Speaker 1: Welcome back to the deep dive. This week, we are
diving into something really quite extraordinary, a cosmic coincidence, you
might say.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's definitely raised a lot of eyebrows.
Speaker 1: We've got sources detailing this astonishing situation. Two highly unusual
objects showing up near the Sun practically well within the
same week.
Speaker 2: It's incredibly rare, like really really rare. I think finding
two I don't know unique diamonds in the same spot
in a river just doesn't happen often.
Speaker 1: Right, So let's break them down. What are these visitors?
Speaker 2: Okay, so first there's three ia halas. Now this one's
confirmed interstellar. It definitely came from outside our solar system.
That's huge news on its own.
Speaker 1: Okay, interstellar got it.
Speaker 2: Then almost at the same time, we get C twenty
twenty five V one, discovered super recently November two, actually
by Gnati Borisov. He's a really sharp amateur.
Speaker 1: Astronomer boresof Yeah, he found the last interstellar commet too, right.
Speaker 2: That's the one. And this new object C twenty twenty
five V one, it's well, it's barely hanging onto the
Sun gravitationally like just bare meaning it's almost interstellar itself.
It almost certainly fell in from the Orc cloud, the
really really distant edge of our solar system.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's set the stage here for you, the listener.
Our goal today isn't just to you know, look at
space rocks. We want to dig into what makes these
things tick.
Speaker 2: Yeah, analyze their properties.
Speaker 1: And explore this big debate. Are they natural commets maybe
or could one or maybe even both be something else? Technology?
Speaker 2: It's huge question and it forces us to think about well,
life beyond Earth.
Speaker 1: So we're jumping straight into a real cosmic detective story here.
Speaker 2: And the first big clue, the thing that really flags
three it laws as an outsider, is its speed. It's
moving at an incredible sixty kilometers every second.
Speaker 1: Sixty kilometers a second. Okay, that sounds fast, but put
that in perspective for us.
Speaker 2: Well, the sources often say it's like six hundred times
faster than the fastest car, which is true, but maybe
not helpful it right, think about Earth, We're orbiting the
Sun about thirty kilometers per second. This thing is going
twice as fast as our entire planet.
Speaker 1: Twice Earth speed. Wow.
Speaker 2: And crucially, it's faster than the Sun's escape velocity where
it is right now.
Speaker 1: Escape velocity, that's the speed needed to break free.
Speaker 2: Right exactly. If you're slower than that, the Sun grabs you,
pulls you into an orbit and a lips usually like
a planet or a normal comet.
Speaker 1: But three Iatael is faster.
Speaker 2: Much faster, so its path isn't closed. It's what astronomers
call a hyperbolic trajectory, hyperbolic meaning it's an open path,
mathematically open. It comes in, swings around the Sun, gets
a little gravitational kick maybe, and then it just keeps
going out forever, never coming back.
Speaker 1: And that speed, that trajectory, that's the proof it's interstellar.
Speaker 2: It's the smoking gun absolutely confirms it's not from around here.
Now see twenty twenty five v one. The other one
totally different story. It's moving fast but a just under
escape velocity, so it is bound to the Sun barely,
just barely, which tells us it probably came from the
oort cloud like we said, but technically it's still belongs
to us system.
Speaker 1: Okay, so two very different characters here. Three italis the
intercellar speedster on its way out and ce twenty twenty
five V one the long distance traveler from our own backyard,
the Orc cloud just barely captured.
Speaker 2: Yeah, profoundly distinct origins and fates really appearing.
Speaker 1: Near the Sun close together in time. Let's dig into
those origins a bit more. C. Twenty twenty five V one.
Speaker 2: First, right, So C. Twenty twenty five v one is
on this really steep plunging path towards the Sun. That
suggests something gave it a big nudge a long long
time ago, like what could have been a passing star,
maybe a giant molecular cloud drifting by out near the
Ork Cloud. Something disturbed its very slow, distant orbit and
sent it falling inwards.
Speaker 1: But its path is still technically an ellipse, just a
really long, skinny.
Speaker 2: One, exactly super elongated, but still closed. It belongs to
the Sun three iaetis.
Speaker 1: Though completely different rules apply totally.
Speaker 2: It owes no loyalty to our Sun. It's just passing through,
using the Sun as a sort of gravitational turning point.
Speaker 1: Which brings us right to that massive question everyone must
have asked immediately, Are they related?
Speaker 2: Oh? Absolutely, that was the first thing, you know, the
cosmic detective question could C. Twenty twenty five v one
have somehow come from three IA lists.
Speaker 1: How would that even work?
Speaker 2: Well, if three ia list is just a big natural comet,
maybe the journey stressed it out, or the Sun's heat
caused it to break apart. Perhaps a big chunk got
knocked off and.
Speaker 1: That chunk went onto a slightly different, slower path, one
that got captured by the Sun.
Speaker 2: That's one possibility, yeah, a lost fragment scenario.
Speaker 1: Okay, But then there's the other possibility, a technological one.
Speaker 2: Right, And if you go down that road, the connection
could be much more deliberate.
Speaker 1: Like if three I eight lists was some kind of mothership.
Speaker 2: Exactly, it could have released a smaller probe. Maybe C
twenty twenty five V one isn't a rock at all,
but some kind of scout sent into the inner Solar
System for a closer look, perhaps specifically at us or
the rocky planets.
Speaker 1: That's well, that's a much wilder idea, it is.
Speaker 2: It's alluring. But you know, as scientists, we have to
start with the simplest explanation, standard physics, passive gravity.
Speaker 1: And what does standard gravity say.
Speaker 2: It says probably not almost certainly not related, A resounding no.
Speaker 1: Really, Why so definitive.
Speaker 2: It comes down to the geometry their orbital paths. Their
planes in space are almost perpendicular to each other.
Speaker 1: Perpendicular like ones flat and the other's coming straight down
pretty much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, imagine the flat plane of Earth's orbit. That's roughly
where three I at loss is moving now picture C
twenty twenty five V one slicing through that plane at
almost a ninety degree angle. Okay, for two objects that
supposedly started together like a comet and its fragment, to
end up on such radically different inclinations, it just doesn't
work naturally.
Speaker 1: You need some kind of massive, specific push at the
exact moment they.
Speaker 2: Separated exactly, a huge, perfectly aimed kick, highly highly improbable
if it's just gravity and fragmentation doing the work.
Speaker 1: Any other evidence against the link.
Speaker 2: Yeah, their closest approach, even if you calculate back in
time this these two objects ever got to each other,
was still about one hundred million kilometers.
Speaker 1: One hundred million kilometers. That's huge. It's like two thirds
of distance from Earth to the Sun.
Speaker 2: Right, way too far apart to suggest they just broke
up recently or had some local interaction. So based only
on gravity, the consensus is clear. Sheer coincidence, monumental, but
still a coincidence.
Speaker 1: And I have to push back a bit here this
technological loophole. Isn't that just you know, wishful thinking. We're
ditching predictable gravity because the coincidence feels too neat. Isn't
that bad science? A violating Aukham's razor.
Speaker 2: That's a really important challenge. And you're right, we have
to be careful. If they look like rocks, assume they're rocks, right,
simplest explanation. Yeah, But the loophole isn't just desire. It
comes from knowing that technology can break those rules. We
humans have built spacecraft Voyager for instance.
Speaker 1: Right, Voyager's trajectory wasn't purely gravitation. We use Jupiter for.
Speaker 2: A boost exactly, we maneuvered it. An alien observer seeing Voyager,
who only assumed gravity was a play would be baffled
by its path. So when we see an object confirmed
to be from outside our.
Speaker 1: System, we can't automatically rule out that it might be engineered.
Speaker 2: We can't because engineering allows for non gravitational forces propulsion maneuvering.
Speaker 1: So a natural object has to follow the fragmentation physics
making those perpendicular paths basically impossible pretty much. But a
spacecraft could have thrusters. It could actively change its course,
moving from one trajectory to another that was completely unrelated
if you only consider gravity.
Speaker 2: That's the caveat A ship could bridge that gap. It
could make two distinct paths appear connected. So while gravity
says no connection, the possibility of technology means we can't
be one hundred percent certain. Yet we need more data,
non gravitational data.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's talk about time, because the time scals involved
here are just mind bending. Let's start with the local
one see twenty twenty five V one from the Ord Cloud.
How long did it take to get here?
Speaker 2: First, you gotta appreciate the Orc cloud itself. It's this
enormous sphere of icy stuff surrounding everything else in the
Solar System. Its edge is maybe one hundred thousand times
farther out than Earth is from the Sun one.
Speaker 1: Hundred thousand au. That's almost incomprehensibly far. Isn't the nearest
star only like four times farther than that?
Speaker 2: Roughly? Yeah, Proximusentaria is around two hundred and seventy thousand AU,
So the ork cloud fills a huge chunk of the
space between us and the next star. It's the Sun's
outermost domain.
Speaker 1: The true deep freeze suburbs. Okay, So traveling from way
out there one hundred thousand AU into the inner Solar
system where we see C. Twenty twenty five V one. Now,
how long does that journey take?
Speaker 2: Calculations based on its current speed and how the Sun's
gravity would have pulled it in suggest it took about
eight thousand years.
Speaker 1: Eight thousand years, just floating inwards.
Speaker 2: Pretty much in darkness, an incredible.
Speaker 1: Cold and context for eight thousand years. That's basically the
entire span of human recorded history, right, like writing, agriculture, cities,
all it stuff start around that roughly.
Speaker 2: Yes, so this icy object has been falling towards the
Sun for as long as human civilization as we know
it has existed.
Speaker 1: That's quite a thought. But cosmically speaking, eight thousand years
is nothing.
Speaker 2: It's a blink. The Sun's been around four point six
billion years. Eight thousand is just noise level, but it
grounds us in the vastness, even within our own system.
Speaker 1: Okay, Now, pivot to the real outsider three eyeautlists. We
don't know what's home star where it came from, But
the sources say its speed tells us something about its age,
potentially a very, very old age.
Speaker 2: This is one of the coolest bits of deduction. I
think if, and it's if three iyeautlists is a natural object,
a piece of rock and ice, then it's crazy speed
sixty kilometers acts like a galactic clock or maybe a
galactic odometer. See objects in the galaxy don't usually start
out that fast. They get sped up over time gravitational kicks.
They fly in your massive stars, drift through dense nebulae,
interact with other things over billions of years each which
close pass can give them a little gravitational nudge a
boost in speed.
Speaker 1: So the longer something's been wandering the galaxy, the more
kicks it's likely received, the faster it's probably going exactly.
Speaker 2: It's statistical, of course, but generally higher speeds imply older origins.
The objects have had more time to get bounced around
the galactic pinball machine.
Speaker 1: Okay, So applying that logic to three i atlas's speed,
how old might it be?
Speaker 2: The calculations based on galactic dynamics suggests it likely came
from a star system or population of stars that formed
maybe seven to ten billion years ago.
Speaker 1: Seven to ten billion yep. But our sun is only
four point six billion years old precisely.
Speaker 2: This object could be debris from a star system that
was born, lived, and maybe even died long before our
own sun and planets even started to coalesce.
Speaker 1: It could be older than the Earth, significantly older.
Speaker 2: Potentially, it might have formed when the Milky Way itself
looked quite different. It's a relic from galactic deep time. C.
Twenty twenty five V one travels eight thousand years human history.
Three ia lefts might have traveled for billions of years
galactic history.
Speaker 1: The difference is just staggering. Yeah, But then we bring
back the technology possibility the riddle.
Speaker 2: And if it is technology, all those age calculations based
on gravitational kicks they just evaporate. Why because the space
that doesn't need billions of years of random kicks to
get up to sixty kilometers. It could have powerful engines.
Speaker 1: So the journey time tells us nothing about its age
if it's artificial.
Speaker 2: Correct, if the senders were nearby, maybe just a few
light years away, and they had advanced propulsions, solar sales
fusion drives. Who knows. The trip could have been relatively short, decades,
maybe centuries.
Speaker 1: They might have launched it quite recently, aimed it at
us even.
Speaker 2: It's possible, or the other extreme.
Speaker 1: The cosmic archaeology scenario.
Speaker 2: Right if the senders were far away, or if they
used slow patient propulsion or just aimed it into a
region of space hoping it would eventually encounter something. It
could still be billions of years old.
Speaker 1: An ancient probe launched by a civilization that vanished.
Speaker 2: Eon ago could be Imagine designing something to survive interstellar space.
The radiation, the dust impacts for billions of years. The
material science alone would be incredible.
Speaker 1: So it could be a time capsule from before Earth existed.
Either way, natural or artificial, it carries this immense sense
of time. Is it ancient geology or ancient engineering? That's
the core question. Okay, so time is ticking, This thing
is moving fast, It's on its way out. We need answers.
Is there a key observation window coming up?
Speaker 2: There is a really important one around December nineteenth. That's
when three I aklist makes its closest approach to Earth.
How close still pretty far in everyday terms, about two
hundred and fifty million kilometers. That's significantly farther than the
Earth's sun distance.
Speaker 1: Okay, so not exactly buzzing the tower, No, definitely not.
Speaker 2: But it's close enough for their very best telescopes, the
big ones on the ground and space telescopes like Hubble
or web, if they can be pointed to get a
much better look. The data we can gather then will
be way more detailed than what we have now.
Speaker 1: And we need that detail because recent images have already
shown something weird, the jet anomaly exactly.
Speaker 2: Recent images, even though they're not super sharp yet, clearly
show jets of material streaming away from three i at lists,
not just one or two, but more than seven distinct jets.
Speaker 1: Seven jets. And how big are these things?
Speaker 2: They're not small puffs. They look like enormous elongated plumes.
The sources suggest they could be extending for millions of
kilometers out from the object.
Speaker 1: Millions of kilometers. That's visualize that. That's like multiple times
the distance to the Moon just streaming off this thing.
Speaker 2: It's visually stunning, yeah, like massive contrails in space. And
this immediately brings our two main hypotheses head to head.
Speaker 1: Okay, Hypothesis one the natural explanation, that's.
Speaker 2: The default for anything with a tail or jets. It's
a comet. These jets are just pockets of ice trapped
inside the rock, water, ice, CO two, ice, whatever.
Speaker 1: And the sun heats them up right.
Speaker 2: As it gets closer to the sun, the ice gets
warm enough to sublimate, turns straight from solid eyes into gas.
That gas bursts out, creating a jet. It's natural outgas set.
Speaker 1: Okay, standard comet behavior basically.
Speaker 2: But hypothesis too. Hypothesis two says these aren't random ice vents,
they're technological. They're thrusters on a spacecraft, maybe for attitude control,
maybe for slight course corrections, maybe remnants of its main drive.
Speaker 1: Engineered propulsion, not natural venting.
Speaker 2: That's the idea. And this is where we can move
from just looking to actually measuring something decisive.
Speaker 1: Okay, this is crucial. How do we tell the difference
sunwarmed ice versus an advanced alien engine? What's the key measurement?
Speaker 2: It comes down to the speed of the gas and
the jets, the expulsion velocity.
Speaker 1: How fast is the stuff coming out?
Speaker 2: Exactly? Natural sublimation driven just by sunlight warming ice creates
pretty slow jets relatively speaking, We're talking maybe a few
hundred meters per second, perhaps up to one or two
kilometers per second for really volatile stuff. Still quite slow cosmically.
Speaker 1: Okay, slow for natural jets. What about technology?
Speaker 2: Technological thrusters, especially anything advanced enough for inter dollar travel,
ion drives, plasma engines, maybe even something more exotic. They
work by throwing propelling out really fast. That's how you
get thrust efficiently.
Speaker 1: So much higher speeds, Oh yeah.
Speaker 2: We'd expect speeds of tens, maybe even hundreds of kilometers
per second. There's a huge, unmistakable difference in velocity between
gentle ice sublimation and engineered rocket exhaust.
Speaker 1: So the test on December nineteenth is basically measure the
speed of the gas in those jets. If it's slow,
say five hundred meters per second.
Speaker 2: It's behaving like a commet natural explanation hole.
Speaker 1: But if it's fast, say twenty kilometers per.
Speaker 2: Second, then we're very likely looking at technology. That speed
is incredibly hard, probably impossible to explain with just sublimating ice.
Speaker 1: That feels like a very clean, decisive test. How do
they measure that?
Speaker 2: Speed from so far away spectroscopy. They'll look at the
light coming from the gas and the jets and spread
it out into a spectrum like a rainbow. Okay, gas
is absorbed and emit light at very specific frequence, creating
lines in the spectrum. If the gas is moving towards
us or away from us, those lines get shifted slightly.
It's the Doppler effect.
Speaker 1: Like the sound of an ambulance siren changing pitch.
Speaker 2: Exactly the same principle, but with light. Measuring how much
those spectral lines are shifted blue shifted if moving towards us,
red shifted if moving away. Tells you the velocity directly.
Speaker 1: That's brilliant. So we should have a pretty definitive answer
soon after those December observations.
Speaker 2: Hopefully, Yes, that's the plant.
Speaker 1: Okay. Before we move on, we have to quickly touch
on the scary part mentioned in the sources. This existential
threat thing three iolas is passing safely, we know that,
but if something this size.
Speaker 2: Hit earth, Yeah, the sources are clear an impact from
an object like three ee lass, assuming it's fairly solid
and maybe a kilometer or so across, would be catasophic,
utterly devastating.
Speaker 1: On what scale?
Speaker 2: Think chicks a lub. The impact that wiped out the
dinosaurs sixty six million years ago.
Speaker 1: That was an asteroid roughly the size of Manhattan right now.
Speaker 2: Around that size, yeah, maybe ten kilometers cross. The energy
released was like billions of atomic bombs. It caused global earthquakes,
tsunamis miles high, and threw so much dust and soot
into the atmosphere.
Speaker 1: Impact winter, blocked sunlight, collapse food.
Speaker 2: Chains, exactly a mass extinction event. If three IIL has
hit us, we'd be looking at something very similar, potentially
the end of civilization, maybe even humanity.
Speaker 1: Sobering stuff. A good reminder why tracking these things, even
the ones passing by, is so critical. But again, to
be clear, three ILIES is passing safely at two hundred
and fifty million kilometers.
Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely no threat from this particular object.
Speaker 1: Okay, this whole discussion feels like these interstellar visitors are
incredibly rare events, but the science, the modeling, suggests maybe
they're not. This brings us to the quadrillion calculation. That
number just sounds insane.
Speaker 2: It does sound insane, but it comes from pretty straightforward geometry. Actually,
the key is realizing how small our detection zone is.
Speaker 1: What do you mean?
Speaker 2: We really only see these things when they come into
the inner Solar system them roughly inside Earth's orbit. That's
where the sun lights them up enough, and where our
telescopes are mostly looking.
Speaker 1: Okay, a small detection bubble.
Speaker 2: Tiny compared to the whole Solar system out to the
Ork Cloud, which stretches out one hundred thousand times farther.
So the physics models look at how often we see
something like three I eight less pop into our little
detection bubble. Then they ask, based on that rate, how
many must be drifting through the entire volume of the
Solar system at any given time, And the answer is
a quadrillion. That's one followed by fifteen zeros. For everyone
we see near Earth, there are likely a quadrillion similar
objects currently within the boundaries of the Ork Cloud.
Speaker 1: A quadrillion? Yeah, how how is that possible? What drives
that number?
Speaker 2: It's the simple brutal math of volume volume scales with
the cube of the radius. Our detection zone is like
a tiny ball bearing inside a sphere with a radius
one hundred thousand times larger.
Speaker 1: You take that distance factor one hundred thousand.
Speaker 2: And you cube it one hundred thousand, one hundred thousand
times one hundred thousand. That gives you one hundred and
fifteen a quadrillion. The vast emptiness beyond Neptune is just
astronomically larger than the space where we can actually see
these things easily.
Speaker 1: So the Solar System is just constantly full of unseen
interstellar traffic.
Speaker 2: That's what the number implies. A quadrillion rocks, bits of ice,
and maybe other things are out there right now, mostly
invisible to us.
Speaker 1: That changes everything. It means stuff moving between stars isn't rare,
it's the norm. The galaxy must be constantly exchanging material.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. It has huge implications for panspermia, life spreading on meteorites,
for how heavy elements get distributed. The galaxy is a
giant mixing bowl, which.
Speaker 1: Brings us back to that nagging problem scientific bias. If
there are potentially quadrillions of these things out there, some natural,
maybe some artificial, why is it so hard to get
scientists to seriously consider the technology angle.
Speaker 2: It's a real challenge, and it often comes down to well,
how science works specialization. The sources use a great analogy
in AI system imagine you train an AI only on
data about commets, pictures of comets orbits of commets, spectra
of commets, nothing else. Then you show it three iedls.
What's it going to say.
Speaker 1: It's going to say commet. That's all it knows exactly.
Speaker 2: It's training data limits its conclusions. Comet experts, in a way,
can be like that AI. They've spent their careers studying
natural objects, so their default, their framework is to assume
everything is a natural object.
Speaker 1: Their expertise becomes a kind of blinder.
Speaker 2: It can. But here's the thing. That bias isn't really
sustainable anymore, because we have already put technological objects into
interstellar space. Voyager one in two.
Speaker 1: They're out there.
Speaker 2: So if some alien astronomers detected Voyager one, they'd be
wrong to just assume it must be a weirdly shaped rock.
They'd have to consider technology. So why shouldn't we do
the same when something comes visiting us? We need to
expand our training data to include the possibility of technology.
Speaker 1: Okay, but let me play Devil's advocate again. If historically
ninety nine point nine percent of things we've seen our
natural commets or asteroids isn't it just efficient and practical
to assume. The next one is too, Why spend precious
telescope time and grant money chasing a tiny, tiny possibility
resources are limited.
Speaker 2: That's a perfectly fair question from a purely academic probability standpoint,
But this is where the perspective shifts, especially when you
think about government or say, intelligence agencies. So they don't
operate just on probability. They operate on risk assessment. They
have to take low probability high impact events seriously.
Speaker 1: Like a terrorist attack or a pandemic, or maybe an
alien spacecraft.
Speaker 2: Precisely, the consequences of it being technology are so enormous,
potentially civilization altering, that you can't ignore it just because
the probability seems low.
Speaker 1: So even if it's a one in a million chance,
the million part is so huge you have to check.
Speaker 2: You absolutely have to check. You gather the maximum possible
data to be sure you confirm it's just a rock.
You don't assume the cost of being wrong, of missing
it is potentially infinite. That risk assessment logic is why
we can't just dismiss the technological hypothesis out of hand, which.
Speaker 1: Makes the next part of this story even more infuriating
the real world example of bureaucracy getting in the way
of gathering that exact data. The NASA shut down issue.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that was incredibly frustrating for everyone involved. So
the high rise camera on the Mars Orconnaissance Orbiter MRO
actually got an image of three ILS high rise.
Speaker 1: Is that super sharp camera usually looking at Mars right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, amazing resolution. But here's the catch. The sources clarify
three ILS was two hundred and fifty million kilometers away.
Even for high rise at that distance, the object was
probably just a pixel or maybe a tiny blob a
few pixels across. The resolution wasn't like seeing surface features.
Speaker 1: Oh it wasn't a sharp image in that sense. Then
why was it so important?
Speaker 2: Because even a few pixels tell you things. It helps
absolutely nail down the object's precise position, which is critical
for aiming other more sensitive telescopes later. It could maybe
hint at the shape. Is it perfectly round or elongated?
Is it tumbling? That basic data helps plan the crucial
follow up observations.
Speaker 1: Okay, so vital preliminary data. An MRO took this image
when October.
Speaker 2: Three, which happened to be just two days after a
US government shutdown began, and because of the inflexible rules
about shutdowns, non essential workstops systems might be locked down.
NASA stated they were unable to process and release that
high rise data.
Speaker 1: So the data, the potentially crucial pointing data for telescopes
around the world trying to observe this unique object, was
stuck on a server somewhere because of paperwork.
Speaker 2: Essentially yes held hostage by administrative procedure. Scientists needed that
data now to refine their plans for the December close approach.
Waiting ricks or months makes a huge difference when your
target is moving fast and observation windows are short.
Speaker 1: It actively hampered.
Speaker 2: The science absolutely. It delayed planning, wasted precious time, potentially
compromised the quality of future observations. As the source put it,
bureaucracies should serve science, not apotage it. It was a
perfect example of inflexible rules hindering our ability to answer
one of the biggest questions we could possibly ask.
Speaker 1: Okay, so the frustration with bias, the urgency of these visitors,
it hasn't just led to complaining, it's actually starked action.
There are now dedicated projects trying to scientifically hunt for
non human technology. The most prominent is the Galileo Project.
Speaker 2: What got that started, it was really a direct response
to all those official government reports we started hearing about
a few years ago, you know, the Pentagon intelligence agencies
finally briefing Congress openly about UFOs or UAPs as they.
Speaker 1: Call them now, unidentified aerial phenomena. Right.
Speaker 2: The fact that these briefings were happening, that the government
was admitting there were things in our skies they couldn't identify,
forced everyone to confront two main possibilities.
Speaker 1: Possibility one national security threat exactly.
Speaker 2: Maybe these UAPs are super advanced drones or aircraft built
by Russia or China or someone else. If that's true,
it's deeply worrying. The US spends almost a trillion dollars
a year on defense, and yet there are objects flying
with impunity in restricted airspace that they can't identify. That
suggests a massive intelligence failure or a terrifying technological leap
by an adversary.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's the defense angle. But the other interpretation, that's.
Speaker 2: The one that really drives the science and the Galileo
project interpretation too. These things are not human made. They
come from somewhere else, extraterrestrial, non human intelligence.
Speaker 1: Eight. If that's true, then.
Speaker 2: As the source says, it's instantly the single most important
discovery humanity is ever made. Period. It changes everything about
our place in the universe.
Speaker 1: So the Galileo Project was set up to tackle that
question head on, using actual science.
Speaker 2: Precisely, to move beyond blurry photos and anecdotal accounts and
bring rigorous, systematic scientific methods to identifying these UAPs.
Speaker 1: How are they actually doing that. What's the practical work?
Speaker 2: It's multi pronged. First, they're building their own observatories. They
have three running now. I believe these aren't looking at
distant stars. Their point at our own sky two hundred
and forty.
Speaker 1: Seven, constantly watching for anything unusual.
Speaker 2: The goal is to monitor millions of objects every year.
And these observatories aren't just simple cameras. They're packed with
sensors like what hyras optical cameras, sure, but also infrared
cameras to see heat signatures, radar to get precise speed,
distance and acceleration data, radio sensors to listen for any
signals they want. Data across the electromagnetic spectrum all gathered
simultaneously on the same object.
Speaker 1: That must generate a mountain of data. How do they
find the needle in the haystack, the truly weird stuff
among all the planes, birds, satellites, weather balloons.
Speaker 2: Machine learning, sophisticated software sifts through the data flood. It's
been trained to recognize the signatures of all the known
mundane stuff.
Speaker 1: So it filters out the noise.
Speaker 2: Exactly, and it's specifically looking for flight characteristics that just
don't match human technology. Things like extreme acceleration, pulling g
forces that would crush a pilot or tear part in aircraft,
sun changes in direction that seemed to defy inertia, or
maybe moving seamlessly between air and water, trans medium travel.
Speaker 1: Stuff that seems to break our known physics or engineering limits.
Speaker 2: That's the target signature physics we don't understand yet, or
engineering afar beyond ours. But they're not just looking up,
they're also looking down, even under the ocean.
Speaker 1: Ah, this is the Interstellar Meteor expedition. Tell us about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this was fascinating. Back in twenty fourteen, a meteor
hit the Earth, burning up over the Pacific Ocean. Years later,
trajectory data analyzed by US Space Command confirmed something amazing.
This meteor came from outside the Solar System.
Speaker 1: It was interstellar, the first known interstellar object to actually
hit Earth.
Speaker 2: Verified interstellar object. Yes, So the Galilea project team mounted
an expedition. They went to the likely impact zone off
the coast of Papla, New.
Speaker 1: Guinea to do what find pieces exactly?
Speaker 2: They used powerful magnets on a sled, dragging it across
the ocean floor, trying to pick up tiny metallic spherules.
These are like millimia sized droplets that formed when the
meteor vaporized in the atmosphere and then rained down like.
Speaker 1: Tiny fragments of the original object. Must have been like
finding needles in an underwater haystack.
Speaker 2: Incredibly difficult. Yeah, filtering tiny magnetic beads from tons of
volcanic ocean sediment.
Speaker 1: And why collect these specific fragments? What are they looking for?
Speaker 2: They're analyzing the composition isotopically shows trace elements. They want
to see if the material looks like typical Solar System stuff,
or if it has anomalies, maybe unusual element ratios, or
perhaps evidence of alloys or materials far stronger than natural iron, nickel, meteorites.
Speaker 1: Looking for signs that it wasn't just a rock, but
maybe a piece of tech, a tiny probe that hit us.
Speaker 2: That's the ultimate question they're asking with those samples. Could
this interstellar visitor have been artificial?
Speaker 1: Wow? So they're scanning the skies and dredging the ocean floor.
That's serious commitment.
Speaker 2: What drives that, the sources mentioned, the core motivation is
just fundamental curiosity, that childhood curiosities. They put it, desire
to know what's out there? Are we alone? It's the
biggest detective story imaginable, and.
Speaker 1: There's a reward beyond just the data, apparently, something about
inspiring people. Yeah.
Speaker 2: The project lead mentioned getting emails from parents saying that
following this real life science mystery, this search for answers
about UAPs and interstellar objects, has gotten their kids, particularly daughters,
excited about science, wanting to become scientists themselves.
Speaker 1: So this cosmic detective work, it actually connects back and
inspires the next generation.
Speaker 2: It seems. So it shows that there are still huge
fundamental questions out there to be explored, and science is
the tool to do it. Hashtag tag outro okay.
Speaker 1: So wrapping this deep dive up. What are the big
takeaways for you the listener. We've gone from the sheer
speed of three Alis, defining it as interstellar.
Speaker 2: To that mind blowing quadrillion number, the idea that our
Solar system is likely teeming with unseen visitors, constantly mixing
the galactic neighborhood we've seen.
Speaker 1: There's a clear decisive test coming soon for three iaglist's
je that measurement of gas speed around December nineteenth. It
could tell us definitively if it's natural or technological, right.
Speaker 2: Comet or spacecraft. The velocity holds the key.
Speaker 1: And we've really wrestled with this issue of scientific bias,
the need to broaden our thinking, to accept the technology
as part of the possible data set now because we
ourselves have put it out there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, challenging that it must be a rock default.
Speaker 1: Which leads to maybe the most profound point. Let's say
the measurement comes back technology. Why should we actually welcome that?
Why is that a good thing for humanity?
Speaker 2: Well, the argument is humanity could really use a bose
of cosmic modesty.
Speaker 1: Cosmic modesty.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we tend to think for the peak, the pinnacle
of intelligence, the center of everything, important discovering we're not alone,
that there are siblings out there among the stars.
Speaker 1: That's humbling, and maybe discovering that some of those siblings are,
as the source puts it, far more accomplished than us.
Speaker 2: That's the ultimate humility lesson, isn't it. It would instantly
shift our perspective. We stop being the smartest kids in
the classes. Maybe we realize we're just starting kindergarten.
Speaker 1: We become the student at the teacher exactly.
Speaker 2: And that's an incredible opportunity, a chance to learn, to
see what's possible, to maybe figure out how to solve
some of our own problems by seeing how others might
have done it. It's not necessarily a threat. It's a
potential education on a cosmic scale.
Speaker 1: A chance to learn from a smarter student. I like that.
But this whole journey figuring out three I at lasts
searching for UAPs, it's happening right now, but it's bumping
up against these very human failings like bureaucracy.
Speaker 2: It's the ultimate irony, isn't it. We have the technology,
the scientific method to potentially make the biggest discovery ever.
We can measure gas beads across hundreds of millions of kilometers.
Speaker 1: We can aim telescopes with incredible precision.
Speaker 2: But then crucial data gets locked away because of a
government shutdown, rule, human systems, human inflexibility getting in the
way of understanding the universe.
Speaker 1: So the final thought maybe is, if we really are
looking for siblings among the stars, if the evidence might
be flying past us right now at sixty kilometers a.
Speaker 2: Second, how much vital information are we missing or actively
blocking ourselves from getting through our own biases, our own
rigid systems. Could we be standing in our own way
preventing ourselves from making that ultimate discovery?
Speaker 1: Are the biggest hurdles not out there in space but
right here in how we operate. A pretty challenging thought
to end on as we wait for those December results.
Speaker 2: Definitely something to think about.
Speaker 1: That was the deep dive. Thanks for joining us, We'll
see you next time.