Thank you all for joining me on a special episode of The Rojas Report slash
Open Mind UFO Radio. We are fortunate enough to have doctor Avi Lobe,
somebody who's been in the news quite a bit regarding extraterrestrial intelligent civilizations and the
possibility that perhaps and a recent interstellar visitor might have been et technology. So
he's created a stir, he's been in the media a lot. Thank you
for joining me, and I hope you enjoyed this interview with doctor Avi Lobe.
Okay, so it's live. Yes, we are live, and hello.
Thank you very much for joining me, doctor Lobe. This is a
great pleasure to be able to talk to you. Thank you for having me.
So I got your book from your publicists very early on, and I
was so excited because I thought great, and they were like, read the
book, we'll try to set up an interview soon. So I was rushing
through to make sure I could finish it before I got to talk to you.
And time went on and I thought I was going to be able to
get my interview at the beginning of your interview cycle. It's ended up being
at the end. But that's kind of neat though, because I'm I'm interested
in how this kind of media frenzy has maybe changed your perspective and views as
well. But first let me do a little introduction. This is, of
course many of you recognize or are aware because I've been talking about doctor Avi
Loobe's book for quite some time. But a astrophysicist from Harvard, and I
do want to mention some of your other affiliations, such as a fellow at
the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Physical Society, the International
Academy of Astronautics. You know, you have been a chair for the Physics
and Astronomy for a national academy. And the reason I want to mention all
that is that you're not like some fringe guy coming out of nowhere. You
are truly embedded and kind of a thought leader in the community. So it
had to have been pretty risky doing this. I mean, were you was
there hesitancy on your part to say that you were feeling really confident about this
controversial theory or were you really you know, motivated where you're like, no,
this is what the data is showing me. And did you have any
you know, trouble going there? Not at all. I applied the same
approach that they did to previous anomalies that I saw in other areas that I
studied for many decades. I worked on the early universe, the first stars,
and on black holes. And you know, there are anomalies in various
context. For example, we don't know what most of the matter in the
universe is. It's called dark matter. And there wasn't anomally reported about the
hydrogen being very cold, much colder than we expect in the early universe.
And a suggestion that I made in a paper that was published in a prestigious
journal was perhaps the dark metal particles have a small charge electric charge, so
they cooled the ordinary metal, the hydrogen, And that was rather speculative,
but there wasn't much a pushback on that, because you know, it's part
of the scientific process. When you see something unusual, something that doesn't quite
line up with what you expect, then you have to put possibilities on the
table. And then of course that would motivate observers or experimentalists to try and
search for more clues, more evidence, and rule out the possibilities that do
not stand up to the scrutiny. And that is the scientific process. You
know, there is nothing unusual about it, and that's the way we discovered
new things in the past. You know, nobody a century ago expected quantum
mechanics to be a description of reality. It was for experiments, and then
the theorists try to figure out what the interpretation of the experiments is. And
it put a lot of people out of their comfort zone, including Albert Einstein,
who argued that quantum mechanics shouldn't have a spooky action at the distance.
But he was wrong. And so the process of the scientific learning about nature
is involves, you know, unusual evidence that you try to explain, and
you put possibilities on the table, and then you rule out by additional evidence
those that do not stand up to the new evidence that you find, and
that's the centers. There is nothing wrong about it. There is nothing problematic
about it, except when people have prejudice. So when Galileo suggested maybe the
Earth moves around the Sun, the philosophers at the time argued, no,
we know that the Sun moves around the Earth, and they refuse to look
for his telescope. Now that's a DVA from the scientific process. And Galileo
was one of the fathers of the current scientific process, and you know,
we're talking about evidence and not about speculations that come out of the blue.
So when this object that we will talk about had some unusual properties that do
not line up with what we expected, that's when I came about, you
know, and suggested maybe it's a artificial origin because of the evidence, because
of the clues. And I didn't I didn't have any concerns about it because
you know, it's just the same approachect I used for many years before.
And the fact that there was a lot of pushback has to do with my
colleagues more than with me. I didn't change much. Yeah, and you
know, definitely some of the criticism of your theory has left kind of the
realm of scientists as well, and it's gotten pretty personal. Even some very
well known you know, writers, science writers have gotten you know, they're
very away from the scientific argument, but gotten very personal. Are you surprised
by that or were you expected? I'm disappointed by that, because you know,
we should all be focusing on the ball rather than the audience. Okay,
we should be focusing on the evidence. And I highly respect those scientists
that the road scientific papers trying to explain the anomalies of more and on this
object in terms of a natural origin, and they came up with specific suggestions
that they analyzed th equations and you know, suggested putting something else, another
alternative on the table. Now, all of these possibilities, that are three
of them have major flows. Okay, so I wrote a rebuttal paper about
one of them that explains why it doesn't work, for example, And you
know that's that's again out of the scientific process. But what is not part
of the scientific process is going on Twitter attacking personally, you know, and
that is not relevant because you know, first of all, if you think
about the big picture, you know, nature doesn't care about whether we say
one thing or another. Nature is whatever it is, and we are all
supposed to try and figure out what it is. And all I was saying
is, perhaps there is a relic of a technological equipment that passed near Earth.
And the way to find out is, of course, next time we
see something like that, you know, and we should see within a few
years another one or many more. Next time we see we should take a
photograph. What's the big deal? You know, like there is nothing more
common sensical than that trying to get more evidence next time around, and instead
you get people extremely upset that this possibility was even mentioned, contemplated, or
suggested in a scientific paper. By the way, I didn't just make up
the suggestion in the blue, you know, like, or write a blog
about it or put it in a book. There was that. There are
many papers that I wrote about that can all be found on my website,
and these are scientific papers. So I don't see why people should complain that
the scientific discourse includes in it the possibility of interpreting anomali is of an object
in terms of technological artifact. Why is that offensive to so many people.
The only way I can understand that is either that there are you know,
not willing to discuss this possibility because they want to preserve their image, and
they put themselves on a pedestal relative to the public that is interested in others,
you know, like unidentified flying objects. But again this is irrelevant because
you know, if you go to ancient history, there was a popular view
that the human body has a soul and therefore anatomy should be forbidden. But
imagine if science would say, oh, this is a controversial subject. There
are lots of claims out there about the human body. We don't want to
dissect it at all. Where would modern medicine be. You know, that's
inappropriate for science to ignore a subject just because there is some controversy about it.
We should apply the best scientific tools we have. We should be And
by the way, a billion dollars was invested before we detected gravitational waves,
a bill one point one billion dollars by the National Science Foundation. Without that
investment, we would never discover gravitational waves, and the Nobel Price in physics
was avoided for that. And moreover, gravitation waves have zero influence on our
daily lives. Okay that you know they passed through our body, nothing happens.
So I'm asking why is the funding in the context of the search for
technological signatures relics? You know, more than a thousand times smaller than that.
If the problem is so important to the public, and the public fund
science, wouldn't you think that there should be at least a billion dollars invested
in the search for technological rights rather than people ridiculing me and attacking me personally.
How wrong? More wrong than that could it be? You know,
funding it in an extremely low level and then anyone that brings this possibility to
the table is immediately attacked personal you know, like what are we are we
in the dark ages here? I thought it was really interesting when the report
on Tabby's Star came out because they had gone there. They had suggested in
their scientific paper that one possibility could be something like the Dyson sphere, and
I was shocked that it was fairly well accepted. However, you know,
when there was a couple of years ago at a SETI conference, there was
one of the scientists who did a lecture on techno signatures and kind of around
the xeno archaeology or exoarchaeology, some of the different terms being used for that,
and he got a lot of media attention. It wasn't accurate, and
he really shied away from it. He was really terrified by the feedback because
unfortunately they were misrepresenting the strength. That is a very important insight that you
just brought up, because I think the public is starved by the science community
on this subject. The public cares about it a lot. And you know
the success of my book, it became a best seller shortly after it appeared
in many countries. The success is a result of the public being starved on
this subject by the scientific community, and I think it's completely inappropriate because you
know, it's not as if the scientific community is supposed to censor the public's
interest. Instead, it should respond to the public interest. And if we
have the instrumentation, you know, the telescopes to search for technological relics,
we should use them for that purpose, because we're supposed to echo the public's
interest rather than worry about you know, how many angels can sit on the
tip of a pin. You know, like all kinds of questions that show
that we are smart, but do not necessarily echo an interest from the public.
You know, there are many such questions, you know, working and
on the mathematics of antide sitter space, you know, what effect does it
have on people's lives? Or arguing that the dark matter is an axiom,
you know, which is a mainstream discussion in the scientific community. Again,
what the dark matter has zero impact on our daily lives? You know,
there are lots of such questions, and the scientific community, the mainstream is
occupied just with those questions. And when you deal with a question that the
public is extremely curious about, no, we should shy away from that.
We should shy away from the limelight. It's as if you go to the
darkness so the public cannot see what you're doing. I don't understand that if
the public cares about it, you know, I don't feel the time on
a pedestal relative to I don't think that sign is an occupation of the elite.
It's a way of life. You know. Every person should be able
to understand what the scientists are doing, and in fact, the scientists should
do things that people care about. Okay, obviously, you know, climate
change is something that the people care about. Pandemics is something people care about.
That's you know, that is part of mainstream. But for some reason,
the search for extraterreaction, the question are we alone? The question is
there anyone else in our neighborhood that is being pushed to the fringes of science?
And why would that be the case? And this is basically the message
of my book. This is the reason I appeared on three hundred interviews over
the past eight weeks. You know, that's quite remarkable. I'm trying to
use it as a platform, you know, and my publicist, the publicist
of my book in the UK, was telling me, great job, you
are making your communicating very well with the public, and the book is selling
quite well. I told him, look, I'm not trying to sell the
book. You have to understand that I'm trying to convey a message. And
if the public didn't like my message and wouldn't buy the book, I wouldn't
care less. I would not change my message just so that the book will
sell. The book and my appearances are trying to convey a message, and
the fact that the public likes it is a good thing. But it's a
byproduct, you know. And I think you bring up something really important,
especially for now because as a science writer, I fortunately get it to some
science writing and the scientific community, especially a lot of the Astrontes I've spoken
with and other NASA personnel are extremely concerned with this anti science kind of movement
that we've had. And you mentioned that the public is very interested and well
the topic you wrote about, but also the pandemic and climate change. But
that's an area where there's a large anti science kind of group out there fighting
against it. Scientists don't seem to, but they blame the journalists a lot
of times, you guys are just sensationalizing our work. But on our end.
I've tried to. I was even in a group with these Nobel scientists
talking about the same topic and they were self frustrated. It's like, well,
what we're trying to do is make what you do appealing, trying to
apply it to people's lives, and I think, you know, unfortunately there
is no pr for science, and maybe there needs to be, because I
think that's where we've got to break down. Yeah, So currently science is
mostly communicated to the public by people that do not practice science, you see,
that's it, and I find that unfortunate because many of my colleagues,
you know, avoid the limelight, and as a result, the way that
the sausages are made is not communicated. You know, most of the time
science is uncertain because we don't have enough evidence, and scientists prefer the public
not to know about it. They want to show the public only the final
product, the sausage, without telling them how it's made. And you know,
the reality of the matter is, most of the time we are uncertain.
There are multiple interpretations for the data. We don't know which one is
the correct one. And only when we have enough evidence we are in agreement
and we come out with a consensus view, and that is you know,
that is something the public should know. The public should see the stages.
You know, there are early stages where you don't know what you're talking about,
and the public should be aware of that because scientists don't always know what
they're talking So I feel as if, you know, I'm the kid that
says the emperor has no clues in a way, but you know, I'm
the kid that says that, and that's the truth. You know that science
is working progress, and I think the public should be engaged. And by
the way, I told my publisher that I will be happy, satisfied if
there is one person around the globe that, after reading my book, will
become a scientist. And a couple of weeks ago, I got an email
from Malawi in Africa from a woman that said that your book is great and
I'm thinking about becoming an astronomer. So I told her the story about the
publisher that changed ahead and asked her are you the one? Are you that
one assigned it? And she said maybe either me or my daughter. I
would not be surprised, but that's what I wanted to say. I'm sure
your book has inspired quite a few people. But I guess let's get into
kind of a little bit of the meat of the situation. A muamu an
object the first we detected that is interstellar to come into our solar system and
then exit, and of course we saw we didn't catch glimpse of it till
it was on its way out, and you know, it had some strange
properties. You said it could be three things. Two of those the conventional
you know, the assumption, a comment or an asteroid, and but you've
made the argument that those don't fit. A comment. It's obvious comment looks
like a comment. You know, it's got a halo of debris. So
the other possibility could be asteroids because they do tumble. But this was definitely
very different than an asteroid. And like you mentioned, it deviated. And
I think that's the big theme that you mentioned, and I agree with you
that I haven't seen any scientists really tackling your argument for the deviation and how
that might have happened in a manner that addresses all of the things that you've
brought up. But I guess analyzing that so, for instance, one possibility
for the movement that you have highlighted was outgassing, so maybe a pocket of
ice or something that dissolved and pushed the object. But as you noted,
the tumble didn't change after this deviation, which is it seems like any outgassing
it would be impossible for the tumble night to change, right. Well,
that's one thing, but also the force that was pushing it changed smoothly inversely
with unsqualled and usually what happens without gassing. If you have water ice on
the surface, there is a certain distance from the sun where the ice doesn't
really evaporate anymore and you get a cutoff in the push. And in fact,
on more and more reached that distance and no cutoff was observed. So
it was a smooth dependence inversely with distance square, just like you expect by
reflection of sunlight giving the push. I should say there was one suggestion that
perhaps it's made of pure hydrogen. This object is a hydrogen iceberg. That
was one of the models proposed by astronomers that I value because they try to
come up with an explanation. And if it's made purely of hydrogen, then
hydrogen is transparent. You could have a cometary tale without seeing it. The
only problem with this idea we're talking about an object raphic the size of a
football field a few hundred feet and such an object made of pure hydrogen would
get evaporated very quickly by absorbing starlite along its journey, and it wouldn't survive
that the trip from its origin. We've never seen hydrogen ized bergs, So
that's an example of a scientific idea that was put forward rather than attacking me
personally, just coming up with an alternative explanation of this anomaly. But we
wrote a scientific paper showing that it doesn't work because the hydrogenized bag would get
evaporated. There was another suggestion more recently, maybe it's not hydrogen, maybe
it's nitrogen, pure nitrogen. For that, you need to separate nitrogen from
carbon. I mean, usually nitrogen and carbon come together that are produced by
the same process in stars, in stellar interiors and the space of space.
Telescope put very tight limits on any carbon based molecules around this object. So
really this doesn't hold together, you know, this interpretation. There was another
suggestion, maybe it is a cloud of dust particles that are very loosely bound,
you know, sort of like a dust bunny that you find at home,
and then it's very light to eight, So the reflection of sunlight would
give it the push that you need. The problem with that is when UMM
got close to the sun, it was heated by hundreds of degrees and such
a fluffy dust cloud that is one hundred times less dense than air that's what
you need, would not have the material strength to hold together, to have
the integrity of maintaining a rigid structure. And so you know, these alternatives,
and there was another one that it's a piece of another bigger object that
was ripped apart as it was passing close to a star. And the problem
with that is usually you get elongated the pieces from the tidal force of a
star. And the best model for was pancake shape the ninety percent confidence.
So all of these alternative interpretations had major flows. And that led me to
conclude in my book that you know, the possibility of an artificial origin should
be put on the table. What's the problem with that, you know,
and we should. What it implies is that even though more and Moire left
and we didn't get enough data on it, you know, it's now a
million times fainted than it was, There would be more like it that we
will find because you know, we just observed the sky for a few years
and we found this one. So if you observe for another few years,
we'll find another one. When I go to the kitchen and I find an
aunt, I get alarmed because there must be many more out there. And
so all we need to do is next time around, when we detect something
in advance, you know, we should send the spacecraft with the camera that
would intercept its trajectory and take the close up photo. And you know,
a picture is worth a thousand words. In my case, a picture is
worth sixty six thousand words, the number of words in my book. I
think that's a really important point. And when I've talked to people, a
lot of them have a miscon perception, and I'll bring up this picture.
A lot of them have seen this image and this is an image from Nazi's
website and uma, and they're like, well, I thought it was a
rock. It looks like a rock, And I explain that, you know,
like you you talked about it could have been a photo. Is important
because it could have been obvious from observation that it was if it was something
manufactured. Well, let me explain. So this this artist's illustration came about
because you know, as the object was stumbling, the brightness of the object
changed by a factor of ten. So projected on the sky, it was
at least ten times longer than it is white. But you know this is
true also of a piece of paper tumbling in the wind. You knows as
you get it to tumble, you know, projected on the sky, would
you could see it as if it looks like this elongated object, you know,
like something very elongated, but in reality it is a flat object.
And that was the best fit to the variation in the light reflected from the
object at the ninety percent confidence. And this is a paper published in December
twenty nineteen by Sergei Maschenko showing that the best fee to the light curve is
that of a flat object. So pancake shape, not a cigar shape,
but projected on the sky, of course, when it's tumbling, you know,
it looks very long compared to how wide it is. So that is
what we know about this object, that the ninety percent confidence it was flat,
not cigar shaped. And then the question is, you know, can
you imagine a flat rock that is at least ten times longer than it is
wide? And you know that is pushed by reflecting sunlight. Now, in
September twenty twenty, just you know, less than half a year ago,
there was another object discovered that is pushed by reflection of sunlight and doesn't show
any commentary tail. And this object was also discovered by pun Stars, the
same telescope that discovered of MUAA. And then the astronomers that found it realized
that if you go back in time, it was actually launched from Earth in
nineteen sixty six. It's a rocket booster that was part of the Lunar Landers
severyor two mission. And we know that we produced it artificially. I mean
it had thin walls and was hollow, and that's why sunlight reflecting off it
gave it a push in the case of a mum. We don't know who
produced it. And I do want to mention two and thank you for that.
I think that that clears apple lot. I think for people that it
was cycly flat, so it could have been shaped just like that object or
similar to the object. If you demonstrate, we just don't know, and
with a photograph we would have known exactly. And a photograph has offers the
advantage First of all, you can tell if it's natural or not, you
know, from the way it looks, the structure. But second you can
decide at that point whether it's worth, you know, landing on such an
object, because if it's a piece of equipment, you know, that may
be more advanced than anything we developed because we had our technologies only for one
hundred years. You know, we can decide to land on something like that
and imagine, you know, getting our hands around an advanced technology that is
that represents something that we might develop in our future, you know, like
a millionaires from now. We can shortcut history and get a glimpse at something
that we will potentially develop in a millionaeres. You know, that could be
amazing. And I talk about it in my book that there is this omo
Amua's wage, which basically says, you know, if it is a piece
of technology, the implications are so great that we just cannot ignore that possibility.
So not only that I should not be ridiculed on a personal level,
but we should consider that possibility and invest funds in searching for more objects of
the same and looking at them closely, you know, so we should do
much more, not much less. And that is my point. And you
know, I just don't understand why people would avoid that. It's as if
they say, let's remain ignorant. You know, having done these three hundred
interviews, what has changed about your perception of the public, perception of your
work and your theory. Well, the public is extremely interested and excited.
And I had a very intelligent dialogue with the public with people that have asked
questions, both people with scientific and technological expertise and people that do not have
that, and and in both camps, I received very insightful questions and comments,
and that inspired me to write a number of Scientific American articles, some
of which already appeared and some are in the pipeline over the you know,
over the past couple of months, I wrote maybe about six of them,
and some of them are not yet published, but all of them are listed
on my website. And the point is that, you know, it's inspiring
for me to speak with everyone, especially the public, because the public is
curious without a prejudice, and as part of the dialogue, I get new
ideas. And if you block your options, if you basically say I don't
want to discuss it, and you really you bully anyone that discusses it.
You know, I find that really surprising because it keeps you ignorant, just
like the philosopher's at the time of Galideo. And of course you know people
say, oh, we extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. That's exactly what I'm
saying. Let's get more evidence. But if you say you know in advance
that it's never aliens, then you will not get that evidence. My point
is, extraordinary conservatism leads to extraordinary ignorance. I love that saying that's a
great one, and that is novel. Certainly. I was going to say
one observation I had from reading your book. A couple of things, but
one thing that I enjoyed about it there was a familiarity in some of it
in that, of course I do cover the UFO topic and the scientists in
the past. I do this lecture about how astronomers started modern UFO research.
They really did, including with this doctor Alan Heinik who had this television show
which distorted his life, but that they made similar argument to the the astronomical
and scientific community that you know about being close minded, and not just what
you had just said about the ignorant that happened. And certainly it's interesting that
many of the books I'm talking about are decade old. Yours is brand new,
But you're still having to make this argument and still having to fight this
fight with the academia. Yeah, I find that really unfortunate because right now,
well, we know more facts about the universe. We know that roughly
half of the sun like stars have a planet the size of the Earth,
roughly at the same separation. So you know, if you arrange for similar
circumstances, you might as well get similar outcomes. So not only that we
are not at the center of the universe, as advocated by Aristotle, the
ancient Greek philosopher, but also our backyard is quite common the Earth's sun system,
and that to me is very encouraging news. You know. It teaches
us once again modesty, that we shouldn't think that we are privileged and you
need special because conditions that we find around us are common, and why would
we believe that we are the only ones? Now, of course, there
may not be living civilizations with which we can communicate because they are short lived.
That's that's possible. If they developed technologies, they also develop the means
for their own destruction. You know, we cannot have a phone conversation with
the Mayans. The Mane culture is not around anymore, but we can find
relics that they left behind in archaeological digs and the say in much the same
way, we can do space archaeology instead of going out and listening to radio
signals as we have been doing for seven years. You know, there is
this Drake equation which is fundamental for this search, but there are lots of
coefficients there that are highly uncertain. And if those civilizations are short lived,
most of them are dead by now, and we can't have a conversation.
We can't get radio signals, and instead what gives us is a wake up
call. You know, there are interstellar objects visiting the Solar System, and
by looking at them, you know, it's just like looking at objects that
arrived from the street into your backyard. You know they make they made the
trip. You don't need to make the trip. It takes a long time
to visit stars, but they already made that trip and they arrived at your
doorstep. So the natural thing is to examine them, take photographs, and
whenever you see a plastic bottle instead of a rock, you say, well,
that's interesting, let's check it out. But you can't say it's always
rocks, because then you would resemble this caveman that says, you know,
when presented with a cell phone, says, oh, it's a shiny rock.
One of the people in the chat is asking that this object was probably
out there for tens of thousands of years, and so he thinks that the
Solar say, a hypothesis from an advanced civilization, seems kind of strange,
But I think you're arguing it doesn't. Necessarily they had to have been sent
directly to us. It could be space junk, right exactly. I mean,
we launched the Voyager, one, Voyager, two new Horizons and other
probes out of the Solar System, and imagine what would be their fate in
a billionaires or a few billionaires. You know, they wouldn't be functional anymore.
And most stars formed billions of years before the Sun. And as a
result, you know, they predated us, and they sent out equipment into
space, and we shouldn't take Most of these equipment would be just like plastic
bottles on a beach. You know, they have their puncture, they have
hors, they're not functional anymore. Because they suffered a lot of damage during
their trajectory, during their lifetime, and that's what we should expect from most
of the stuff we find in space, and therefore arguing that it was tumbling
and therefore not in control. You know, that's quite expected, because I
wouldn't expect it to be spying on us. By the way, I don't
that we are sufficiently interesting for anyone to spy on us. And of course,
you know, ten thousand years ago, we were even less interesting.
So when the object started its journey into the solocity, it was more than
ten thousand years ago. But I believe that most of the objects we find
will be billions of years old because they traveled throughout the galaxy and sort of
there is a population of them, sort of like the space debris that we
live around the Earth. You know, there is a lot of the brick
going there, or like plastic bottles in the oceans. You know, they
keep accumulating over time, and we just don't know what is out there unless
we search so without the prejudice, without always saying it must be a rock.
It's never aliens. Let's just check what is more natural than looking for
evidence? You know, you got very personal in the book too, getting
back into your childhood and how it's kind of always been an interest and inspiration
for you to look for potential life out there. That's right. I don't
separate my science from my life. For me, science is a way of
life. And you know, when I have a problem with a pipe at
home and I try to figure it out with a plumber, you know,
I approach it exactly as a scientist. You know, we look for the
clues and then try to figure out what's the problem and solve it. And
I don't see science any different than applying common sense and looking at being guided
by the evidence. Of course, it has some mathematical aspect to it that
makes it a little more sophisticated and daily activities, but you know, it's
not really essential if you understand what nature is doing. You know, you're
trying to figure out how to explain the evidence based on the clues that we
have that we have, and that's the way I approach my life, you
know, on a daily basis. So for me, you know, everything
that I went through during my life is contributing to my scientific work. And
in particular when I was young, you know, I was very much connected
to nature because I grew up on a farm, so I developed a special
connection to nature to more than two people, you know, more than to
social interactions. And that's why nowadays I don't really care how many likes I
have on Twitter, and I joke every morning at five am in the company
of rabbits, ducks and birds, and I enjoy that and irrespectful whether it
snows or rains. You know, I take whatever nature gives me, and
that's my attitude also towards the scientific exploration. You know, whatever, if
nature gives us anomalist, we should be delighted about it because we can learn
something new. You know. There was a seminar at Havad about a muamua,
and when I left the room with a colleague of mine, he said
that this object is so weird, I wish it never existed. And after
world by this, because it should be exactly the opposite attitude. You're not
supposed to always relax and assume that what you know is what you will find.
In fact, when you see something unexpected, it should be thrilling.
You know, it's exciting. Why should science be boring? By the way,
I never understood that and you know, if there is something new coming
along that is you didn't expect, that is an opportunity to learn something new,
and it makes science worth doing. I don't care about science as a
vehicle to promote our egos as a way to convince other people that we are
smart, or that we deserve an honor or an award or a label.
You know, that is completely irrelevant. What we need to care about is
understanding nature, and by the way, that's also what the public cares about.
So I think we are all in it together. You know, if
we develop a vaccine to COVID nineteen, you know, it's to be shared
by all of us. And the way I see science. You know,
in economics, there is this idea of a zero sum game where if someone
gains a profit, then someone else loses. But I think of science as
an infinite sum game in the sense that if you produce some new knowledge,
everyone benefits, so it can go to infinity. You know, the more
you add, the better everyone is. So it's we are all in it
together. In the context of science, it involves collaborations, and it should
it should feel as if we are fighting each other and saying no, you're
not allowed to say that, you're not allowed to say. Okay, well,
if you have another interpretation for the NORMALI is, write a scientific paper,
don't write it on Twitter. Write a scientific paper that explains the normalies
in terms of something natural, and we will be done with that. You
know, why get personally, why ridicule, why get so emotional about it?
It's it's you know, we're just trying to figure out what this unusual
object is. Mm hm. So you must have been excited at such as
I was, certainly and many interested in these sort of topics when you're a
Mailner decided to start his breakthrough programs, and of course you got to be
involved with that, and when great part of the book is how you had
this limited amount of time to come up with the StarShop project, something I
had been really excited about and I'm excited to talk to you about updates on
that project. But essentially using these little solar sales, which is what you
feel might have been, which is essentially just actually they even had it on
Star Trek, but you know, this little sale that's being pushed by the
by photons, either by laser or by the sun or something like that,
a reflection of light. Yes, So this is a technology that can either
use the sun, but then the speed that you can reach is not very
high. By the way, in my book, I talk about the possibility
that it can use also the flash of light from an exploding star supernova.
If you park light sales in the vicinity of a massive star that is about
to explode, then the flyush of light can push those light cells close to
the speed of light. And that's quite remarkable. It's just like those surfers
that are waiting for a giant wave on the beaches of Hawaii and then they
surf on it. So you can do that from a natural source of light
and exploding star and reach close to the speed of light, and then you
will just like dandeli on seats you know that are carried by the wind,
these sails will be carried by the flash of light into the galaxy as a
whole. But this is what we proposed to your mill leern. That's the
project Starshot that I'm leading, is to use a laser beam in pushing a
light sale roughly the size of a person that weighs only a gram or so,
and within a few minutes with the laser beam of one hundred jigobat.
It can reach a fifth of the speed of light over a distance that is
five times a distance to the Moon. And then if you send it in
the direction of the nearest star, for example, proximas Entaweri, it could
get there within twenty years. So that's within our lifetime. If we were
to use a rocket technology of the type that NASA employed in all the missions
until now, then it would take fifty thousand years to reach the nearest star.
And obviously we're not that patient, because we should have sent it when
the first humans left Africa in order for it to reach proximas Inaweri right now.
So obviously, you know, this technology allows us to learn more about
our environment faster, and hopefully you know, we're now working on developing the
or overcoming the challenges that it poses. And I would deny that my imagination
is limited to what I'm experiencing, you know, So in a way that
was preparation for me. Working on this project allowed me to imagine that perhaps
one is being pushed by somebody. Mm hmm. I like the surfing analogy,
and there's actually Saturday and just down the street from here, I mean
and to there's tons of surfers fighting for waves right now. But I think
that the solar sale question actually somebody asked the question and the chat chat.
Would it be possible to create a solar sale to send to catch up to
uh? Yeah, And principle, if we had the technology, that would
be an ideal use of of of of a light sale uh for example,
pushed by a laser beam, a powerful laser beam. But unfortunately we don't
have it yet. But what we should do, I think is you know,
hav an advanced warning for future objects that belong to the same class.
And there will be the very Rubin observatory that will become operational in less than
three years, and it would be much more sensitive to objects of the size
of when we're reflecting sunlight, and could alert us of such objects a year
in advance when they are still approaching us rather than moving away from us.
And if that's the case, if we have a year of a warning time,
we could contemplate sending a mission that will intercept their trajectory. And if
you come with a four inch camera, if you come within roughly a distance
comparable to the diameter of the Earth from such an object which is roughly the
size of a football field a few hundred feet, then you should be able
to resolve it with that camera. You should be able to get an image
with multiple pixels, and that should be our goal, because you know,
that is the kind of information that will conclusively demonstrate that it's not a natural
object. If it is not a natural and there should be many out there,
and we should just go in search, you know, for more,
and every time we see an unusual one, we should examine it and get
as much information about it as possible. So I'm really guided by evidence and
I want to get more evidence, more information. The only way we will
not get that information is if people know the answer in advance, if they
say it's always rocks and we don't want to discuss it only then we will
remain ignorant about it. M hmm. I know that you've got to go,
so we've got to wrap up. So I guess I'll kind of get
to a UFO question, just because I'm sure you've gotten a lot of these
sort of questions. But my question is, you know, there's been a
lot of news about the Pentagon actually spending some money looking into some of these
incidents that have happened. There is a group I work with the scientific community
of UAP studies that has gotten scientists who have come out of the woodwork because
of that and gotten interested in looking more into these kind of things. Do
you think that is appropriate and do you think you know, there should be
these sort of organizations to look into not just like a moo a more but
also some of these alleged you know, more closer encourageents to our airspace.
Well, definitely, I think that rather than obsessed with Pentagon reports that were
based on testimonial evidence and on equipment that was not optimized for the purpose of
finding unusual phenomena, and also equipment that is decades old, you know,
and by now we have much better cameras, much better audio sen source And
my approach to this is, rather than worry about what the document said,
we should just for anyone that cares about this question, we should deploy state
of the art instrumentation, including the best cameras we have right now and a
lot of them, and the audio sensors in the same locations where the reports
came from, and see if we detect anything unusual and you know, rather
than rely on testimonial evidence because of you know this example that I often like
to give about the biblical story of Abraham that heard the voice of God and
the voice of God told him to sacrifice his only son, Isaac. And
if Abraham had a cell phone with a voice memo up, he could have
pressed the button and recorded the voice of God and we would all know if
that story really happened. But instead, he didn't have a cell phone,
so we have to decide whether to believe his testimony. And that's the analogy
I make with reports that are based on people's impressions or people's people using equipment
that was not optimized for the purpose. And I think rather than do that,
we should actually use the best equipment we have and go to the same
locations. And you know, science is about to reproduce ability. You have
to get You have to be able to reproduce results, because otherwise you don't
know whether to believe them, And by going to these locations where the reports
came from and using the best instrumentation, we should be able to find out.
And you know, why not just do that in a purely scientific method
way. I love your answer, and that's what I love about science.
It's proactive. We don't need to rely. We need to gather our own
data to analyze. And it's similar to conversations with the scientists. It's it's
more government documents aren't scientific data. We need to figure out how to go
get that data. So I think that's definitely and you said the same thing.
How we have to deal with potential moods in the future, right,
And it should all be in the open, you see. There shouldn't be
any concerns about conspiracy of the government hiding things. No, it should be
all in the open because science is in the open, you know. And
the only issue here is funding to get the best instrumentation deployed in those locations.
And what's the big deal, you know. I think it can be
done if the right people are providing the funds and the right people are doing
the experiment. So I'm all in favor of getting more evidence to guide us
rather than arguing forever about whether something that someone said is correct or not.
Well, I'm sorry I kept you over a couple of minutes. This has
been an absolute pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much for taking the
time to talk to us this morning. It was a great pleasure. Thank
you, good luck with the book. Excellent book. I loved it.
The cover is beautiful too, but excellent book. Thank you so much.
Thanks for having me all right, Thanks everybody for joining, and of course
we will talk with you all later