The Glenn Beck Program - Ep 95 ｜ Harvard Astronomer Makes Humble Case for Alien Life ｜ Avi Loeb ｜ The Glenn Beck Podcast

00:00:00.000 Today's podcast is going to be a rollercoaster ride, I think.

00:00:04.160 It's with the author of the new book called Extraterrestrial.

00:00:08.600 And on the surface, it is about, and I can't pronounce this right.

00:00:12.420 I mean, I can't pronounce most things right.

00:00:15.920 Amuamua.

00:00:17.940 That is a some sort of something that was in space that came flying by us in 2017.

00:00:28.040 And at first it was like a comet.

00:00:31.720 Then it was an asteroid.

00:00:32.760 Then they didn't know what it was.

00:00:35.080 Well, there's it defied physics.

00:00:37.540 It moved in ways it shouldn't have moved.

00:00:41.620 And there is one guy who says, I think we need to really seriously consider that either our physics are wrong or this is signs of extraterrestrial life.

00:00:56.500 Now, he's getting hammered for it.

00:00:59.300 But I just want to explain before he comes on who he is.

00:01:04.980 He is Avi Loeb.

00:01:07.180 He is the professor of science at Harvard University, received his Ph.D. in physics from Hebrew University at the age of 24.

00:01:15.560 He led the first international project supported by the Strategic Defense Initiative and subsequently a longtime member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton.

00:01:28.320 He's written eight books, over 800 pages on a wide range of topics, including black holes, the first stars and the search for extraterrestrial life and the future of the universe.

00:01:39.540 He's been the longest serving chair of Harvard's Department of Astronomy, founding director of Harvard's Black Hole Institute and director for the Institute for Theory and Computation within the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

00:01:55.860 You getting the idea?

00:01:56.740 This guy is not a crackpot.

00:01:59.000 He serves as the chair of the board on physics and astronomy for the National Academies and is the elected fellow for the American Academy of Arts and Science, the American Physical Society, and the International Academy of Astronautics.

00:02:19.200 He is also a former member of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, and this goes on.

00:02:27.460 He's not a kook, even though you will see that this story of did we actually just find evidence of extraterrestrial life is more about what we're all going through right now. 0.96

00:02:47.120 A lack of humility, an unwillingness to be wrong, and the lack of using all of the tools that science has always used.

00:03:05.260 We're back to the days of Galileo.

00:03:07.480 It's a fascinating interview with Abhi Loeb.

00:03:17.120 Abhi, I can't tell you how excited I am to have you on the podcast.

00:03:30.980 I have been waiting for your book to come out.

00:03:34.820 I read it this week, and I think people will be surprised if they think they're going to get a book about little green men.

00:03:44.500 It is really a very important book that is about the two things that I think we're missing right now, and that is the scientific theory and humility.

00:03:57.880 Right.

00:03:58.540 Isn't it?

00:03:59.060 I agree.

00:03:59.700 Yeah.

00:03:59.880 And when you talk about Amuamua, Amuamua, Amuamua, Amuamua, when you're talking about that, I want to preface this with, it's my understanding that you are not saying this is definitely what this is.

00:04:18.960 You're saying we have to have this discussion because either we're wrong about physics or we're wrong about this, you know, asteroid.

00:04:32.680 Do I have that?

00:04:33.480 Yeah, well, first of all, I wanted to thank you for having me.

00:04:38.600 And indeed, you know, as an astronomer, the biggest lesson I've learned by studying the sky is a sense of modesty.

00:04:46.340 You know, the story starts from the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle that suggested that we are at the center of the universe and that there are spheres around us.

00:04:58.200 And for a thousand years, people believed what he said.

00:05:02.180 And, you know, it's flattering to our ego to think that we are central, you know, that we are unique and special at a privileged location.

00:05:10.440 And that's why people tend to believe that notion.

00:05:14.540 But then Copernicus and Galileo figured out that the Earth moves around the sun.

00:05:20.320 And that was really a shock to many people.

00:05:24.040 And in fact, at first, the philosophers didn't want to look through Galileo's telescope and they put him in a house arrest.

00:05:30.960 But reality doesn't go away if you ignore it.

00:05:34.020 And eventually we figured out that we are moving around the sun and the sun moves around the center of the Milky Way.

00:05:40.300 A galaxy, which is one of a trillion galaxies in the observable volume of the universe.

00:05:44.620 So we're clearly not at the center of the physical universe.

00:05:48.080 And then, you know, many people still maintain the notion that we are special and unique and that there is no life out there except here on Earth.

00:05:58.460 And I say to those that they should learn a lesson from my daughters.

00:06:03.020 You know, when they were infant, they tended to think that they have qualities that nobody else shares.

00:06:09.080 And they are special and unique and everything centers on them.

00:06:11.840 But when they left to the kindergarten, they met other kids and realized, got a better perspective about reality.

00:06:19.060 And for our civilization to mature, we have to find evidence for others.

00:06:24.820 But that requires us to look.

00:06:28.200 And the problem is a lot of scientists put blinders.

00:06:32.840 They basically say there is a taboo on discussing this possibility of finding technological signatures for other civilizations.

00:06:41.180 And as a result, they discourage young scientists from entering this search.

00:06:47.100 And they don't fund the search as part of the mainstream in astronomy.

00:06:52.220 And it's sort of like stepping on the grass and then saying, look, it doesn't grow.

00:06:57.920 And I think it stems from the arrogance that a lot of people have about us being privileged and unique and special.

00:07:08.240 And I think that a dose of modesty and, you know, is needed in order to bring us back to reality, so to speak.

00:07:17.660 And it's really unfortunate.

00:07:19.720 But but this is one of the messages in my book.

00:07:22.880 So we have so much to cover.

00:07:25.720 I think your book is so universal, even though the part of of what happened in 2017 is phenomenal.

00:07:38.300 And we're going to get to that in a minute.

00:07:40.420 But your message right now is so universal, because I think what you're experiencing in science is happening everywhere.

00:07:49.680 I don't know if it says we're approaching the singularity or if there is something that is that happens periodically where everything changes.

00:08:01.200 But we're on the verge of a great leap and everything seems to be decaying.

00:08:07.420 And it it's it's I feel as though it is like those who have been the guardians at the gate are just not going to let anybody in.

00:08:17.500 But they don't understand the castle walls are coming down.

00:08:20.680 They're coming down.

00:08:21.500 Exactly.

00:08:22.720 I completely agree with you right now.

00:08:25.940 The way I see it is the mainstream community in astronomy in particular, but also in science is exactly the opposite side of where it's supposed to be.

00:08:38.300 It's not a small nuance that I'm talking about.

00:08:40.920 It's the fact that in theoretical physics, for example, you find mainstream scientists, you know, hundreds of them or thousands working on concepts that have no test and no verification through experiments.

00:08:57.500 These are extra dimensions, you know, the multiverse string theory, and they don't feel bad about it.

00:09:05.320 In fact, there are philosophers supporting them and they are very happy to do that because they do intellectual gymnastics and they are never tested.

00:09:14.440 They never put skin in the game.

00:09:16.180 But physics is all about putting skin in the game.

00:09:19.020 You want to make predictions that one can test.

00:09:22.400 And, you know, Einstein was wrong three times in the last decade of his career just because he was working at the frontier.

00:09:29.580 And, you know, when you work on the frontier, you never know if you are right or wrong.

00:09:32.540 You take some risks and you make mistakes.

00:09:34.680 But if your intention is to demonstrate that you are smart, then you will escape from any attempt to test your ideas.

00:09:42.940 And you will just do mathematical gymnastics to demonstrate that you are smart.

00:09:46.340 And then you can get awards recognition if your community of people is not really geared towards explaining reality.

00:09:55.140 And that's what happens right now in physics, which is really surprising to me.

00:09:59.380 While at the same time, you know, a question like, are we alone?

00:10:03.580 Are there technological civilizations aside from ours?

00:10:07.100 Are we the smartest kid on the block?

00:10:09.500 You know, these kinds of questions that inspire the public.

00:10:12.560 And by the way, the public supports science.

00:10:15.940 Funding for science comes from the public.

00:10:18.280 These questions excite the public.

00:10:19.860 Yet scientists put a taboo on discussing these questions and using their telescopes, their instruments to explore this question.

00:10:29.240 And as you said in your book, Galileo, when he was at trial, he couldn't get anyone to even look through the telescope.

00:10:40.720 He would say, it's right here.

00:10:43.040 You just have to look.

00:10:44.600 And they wouldn't even look through the telescope.

00:10:47.560 That's right.

00:10:48.320 Because because it would violate.

00:10:50.500 I mean, it would take them out of their comfort zone.

00:10:53.440 But Galileo's experience.

00:10:55.200 I mean, he was put in house arrest.

00:10:57.060 Yeah. 0.79

00:10:57.760 And what that did is basically maintain the ignorance of those philosophers.

00:11:02.740 Right.

00:11:03.060 But it didn't change anything other than that.

00:11:06.860 The experience of Giordano Bruno was much worse.

00:11:10.000 So, actually, there is a student at the Harvard English Department that was inspired by my book to write a Ph.D. thesis on the theme of my book.

00:11:20.720 And she invited me a couple of months ago to her Ph.D. exam.

00:11:26.300 And one of the examiners asked her, do you know why Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake?

00:11:32.980 And she said, well, he was an obnoxious guy.

00:11:35.980 He irritated a lot of people, which is, of course, true.

00:11:40.000 But the professor corrected her and said, no, the main reason was that he argued that other stars are just like the sun and they might have a planet like the earth on which life may exist.

00:11:53.880 And the church at the time found it offensive because it implies that if that life had sinned, you needed copies of Christ to visit those planets and save the life there.

00:12:08.400 And that was unacceptable.

00:12:10.400 So, my point is, the fate of Galileo was actually not as bad as Giordano Bruno.

00:12:21.060 And there is a long history to people resisting the notion that we are not alone, that we might not be the smartest kid on the block.

00:12:30.140 And my point is that by ignoring this possibility, we are simply keeping ourselves ignorant.

00:12:37.500 It doesn't change the reality.

00:12:39.240 They may be out there and we could learn from them, by the way.

00:12:42.220 We could learn lessons from other civilizations.

00:12:45.540 In the book, and then I want to turn to what happened in 2017.

00:12:49.000 In the book, you compare the universe to grains of sand.

00:12:56.620 Can you give that analogy?

00:13:01.220 Right.

00:13:01.580 So, actually, as of a few months ago, there was a paper analyzing the latest data from the Kepler satellite that implies that a substantial fraction, about half of all the sun-like stars in the Milky Way galaxy, have a planet the size of the earth, roughly at the same separation.

00:13:21.920 And what that says is that the conditions we find on earth could be replicated in all of these earth-sun systems.

00:13:30.800 There are billions of them within the Milky Way galaxy alone.

00:13:35.060 And if you repeat the same circumstances, you might get similar outcomes.

00:13:38.740 You might get things just like us.

00:13:41.300 And then there are a trillion galaxies like the Milky Way in the observable volume of the universe.

00:13:47.320 So, altogether, the number of planets like the earth on which things like us may exist is more than the number of grains of sand on all beaches on earth.

00:14:00.340 And if you think about all the kings and emperors that were extremely arrogant in conquering a piece of land on earth, that is equivalent to an ant that hugs a single grain of sand on the landscape of a huge beach.

00:14:15.700 Right.

00:14:16.100 It's not very impressive.

00:14:17.460 So, how can anyone be arrogant?

00:14:20.000 I mean, not only just in terms of the vast size of the universe and the number of planets like ours, but also in terms of the fact that we live for such a short time, you know.

00:14:29.800 And, you know, we should just focus on the substance, right?

00:14:35.240 Not pretend that we are powerful and so forth.

00:14:38.600 And just try to figure out the world, you know.

00:14:41.060 That is what a kid does.

00:14:43.480 And something bad happens when these kids turn into adults.

00:14:47.640 They start worrying about their ego, start promoting their image.

00:14:51.400 When they get tenure in academia, they create those echo chambers of students and postdocs that make their voice louder so that they can get prizes and awards.

00:15:01.480 It's not really about us.

00:15:03.400 Science is about a dialogue with nature.

00:15:05.780 And sometimes nature is more imaginative.

00:15:08.720 You know, we should be open-minded.

00:15:10.260 If we see anomalies like Oumuamua was, we should consider the possibility that we need to revise our notion.

00:15:18.080 Maybe it is space trash, some technological equipment.

00:15:22.360 Why put a taboo on such a possibility?

00:15:25.640 Why avoid discussing it?

00:15:27.640 Why ridicule that when all evidence is that this object is nothing like we have seen before?

00:15:34.140 Okay, so let's start here.

00:15:36.720 By the way, you are so right.

00:15:38.660 As I'm listening to your book, I keep thinking of the Christian idea of Jesus saying, come to me as a child.

00:15:48.880 And I spent a lot of time pondering that.

00:15:52.360 And a child asks the same question over and over and over again.

00:15:57.380 And that is why.

00:15:58.800 And if we aren't, when we stop asking why, we're in trouble.

00:16:05.200 Exactly.

00:16:05.920 No, I completely agree with this notion.

00:16:07.740 You know, the Harvard Gazette, which is the Pravda of Harvard University, the official newspaper of Harvard University, they asked me for, they asked me, what is the one thing you would like to change about the world?

00:16:21.060 Which is a big question.

00:16:22.060 And my answer was, I would like my colleagues in academia to behave more like kids, just along the lines that you just mentioned.

00:16:33.020 Because kids, you know, are more about exploring the world and they are more humble.

00:16:38.740 You know, they're not connected so much to promoting themselves, to their egos.

00:16:42.980 And they are willing to take risks, make mistakes.

00:16:45.840 They realize that they have to learn.

00:16:48.220 Okay.

00:16:49.220 I think we have a lot to learn.

00:16:51.380 What we know is just an island in an ocean of ignorance, you know, and why should we pretend that we know a lot?

00:16:58.480 Why should we pretend that we are powerful?

00:17:01.040 I see no other honest point of view than being modest.

00:17:06.680 You know, I really find it strange to see my colleagues claiming that they know the answer before they actually check it.

00:17:13.380 Yeah.

00:17:13.840 Once we, you know, I wrote just recently that the only thing I'm certain of now in my life is that I'm not certain of anything.

00:17:22.600 And the minute we become certain on things, we're in trouble.

00:17:28.640 Let's go back to 2017 and describe what the observatory picked up in Hawaii and named it basically the English equivalent of, if I'm not mistaken, the visitor.

00:17:46.040 Right.

00:17:47.440 A scout.

00:17:48.260 Yes.

00:17:48.620 Yeah.

00:17:48.840 A scout.

00:17:49.400 That's right.

00:17:49.800 A scout.

00:17:51.040 Yeah.

00:17:51.600 A scout or a messenger from far away.

00:17:54.560 And this is the very first object that was discovered near Earth that came from outside the solar system.

00:18:02.320 First question.

00:18:03.040 It's an interstellar.

00:18:04.000 First question.

00:18:05.220 The reason we know that is because.

00:18:06.580 Wait, wait, wait.

00:18:07.120 Why?

00:18:08.440 There should be interstellar space junk, you know, floating everywhere.

00:18:14.200 Why is this the first one we've ever found?

00:18:16.700 Oh, because we didn't have surveyed telescopes.

00:18:20.960 Okay.

00:18:21.420 Telescopes that look all across the sky, not just in a small region of the sky.

00:18:26.420 That are that sensitive.

00:18:28.120 So, we could have never found such an object.

00:18:30.740 Okay.

00:18:30.920 You really need.

00:18:31.440 Now, PANSTARS, the telescope on Maui, Mount Haleakala, which actually, as it turns out, I visited, you know, in July 2017, just a few months before Oumuamua was discovered.

00:18:47.300 Back then, nobody knew about it, about Oumuamua.

00:18:50.200 So, that telescope was constructed because Congress tasked NASA to find 90% of all the objects bigger than 140 meters that will come close to Earth.

00:19:05.320 And the reason is, you know, we know that the dinosaurs were killed by a big rock roughly the length of Manhattan Island.

00:19:14.300 And the dinosaurs just saw this rock coming towards them.

00:19:18.500 It got bigger and bigger on the sky, and the fan stopped when it hit the ground.

00:19:23.540 Right.

00:19:23.880 And we have astronomers to warn us about such things.

00:19:28.400 And that's why Congress wanted astronomers to come up with a list of all, or at least 90% of all near-Earth objects.

00:19:39.980 And PANSTARS started doing that.

00:19:42.420 And so, this was, people thought at first that this was a comet.

00:19:47.420 And you started to say, wait a minute, wait a minute.

00:19:53.560 I don't think it is.

00:19:55.660 Why?

00:19:57.260 Yes.

00:19:57.860 So, first of all, everyone, by the way, the facts that I tell you are, you know, scientific facts.

00:20:03.560 Nobody would dispute them.

00:20:05.140 It's just that many people ignore them.

00:20:06.880 They want to continue business as usual.

00:20:09.260 I should tell you that I went to a seminar about Oumuamua at Harvard.

00:20:14.040 And then when I left the room together with a colleague of mine who worked on rocks within the solar system, he said, this object is so weird, I wish it never existed.

00:20:24.380 And, you know, I was appalled by that because as a scientist, you should accept whatever nature gives you.

00:20:31.620 Right.

00:20:31.720 And in fact, if you see an anomaly, something that doesn't quite line up with what you expected, you should be happy because it's nature's way of telling you that your ideas have to be revised.

00:20:43.860 Right.

00:20:43.960 So, that's the spirit of a learning experience.

00:20:47.000 The future is not necessarily the same as the past because you are learning something new.

00:20:51.100 So, anyway, what was new about Oumuamua that is different from comets or asteroids is the fact, in difference from comets, it didn't show any cometary tail.

00:21:01.640 There was no gas coming off it.

00:21:03.640 So, a comet is a rock covered with ice, and when it gets close to the sun, the ice evaporates and creates this tail of gas and dust behind it, which reflects light, and you can see it as a beautiful cometary tail.

00:21:18.300 There was nothing like that in the case of Oumuamua.

00:21:21.580 We would have seen it for sure.

00:21:23.640 And the Spitzer Space Telescope looked very deeply behind it, couldn't see anything.

00:21:29.100 So, there was no cometary tail.

00:21:30.780 Then people said, okay, it's not a comet.

00:21:34.300 So, maybe it's just a rock.

00:21:36.480 But the problem with that idea is that it exhibited an extra push away from the sun, which is usually attributed to the evaporation of gas because you get this rocket effect that gives the object an extra push.

00:21:51.360 But there was no cometary tail.

00:21:53.280 And so, the question is, what gave it the extra push?

00:21:57.340 And that is one weird fact about it.

00:22:00.880 Another one is, as it was tumbling, spinning every eight hours, the amount of sunlight reflected from it changed by a factor of 10.

00:22:11.720 And that means the area on the sky that it occupies changed by a factor of 10.

00:22:17.220 And think about a piece of paper that is razor thin, tumbling in the wind.

00:22:23.060 A change by a factor of 10 is a lot because it's unlikely to be exactly edge-on.

00:22:28.420 And it means that projected on the sky, it is at least 10 times longer than it is wide.

00:22:34.300 And the best fit to the variation in the light reflected from it was a flat object, pancake-like, not a cigar-shaped object the way it was depicted in a famous cartoon.

00:22:48.840 And so, you have a pancake-shaped object that shows an excess acceleration.

00:22:54.600 And the only way I could explain it is it's from reflected sunlight.

00:23:00.100 And actually, the force declined with increasing distance, just like you expect from reflected sunlight, inversely with distance squared.

00:23:09.180 And so, I suggest that maybe it's an artificial object because it needs to be very thin, like a sail, in order for it to be pushed by reflecting sunlight.

00:23:19.720 And, you know, a sail on a boat is pushing the boat forward by reflecting air, wind.

00:23:26.880 And you can imagine a light sail.

00:23:29.800 This is a technology that we are currently developing for space exploration.

00:23:33.920 And the advantage of it is that the spacecraft doesn't need to carry the fuel with it.

00:23:38.300 Wow.

00:23:39.340 Okay.

00:23:39.960 So, there was...

00:23:41.060 One more thing I should say.

00:23:42.300 Yeah.

00:23:42.560 In September 2020, there was another object discovered that showed an excess push away from the sun and no cometary tail.

00:23:52.240 And it was given the astronomical name 2020SO.

00:23:56.340 And then the astronomers realized that it was a rocket booster from a 1966 mission called Lunar Lander Surveyor 2.

00:24:06.820 And the rocket booster was hollow and thin.

00:24:10.780 And that's why it exhibited this extra push.

00:24:13.340 So, my point is, we can tell the difference between a rock and a thin object based on the way they behave.

00:24:22.620 There is no cometary tail.

00:24:24.100 And you get an extra push in the case of a thin object.

00:24:27.660 And therefore, in the case of the rocket booster, we know that we produced it.

00:24:31.620 In the case of Oumuamua, we don't know who made it.

00:24:35.300 So, when you were describing the surface in the book, I saw like a mirror-like or metallic, a smooth kind of surface.

00:24:47.480 Would that have been what it looked like?

00:24:50.360 Because we never really could see close enough, right?

00:24:53.820 Right.

00:24:54.140 We could not get an image.

00:24:56.740 Of course, a photograph is worth a thousand words.

00:24:59.460 If we had a photograph, everyone would agree whether it's a rock or artificial, right?

00:25:05.200 The problem is that it was discovered on its way away from us.

00:25:09.140 So, it's sort of like having a guest for dinner and realizing that this guest is interesting only when the guest leaves through the front door into the dark street.

00:25:18.760 But the point is that in the future, you know, within a few years, we will be able to see many more of the same because there would be the Vera Rubin Observatory, much more sensitive than pan stars, that will survey the sky.

00:25:32.440 And it could find one per month.

00:25:34.640 And when we find one that approaches us, we could potentially send out a spacecraft that will take a close-up photo of it.

00:25:42.820 So, when you said it was like a sail and it was catching solar light winds, is there anything naturally occurring that would do that, that we know of?

00:25:56.020 No.

00:25:56.980 So, that's exactly the point.

00:25:58.840 If you imagine a thin object like a sail that is being pushed by a reflection of light, there is no natural process that would produce it.

00:26:08.480 However, so, in the subsequent years, after my paper came out with my postdoc Shmuel Bialy, various people tried to explain the strange properties of Oumuamua from a natural origin.

00:26:23.860 And they always discussed something that we have never seen before, like, for example, a hydrogen iceberg, a frozen hydrogen, a chunk size of a football field of frozen hydrogen.

00:26:37.080 Then when the hydrogen evaporates, just like in the case of a comet, you don't see it because hydrogen is transparent.

00:26:43.880 The problem with that idea is that a chunk of frozen hydrogen would evaporate very quickly along the journey.

00:26:51.300 We showed that in a paper that followed up on this suggestion.

00:26:56.320 So, it won't really survive in interstellar space because of the absorption of starlight.

00:27:02.200 And then there was another proposal.

00:27:04.380 Maybe it's a collection of dust particles, like a dust bunny, that is 100% less dense than air.

00:27:12.740 So, you have this cloud of dust reflecting sunlight and getting pushed.

00:27:16.780 Again, it's hard to imagine how something that is 100 times less dense than air would survive the journey.

00:27:24.200 So, this example just illustrates to you that people that try to really explain the facts encountered difficulties and came up with scenarios that involve something that we have never seen before.

00:27:35.700 And these scenarios appear to me less plausible than a light sail.

00:27:41.000 And so, you know, I don't see why there should be an objection to putting that possibility on the table, an artificial origin.

00:27:48.520 And unfortunately, many of my colleagues prefer not to discuss this possibility at all.

00:27:55.580 Okay.

00:27:55.960 So, there was another problem with it.

00:28:00.080 Our infrared, as it was leaving, as it was leaving the area of the sun, it should have heated up, which would, you know, if you had hydrogen, you know, a hydrogen block.

00:28:14.420 And as it got close to the sun, it would make that turn into gas, which would help it propel itself.

00:28:21.120 But it would also be smaller on the other side of the sun because it would have expelled some of that stuff.

00:28:28.140 There was no tail.

00:28:29.920 We believe it was the same size.

00:28:31.800 And our infrared showed that there was no increase in heat.

00:28:37.060 Right?

00:28:37.980 That close to the sun?

00:28:39.180 Yes.

00:28:39.240 How odd is that?

00:28:41.360 Yes.

00:28:41.660 So, we know the temperature that its surface should have gotten to because we know the trajectory.

00:28:48.180 So, if you know how close it gets to the sun, you know how hot the surface of this object must be.

00:28:54.400 And then we can expect how much heat we would detect depending on its size.

00:28:59.700 The bigger it is, the more heat we get.

00:29:02.620 Sure.

00:29:02.740 So, the Spitzer Space Telescope did not detect any heat coming off it.

00:29:08.100 And as a result, you can set an upper limit on its size.

00:29:11.260 It has to be smaller than something so that we would not detect the heat.

00:29:15.700 And that, on the other hand, implies that it must be relatively shiny because we see a certain amount of reflected sunlight.

00:29:23.920 So, if the size is small and you see a certain amount of reflected sunlight, it means that it's more shiny than if it were bigger, you know.

00:29:33.040 And it looks like this object was on the shiny end of all the comets or asteroids that we have seen.

00:29:41.520 So, it's more than average, shinier.

00:29:44.600 And, you know, there were other anomalies about Oumuamua.

00:29:50.180 It came, for example, from a very special frame, which is called the local standard of rest, which is sort of like the galactic public parking lot.

00:30:01.680 You know, that's the frame that you get to when you average over the motion of all the stars near the sun.

00:30:07.480 So, there is a sort of a rest frame locally.

00:30:12.700 And this object was at rest in it.

00:30:16.060 And only one in 500 stars is so much at rest.

00:30:19.520 The stars are moving relative to that frame.

00:30:21.720 And so, in fact, the sun is moving.

00:30:24.120 And that's the origin of our relative speed relative to Oumuamua.

00:30:29.320 Oumuamua was just like a buoy sitting on the surface of the ocean.

00:30:33.000 And the solar system, like a giant ship, bumped into it.

00:30:38.000 So, it wasn't moving.

00:30:39.160 Because I looked the speed up and it's the fastest object I think we have seen at 85,000 miles an hour.

00:30:46.940 But it was at rest and we were moving?

00:30:51.440 Yes.

00:30:52.300 We were moving.

00:30:53.280 Now, that begs the question of why it's in that special frame of reference.

00:30:57.880 And, you know, one possibility is that there is a grid population of such objects that is used for navigation, like road posts sitting out there.

00:31:11.360 And we just bumped into one of them.

00:31:13.660 Another possibility is that it's a relay station for communication so that you don't need to send a very powerful beam communicating across large distances.

00:31:24.520 There are these relay stations.

00:31:26.040 Or, you know, it could be just a junk, space junk, some surface layer of a spaceship that was torn apart and it's just floating out there.

00:31:38.260 One thing is clear that we cannot associate this object with any particular star in our neighborhood because all these stars are moving around and this object is at rest.

00:31:48.920 So, it's just like finding a car in a public parking lot.

00:31:52.440 You cannot associate the car with a particular house from where it came because it's sitting at rest.

00:31:59.840 But the closest star to us or the closest solar system to us is 25,000 light years away, right?

00:32:08.800 No, the closest star to us is four and a quarter light years away.

00:32:13.020 Four and a quarter.

00:32:13.520 It's called Proxima Centauri.

00:32:14.940 It takes like four years to get there.

00:32:18.920 So, they are at the speed of light.

00:32:20.840 Just around now, they are getting the results of the 2016 elections.

00:32:27.040 Okay.

00:32:27.720 And that's at the speed of light.

00:32:29.760 Boy, they're in for an interesting four years.

00:32:31.440 The speed of light, exactly.

00:32:31.860 So, how old do you think, if this is space junk, how old would it have to be at the minimum?

00:32:41.660 At the minimum, tens of thousands of years, if not millions of years, because to cross the solar system, you know, the Oort cloud, the periphery of the solar system, all the way to us, would take this object more than 10,000 years.

00:32:56.860 And that means that it started its journey a long time ago.

00:33:02.740 You know, we were not very interested in 10,000 years ago as a human species.

00:33:07.500 So, I find it hard to believe that this object is spying on us.

00:33:12.640 Most likely, it is just like, you know, going to the beach.

00:33:16.720 Most of the time, you find seashells and rocks that are naturally produced.

00:33:21.300 But every now and then, you find a plastic bottle.

00:33:24.960 And that indicates that there is a civilization out there that produced it.

00:33:29.340 So, I think of it more as a space junk or space trash.

00:33:34.360 It could be equipment that is not functional anymore.

00:33:37.520 Simply, you know, we launched Voyager 1, Voyager 2, New Horizons.

00:33:42.680 Within thousands of years from now, that will not be functional.

00:33:46.840 And that will be just space junk. 0.60

00:33:48.900 And the only question is, how many such things were launched by other civilizations?

00:33:53.960 You know, we might find every now and then, we might find one of them.

00:33:57.700 So, are you following the revelations from the Pentagon in the last few years because of our technology?

00:34:07.660 I mean, I've read and I've read, I've talked to the people at the Pentagon.

00:34:11.940 And I keep asking them, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait, wait a minute.

00:34:17.280 You're saying you have pieces or fragments of something that is otherworldly.

00:34:27.580 What does that even mean?

00:34:29.760 And to me, over the last four years, I know it's been crazy, but this is the biggest news story of all of mankind, if these things are true.

00:34:44.400 Right.

00:34:45.080 I mean, this general question of finding evidence for other technological civilizations is the biggest question that we have.

00:34:55.100 It will change everything.

00:34:56.360 It will change our perspective about our place in the universe, our aspirations for space.

00:35:02.040 It will have a huge impact on our culture and on our society.

00:35:06.640 With respect to the Pentagon papers, and by the way, they are supposed to release everything they know about UFOs as part of the COVID bill in six months or so.

00:35:16.520 So on that, we have to see exactly what these papers are.

00:35:23.460 Right. And I'm not talking about Project Blue Book and all of that stuff.

00:35:26.380 I'm talking about the new evidence that we have now that we can track.

00:35:32.560 And we tracked objects that were seemingly tracking us for, I think, three weeks.

00:35:40.880 And we had it on several different systems.

00:35:44.820 You know, I think our technology has changed so we can we can spot these things. 0.93

00:35:52.040 But it is it's no longer seemingly the story of, you know, I was out in the farm and I got an anal probe from this guy. 0.89

00:36:00.480 I mean, this is different. 0.98

00:36:02.720 Right. Well, you know, I think, first of all, it's of interest to the government because, you know, some of the reports could indicate technologies that other nations have that could be a threat to national security.

00:36:17.260 So you want to understand. Right.

00:36:19.280 What they mean. Right.

00:36:20.820 And well, I've talked to the guys.

00:36:23.460 I talked to the guys that are actually running that for the government and now are outside.

00:36:29.020 And they said that that's exactly why they started.

00:36:32.760 They wanted to know who had this technology.

00:36:34.940 And they said the technology is just so far ahead.

00:36:39.460 They just don't think anyone you would.

00:36:42.180 Your society would be different if you had this technology.

00:36:46.580 It would have affected everything.

00:36:48.140 So they don't think that it's coming from here.

00:36:51.680 You know, I had a similar discussion with Joe Rogan in a podcast a week and a half ago.

00:36:57.440 And my take on these reports is that with relatively modest funding, one can deploy scientific instruments at those sites and, you know, do a careful job at monitoring what is going on there.

00:37:18.320 And rather than rely on eyewitness testimony or I mean, science is about reproducing results.

00:37:26.140 OK, about arranging for better and better instruments to get more reliable evidence for us.

00:37:33.920 And it could be open to the public.

00:37:36.440 There is no reason for it to be classified.

00:37:38.060 And if there is a public funding source for doing such an experiment, putting those instruments out there.

00:37:44.460 And after we discussed it, there was a grassroots initiative by some people to raise the funds to do such an experiment.

00:37:51.380 You know, I am very much in favor of checking, you know, scientifically what is behind this.

00:37:58.760 If we don't find anything, then we know that there is nothing to think about.

00:38:03.260 But, you know, it reminds me of the biblical story in the Old Testament.

00:38:08.460 There is this story about Abraham that heard the voice of God and that voice told him to sacrifice his only son, right, Isaac.

00:38:19.100 And suppose Abraham had a voice memo up on his cell phone.

00:38:25.940 He could have pressed the button and recorded the voice of God and nobody would doubt that he heard the voice of God.

00:38:33.740 But he didn't have a cell phone back then.

00:38:36.320 And so we have to decide if we believe the story or not.

00:38:39.780 And scientifically speaking, we have no proof that this story is right.

00:38:44.300 So my point is, if you have scientific instruments, you don't need to believe stories.

00:38:49.500 You can just deploy them, record what is happening.

00:38:53.020 And if you hear the voice of God, you can convince everyone that it really happened.

00:39:00.820 I'm a big science geek, and I know just enough to have everything wrong.

00:39:09.700 But I've been fascinated with the singularity.

00:39:14.900 One of the I remember in my, what, 30s, I was fascinated by black holes and baby universes by Stephen Hawking.

00:39:23.840 And his description of our universe as being just one soap bubble in a collection of soap bubbles.

00:39:35.040 And you can't go between any of these universes, which makes you even feel smaller than you do if you understand the size of this universe.

00:39:44.340 Yeah, I actually have a variant on this, which is, you know, we don't know what happened before the Big Bang.

00:39:51.300 There is a point in time when everything that we see started.

00:39:56.040 Right.

00:39:56.300 Okay.

00:39:56.580 And, you know, by the way, it matches more or less the idea that is in the first chapter of the Bible, the Old Testament, that there was a beginning in time.

00:40:04.660 But the question is, what was there before?

00:40:08.020 You know, where did it come from?

00:40:10.000 What is first cause?

00:40:12.340 And, you know, I thought about an interesting possibility.

00:40:16.120 You know, so right now we have Einstein's theory of gravity and we have quantum mechanics.

00:40:22.500 These are two pillars of modern physics that are not unified.

00:40:27.100 We don't have quantum gravity.

00:40:29.260 And therefore, we cannot go back in time beyond the Big Bang.

00:40:33.180 So the Big Bang is simply the breakdown of Einstein's theory of gravity.

00:40:37.840 And we know why, because it doesn't incorporate quantum mechanics.

00:40:41.200 So suppose we had a theory of quantum gravity that we can trust.

00:40:46.020 Then, in principle, we could contemplate the conditions under which we will create a universe in the laboratory by irritating the vacuum.

00:40:55.780 In principle, it's possible.

00:40:57.000 And if that is the case, perhaps the umbilical cord of our universe was in the laboratory of another civilization that created our universe.

00:41:08.920 And that's where the Big Bang came from.

00:41:11.000 And then when we understand that, we will create another baby universe.

00:41:14.740 So it's just like in family, human families, you have a baby that has a baby that has a baby.

00:41:20.560 And that may explain how the universe came to exist.

00:41:24.520 I actually agree with you, even for me, at least theologically.

00:41:32.600 I agree with that.

00:41:36.960 With quantum computing now, are we going to be able to answer some of those questions?

00:41:45.800 What is quantum computing?

00:41:48.280 First of all, does quantum computing, the fact that it can exist, does that verify quantum mechanics and like a parallel universe at all?

00:41:59.440 Does that verify any of these things and are we, will it be able to answer some of these questions that have, you know, been on man's mind forever?

00:42:12.440 Well, so quantum computing is taking advantage of quantum mechanics.

00:42:16.740 The fact that, you know, quantum mechanics is very weird.

00:42:20.120 We are used to the fact that, you know, if you have a billiard ball, it sits at a given location and you can measure its position and its speed and you know what their values are if you have a good, a precise enough measurement.

00:42:35.580 But in quantum mechanics, you can't really measure everything at the same time and everything is probabilistic.

00:42:42.120 And, you know, it's only on, it's only on observation that you can, no, wait, you can measure it until you observe it.

00:42:52.140 Right.

00:42:52.460 And then you can't, you have a probability.

00:42:55.900 So each, for example, you can measure the position of an electron, but you can't measure its speed exactly at the same time.

00:43:03.020 If you know the position, you don't know the speed, or if you know the speed, you don't know.

00:43:09.020 And then also the, you can find it in many different places with some probability.

00:43:14.300 So it's never localized.

00:43:16.400 And so it's always in a superposition of states that there are several states that each particle or each system is at.

00:43:25.500 Right.

00:43:25.600 And quantum computing is taking advantage of that.

00:43:28.100 The fact that, let's say you have multiple particles, you know, they can be in some system that is entangled, it's called, that if you were to measure the properties of one component of that system, it would affect what you can measure for the other.

00:43:46.860 So quantum computing is taking advantage of that.

00:43:50.040 And at the moment, I should say it's not yet at a practical level of being useful, but it's getting there.

00:43:58.100 And, you know, within a few years, it's quite possible that it will get us to do some computations much faster than normal computers.

00:44:06.620 But it doesn't shed any light on issues of parallel universe.

00:44:10.580 I mean, have you seen have you seen what the Fermi labs just announced right before Christmas about they used string theory and quantum computing?

00:44:22.300 And they they moved or they actually transported digital information from one place to another.

00:44:30.820 And they said that that that is starting to take a take apart Einstein's theory of of speed of light and nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, et cetera.

00:44:41.820 Is that you have that right?

00:44:43.320 Is that true?

00:44:43.820 As I mentioned before, Einstein made three mistakes at the end of the last decade of his career, and one of them had to do with the spooky action at the distance in quantum mechanics.

00:44:54.380 What what it means is if you have a system, let's say of two particles and you separate the particles by a large distance, if you if this system is, you know, the two particles know about each other because they were created together and then you separate them.

00:45:09.720 Then then if you make a measurement of one particle very far away, it affects what you can measure right here immediately and it's faster than light.

00:45:20.200 And so that's what Einstein dubbed this spooky action at the distance.

00:45:23.900 He didn't believe that it can happen.

00:45:25.840 So it's not this happen.

00:45:27.140 Now we have experiments.

00:45:28.320 And isn't this part of the rate?

00:45:30.720 Doesn't this go back to what we were talking about before?

00:45:33.660 There are huge things that are being disproven or called into serious question now, and nobody seems to be talking about it.

00:45:47.040 Right, right.

00:45:47.620 I mean, clearly, this spooky action at the distance took Einstein out of his comfort zone and he was trying to resist it.

00:45:56.520 And, you know, Einstein was the greatest scientist of the 20th century and he was wrong.

00:46:01.120 Now, my point is, this is any anomaly you find through experiments is nature's way of telling you, be humble and be willing to revise your notions about reality.

00:46:15.460 And so we should learn the lesson from those historical mistakes that others have made, including Einstein.

00:46:24.140 And in principle, be willing to open our mind to what evidence tells us.

00:46:29.400 But the problem is that some people do not want to even consider evidence and put skin in the game, make predictions that can be falsified, because that would mean that they were wrong.

00:46:40.260 So if they want to maintain an image of not being wrong and being very smart, they will never put any skin into the game.

00:46:47.800 And at the same time, when there is an anomaly like Oumuamua was, people would just shove it under the rug of conservatism and ignore it and do business as usual rather than discuss it.

00:47:01.160 You know, the standard thing that people say is extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

00:47:09.060 Now, the word extraordinary is really in the eyes of the beholder.

00:47:13.640 You know, some people regard, I don't know, a black hole as extraordinary.

00:47:17.300 Others would say, no, it's just an object, a result of Einstein's theory of gravity.

00:47:21.180 So the point is, in my mind, what matters is evidence, irrespective whether it's extraordinary or not.

00:47:28.280 When you see something anomalous, you need to explain it.

00:47:31.800 And if you put this bar of the evidence being extraordinary, then it gives you legitimacy at ignoring anomalies.

00:47:38.380 You know, so that the philosophers back in the days of Galileo would say, oh, what Galileo says does not provide extraordinary evidence.

00:47:46.860 Therefore, we can still think that the sun moves around the air, you know, and that is an excuse for being lazy, for ignoring anomalies when they appear.

00:47:56.860 And my point is that we should be alert.

00:47:59.340 We should be like kids, you know, that realize something unusual and are trying to figure it out.

00:48:05.140 You know, who cares about our self-image?

00:48:08.120 And, you know, we are trying to figure out nature.

00:48:10.720 And if we are not alone in the universe, that would be amazing.

00:48:13.500 As you were pointing out, it will change everything for us.

00:48:16.860 One of the guys who I read 20, 30 years ago that I just loved and and, you know, as it turns out, he's not accurate, but I just loved it because he thought so differently and everybody rejected him out of hand.

00:48:40.060 And that's Velikovsky, Worlds in Collision.

00:48:43.520 I loved the way he said, wait a minute, wait a minute.

00:48:47.020 Let's not dismiss this religious stuff as kooky.

00:48:51.680 Let's see if it matches around the world.

00:48:54.680 And then let's try to find a scientific evidence for it.

00:48:57.840 And it was so brilliant.

00:49:00.720 But, I mean, he was mocked and ridiculed for even suggesting that.

00:49:07.400 Well, I should first of all tell you that I have no footprint on social media because my wife asked me not to do that when we got married.

00:49:15.940 And I promised her.

00:49:16.880 Therefore, I don't really care how many likes I have on Twitter and I really think independently.

00:49:23.440 But more importantly, you know, I don't think there is necessarily a conflict between science and religion because science is about understanding how things work.

00:49:33.380 You know, it's just like looking at the watch and you want to figure out how the watch works.

00:49:38.240 So, you open up the case and you start looking inside and you start to figure out the mechanics.

00:49:43.880 And that's what science is about, figuring out how things work.

00:49:48.660 Now, if you are religious, in fact, you would like science to succeed in this endeavor because it increases the all that you have about the watch.

00:50:00.020 How delicate and how sophisticated it is.

00:50:03.480 And science improves your appreciation of reality.

00:50:06.200 You see all the delicate details.

00:50:08.800 For me, for example, the fact that the universe is controlled by a set of laws that we discovered here on Earth and they apply throughout the entire universe.

00:50:19.700 That's remarkable.

00:50:20.840 You know, we have laws that we apply in society and many people do not obey them.

00:50:26.780 And when I go every morning to look at my daughter's room, it looks like a mess.

00:50:31.340 So, how come the universe is so organized?

00:50:33.720 You know, that's amazing.

00:50:34.460 So, my point is, physics tries to figure out how things work.

00:50:39.140 And it seems like they are extremely well organized in terms of natural laws.

00:50:43.440 And when you figure them out, it will only increase your O as to how impressive the universe is.

00:50:51.780 And then you can dress it up, your impression, you can dress it up with your religious beliefs.

00:50:57.820 And that's a completely separate layer because it's not about how things work.

00:51:03.260 It's more about what does that mean, you know.

00:51:06.580 So, if you look at the watch, what's the purpose of the watch and why does it exist in the first place?

00:51:12.180 You can ask those questions which are beyond physics, metaphysics.

00:51:16.700 And they don't overlap with the scientific questions.

00:51:20.620 So, in my view, you can separate the two.

00:51:25.340 And there doesn't...

00:51:26.580 So, the only reason there was a conflict was because some people that were theologians tried to also make suggestions for how the world works.

00:51:36.460 You know, and then they were wrong.

00:51:38.240 And so, they should not invade that territory.

00:51:41.180 That territory is of the scientific endeavor.

00:51:44.320 And, you know, the science is doing a pretty good job at figuring out how things work.

00:51:49.280 I think that it's, you know, if there is a God, he's the author of science.

00:51:56.480 He's the author of chemistry.

00:51:58.740 He's the author of mathematics.

00:52:00.760 He'd have to be...

00:52:03.180 He would agree with all of these things because it's so precise.

00:52:09.340 And he can't violate his own system if there is a God.

00:52:15.760 But it doesn't...

00:52:18.340 Science...

00:52:20.140 Science has grown so arrogant.

00:52:25.160 And when science or theologians grow arrogant, they attack one another.

00:52:32.720 Where one has to be right and the other has to be wrong.

00:52:36.360 My father used to say...

00:52:37.620 I don't think so.

00:52:38.400 Yeah, I don't think so either.

00:52:39.940 And by the way, just another point.

00:52:42.480 I don't think that science is an occupation of the elite.

00:52:45.340 I don't think that being a scientist puts you on a pedestal.

00:52:49.160 For me, science is a way of life.

00:52:51.560 You know, when the sewer in my basement gets clogged and I try to solve the problem with a plumber.

00:52:58.940 You know, I apply the same thinking that I do when I see an anomalous object like Oumuamu.

00:53:04.760 I just try to figure it out.

00:53:06.380 And it's like a detective story, as you were mentioning.

00:53:09.400 And you apply common sense.

00:53:11.320 You put some possibilities on the table.

00:53:14.440 And, you know, I always think about anything that I encounter the way I do my science.

00:53:18.740 It's not something...

00:53:20.420 It's not a status symbol.

00:53:23.040 It's actually thinking about reality, trying to figure out how it works.

00:53:26.620 That's why I think it's not in conflict with religion.

00:53:29.380 Because you're just trying to figure out how things work.

00:53:32.300 And then, you know, then you can ask, why do they exist in the first place?

00:53:36.720 And why do they have this configuration?

00:53:39.480 You know, just like you asked about the watch.

00:53:41.540 You know, was there a watchmaker?

00:53:42.880 And what was the purpose?

00:53:44.300 But those questions go beyond physics.

00:53:46.860 And just putting physics on a pedestal and saying, you know, we don't want to engage with any theology.

00:53:55.320 And I think it's the wrong view.

00:53:57.740 And indeed, it reflects arrogance.

00:53:59.880 Because these are completely different facets of human thinking, you know.

00:54:03.720 So, let me go back to one of the questions I asked you right at the beginning.

00:54:08.540 And that was, and you agreed with the premise.

00:54:11.380 But I want to go deeper on, can you give me any evidence?

00:54:17.040 Are we, this tension that we're feeling in politics, in banking, in every field, everything is changing.

00:54:28.760 Is that because, is that unique?

00:54:34.040 Have there been times where everything changed?

00:54:39.320 Like I think it's going to.

00:54:40.620 Or is this because we are approaching, you know, some sort of singularity.

00:54:47.160 Some sort of grand unified theory.

00:54:51.320 What is it that we, is this usual?

00:54:55.060 Or is this different?

00:54:56.600 I think it's different in the sense that the technologies that we are developing right now are changing on a few-year timescale.

00:55:07.080 So, they are advancing exponentially on a few-year timescales.

00:55:12.460 And that's why you see this rapid change.

00:55:15.280 Now, you're asking a different question.

00:55:17.320 Where does it lead?

00:55:18.300 And will it continue to evolve that way in a stable fashion?

00:55:21.660 Or it would lead us to a state that would be untenable, like a singularity that will change everything for us?

00:55:30.140 That's not clear because it depends on the response of the political system.

00:55:33.560 I mean, it's clear.

00:55:34.440 If you look at social media, like over the past decade and a half, it clearly changed society.

00:55:40.220 And whether you change it for the better or for the worse, it remains to be seen.

00:55:44.620 And, you know, the advance in technology definitely changes our lifestyle.

00:55:51.140 And I think we need to complement it with a proper sense of ethics and morals.

00:55:57.740 You know, it's just like the atomic bomb.

00:56:00.520 You know, when we had the Manhattan Project, we developed new means of destruction, right? 0.59

00:56:05.800 So, there was a lot of concern back then that it may destroy humanity, right?

00:56:11.540 And so, you have to supplement that with your set of values and not use nuclear weapons unnecessarily.

00:56:19.640 And obviously, there is a similar risk with any technology that we develop that could have a big influence on us, such as genetic research.

00:56:27.820 You know, the understanding of the human genome, you know, that opens up a Pandora box of possibilities of modifying people and, you know, designing people.

00:56:39.780 And also, you know, the computer systems, artificial intelligence that enters any facet of our life, that could, for example, make decisions of life and death.

00:56:52.080 About, you know, the medical state of patients, you know, an artificial intelligence system could decide whether a person will die or live, rather than a doctor, a human.

00:57:04.620 Correct.

00:57:05.160 And we have to come up.

00:57:06.100 Our cars will do that.

00:57:07.620 To adapt to that, we have to come up with a set of ethical principles.

00:57:13.420 And for that, you know, I need our, I think our society needs the humanities.

00:57:18.960 So, there is this common view among scientists that, you know, we carry the torch forward of progress and we don't really need humanity.

00:57:30.800 The humanities are losing steam, so to speak.

00:57:33.440 They are, you know, the wave of the past.

00:57:36.740 I don't think so.

00:57:37.760 I think they are essential because you really need to decide how to respond to these new technologies in a way that our civilization will maintain its longevity.

00:57:51.440 And, you know, there are lots of ethical questions that come up now when we have new technologies.

00:57:59.240 So, I think, you know, yeah.

00:58:01.500 No, go ahead.

00:58:02.060 You think.

00:58:02.660 Go ahead.

00:58:03.000 No, so I think humanities have a central role in our future.

00:58:07.980 And I would, I think, and I actually wrote an essay about that, the humanities of the future.

00:58:13.820 I think they are as important as the scientists in fostering a better future for us.

00:58:20.600 I couldn't agree more, but I've talked to a lot of people out at Silicon Valley.

00:58:25.000 I've, I've, I've, I've talked to Ray Kurzweil a couple of times.

00:58:30.560 You know who Ray is.

00:58:31.880 Yes, of course.

00:58:32.640 And I've told him this, you know, to his face.

00:58:38.600 I find him the most fascinating, most inspiring, and the most terrifying man I've ever met.

00:58:46.920 Um, his, his view of what can be and what might be is just off the charts exciting, but his arrogance of, well, we as humans won't make the mistakes to use this incorrectly.

00:59:05.220 His, his cavalier, uh, idea of being eventually be one with the machine so you could download yourself and you'll live forever is terrifying because that's, as I said to him, that's not life, at least to me.

00:59:26.080 Um, and it could mirror life, but it, it's not life.

00:59:31.500 And the, the, again, I go back to what your book is really about.

00:59:35.960 The arrogance and the hubris of, of science is, is back to the tower of Babel days.

00:59:44.180 I agree with you.

00:59:45.480 I completely agree with you.

00:59:46.720 And unfortunately it doesn't take us, uh, in the right direction because, um, if you look at the history of humans,

00:59:54.320 the biggest mistakes were made out of arrogance and, um, uh, I, I very much hope that the people will hear the message and change.

01:00:03.220 Yeah.

01:00:03.860 Can I, can I, can I ask you this?

01:00:06.060 Um, and this is always such a dangerous road to go down and, and, uh, and I just want to know the difference in your opinion.

01:00:15.660 And I asked Ray this, um,

01:00:18.040 Um, a lot of the pursuits when coupled with arrogance are the same things that the early eugenicists here in America and elsewhere and Germany, um, it's the same pursuit of being able to make the Superman.

01:00:39.440 Um, um, what's the difference besides technology that we, that we can now do these things?

01:00:48.540 What's the difference?

01:00:50.920 Yeah, no, I think of arrogance just like junk food, you know, like sugar.

01:00:55.460 It tastes good when you have it and, but it's bad for you.

01:00:59.420 Uh, and it brings you to a bad place.

01:01:01.460 Uh, and, um, you know, if you have a good diet, um, intellectually, you get, um, a sense of modesty and, and then, um, you, your steps are more measured and are more balanced and you care about other people.

01:01:17.000 Arrogance leads you in the direction of dismissing the values of, of other people.

01:01:22.060 And, um, I, I, you know, I very much agree with you that, um, we, yeah, we should not surrender to this tendency.

01:01:30.180 I mean, people like sweet things, right?

01:01:32.900 Yeah, I know.

01:01:33.660 It tastes good.

01:01:34.660 We should just try to avoid it and it requires some effort.

01:01:39.280 Um, and in the context of science, you know, the thing that bothers me is that, uh, it, it, it, it puts blinders, uh, on our eyes because arrogance says we, we already know the answer before we need to check it.

01:01:52.420 And that's pretty bad, you know, because, uh, you, it's in many cases, it's just like saying, okay, I'm as wealthy as Elon Musk.

01:02:03.460 You know, I don't need to check it.

01:02:06.580 It's like being on drugs.

01:02:08.280 Right.

01:02:08.660 And, but if you really want to cash your money, you think that you're more wealthy than Elon Musk, you go to the ATM machine and you find, you know, that you don't have that much money.

01:02:19.820 And that is equivalent to testing, to putting some skin in the game, to testing your idea.

01:02:24.820 And without going to the ATM machine, we may, we may never realize that we are bankrupt, you know, and so our ideas may be completely off.

01:02:33.780 Now for people, you know, that sit in a comfortable position, they, they have income that they don't need to worry about.

01:02:40.620 And they can believe in that our reality is a simulation and they can believe that we don't need any experimental feedback.

01:02:48.380 We don't need to put any skin in the game.

01:02:50.080 They can think that.

01:02:51.080 But to me, it sounds like, you know, just like feeling high on drugs and not really test, you know, not being in contact with reality.

01:02:59.580 That's, that's the risk that, that, that I see in this approach.

01:03:03.720 Are you hopeful for the future?

01:03:07.200 Are you pensive about the future?

01:03:10.100 Where, where, where are you seeing, knowing what you know and seeing the state of the world and the state of arrogance in the world?

01:03:18.840 I'm always optimistic in the sense that I never back down, you know, so even in the context of scientific disputes, you know, if the evidence shows me that I'm wrong, then I will correct myself.

01:03:33.660 But if it's people that tell me on Twitter that I'm wrong without attending to the evidence, I don't care less.

01:03:40.860 And in that sense, you know, it reminds, I used to be in the military at a young age because in Israel where I grew up, it's obligatory.

01:03:48.640 And when I was in the paratroopers, there was a saying that the soldier sometimes needs to put his body on the barbed wire so that others can step forward.

01:04:00.080 And that's the way I see the pain that I have right now in with all this pushback.

01:04:06.500 I see it as a way of allowing the younger generation of tomorrow to be able to speak freely on this subject of search for other civilizations.

01:04:17.380 And I see it as a service.

01:04:19.000 You know, it's not about me personally.

01:04:20.820 I see it as a service to those people so that they can overcome this taboo that exists right now.

01:04:26.920 And also promoting the right ideas of modesty, of being open-minded, of allowing innovation in science.

01:04:34.920 And at the same time saying that what most of the community is engaged with is self-indulgence, you know, trying to prove that people are smart,

01:04:44.020 but not really dealing with reality by getting experimental data to test what these ideas are.

01:04:51.540 And, you know, I don't mind that it's not popular.

01:04:54.260 And obviously it will not be popular, but I just hold my – so I'm optimistic in the sense that I'm trying to promote a better future.

01:05:03.060 If I was pessimistic, I would say, the hell with it.

01:05:05.920 It's not worth the fight.

01:05:08.080 But as to the question of whether I would be successful in promoting these ideas, I don't know.

01:05:13.280 I'm just trying my best.

01:05:14.520 I find you a remarkable man and somebody that history should remember.

01:05:26.120 We are entering such interesting times, to put it mildly.

01:05:31.500 And those who may end up being wrong on things, but can passionately, scientifically, logically make a point and have a different point of view,

01:05:46.860 those people are hard to find now because it's getting scary for people to stand up.

01:05:53.320 Well, thank you, Glenn.

01:05:55.260 But I should say that I came to this point partly because over the past few years, both of my parents passed away.

01:06:03.040 And, you know, at some point I said to myself, you know, the hell with it.

01:06:07.120 Why pretend to be better than we are?

01:06:11.640 You know, let's focus on substance.

01:06:14.380 And sort of like what basketball coaches say to their team members.

01:06:18.540 They say, keep your eyes on the ball, not on the audience.

01:06:23.120 Do you think you would be the man you are?

01:06:25.720 Not just your parents, but 65 members of your family thought they'd be able to get out of Germany before it was too late and they didn't.

01:06:36.160 Do you think you'd be the same man?

01:06:38.440 No, no.

01:06:39.120 That taught me an important lesson.

01:06:41.100 Yes.

01:06:41.400 And by the way, the Second World War is an excellent example where, you know, the Nazi regime was quite arrogant in saying that they are the superior race. 0.78

01:06:53.460 And racism by itself makes very little sense because, you know, very often it's related to skin color or very superficial things.

01:07:02.400 And humanity wasted so much money, energy, effort in fighting the Second World War.

01:07:12.020 And so many people died.

01:07:13.840 A lot of Jews, many of my family members.

01:07:17.340 Really unfortunate.

01:07:18.660 And Winston, I say that in my book, Winston Churchill in 1939 wrote an essay arguing that we should search for life beyond Earth.

01:07:29.520 And just around the time when he was about to publish it, he was recruited to be the prime minister in England and didn't have a chance to publish it.

01:07:39.220 And and then spent many years fighting the Nazi regime.

01:07:42.980 And just imagine if instead of the Second World War, we would use all these resources to search for life elsewhere, the way Churchill advocated.

01:07:53.420 Imagine where would we be today?

01:07:55.060 We would know much more.

01:07:56.080 Imagine if Wernher von Braun, his intellect would have been employed instead of in the 1960s, in the 1930s and 40s.

01:08:08.420 It's it's an honor to talk to you.

01:08:10.300 Hope we can talk again.

01:08:12.120 Keep up the fight and let us know what else you find.

01:08:17.040 Thank you, Glenn.

01:08:17.800 It was a real pleasure speaking with you.

01:08:19.300 Thank you.

01:08:19.600 God bless.

01:08:20.000 Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on to a friend so it can be discovered by other people.

01:08:32.780 Thank you.

The Glenn Beck Program - January 30, 2021

Ep 95 ｜ Harvard Astronomer Makes Humble Case for Alien Life ｜ Avi Loeb ｜ The Glenn Beck Podcast

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