Joe Rogan Experience #1596 - Avi Loeb

Joe Rogan 0:02 (drumming) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

Avi Loeb 0:04 The Joe Rogan Experience.

Joe Rogan 0:06 Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (rock music) Hello, Avi.

Avi Loeb 0:16 Thanks for having me.

Joe Rogan 0:17 My pleasure. Uh, I, um, I'm very good friends with your friend, Lex Fridman.

Avi Loeb 0:21 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 0:22 And, uh, he highly recommends you as well.

Avi Loeb 0:24 Oh, thank you. You know, he asked me about social media and I told him I have no footprint on social media. He said, "Why?" And I said, "I promised my wife when I married her not to have any account." And he said I should get married.

Joe Rogan 0:38 (laughs)

Avi Loeb 0:39 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 0:40 Yeah, he reads accounts.

Avi Loeb 0:42 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 0:42 He read... And he, he says he doesn't, but then he does. He reads, like comments and stuff, and then he gets mad at things people say. It's kinda funny.

Avi Loeb 0:48 Yeah. You see, I save the time. I don't even read what other people say.

Joe Rogan 0:51 Good for you.

Avi Loeb 0:52 And I don't care how many likes I have. That's the other thing.

Joe Rogan 0:54 That's wonderful. That's a freedom.

Avi Loeb 0:56 Yeah, exactly.

Joe Rogan 0:57 It's a underrated freedom.

Avi Loeb 0:58 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 0:59 Uh, you came on my radar when, uh, you were discussing, uh, a, a mu, a Oumuamua. Is that how you say it?

Avi Loeb 1:05 Yes, that's the right thing.

Joe Rogan 1:06 A Oumuamua, which is an object that we detected in space, that you believe could possibly have been extraterrestrial in origin, meaning from some sort of a civilization.

Avi Loeb 1:17 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:18 Yeah. Why did you... d- why... Te- please explain to people what a Oumuamua is, why it's so extraordinary, and why you think it's possible that it came from some other intelligent civilization.

Avi Loeb 1:29 Right. So, I'm a scientist and, uh, I basically follow the evidence, just like Sherlock Holmes-

Joe Rogan 1:37 (laughs)

Avi Loeb 1:37 ... trying to find solutions. It's a detective story. You have some anomalies, some things that don't quite match what you expected, and you're trying to find an explanation. And, uh, the thing about Oumuamua is that it was discovered on, uh, October 19th, 2017, um, a little more than three years ago. And, um, it was the very first object that visited our vicinity in the solar system from outside the solar system. It moved too fast to be bound to the sun. Very first object that we have found coming to us from interstellar space, from other places. And, uh, 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." Uh, we have seen comets and asteroids. So a, a, a comet is a rock that is covered with ice, water ice. So when it gets close to the sun, the surface gets warmed up and the ice turns into vapor, um, gas. And you see this beautiful cometary tail, uh, behind it. That's what a comet is. An asteroid is just rock without much ice on it. Actually, the first person to explain, uh, what comets are, uh, was at Harvard, the university that I, uh, am affiliated with. And the, the story goes that... I mean, it was Fred Whipple that he went to Harvard Square and saw all the slush, uh, during the winter day, you know, and came up with the idea that it's just icy rock or icy, icy rocks or, you know, rocky ice. Uh, and, um, that's what a comet is. And, um, the comets come to us from the periphery of the solar system. And, you know, astronomers said, "Okay, other stars may have them as well." And, you know, since, since they're loosely bound if they are in the periphery, they can be easily ripped apart from their host star, and some of them will fly in our direction, we will see them. So they said Oumuamua is probably

Avi Loeb 3:39 a comet. The only problem is there wasn't any cometary tail. So you look for a duck, but it doesn't look like a duck, you know? So then the question is, what is it? And so people said, "Okay, it's just a rock without any ice on it." Then the problem was that it exhibited an extra push away from the sun. And usually you get it from the rocket effect that when, when you make the cometary tail, uh, it pushes the object in the opposite direction, just like a jet plane. A jet plane works by throwing gas out, and that's pushing you forward. So a comet has an extra push when it evaporates. Uh, but there was no cometary tail, so why did it show an extra push? That 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? And the other strange thing about it, it, it changes its, uh, brightness by a factor of 10 or more, and the brightness of the object, the light that we see is simply reflected sunlight. So just think about it, uh, think about a piece of paper, razor thin piece of paper tumbling in the wind and changing the area that we can see, uh, the projected area of that piece of paper by a factor of 10 as we look at it. That'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 reflects sunlight changed by a factor of 10. So that means it has an extreme geometry, most likely flat if you try to interpret the light that it reflected, uh, over... as it was tumbling around. And so a flat object about the size of a football field that has an extra push, if it were a comet, it needed to lose about a tenth of its, uh, weight. So a lot of evaporation. You can't just say, "Oh, it's a little bit of evaporation and, uh, therefore that's why we don't see it." It should have lost a tenth of its weight, you know? If we go on a diet and lose a tenth of our weight, that's, that's a big chunk of, of, of mass, right? So this object didn't lose that because we didn't see it. And the Spitzer Space Telescope looked very deeply behind it to see if there are any traces of dust or, or gas. Didn't see anything.

Avi Loeb 6:10 So then...... you know, just like Sherlock Holmes, I was trying to think, together with, um, a- a post-doc of mine, uh, Shmuel Bialy, what could explain it. And the only thing that came to mind is reflecting sunlight. So, um, the object itself is being pushed by the sunlight reflecting off its surface. And, you know, um, that would agree with everything we know about the object, but in order for it to work, the object needs to be very thin, like a sail. You know, the sail on a boat?

Joe Rogan 6:43 Mm-hmm.

Avi Loeb 6:43 Uh, so a sail is pushed by a wind, uh, but you can also push an object, a thin object, by r- light, and that is called the light sail. And we're actually using this technology now, developing it for space exploration. The big advantage is you don't need to carry the fuel with the spacecraft. You just reflect light off it and it's being pushed. Now, I-

Joe Rogan 7:08 There was a science fiction movie they did something like that. I think it was called Sunlight.

Avi Loeb 7:11 Quite possibly.

Joe Rogan 7:12 It was about that.

Avi Loeb 7:12 I shou- I should mention an anecdote that in September, just a few months ago, in September 2020, there was another object that showed an extra push, no cometary tail, and then astronomers... So astronomers gave it a name, 2020 SO, okay, September 2020. And then they, uh, w- extrapolated back in time and found that it came from Earth actually, and then they looked at the history books and show- and- and saw that there indeed there was a rocket booster from a lunar lander that was kicked into space, and this is the object.

Joe Rogan 7:46 Ah.

Avi Loeb 7:46 Now, why did it, uh, show this push? Because it's a hollow... it's a very thin structure. So here is an example where we can tell it's artificial, and we know that we made it. But 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. That's why we couldn't really chase it when it was receding away from us. And it came from outside the solar system. So, you know, I just do one plus one equal two.

Avi Loeb 8:17 I say, "Okay, it looks very peculiar. Maybe it belongs to another civilization." I just put it in a scientific paper. I didn't think... you know, we didn't have any press release. Then it went viral. Th- the public got extremely interested. And the thing that really surprised me is that my colleagues were pushing back. They were very upset that this possibility was even mentioned. You know, we had a- a- a seminar, a lecture about this object at Harvard, and a f-... a colleague of mine, after the lecture, said, "This object is really weird. I wish it never existed."

Joe Rogan 8:53 (laughs)

Avi Loeb 8:53 Now to me, you know, that... I was really appalled by this. How can you say something like that? You should, you should be happy about whatever nature gives you. You know, you learn something new. If- if something doesn't look right, it actually teaches us. Our... it's a learning experience. We learn that we have to revise the way we think about reality, you know. That's a good thing. That's not a bad. You shou- you shouldn't always be in your comfort zone and think that the future will be the same as the past. So, I actually see it as a blessing, you know?

Joe Rogan 9:25 I can't imagine why anybody would be upset that it exists. Like, "I wish it didn't exist." That's kind of hilarious.

Avi Loeb 9:31 Because it takes you away from your comfort zone, you know?

Joe Rogan 9:34 I know but it's... if you're studying the heavens, you're studying the cosmos, wha- wha- what is the ultimate thing that you could find, another civilization or a piece of something-

Avi Loeb 9:44 Well, that-

Joe Rogan 9:44 ... from another civilization?

Avi Loeb 9:45 ... that's exactly my point. But if you go back in time... Let- let me give you-

Joe Rogan 9:49 Okay.

Avi Loeb 9:49 ... two examples. Uh, Galileo Galilei said, "I think the earth moves around the sun." But at the time, philosophers knew for sure that the sun moves around the earth. You see it moving in the sky. It was consistent with their religious beliefs, everything. So they said, "We don't want to look through your telescope to change our view. We will put you in house arrest."

Joe Rogan 10:13 (laughs)

Avi Loeb 10:14 Now, what did they achieve by that? And by the way, I'm in house arrest, but it's because of the pandemic, not because... So what did they achieve by that? They maintained their ignorance and the earth continued to move around the sun. You know, reality is the one thing that never goes away, irrespective whether you ignore it. You can ignore it. Now, there is another example. There is a student, a student at Harvard that, as a result of my book on this subject that is about to come out in- in a week or so, she- she was inspired to do her PhD by... you know, on the theme of my book. So 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?" And she said, "Well, he was an obnoxious guy. He irritated a lot of people." Which is true, you know, he was an obno... But the professor corrected her and said, "No. It was because he said that other stars are just like the sun, you know, there are stars like the sun, and they have planets like the earth around them, and there may be life on those planets." And that was offensive to the church because if there is life there and it had sinned, you know, (laughs) then Christ should have visited those planets to save them, to save the life- lifeforms. And, you know, you need multi- copies of Christ to- to visit those planets, and that was unacceptable, so they burned the guy.

Joe Rogan 11:53 Burned him alive.

Avi Loeb 11:53 So- so you see that, you know, throughout history, people are not really open-minded about the sky, the heavens, as you said.

Joe Rogan 12:03 Well, 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. Peo- people don't like being ridiculed, and I- I would imagine that's one of the things you've experienced.

Avi Loeb 12:18 I don't care.

Joe Rogan 12:18 Well, wonderful for you.

Avi Loeb 12:19 Yeah, I go... Look, uh, what I care about is, you know, I- I operate by the same theme that basketball coaches...... tell their team. Uh, they're, they're team players. They say, "Keep your eyes on the ball, not on the audience."

Joe Rogan 12:36 Mm.

Avi Loeb 12:36 I really don't care what other people think, I just follow the evidence. Now, it may well be that I'm wrong, that this is really an unusual object that is of natural origin. And by the way, some of the mainstream astronomers tried to explain it, but they always came up with an explanation that is the first object of its type that we have ever seen. So, all I'm saying is, if it's, if it's nothing that we have seen before, why not contemplate also the possibility that it's artificially made? You know, why is that so offensive to, to people? And besides, you know, science is about evidence, so let's look for other objects and not always assume that we know the, the answer in advance. You know, if, if you took a caveman and showed the caveman a cellphone, a modern cellphone, the caveman would think that it's a rock, just a shiny rock. And, um, I can understand the response of my colleagues, but on the other hand, I would expect them to be more open-minded. That that's the whole purpose of science is to... it's a learning experience. We should be humble. We should be modest. We shouldn't assume that we always know the answer in advance, and we shouldn't worry about our image. It's not about us. It's about finding what the heavens are, you know.

Joe Rogan 13:50 Now, the pushback that you've received, is there pushback on your interpretation of the evidence? Is, is there pushback on the evidence itself? Like, what is the pushback? Is it just the possibility that it's extraterrestrial in origin?

Avi Loeb 14:03 Just the possibility bothers people, and they say, you know, we shouldn't even discuss it. There is a taboo on it. Now, some of these people that are very vocal about it, you know, some of them I think of as just, like, this congressman that for many years was making anti-gay statements, and then, uh, in March 2020, he confessed that he's gay.

Joe Rogan 14:28 (laughs)

Avi Loeb 14:28 You know? So, I believe that some of them, deep inside, are really intrigued by this possibility-

Joe Rogan 14:33 Yes.

Avi Loeb 14:33 ... and they speak out in a way that is against it, but, uh, would... you know, they will jump ship as soon as the evidence becomes undisputable. To me, it's just a possibility that we should entertain because it affects the way we behave in the future, you know? We... if we search for other objects of the same, we might find even more conclusive evidence. If we don't, uh, look for unexpected things, we will never discover them, you know, if we put blinders on our eyes. So, 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, very... because all the natural interpretations also assume something that we have never seen before. So, I say, okay, so let's consider the possibility of a, uh, a message in a bottle. You 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. And perhaps Oumuamua was the first plastic bottle, you know, that carries some message for us, and that would change our perception about our place in the universe, you know, we are not alone. Also, I don't think that we are the smartest kid on the block, if you ask me. Uh, I think that we are probably quite typical because half of the stars like the sun have a planet the size of the Earth, uh, roughly at the same distance that could have liquid water on the surface and the chemistry of life as we know it. Now, you open a recipe book for cakes, you can see that you can make very different cakes out of the same ingredients, you know, depending on how you mix them. You can take flour, sugar, I mean, so you get very different outcomes. What'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, that you got the best cake possible? What's the... the chance is minuscule. I think we are sort of typical, like ants, uh, on a sidewalk, you know? We are not really special. That's why nobody is interested in us. You know, it's very arrogant to say, "We are unique. We are special. Uh, the aliens are coming to haunt us." They don't care about us. We are just like ants on a sidewalk, you know? And at the same time, we might learn from them, you know? So if we a- a- approach this from a modest perspective, that we are not really the sharpest cookie in the jar, then by looking at the sky, we may learn something about more advanced technologies that we can bring here, for example. You know, suppose we see a technology that we didn't even dream about, it would be a better investment of our time to learn about it than to go to Wall Street or to Silicon Valley. Instead of us developing it over hundreds of years, you know, suddenly you see something that, you know, we can use here.

Joe Rogan 17:29 Well, let me push back on a couple of these things.

Avi Loeb 17:31 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 17:31 First of all, I, I don't think... if people do believe that there are... that there is alien life, I don't think they necessarily think that we are the best of, of life in the cosmos. I think most people agree there's room for improvement when it comes-

Avi Loeb 17:46 Oh, definitely.

Joe Rogan 17:46 ... to the human race.

Avi Loeb 17:47 If, if-

Joe Rogan 17:47 But we are clearly the most advanced animal that we're aware of-

Avi Loeb 17:52 Here, yeah.

Joe Rogan 17:52 ... that we're aware of that we can prove currently. Right.

Avi Loeb 17:54 But we are not smart. Look at the newspaper.

Joe Rogan 17:55 But we're v- but we're not perfect, but we're far more... I w- I don't... ev- the word intelligent is a rough word, right? It's, uh, we're definitely more intelligent than a lot of other animals that we can observe, but what we can do that is interesting is we can radically change and manipulate our environment.

Avi Loeb 18:14 Sure.

Joe Rogan 18:14 And I think it's preposterous to think that that wouldn't be interesting to another species. Now, 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, but we have, uh, uh, we take-

Guest (unidentified third speaker, likely calling in or added segment) 18:29 ... biologists go to the jungle to study bugs. I mean, we have people that spend a, a large portion of their life looking for strange little mammals-

Avi Loeb 18:38 Yeah, but-

Guest (unidentified third speaker, likely calling in or added segment) 18:38 ... that live in the, in the forest.

Avi Loeb 18:39 But think about it. Our technology is evolving on a three-year time scale.

Guest (unidentified third speaker, likely calling in or added segment) 18:43 Mm-hmm.

Avi Loeb 18:43 So, you know, we ... It's a century old, the technologies we have. So, think what it would be 100 years from now, 1,000 years from now-

Guest (unidentified third speaker, likely calling in or added segment) 18:51 Yes.

Avi Loeb 18:51 ... a million years from now, a billion years. I believe that an advanced technological civilization probably builds a cocoon around itself, is not really interested in establishing contact with lesser civilizations like ours-

Guest (unidentified third speaker, likely calling in or added segment) 19:04 But why wouldn't it be?

Avi Loeb 19:05 Because we are, you know, not, uh ... First of all, the only thing that can happen as the result of interaction with us is that they will downgrade their lifestyle, you know, uh, their quality of life. So, the only way for us to learn about them is from the trash they throw out. You know, just like, uh, uh, investigative journalists looking through the, the trash of celebrities in Hollywood, you know? The ... To find out what, what are they doing, and, uh, but, um, I don't think they will care much about us.

Guest (unidentified third speaker, likely calling in or added segment) 19:32 I do. Let me offer you up another possibility. What 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, that things go from single-celled organisms, to multi-celled organisms, to interstellar travelers, and that they continue along this path as long as they don't fall into a few possible scenarios that could lead to ultimate destruction-

Avi Loeb 20:03 Exactly, but-

Guest (unidentified third speaker, likely calling in or added segment) 20:03 ... like nuclear war, like climate change, like all the things that we're involved in right now.

Avi Loeb 20:07 But, but that's, that's the point. I think advanced civilizations are probably short-l- uh, I mean, like ours, are short-lived because of stupidity. Now, look, for example, uh, the concept of racism. You know, that's not new. Uh, you know, there was the, uh, the Nazi regime, uh, okay, in the second World War, and racism is still around us. What is it based on? That somehow the color of the skin of a person, you know, makes a difference as to who the-

Guest (unidentified third speaker, likely calling in or added segment) 20:34 Well, it's essentially tribalism, right? Because it's, uh, if it's not the color of the skin, then it's the origin of the religion, then it's the-

Avi Loeb 20:39 But it, it's stupidity. It's not-

Guest (unidentified third speaker, likely calling in or added segment) 20:41 It's stupidity.

Avi Loeb 20:41 Yeah. It's stupidity.

Guest (unidentified third speaker, likely calling in or added segment) 20:41 It makes no sense.

Avi Loeb 20:42 Yes.

Guest (unidentified third speaker, likely calling in or added segment) 20:42 If you look at the genetic making of humans, you know, the color of the skin is completely s- superfluous. It, it, it's-

Avi Loeb 20:49 Right.

Guest (unidentified third speaker, likely calling in or added segment) 20:49 So, the fact that humans always want to feel superior relative to each other, they fight each other. Most of our money, time, and energy. Look at the newspaper. Most of our effort is in fighting each other. That is not a sign of intelligence. A sign of intelligence is working together, dedicating all the resources that we have-

Avi Loeb 21:10 Yes.

Guest (unidentified third speaker, likely calling in or added segment) 21:10 ... towards a better future, such that we can benefit from it. So, how can we waste all these res- ... You know, just to give you an example. In my book, I talk about Winston Churchill. Winston Churchill in 1939 wrote an essay about the fact that there could be life around other, in, on other planets around other stars, and that we sh- we should search for it. Now, he didn't have a chance to publish it 'cause he became prime minister and then had to fight the, the, the second World War against the Nazi regime. So much money was wasted in that war. If that money was allocated to the search for extraterrestrial life the way that Churchill envisioned it before the war, we might have n- ... We might have known the answer by now. And what I'm saying is, this is just an example for how non-intelligent we are. We are not working together towards a better future. We're fighting each other, and that's the answer to your question, that we might not live very long. But you're saying this as you work at Harvard-

Avi Loeb 22:10 Right.

Guest (unidentified third speaker, likely calling in or added segment) 22:10 ... and as you're writing books on extraterrestrial objects.

Avi Loeb 22:14 Right.

Guest (unidentified third speaker, likely calling in or added segment) 22:14 I don't necessarily agree with you. I 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. And I think that we will probably be looking back on this day and age and, and mocking how stupid we were when we are more advanced 2,000 years from today.

Avi Loeb 22:32 I really hope so, and that's what I'm trying to-

Guest (unidentified third speaker, likely calling in or added segment) 22:34 I think we're moving in that direction.

Avi Loeb 22:35 Well, that's what I'm trying to promote, but, uh, I'm not f- necessarily-

Guest (unidentified third speaker, likely calling in or added segment) 22:38 I think our cake-

Avi Loeb 22:39 ... as optimistic as you are.

Guest (unidentified third speaker, likely calling in or added segment) 22:40 I think our cake is still in the oven. That's what I think.

Avi Loeb 22:42 Let's hope so.

Guest (unidentified third speaker, likely calling in or added segment) 22:43 That's what I think.

Avi Loeb 22:43 I, I really want that future, but, you know, I'm doing my best, but you can see from the pushback-

Guest (unidentified third speaker, likely calling in or added segment) 22:49 Yes.

Avi Loeb 22:49 ... to which I don't have access because I, I'm not, you know, I don't have a c- an account on the social medias.

Guest (unidentified third speaker, likely calling in or added segment) 22:54 Congratulations again for that.

Avi Loeb 22:55 (laughs)

Guest (unidentified third speaker, likely calling in or added segment) 22:56 I think that's, uh, I, I, I think we're moving ... Uh, I think there's conflict, but I think for whatever reason, the way human beings operate, we oftentimes need conflict in order to make improvements.

Avi Loeb 23:09 Right.

Guest (unidentified third speaker, likely calling in or added segment) 23:09 We need a yin and a yang. We need a give and a pull. If we don't have that, we get, uh, we get complacent, we get lackadaisical.

Avi Loeb 23:14 Why can't we understand the, the, the best path forward without ... You know, it's just like using a GPS system, and it says, "Recalculating."

Guest (unidentified third speaker, likely calling in or added segment) 23:22 Yes.

Avi Loeb 23:22 Every time we have a crisis, "Recalculating." So, we re-recalculate our next move based on all the mistakes we've made. Why can't we be smart in the first place?

Guest (unidentified third speaker, likely calling in or added segment) 23:31 I think we have biological limitations that are based on our ancestry.

Avi Loeb 23:35 Yes, I agree with that.

Guest (unidentified third speaker, likely calling in or added segment) 23:35 And our ancestry is filled with tribalism-

Avi Loeb 23:37 I agree with you.

Guest (unidentified third speaker, likely calling in or added segment) 23:38 ... and chaos, and we're primates.

Avi Loeb 23:39 I agree with you.

Guest (unidentified third speaker, likely calling in or added segment) 23:39 I mean, that's, that's part of the problem, and I think that our, our issue with racism is the same issue that we have when we have religious discrimination or cultural discrimination. It's tribalism.

Avi Loeb 23:49 I agree.

Guest (unidentified third speaker, likely calling in or added segment) 23:50 And we are, uh, you know, we're just ... It's wired into our DNA.

Avi Loeb 23:53 Now, my problem is, why couldn't science, given that, uh, you know, there are billions of earth-sun systems within just the Milky Way galaxy-

Guest (unidentified third speaker, likely calling in or added segment) 24:04 Mm-hmm.

Avi Loeb 24:04 ... and then a trillion galaxies like the Milky Way in the observable volume of the universe, you know? Why can't the mainstream of astronomy simply say, conservatively, you know, just assuming the most conservative, not speculative assumption, conservatively, we are at the middle of the road, you know, kind of life, uh, it's very likely that we're not unique and special.... and let's just look for evidence, you know, search for it. Why should that, there be a taboo on discussing this subject? That makes no sense. For 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 in the atmospheres of other planets around other stars because oxygen could be indicative of life, microbial life. I say it will never be conclusive, such a search, 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, in its atmosphere. There were microbes, but the oxygen level was quite low, and then it suddenly rose after two billion years, half of its life. So not finding oxygen doesn't mean there is no life. And then if you find oxygen, it can be produced by many natural processes, like breaking water molecules or other things. So it will never be conclusive. How can you make a conclusive statement if you find industrial pollution in the same atmosphere? You just search for CFCs. These are the molecules produced by refrigerating systems, by industries. If you find evidence for that, there is no way that nature can make these m- very complex molecules naturally. So I say to the mainstream of astronomy, use the same instruments and motivate them-

Joe Rogan 25:59 Mm-hmm.

Avi Loeb 25:59 ... by this question of, can we detect industrial pollution? And I wrote a paper about it, and the thing is, the public is extremely interested in this question, and the public funds science. So how can the scientific community shy away from a question that it can address with existing technology, you know? When the public is very interested in that, how can there be a taboo on this question? That's the thing that really puzzles me. Now, you know, I wasn't working in this area until the last five years or so. I was working in studying black holes, studying the universe, and I came across, uh, a number of ideas that led me in- in- into this, uh, rabbit hole, into this, uh, subject. Now I'm about to publish this book at a popular level, but also a textbook six months later, that describes all the signs that we have related to the search for life outside Earth, far

Avi Loeb 26:59 from Earth. And I'm just amazed that, um, it's not part of the mainstream, you know? It's really surprising to me, and I think it's inappropriate because you look at physics, theoretical physic, there are lots of speculative ideas in it. Like, people talk about extra dimensions, the multiverse, you know, supersymmetry, superstring theory. All of these have no evidence to their credit, you know? There is no experimental test, not even thought about, you know, like in the next decade, the next two decades. But these ideas are part of the mainstream. So you see physicists giving each other awards and doing intellectual gymnastics, you know, just demonstrating that they're smart, and to me, that's an unhealthy situation in physics. You know, you can do it in mathematics where it's completely detached from, uh, any application to reality. But in physics we are supposed to describe reality, and yet you have this intellect. So it's as if the physics community, some parts of it, decided that the most important task is to demonstrate that you're smart.

Joe Rogan 28:08 Mm-hmm.

Avi Loeb 28:08 And that is really strange to me because, you know, we're supposed to understand nature, not show that we are smart. You know, Einstein made three mi- three big mistakes at the end of his career in the 1930s. He argued that black holes don't exist, gravitational waves don't exist, and quantum mechanics doesn't have spooky action at a distance. You know, he argued all these three things at the end of his career when he was the most experienced, you know, and he was wrong. We have experimental data that shows that he was wrong on all three. And what is the lesson from that? Even the smartest person, you know, that was last century in physics can be wrong if he works on the frontier because you never know exactly wh- where the truth lies, okay? You have to take risks, and if people want to just demonstrate that they are smart, it's better not to take risks. And how do you not take risks? If you work on ideas that will never be tested against data, against evidence. So 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 and you will get jobs, you will get recognition, you will get awards. If that's your goal, that's a completely legitimate framework, but I see it as a violation of our commitment as physicists to understand nature. You know, it's not really about us. Physics is a dialogue with nature. You listen to nature, you see what the experiments are telling you, and you learn, and perhaps you were wrong. You take risks. It's not about your image. It's not getting more likes on Twitter. So that's why I don't really care what my colleagues say. If this object looked unusual, I just talk about it the way I would talk about any other anomaly, and people were asking, you know, "Why isn't he backing down?" Well, I will back down as soon as there is evidence, you know, if I saw a photograph showing that it's a rock-

Joe Rogan 30:05 Mm-hmm.

Avi Loeb 30:05 ... 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. Like, and I'm not afraid of being wrong, you know, that's- that's part of any work on the frontiers.

Joe Rogan 30:17 This is my thoughts on the- the quantum physics aspect of this. I think there's not enough people that understand what they're doing to criticize them so there's no social pressure. The difference between that and the concept of exploring extraterrestrial life is extraterrestrial life is inexorably connected to nonsense. It's inexorably-

Avi Loeb 30:38 That's right.

Joe Rogan 30:38 ... collected... It's connected to crazy people-

Avi Loeb 30:41 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 30:41 ... that think that they're talking to aliens-

Avi Loeb 30:43 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 30:44 ... and that they're channeling people from another planet-

Avi Loeb 30:44 But, but I have to answer, I have an answer to that.

Joe Rogan 30:47 Okay.

Avi Loeb 30:47 Suppose...... there was a whole literature on COVID-19 that is completely fictitious. You know, like, people were saying crazy things about COVID-19 that make no sense whatsoever, and that was a, you know-

Joe Rogan 30:59 Oh, you can find them.

Avi Loeb 31:00 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 31:00 Those people out there.

Avi Loeb 31:00 Suppose there were, there were books about it.

Joe Rogan 31:02 Right.

Avi Loeb 31:03 There were films about it.

Joe Rogan 31:04 Mm-hmm.

Avi Loeb 31:05 Now, would that mean that scientists, reputable scientists should not work on a vaccine for COVID-

Joe Rogan 31:11 No, no, no.

Avi Loeb 31:12 No. So, who cares if there are people that say nonsense?

Joe Rogan 31:14 But that's, this is why that doesn't apply.

Avi Loeb 31:14 You don't care, you ignore them.

Joe Rogan 31:15 This is why that doesn't apply. COVID-19's a real thing, and you can prove it in a lab, quickly, instantly.

Avi Loeb 31:19 Yeah. Okay.

Joe Rogan 31:19 I mean, it's, it's universally acknowledged as being a real thing.

Avi Loeb 31:22 Right.

Joe Rogan 31:22 The problem with extraterrestrial life is there's no evidence that it's real.

Avi Loeb 31:24 Well, but if you step on the grass, and, and you say that, "Look, it doesn't grow," then obviously, because you're stepping on it. So, if you bully anyone that works on the subject, and young people don't enter into this, uh, research field.

Joe Rogan 31:37 Yes.

Avi Loeb 31:37 If you don't fund it at all, you dry it up, then there will not be discoveries.

Joe Rogan 31:41 No, I agree with you.

Avi Loeb 31:41 And then you say, "Look, there are no discovery." I step on the grass, and it doesn't grow. Eh, therefore, what, there is no point in continuing to wait for it, you know, to grow.

Joe Rogan 31:49 I agree with you.

Avi Loeb 31:50 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 31:50 No, I, I, I think it's a, I think it's a side effect of our social interactions. And I think a lot of professors, a lot of people in academia, they come from, you know, maybe a so- more socially awkward environment. They come from, uh, uh, a lot of people that get into teaching, a lot of people that get into being professors, they weren't like the class king, they weren't like the most popular person. And social interactions with them, uh, you know, maybe they were bullied. Maybe they, like, uh, Dr. Carl Hart, who's a, an academic who was on a couple days ago, was actually talking about this very subject.

Avi Loeb 32:25 Uh-huh.

Joe Rogan 32:25 And that a lot of academics, they, uh, they s- they try to undermine other people's work. And they, they do so in kind of a bullying fashion.

Avi Loeb 32:34 Yeah, because it's all about the ego. You see?

Joe Rogan 32:36 Yes.

Avi Loeb 32:36 I was asked by the Harvard Gazette, the Harvard University Gazette, which is the Pravda of Harvard.

Joe Rogan 32:42 (laughs)

Avi Loeb 32:42 You know, the, this official, uh ...

Joe Rogan 32:44 Yeah.

Avi Loeb 32:45 ... newspaper of Harvard.

Joe Rogan 32:46 I like how you put it.

Avi Loeb 32:46 They asked me, uh, "What is the one thing you would like to change about the world?" You know, a very big question.

Joe Rogan 32:53 Yeah.

Avi Loeb 32:53 So, I wrote an essay. I said, "I want my colleagues to behave more like kids."

Joe Rogan 32:59 Hmm.

Avi Loeb 32:59 Because, as a kid, I remember that, you know, I was mostly curious about the world. I, I would not be afraid of making mistakes. I wasn't worried about my ego or my ... Something really strange, uh, happens to those kids that take risks and are not worried about themself so much. Uh, something bad happens to them when they become tenured professors in academia. Tenure is supposed to give you the freedom to explore, you know, directions that might, may turn out to be wrong.

Joe Rogan 33:28 Mm-hmm.

Avi Loeb 33:29 You know, that's what Einstein demonstrated at the end of his career. So, 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.

Joe Rogan 33:48 Status.

Avi Loeb 33:49 Status, recognition.

Joe Rogan 33:50 Yeah.

Avi Loeb 33:50 They are afraid of making mistakes. They build th- these echo chambers, where they have students and post-docs repeating their mantras so that their voice will sound louder.

Joe Rogan 34:02 Hmm.

Avi Loeb 34:02 So that they will get even more recognition. Now, I say, this, you know, the scientific inquiry is not about us. It's about the dialogue with nature, trying to figure out what nature is. It's not about elevating our status, our image. You know, we will all die in several decades, so, you know, it's really not that. Now, uh, you know, actually, Lex Fridman was asking me, "Avi, you know so much. Uh, what do you think is the meaning of life?"

Joe Rogan 34:32 Heaven.

Avi Loeb 34:33 Uh, (laughs) and I told him, "Look, um, I don't, I think we just exist." You know, any meaning that we assign now, uh, will go away in a billion years, 'cause the sun will boil off the oceans on Earth, there will be no life on Earth, you know.

Joe Rogan 34:49 Mm-hmm.

Avi Loeb 34:49 All of these things that we call meaning, they are really temporary in the big, big scheme. We should just enjoy the process, just like eating good food, you know. I will not mention another example. Uh, you know, doing these, like eating good food, you enjoy the process. So, learning about the world, figuring out what the world is, is very enjoyable. You know, I, I, if I realize something nobody else did, and understand something that nobody else did, it gives me pleasure. So, just the process of doing that, that gives me meaning, because I enjoy it. You know? So, you should live your life in a way that you enjoy it. If you like good food, that's good enough. You know, you can live your life just eating. You know, that's what animals do.

Joe Rogan 35:36 Yes.

Avi Loeb 35:36 Yeah. Right? Uh, can have sex, you can do all kinds. But if you want a deeper sort of satisfaction, I think understanding the world is what humans are capable of doing. And, and that's really a deeper level of, of enjoying life, so to speak.

Joe Rogan 35:52 Well, 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, and then it turns out ultimately they were correct, but there's very little, uh, there's a s- very little repercussions for that. And there's this thing that happens with people and ideas, where they get scared to take on something that could easily make them look ridiculous. And the best example of that is extraterrestrial life.

Avi Loeb 36:29 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 36:30 That is, it's so easy to get ridiculed for believing in ex- it's like Bigfoot and then extraterrestrial life.

Avi Loeb 36:37 No, I want to change that.

Joe Rogan 36:38 Those are the two things.

Avi Loeb 36:38 I say this is a subject the scientific community can address with scientific tools.

Joe Rogan 36:43 Yes.

Avi Loeb 36:43 Okay? With telescopes. Let's discuss it. The public is interested. You know, let's forget about the past (laughs) and look for a better future, right? And, uh, my point is, uh, there are many examples for unborn babies, you know, in science, where people were ridiculed and ideas were never pursued, uh, or delayed, you know. For example, looking for planets around other stars. You know, that was something f- 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, and you could tell if there is a close-in Jupiter near other stars by looking at their motion, or looking as it occults the star, comes in front of it, transits in front. He suggested that 1952. For four decades, astronomers ignored that. Why? Because 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." Then 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. So my point is, this is an example of a baby that was eventually born. So people would say, "Oh, yeah. Science works, you see? Eventually, it was found." My point is, it took four decades. In those four decades, you know, we could have done a lot to advance science. And the other thing is, I say, okay, this baby was born, but there might have been other babies that were not born, you know, ideas that were put forward and were scrutinized for no good reason just because people are close-minded. And, you know, e- the strange thing for me is that I see a lot of innovation in the commercial sector. You see, uh, you know, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, uh, you know, Apple, uh, Google. Uh, they have parts of their companies that is, that are doing, uh, blue sky research, you know, things that are not applied. Sta- i- it all started with, uh, IBM and before that. And then in academia, I see a lot of conservatism, much, much less, um, innovation-

Joe Rogan 39:04 Mm.

Avi Loeb 39:05 ... as in the commercial se- now the commercial sector is after making a profit. You would expect academia to be even more open-minded, but it's not. And to me, that has t- that must change.

Joe Rogan 39:16 Is this something that you had as an idea before publishing this, th- this, th- these thoughts about extraterrestrial life?

Avi Loeb 39:23 Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 39:23 And did that accentuate it for you?

Avi Loeb 39:26 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 39:26 Yeah.

Avi Loeb 39:27 I didn't expect the response that I received. It doesn't bother me. Um, you know, I, in my, uh, pub- I have 800... more than 800 papers that I published and eight books. In, in, in all of these, I talk about anomalies, you know, over the years, I talked about anomalies in other contexts, you know, like, eh, eh, in the early universe, and, and, um, when I mentioned speculative ideas in other contexts, there was no pushback, you know? It, it, it wasn't threatening to anyone, it wasn't... but something about the subject of extraterrestrial life-

Joe Rogan 40:04 Yeah.

Avi Loeb 40:04 ... bothers people. And frankly, you know, I'm just like a kid. I try to be as close as possible to the way I was at a young age. I'm just doing it innocently, working on this subject the same way I work on other subjects, and I get this response that... now 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. If everyone would accept, you know... I think it's common sense, what is common sense to me, if everyone would accept it, I would be no different than the person next to me. You wouldn't speak, you wouldn't be speaking to me.

Joe Rogan 40:39 Sure, I would.

Avi Loeb 40:40 No.

Joe Rogan 40:40 No, I, I still would be.

Avi Loeb 40:41 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 40:41 I would love to talk to you. I would.

Avi Loeb 40:42 You know, I grew up on a farm, by the way. I'm, I'm not a typical astronomer that's, uh-

Joe Rogan 40:46 Oh. Yeah, you were explaining that. Did you grow up in Israel? Is that where you were on a farm?

Avi Loeb 40:49 Yeah, I grew up in Israel on a farm. I used to collect eggs every afternoon and then-

Joe Rogan 40:54 Oh.

Avi Loeb 40:54 ... drive a tractor to the hills and, and read primarily philosophy books. That's what... I was interested in the big questions. But then, you know, I had to serve in the military, and, um, I had two, two options, either to run in the fields with a machine gun, you know, uh, which I did partly, or to, uh, do intellectual work, you know? And I could do that if I were to work in physics. So I said, "Okay, I'll, I'll, I'll do the physics." And, uh, I was recruited to a special program that allowed me to finish my, a PhD at age 24. And then, um, 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, the first international project. So General Abramson came to visit Israel, and we presented the project to him. I was the theorist leading that project, and he liked it a lot. So it was the first project to be funded outside the US related to SDI, the Star Wars initiative. So that l- brought me to visit Washington, uh, quite often, 'cause we were funded by the US. And in one of the visits, I went to Princeton, 'cause I heard that, you know, Albert Einstein was at the Institute for Advanced Study and wanted to see the place. And s- uh, you know, someone introduced me to John Bahcall, uh, who was an astrophysicist there, uh, working mostly on the sun for his career. I didn't know how the sun shines when I met him. Uh, eventually, he invited me for a month-long visit, and then offered me a five-year fellowship, and at that point I said, "Okay, I have this offer. I cannot decline it. I'll go into astrophysics." So I switched into astrophysics. I had to learn the vocabulary, and then a position came at Harvard, junior faculty, and nobody wanted it. There was someone else that was offered it. He turned it down because the chance of getting tenure at Harvard were very small at the time, and I took it because I can, I could always go back to the farm, you know? That was a plan B for me, and maybe even better plan because, you know, I enjoy nature and... but th- then they promoted me to tenure in, in three years, and I became the chair of the department a decade and a half later. So I was the longest-serving chair between 2011 and 2020, so that three terms, um... so, you know, I'm, in a way, part of-... should be regarded as part of the establishment, 'cause I was the chair of the Harvard Astronomy Department for nine years, three terms. And I also chair the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies, and I was a member of, um, President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology in Washington, and then, you know, I, I'm also chair of the, the Starshot, uh, initiative of the Breakthrough Foundation. Uh, I 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. Um, so I have all these leadership positions, but fundamentally, I'm just like a kid, you know? I, I, I don't care about these labels. All I care ... You know, I, I try to keep my eyes on the ball.

Joe Rogan 44:16 Now, w- w- to go back to Oumuamua, um, the, you, you were saying that it's, it was moving at a speed that, uh, was inconsistent with something that's being thrown from the sun, and that it moved faster than any rocket that we can shoot out.

Avi Loeb 44:31 True.

Joe Rogan 44:31 How, how fast was it moving?

Avi Loeb 44:33 Uh, it wa- uh, I- it was moving at, uh, when it went close to us, uh, over 50 kilometers per second, which is, you know, think about it, well, of order 30 miles per second, second, not hour.

Joe Rogan 44:47 Yeah.

Avi Loeb 44:47 Uh, so very fast. Now, um, by the time we spotted it, it was already moving away from us. So 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. So you can't ... By now, you know, as it, as it moved out, by now, it's extremely faint. It's a million times fainter than it was when it was close to us.

Joe Rogan 45:16 What is the normal speed of a comet?

Avi Loeb 45:19 Uh, it's, um, uh, uh, at least twice as slower. So all the comets and asteroids we have seen before are bound to the sun.

Joe Rogan 45:27 Mm-hmm.

Avi Loeb 45:28 And so they come from the outer part of the solar system, they are sinking on, uh, uh, an orbit that almost goes towards the sun, but not quite, and so they pass near us, some of them. Most of them are moving far away from us, so we don't see any cometary tail. And, uh, they basic- ... Because they are bound to the sun, they are not moving as fast as an object that came from outside that is falling, you know, the ... And we could tell that it is an interstellar object. That was the first thing noticed. We didn't expect it because I wrote a paper about, uh, 12 years earlier saying that this telescope in Hawaii that discovered Oumuamua, and that's why it has this name by the way, because it's, it means a scout in the Hawaiian language, a messenger from far away.

Joe Rogan 46:17 Mm-hmm.

Avi Loeb 46:18 Oumuamua. Uh, it was discovered by a telescope called Pan-STARRS on Mount Haleakala in Maui, in Hawaii. We actually visited that observatory in July 2017 with my family. We were on vacation in Maui.

Joe Rogan 46:32 Mm-hmm.

Avi Loeb 46:32 But back then, they didn't spot Oumuamua when it was approaching us at that time. They spotted it only when, in October that year, when it was receding away. If we would have known about it when it was approaching us, you know, we could have, in principle, sent a CubeSat, a satellite, with, um, a camera that would meet it, uh, halfway and take a photograph.

Joe Rogan 46:56 Mm-hmm.

Avi Loeb 46:56 A closer ... Uh, not only that we didn't spot it approaching us, but we also didn't suspect that it's something special. Now, there was a second object that came later, uh, called Borisov. It's called after, um, a Russian amateur astronomer, Gennady Borisov, uh, that 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. So then people came to me and said, "Okay, you see, this one is a comet. It's interstellar as well. Doesn't it convince you that Oumuamua was also natural in origin?" And I said, "You know, when, when I h- went to the first date with my wife, I thought that she's special and unique. The fact that I met a lot of women since then didn't change that opinion. I still think that she's special." So the fact that we saw Borisov like a typical, regular, usual comet after we saw Oumuamua that didn't look like a comet doesn't change my opinion about Oumuamua.

Joe Rogan 47:59 So you think they were just hastily looking to dismiss your ob- observations? Without really ...

Avi Loeb 48:03 Well, it was not my observa-

Joe Rogan 48:04 Yeah. Any observations. Yeah.

Avi Loeb 48:04 But they were trying to make the case that it's also natural.

Joe Rogan 48:08 Yeah.

Avi Loeb 48:08 So, you know, the community as a whole, there was a group of astronomer that came together and said, "It is natural. It is unusual, but it's probably natural." They just said that.

Joe Rogan 48:18 Mm-hmm.

Avi Loeb 48:18 And it reminded me of a story about the, in 19- at the, 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. So when Einstein was asked about it, he said, um, "You know, why do you need 30 physicists to write such a book? You know, one of them would be enough. You know, if he makes a good argument, that would show that my theory is wrong." So a kid can make a good argument and show that something is wrong. You don't need a group. The only reason you need a group of people is, if- i- if the, 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, and so th- so it's just an, a sign of authority. They want to establish authority. My point about Oumuamua is, you don't need a group of, you know, of astronomers to come together and say that it's natural. I just want them to look at the evidence and explain it.

Joe Rogan 49:19 I, I, I appreciate that. Now, the, the speed in which it was traveling, you, you said that it's, uh, twice as fast, at least, as, as the-

Avi Loeb 49:27 Yes.

Joe Rogan 49:27 ... average comet? Have there been other things that have been observed that are as fast as it?

Avi Loeb 49:32 No, this was the first-... object that we saw coming from outside the solar system. So it was the fastest at the place where we saw it. The fastest ever. Because all the other objects were bound to the sun.

Joe Rogan 49:46 Mm-hmm.

Avi Loeb 49:47 And by the way, there is this, uh, principle that, uh, is called the Copernican principle that says, "We are never at the privileged time or space." You know, Copernicus was arguing that we are not at the center of the universe. We're not at the center of the world. And you can generalize it and say also that we are never at a special time, okay? So if we saw this object over a period of a few years that the survey of Pan-STARRS was going on, in the region that, of the Earth's orbit around the sun, that means that there are many more out there. You know, you can't, 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. E- e- e- you know, that makes no sense. So there will be many more that we will find in the future if we just look. And in three years, there would be another telescope, much more sensitive than Pan-STARRS, called the Vera Rubin Observatory that could see one such object every month, you know? The only thing that, uh, complicates the picture is that Elon Musk wants to launch all these Space X, um, all these communication satellites, and uh, you know, they would ... They reflect sunlight, so when they go in the dark sky they, they appear, uh, on the telescope images. So we have to know where they are and subtract them off, but that's all.

Joe Rogan 51:14 Now, um, this object you, you also deemed when you, when you were t- talking about its reflective surface, that th- there's something about it that is much more reflective, I believe you said 10 times more reflective than the average ...

Avi Loeb 51:29 Than the typical.

Joe Rogan 51:30 Yeah.

Avi Loeb 51:30 Yeah, it's, um, okay, so how did we get that? Um, the Spitzer Space Telescope was trying to detect heat coming off the object. Because we know how close it came to the sun, and we know what temperature it was heated to, okay? So the amount of heat that we can detect from it just depends on its size. If it's very big and it's hot, we would easily detect the heat.

Joe Rogan 51:54 And i- this is about the size of a football field, roughly?

Avi Loeb 51:56 So then, yeah, so it's less than a football field. So from the fact that the Spitzer Space Telescope didn't see any heat coming off it, you can put an upper limit. You can say the size is smaller than something, okay? S- roughly the size of a football field. And then you can infer how much reflect- reflectance it should have so that you see as much light, as much, uh, sunlight coming off it as we saw. And it's at the shiny end of the objects that we have seen before. I mean, it's not completely unprecedented. There 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 object. It's at the shiny end.

Joe Rogan 52:36 And so that, in y- in your mind le- like what, what is similar in terms of the, what you would expect from e- something that's this reflective, that's that shiny?

Avi Loeb 52:48 Um, so w- what we've seen before are asteroids and comets, that s- a small fraction of which are as shiny. None of them has, uh, is ten times longer than it is wide, as this object to be-

Joe Rogan 53:04 So it's cigar-shaped.

Avi Loeb 53:05 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 53:06 Roughly.

Avi Loeb 53:06 And the, the comets that they show as much push as this object exhibited, they have very clear cometary tails. So I say, you know, okay, suppose it, 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 anomala- you multiply all these probabilities, you get a very small likelihood of getting such an object. And this is the first that we have seen, you know? So it should be typical. So 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? So my point is, let's collect more evidence in the future. Let's be open-minded. Why assume that we know the answer in advance? What is so problematic in discussing, I don't think it's a speculation that there are other civilizations out there. Maybe they're dead because they killed themse- you know, they produced the means for their own destruction. They didn't take care of the climate, they didn't ... They, they fought each other through nuclear war, or m- you know, maybe they, they are dead by now. But just like we find evidence for dead civilizations on Earth, you know, by digging into the ground, doing archeology, you know, the Mayan civilization is not around anymore, but we can find evidence for it from the things that they left behind. We can do the same thing in space. Space archeology. We can look for relics from dead civilizations. And one, one type of relics are those, the, the space junk, you know, the things that they threw out that we can find visiting our solar system. So why not check for it?

Joe Rogan 54:48 Now everything you've said is very rational and makes perfect sense. What are the arguments against this? Like when your colleagues disagree with you.

Avi Loeb 54:57 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 54:58 What fuel do they possibly have?

Avi Loeb 55:00 Ex- for example, they say it's never aliens. It's never aliens.

Joe Rogan 55:04 Never, never, until the aliens come. I mean, what, what do they think-

Avi Loeb 55:07 Well, like what is-

Joe Rogan 55:08 ... about things like Commander David Fravor's interpretations of the experience that he had, uh, off of the coast of San Diego where something moved from 60,000 plus feet above sea level to one in a second?

Avi Loeb 55:20 On that day I would say, on, on, on a UFO, unidentified flying objects, I think the scientific community should invest some effort at, you know, examining these reports.

Joe Rogan 55:33 Yeah.

Avi Loeb 55:33 Basically, you can deploy a whole set of instruments-... in the ocean where the Nimitz, uh, uh, you know-

Joe Rogan 55:41 Yes.

Avi Loeb 55:41 ... carrier was, and search for objects similar to what was re- uh, uh-

Joe Rogan 55:48 Yes.

Avi Loeb 55:48 ... to the reports, and then do a scientific study of this rather than dismissing it and moving on to work on extra dimensions.

Joe Rogan 55:57 Yeah.

Avi Loeb 55:57 You know, I... Given that the public is so curious about these issues, I just find it inappropriate not to listen to them. By the way, I don't think of science as an occupation of the elite. It's not something that is supposed to elevate you to a higher status. You know, when a plumber comes to my home to fix a problem with, uh, the toilet or with the, with the pipe, you know, I help the plumber and we figure out what the problem is based on all the clues that... So, this is my way of life. I, I think about a problem in the sink or in the toilet just like I think about a problem in physics, you know. Trying to apply common sense, look at all the evidence, the clues, and figure out what's going on. And I don't think... I think anyone, even without professional education, should be able to follow what the scientists are doing. But my frien- my colleagues argue, you know, we should be quiet as long as we are not sure about the interpretation. You know, once we decide that we have the right answer, we come out to the public and tell the public what it is. Because otherwise nobody would believe us that there is global warming, for example. My point is exactly the opposite. I say nobody would believe you if you don't show, expose the process by which you arrive at the conclusion. So most of science is not, uh, finalized. You know, most of the scientific process does not have enough evidence. We don't know exactly what's going on. So we're trying to collect clues, evidence. And that's part of the process. It's a learning experience. Sometimes we make mistakes. It's completely human to make mis-... You know, we should show the public that it's okay. The public will understa- that, you know, the public will understand that because, you know, it's part of our experience. And 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. Instead 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, you know, every now and then those press conferences end up being wrong.

Joe Rogan 58:16 So the- their quarrel with you is that they think that your, your assumption that it's alien in nature is incorrect or hasty?

Avi Loeb 58:24 No. What, what...

Joe Rogan 58:25 What is their...

Avi Loeb 58:26 We shouldn't discuss it because they-

Joe Rogan 58:27 Shouldn't discuss it at all.

Avi Loeb 58:28 We shouldn't discuss it because the alien interpretation could be contemplated, you know, in many other o- occasions. But I say, you know, this is not a, a typical situation. We have the first object from interstellar space. It looks strange. Go for it. You know, let, let's collect more evidence. Uh, the public is interested. So what's the problem? I don't see any problem with discussing this possibility, putting it on the table, and looking for more evidence. Why would there be a taboo on this subject?

Joe Rogan 59:00 What, what is their interpretation of the evidence? What, what is th-... When they... When you lay out all the things that you said about the shape of this object, the speed of it, where it's coming from, all, all these variables-

Avi Loeb 59:11 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 59:11 ... that are very unusual.

Avi Loeb 59:12 Yeah. So they say each of them is indeed unusual, but probably there is a natural explanation. And then they say, "It's within my comfort zone to just ignore it. Let's forget about it. It's natural."

Joe Rogan 59:26 The 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 10 times longer than it is wide, and they just wanna ignore it.

Avi Loeb 59:41 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 59:42 That seems silly.

Avi Loeb 59:43 And it's flat, most likely flat-

Joe Rogan 59:44 Yeah.

Avi Loeb 59:44 ... according to this. Yeah, I mean-

Joe Rogan 59:46 So it's-

Avi Loeb 59:47 Look, I, I, I, I'm telling you that, uh, frankly, I, you know, I, I don't benefit from this, uh, exchange with my colleagues. Uh, on the contrary, I'm sure that, you know, behind my back, they're saying bad things. (laughs) But, um, the way I see it is when I served in the military, you know, and I, I did some, uh, uh, training, uh, in the paratroopers and so forth, there was this saying that, um, sometimes a soldier has to put his body on the barbed wire.

Joe Rogan 1:00:17 Hmm.

Avi Loeb 1:00:17 So that others can pass across. And, uh, the way I see it is that I'm trying to create an atmosphere, intellectual atmosphere, that would be, uh, more open-minded that would allow younger people to have a better future in the f- uh, you know, and, and discuss these subjects. To me, I, 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.

Joe Rogan 1:00:50 They're not the same. They're not the same people though, right?

Avi Loeb 1:00:51 Not the same.

Joe Rogan 1:00:51 I mean, you're saying science in this gigantic blanket.

Avi Loeb 1:00:54 Yeah, but, but there is this culture.

Joe Rogan 1:00:55 But quantum physicists and astronomers are, is-

Avi Loeb 1:00:57 They're not the same.

Joe Rogan 1:00:58 Right.

Avi Loeb 1:00:58 But, but think about it, the mainstream, uh, I mean, and the astronomers are completely fine with the discussion on extra dimension, the multiverse. They, they don't complain about it. So... And, and, and, you know-

Joe Rogan 1:01:11 But it's not their field of discipline, right?

Avi Loeb 1:01:13 It d- yeah, it doesn't threaten them, uh, in any way. Uh, I think there is something about extraterrestrial life that is so important for us-

Joe Rogan 1:01:21 Yes.

Avi Loeb 1:01:22 ... that they prefer, just like my colleagues said, "I wish it never existed."

Joe Rogan 1:01:26 But it's kind of crazy for someone who is an astronomer to not want there to be evidence of extraterrestrial life.... or at least extraterrestrial civilization. Some, some d- discarded piece of, uh, uh, civilization-

Avi Loeb 1:01:41 I agree.

Joe Rogan 1:01:41 ... hurling through our galaxy, and that's what you believe, right? You don't think it's actually a ship. You think it's some sort of an object that's th- like-

Avi Loeb 1:01:49 Artificial. I don't know what it is. It could be just a surface layer.

Joe Rogan 1:01:54 But there was something about the way it was moving where it seems to-

Avi Loeb 1:01:56 Yeah. It was, uh, pushed by sunlight in my, my view, just like this-

Joe Rogan 1:01:59 But the tumbling, though?

Avi Loeb 1:02:01 It was tumbling, so it probably was not functional, you know.

Joe Rogan 1:02:04 Right.

Avi Loeb 1:02:04 It could be a piece of, uh, a surface layer of, of, of a spaceship that was ripped apart, you know. It's something that... Now, let me mention a few examples that my colleagues suggested. So, those mainstream astronomers that try to explain the observed properties of Oumuamua, an example for an explanation that is natural was that it's a dust bunny. You know, the kind of thing you find in a h- household. The collection of dust particles, a dust bunny, you know, you find in the corner of your-

Joe Rogan 1:02:33 Yeah.

Avi Loeb 1:02:34 Uh, but ju- uh, a size of a football field and 100 times less dense than air that is pushed by sunlight.

Joe Rogan 1:02:43 What?

Avi Loeb 1:02:43 Very porous. That was an explanation, um, of a natural origin.

Joe Rogan 1:02:49 Why would it be so reflective?

Avi Loeb 1:02:52 Uh, they didn't, uh, discuss that. Then there was another suggestion that it's frozen hydrogen, like a, a, a hydrogen iceberg.

Joe Rogan 1:03:01 Hmm.

Avi Loeb 1:03:01 And that evaporates, but hydrogen is transparent, so you can't see the cometary tail. The problem with that is we showed in a scientific paper that it would not survive the journey 'cause hydrogen can easily get, uh, evaporated by starlight, uh, impacting on its surface. So, you know, these are the kinds of ideas that were... And then there was another idea that maybe it's a piece of an object that was shredded by a star when it passed close to a star. But the problem with that is usually you get shrapnel or pieces that are elongated from such a disruption, whereas this object was most likely flat-

Joe Rogan 1:03:39 Hmm.

Avi Loeb 1:03:39 ... according to the analysis of the light curve that... So, you know, these are the ideas of the mainstream astronomers that try to explain it as a natural origin.

Joe Rogan 1:03:49 Now this object, the way it's detected, y- y- y- you, you can't see a clear image of it, correct?

Avi Loeb 1:03:56 No, you can't, because it's too small. From the distance, uh, it had from Earth, you know, our telescopes are not big enough to resolve it.

Joe Rogan 1:04:05 So, how do we detect it? What are we detecting?

Avi Loeb 1:04:07 We're, we detect the reflected light from it, the sunlight that, that bounces off its surface, we can see it. So, you know, it's a s- it's just reflecting some light and we see it as a point source. But if we were to di- discover it when it was approaching us, we could have sent a camera that would come close to it and take a photograph.

Joe Rogan 1:04:26 Yeah. But there's no... So, there's no images of it that any of you can look at?

Avi Loeb 1:04:30 No. No.

Joe Rogan 1:04:30 Th- so when the, the machine, when the observatory is detecting it, they are detecting it as data?

Avi Loeb 1:04:38 As a point source of light.

Joe Rogan 1:04:40 Hmm.

Avi Loeb 1:04:41 A source of light that cannot be resolved, you know, like, uh-

Joe Rogan 1:04:44 There it is. That's what, that's what they were seeing?

Avi Loeb 1:04:47 Yes. So, the thing that is circled is Oumuamua and all these other dots that you see are trails of stars. Now, Oumuamua was moving in the sky very fast, but if we f- focus on it, then the stars are moving relative to it.

Joe Rogan 1:05:03 Hmm.

Avi Loeb 1:05:03 And that's why you see from, you know, a sequence of snapshots, you see this, this trailing trails of stars, you know.

Joe Rogan 1:05:11 Now, uh, is there anyone who agrees with you?

Avi Loeb 1:05:14 Well, the people that I worked with.

Joe Rogan 1:05:16 (laughs) Yeah, that's what I mean. Uh, are there other astronomers that have stepped out with you and said, "I think he's got some really good points here."

Avi Loeb 1:05:22 Not stepped out, but, um, you know, behind the scenes.

Joe Rogan 1:05:25 Ahh.

Avi Loeb 1:05:25 One of the reasons I wrote it up is because, um, you know, uh, people that I respect told me that they think s- this is really unusual.

Joe Rogan 1:05:33 The behind the scenes people?

Avi Loeb 1:05:35 Yes.

Joe Rogan 1:05:35 They don't wanna step out in public?

Avi Loeb 1:05:36 That's right.

Joe Rogan 1:05:37 Isn't that un- unusual?

Avi Loeb 1:05:39 Yeah, but I don't have-

Joe Rogan 1:05:39 Or not even unusual. It's just sad.

Avi Loeb 1:05:42 It is sad. The entire situation is sad. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:05:45 Well, it's not that sad because y- you're, you know, a lot of people are discussing it because the fact that you have the courage to talk about it openly.

Avi Loeb 1:05:52 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:05:52 Yeah, I mean, it's not sta- it's not sad, it's just, it, it sort of just explains the state of modern academia in that it's filled with human beings and human beings are flawed, and there's some really typical psychological traits that, uh, uh, people that, you know, m- might be a, a little socially awkward display and that's what we're seeing.

Avi Loeb 1:06:10 But by the way, the public is different.

Joe Rogan 1:06:12 Yes.

Avi Loeb 1:06:12 I, I-

Joe Rogan 1:06:12 Very different.

Avi Loeb 1:06:13 I get a very different response.

Joe Rogan 1:06:14 Well, we're dumb and we depend on people like you-

Avi Loeb 1:06:17 No. I wouldn't say that.

Joe Rogan 1:06:17 ... and stories like this are fun. (laughs)

Avi Loeb 1:06:18 I would turn it around. I would say that you are open-minded and you're, uh, you know, you're, you're much more forward-looking.

Joe Rogan 1:06:25 Yes. I think the public is more forward-looking when it comes to extraterrestrial life, but also less informed. You know, they, they believe things they maybe shouldn't believe.

Avi Loeb 1:06:35 True.

Joe Rogan 1:06:35 And it's n- it's a complex, very bizarre issue because-

Avi Loeb 1:06:40 But my point is, unless you look, you will never discover those things-

Joe Rogan 1:06:44 Of course.

Avi Loeb 1:06:44 ... that you have convictions about.

Joe Rogan 1:06:45 Yes.

Avi Loeb 1:06:46 So, if the scientific community shies away from this subject, obviously there will be no news and the public is starved.

Joe Rogan 1:06:52 Yeah.

Avi Loeb 1:06:53 The reason I get this attention is the public is starved, really wants to know more about it. The scientific community has the ability to, to explore it-

Joe Rogan 1:07:01 Mm-hmm.

Avi Loeb 1:07:02 ... but they shy away from it. So, I'm sitting in between s- uh, y- you know, in this very awkward, strange situation. I told my wife, you know, when this story broke out, I said, "Look, this is... I, I just cannot believe this, that it's so obvious that the scientific community needs to explore it because p- the public funds science and it's common sense, you know, I just apply common sense to it, and yet my colleagues do not agree with me." You know? I cannot believe this.

Joe Rogan 1:07:27 (laughs) Well, I believe, and also, I think that it's also part of the thing that they didn't come to the same conclusion. Even if your data and your interpretation of the data makes sense to them-

Avi Loeb 1:07:37 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:07:37 ... if they didn't come to that conclusion on their own, and you are also in the same field as them, they might wanna just, uh, diminish-

Avi Loeb 1:07:44 Yes.

Joe Rogan 1:07:44 ... your findings.

Avi Loeb 1:07:45 Yes. There is this tendency as well, uh, that stems from jealousy-

Joe Rogan 1:07:49 Mm-hmm.

Avi Loeb 1:07:49 ... to the attention and so forth. But the way I see it, and frankly, it's not about me, and it's not about, uh, the, the, uh, public media attention and so forth. It's about, are we alone?

Joe Rogan 1:08:01 Yes.

Avi Loeb 1:08:02 And are we the smartest kid on the block? Uh, are, you know, or not? And, uh, the only way to find out is by collecting evidence.

Joe Rogan 1:08:09 Yeah.

Avi Loeb 1:08:10 So let's look for more objects of the same. And that's all I'm trying to advocate. Let be, let's be modest, not say that we know the answer in advance, because that would resemble those philosophers that put Galileo in house arrest. Let's be open mind, and the good news is that science can address this question now.

Joe Rogan 1:08:28 Yes.

Avi Loeb 1:08:28 You know? So it's an opportunity that I just cannot believe that my colleagues are not taking advantage of, because public is excited. Public funds science. You know, one plus one equal two. Let's get the public engaged behind this to fund future astronomical research in, at a much higher level than is currently funded. No, instead, the, the scientists said, "No, no, thank you. We don't, you know, we don't need this gift. We don't want to deal with it."

Joe Rogan 1:08:56 Now, this, uh, much more powerful observatory that you're saying comes online in three years.

Avi Loeb 1:09:00 Uh-huh.

Joe Rogan 1:09:00 Where is that gonna be located?

Avi Loeb 1:09:01 In Chile.

Joe Rogan 1:09:02 Chile?

Avi Loeb 1:09:02 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:09:02 Is that the VLT?

Avi Loeb 1:09:04 No.

Joe Rogan 1:09:04 That, that's-

Avi Loeb 1:09:04 Well, there is a VLT there in Chile as well, but not far f-

Joe Rogan 1:09:07 But that's already up?

Avi Loeb 1:09:08 Yeah, that's already up. Uh, this is called the Vera Rubin Observatory.

Joe Rogan 1:09:11 And it's even more potent than the VLT?

Avi Loeb 1:09:13 Oh, it's a different instrument. It, it's a telescope that will survey the sky. The VLT is focusing on a smaller region of the sky. This is a survey telescope that would look-

Joe Rogan 1:09:24 Hmm.

Avi Loeb 1:09:24 ... through the sky. Now, the purpose of Pan-STARRS or this telescope, you know, was originally defined by Congress that said, uh, "Astronomers should find all the objects that are endangering life on Earth." You know, all the killer asteroids that could wipe us out.

Joe Rogan 1:09:38 Mm-hmm.

Avi Loeb 1:09:39 Because the dinosaurs were killed by a giant stone, you know, a rock.

Joe Rogan 1:09:44 Yeah.

Avi Loeb 1:09:45 S- the size of a big city, like Manhattan, you know, uh, tens of kilometers in size. And it must have been an amazing sight to be a, a, you know, a dinosaur back then, 'cause you see this rock coming at you, and then boom, and you're gone. Uh, they didn't have astronomy, right?

Joe Rogan 1:10:01 Right.

Avi Loeb 1:10:01 The dinosaurs didn't have science, so they couldn't really forecast this risk coming at them. We have science, so we can, uh, at least alert ourself to that danger, and perhaps deflect, nudge those killer asteroids that are heading our way. And, you know, there are various ways to nudge them off. You can evaporate part of their surface, just give them a little kick so that they miss the Earth. But first, you need to find them. So that's why Pan-STARRS was funded, and i- it's one of the goals of, uh, the Vera Rubin Observatory to identify all these objects that are endangering. But in the process of doing that, you know, Oumuamua was discovered.

Joe Rogan 1:10:43 Hmm. Um, d- so when this new one goes, uh, online in Chile, will they be looking specifically for the same kinds of things that...

Avi Loeb 1:10:55 No. So science, you, you know, you just survey the sky. You don't need to know what you are expecting to find, you know?

Joe Rogan 1:11:00 So it's just a blanket view of the sky?

Avi Loeb 1:11:02 Yeah, it's just sur- uh, it's serving the sky.

Joe Rogan 1:11:04 And then when they see an object that's moving...

Avi Loeb 1:11:06 Fast, and then if you see that it looks weird, just like Oumuamua-

Joe Rogan 1:11:10 Mm-hmm.

Avi Loeb 1:11:10 ... you can follow up on it.

Joe Rogan 1:11:11 And how much more potent will this one be?

Avi Loeb 1:11:13 Oh, it will be much more sensitive, and it will detect an Oumuamua-like object roughly once per month.

Joe Rogan 1:11:19 Here it is right here.

Avi Loeb 1:11:20 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:11:20 "The telescope will produce the deepest, widest image of the universe. 27-foot mirror."

Avi Loeb 1:11:27 Yes.

Joe Rogan 1:11:27 "The width of, uh, a singles tennis court. 3,200 megapixel camera." That'll be on the new Samsung Galaxy phone.

Avi Loeb 1:11:36 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:11:36 Uh, "each image the size of 40 full moons." What?

Avi Loeb 1:11:40 Yeah. It's a survey of the sky.

Joe Rogan 1:11:43 Wow.

Avi Loeb 1:11:43 It's an amazing f-

Joe Rogan 1:11:44 37 billion stars in our galaxy.

Avi Loeb 1:11:44 You know, the biggest challenge with this, uh, observatory will be the huge amount of data that it will produce.

Joe Rogan 1:11:50 Yeah.

Avi Loeb 1:11:50 We cannot store so much data. And-

Joe Rogan 1:11:51 Look, it says there, "20 terabytes of data every night."

Avi Loeb 1:11:55 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:11:55 Wow.

Avi Loeb 1:11:56 It's amazing.

Joe Rogan 1:11:57 That's insane. "Up to 10 million alerts, 1,000 pairs of exposures." That's incredible.

Avi Loeb 1:12:02 So the only risk, I should say, to this, uh, survey comes from the communication satellites. Th- these constellations-

Joe Rogan 1:12:09 Mm-hmm.

Avi Loeb 1:12:10 ... that, you know, at the tens of thousands, that Space X is planning-

Joe Rogan 1:12:13 Yes.

Avi Loeb 1:12:13 ... to put in space. And, uh, at first they were not, uh, really, uh-

Joe Rogan 1:12:18 Concerned?

Avi Loeb 1:12:19 ... aware, yeah, uh, of the risk. But then, uh, the astronomers told them, "Look, you are contaminating our images."

Joe Rogan 1:12:25 Yeah.

Avi Loeb 1:12:25 And so now, they're thinking about coating those communication satellites so that they are-

Joe Rogan 1:12:30 Like stealth bombers.

Avi Loeb 1:12:31 ... dark enough, they don't reflect as much sunlight. We're trying to work together with them, but obviously they have a commercial, uh, incentive to, to put these things up.

Joe Rogan 1:12:39 They do, but what if it puts us in danger? Like, what if we don't see asteroids-

Avi Loeb 1:12:43 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:12:43 ... because they wanna get, you know?

Avi Loeb 1:12:45 Well, let's party until the, the end.

Joe Rogan 1:12:47 (laughs) They wanna get internet a- access in Antarctica.

Avi Loeb 1:12:50 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:12:51 It's, uh, just seems a little silly. Uh, I mean, uh, it's great, but I don't know if this is the only way to get internet access. I just think like, the more things we have in the sky, the more things we can't get out of the sky. The problem with space junk is like, there's no real tenable plan to take that stuff out, and-

Avi Loeb 1:13:08 True.

Joe Rogan 1:13:09 ... and s-

Avi Loeb 1:13:09 That's why I think we should event- we will eventually have to leave Earth, because-

Joe Rogan 1:13:14 Of junk?

Avi Loeb 1:13:15 Yeah, because of all the, you know, we're self-inflicted wounds.

Joe Rogan 1:13:19 Yeah.

Avi Loeb 1:13:19 Uh, but the way I see it is also like, you know, the printing press of Gutenberg. Um, that, uh, once it was established, it produced many copies of the Bible.... and before that there were very few copies and each of them was extremely precious. But after the printing press by Gutenberg, there were many copies. So if one of them got damaged, you, you wouldn't worry too much. So I think that we should produce what we have here on earth. You know, currently all our eggs are in one basket on earth, but 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, it won't be that bad. You know, it will be one copy out of many. And you might ask, "How can we do that? How can we avoid..." So you know, there is this story in the Bible, in the Old Testament about Noah. It's called Noah's Ark. He was worried about the great flood that will, that will come, and wanted to preserve, uh, animals. So he built an ark. And 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. Uh, anyway, so he put the animals on it and saved them. Now, what is the moral of this? How can we preserve life that we have on earth by sending out a spaceship? So you might think, "Oh, if we build a big enough spaceship, we can put whales, we can put elephants, we can put birds on it." That's not the smart thing, uh, thing to do. Uh, you can just take a small spacecraft, a CubeSat, put a very, uh, advanced computer system on it with artificial intelligence and a 3D printer, and you load to the computer system the DNA information of all the animals that you want to reproduce somewhere else. And then you produce them synthetically in other places using the raw materials that are on other planets. So you just send this spacecraft, I call it Noah's spaceship. You send it to those places and you produce what you want out of the raw materials.

Joe Rogan 1:15:33 Wouldn't you think that if some civilization got that advanced, that they wouldn't be satisfied with the design that we currently experience? Like the design of the animals, the design of the people, wouldn't, wouldn't they want to make that better?

Avi Loeb 1:15:45 Yes.

Joe Rogan 1:15:45 Like make people that can breathe underwater?

Avi Loeb 1:15:48 Yes.

Joe Rogan 1:15:48 Make people that don't get cancer?

Avi Loeb 1:15:50 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:15:50 You know?

Avi Loeb 1:15:50 And I think, uh, maybe the ultimate, uh, you know, we are evolving.

Joe Rogan 1:15:55 Yeah.

Avi Loeb 1:15:55 You know, we started just like animals and, uh, we are getting better, but eventually it may be silicone-based things-

Joe Rogan 1:16:02 Yeah.

Avi Loeb 1:16:03 ... that, that will, uh, be the future.

Joe Rogan 1:16:04 Well, that's a speculation that people have when they look at the archetypal alien, right? With the large head and no genitals.

Avi Loeb 1:16:10 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:16:10 That what that is, is some sort of, uh, an ad- advanced version of intelligent life. Like that life, as life becomes sort of, uh, immersed in the world of technology, it becomes, uh, they have these symbiotic relationships where the, their parts get replaced by artificial parts, which we see now-

Avi Loeb 1:16:30 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:16:30 ... with people. We see artificial limbs and artificial-

Avi Loeb 1:16:34 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:16:34 ... you know?

Avi Loeb 1:16:34 Yeah. And 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.

Joe Rogan 1:16:42 Yeah.

Avi Loeb 1:16:42 For example, the nearest star to us is called Proxima Centauri. Now it's not like the sun. It's much smaller, uh, 12% of the mass of the sun, and it's much fainter, but it has a planet close enough so that life can be on that planet. The planet has a permanent day side. It's facing the star because it's so close to, to the star, 20 times closer than the earth is from the sun. That planet, Prox- Proxima b, is facing the star with the same side. So there is a permanent day side-

Joe Rogan 1:17:13 Like the moon.

Avi Loeb 1:17:14 Yes, exactly like the moon, and a permanent night side. And the per- permanent day side is warmer than the permanent night side. That's what we think. Now, my daughters said that, you know, the real estate value would be highest in between the day side and the night side because you will have a permanent sunset strip there. And you know, if you want a home, that would be a perfect vacation place, you know, kind of.

Joe Rogan 1:17:37 Yes.

Avi Loeb 1:17:37 Uh, but, um, if you think about the animals that may exist on the d- day side and on the night side, they would be very different. And also the ones on the day side, since the star is, uh, much colder than the sun by a factor of two or so, it's cooler, like, uh, 3,000 degrees instead of almost 6,000 degrees for the sun. Um, then they ha- the, most of the light emitted by the star is infrared. So these animals would have infrared eyes, not like... Our eyes detect sunlight. That's what we have. But on that planet, Proxima b, the closest planet, habitable planet to the solar system, you need infrared eyes to survive. So these animals would be something very different. They will have infrared eyes. I don't know how they would look. I think even if we find evidence for biological life, it would be shocking to us, not to speak about, you know, technological instrumentation, you know. If they're much more advanced than we are, it would look like magic to us. Uh, you know, it ap- uh, an approximation to God. It will do things that are really crazy for us.

Joe Rogan 1:18:47 Yeah. So when you think about, uh, taking a 3D printer and, 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 lives-

Avi Loeb 1:19:05 That's right.

Joe Rogan 1:19:06 ... in the first century A.D.

Avi Loeb 1:19:07 I, I, well, you know, it's not, it's not cr- completely crazy because-

Joe Rogan 1:19:09 Yeah.

Avi Loeb 1:19:09 ... there is a colleague of mine, a Nobel laureate, uh, at Harvard, Jack Szostak, has a laboratory in which he's very optimistic that he will produce synthetic life, meaning starting from building blocks, chemical building blocks, and making a living cell.

Joe Rogan 1:19:26 That sounds like a horror movie, doesn't it?

Avi Loeb 1:19:29 No. Why? You can, uh-

Joe Rogan 1:19:30 Sounds like it 'cause it gets out of hand, like some guy decides, "I'm gonna make something."

Avi Loeb 1:19:34 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:19:34 "I'm gonna make a giant wolverine."

Avi Loeb 1:19:37 ... well, you have to trust that guy, uh, you know?

Joe Rogan 1:19:40 Oh, I don't trust anybody like that.

Avi Loeb 1:19:42 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:19:42 I don't trust anybody with new life. Just-

Avi Loeb 1:19:45 Yeah. But you can't prevent it.

Joe Rogan 1:19:46 ... could be a disaster.

Avi Loeb 1:19:47 It's just like, you know, the exploration of the atom that led to-

Joe Rogan 1:19:51 Yes.

Avi Loeb 1:19:51 ... uh, eventually nuclear weapons. You, you know, you can't stop science.

Joe Rogan 1:19:55 No, you can't.

Avi Loeb 1:19:56 So I think it will happen in the next few decades that we will be able to create synthetic life.

Joe Rogan 1:20:00 Did you have, uh, an interest in extraterrestrial life before this?

Avi Loeb 1:20:06 Only-

Joe Rogan 1:20:06 And has it, has it changed at all?

Avi Loeb 1:20:08 No. So I can tell you, uh, maybe a decade ago, I, r- you know, I was working on detecting, uh, radio waves from hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe, from early cosmic times. And astronomers built observatories to test the calculations that I've worked on. And then one of the problems was that radio stations, TV stations would introduce interference to these observatories because they operated the same frequencies. So I said, "Oh wait, if we are producing interference, can't we use these telescopes to also look for, to eavesdrop on other civilizations?" Uh, you know, I Love Lucy radio transmissions, you know, with the same instruments. Uh, so that was my first paper on the subject. Then I was in, uh, Abu Dhabi. I was invited to give a, uh, talk in Abu Dhabi, even though I'm Israeli, you know, I'm also American. So it was fine. I went there. Uh, and then, uh, the tour guide showed us around, also do- went to Dubai, and then he was bragging, he said, "You know, these lights at night," he was showing us around, "they can be seen from the moon." So then that inspired me to consider the possibility of us seeing artificial lights from a distance. So with a colleague of mine, Ed Turner, we asked, "How far away can the Hubble Space Telescope see the city of Tokyo?" And we found that on Pluto, if there was a city like Tokyo on Pluto, we would be able to detect it with the Hubble Space Telescope.

Joe Rogan 1:21:53 Wow.

Avi Loeb 1:21:53 That was my second paper on this subject.

Joe Rogan 1:21:55 Wow.

Avi Loeb 1:21:57 Uh, but that, you know, there is no city like Tokyo on, on, on Pluto. But-

Joe Rogan 1:22:01 Well, that would also assume th- you know, what's interesting is the type of light that you were talking about being infrared light on this