21:49.000And in fact, Einstein thought that it makes no sense.
02:21:51.000And he was saying it has this spooky action at a distance that cannot be real.
02:21:56.000And then experiments showed that he was wrong.
02:21:59.000And that we still do not fully understand the meaning of quantum mechanics.
02:22:04.000Can you explain, just because you've said that a couple times, explain to people that don't know, what does that mean by spooky action at a distance?
02:22:14.000Entities, objects, are described by a wave function.
02:22:18.000So you have a probability of detecting an electron.
02:22:21.000At this point, at that point, you cannot imagine the electron as being a point-like particle, like a billiard ball, which is located in a particular place.
02:22:37.000Now what that means is that if you do a measurement of the electron, let's say here, it affects what you will find very far away because there is a probability distribution of finding it far away and a probability finding it here.
02:22:51.000And if I measure it here, it means that it's not there.
02:22:54.000And this effect is action at a distance, and it can be faster than light.
02:22:59.000So in other words, you can imagine two experiments done almost simultaneously, without any information coming from one experiment to the other, trying to measure the electron.
02:23:11.000And if one of them finds, the other one is not able to find it.
02:23:16.000But how did they know about each other when they were separated by a distance?
02:23:21.000So large that they couldn't transmit a signal.
02:23:23.000This is called spooky action at a distance, that information about what is done here is already known there without enough time for the signal to cross that distance, that separation.
02:23:35.000What does that tell us about the nature of reality?
02:23:39.000We're used to having a cup of coffee at one place.
02:23:42.000You can't have the cup of coffee at another place.
02:23:46.000But in quantum mechanics, that's not true.
02:23:49.000Your cup of coffee has some probability of actually being there as well.
02:23:52.000So that's something being in superposition, right?
02:23:55.000Well, yeah, it's being in a multitude of states, many places with different properties, potentially.
02:24:04.000And you just assign a probability to finding it here.
02:24:08.000And moreover, quantum mechanics says that you can never pin down both the position of an object and its speed, its velocity.
02:24:18.000If you want to localize the object extremely well, You don't know its speed.
02:24:23.000And if you want to measure its speed, you don't know where it's located.
02:24:28.000And this is called the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.
02:24:30.000There is always uncertainty about reality.
02:24:33.000We're not used to it because big objects have very little quantum uncertainty.
02:24:37.000So that allows us to come to the conclusion that, you know, you can imagine things being in one place.
02:24:45.000But quantum mechanics says no, that's not the case.
02:24:48.000And it's counterintuitive, and Einstein had a problem with that, but he was wrong.
02:24:53.000And all the experiments are fully consistent with this strange feeling.
02:24:57.000So what I'm saying, the reason I brought this up is you have an uneasy feeling when you think about quantum mechanics.
02:25:03.000And a lot of people had an uneasy feeling.
02:25:06.000You know, I'm sure that the friend of mine, the colleague that spoke about Oumuamua would have said about quantum mechanics, I wish it was not there, you know?
02:25:15.000So, okay, he can wish, but reality is whatever it is, irrespective of whether we ignore it or not.