Speaker 1: Welcome to Thrilling Threads. This is the show where we
take the sources you're curious about, the articles, the videos,
the research, and we really just pull apart the key
threads for you.
Speaker 2: We do. We give you that shortcut to being the
most informed person in the room on some pretty complex topics.
Speaker 1: And today we are embarking on well, a fascinating journey.
It really crosses billions of kilometers.
Speaker 2: It does. It connects this mysterious visitor from deep space
with the very opaque world of government secrecy right here
on earth.
Speaker 1: This is really a story about where cutting edge astrophysics
just runs headlong into skepticism and accusations of a cover up.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, the source material you provided for US centers on
are recent and i'd say highly charged discussion with doctor
Auvi Loob.
Speaker 1: The Harvard astrophysicist. Yeah, this was from an interview on
the Newsmax YouTube channel, right, and.
Speaker 2: It's explosive because doctor Lobe is you know, he's connecting
three very distinct but as you said, suspiciously overlapping threads
of miss.
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's lay them out. What are the three
interlocking phenomena we're pulling apart today?
Speaker 2: First, we have the highly anticipated flyby of a comet
CE twenty twenty three, A three, A potentially spectacular one,
but it also has some really unusual characteristics.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's thread one, the comet.
Speaker 2: Thread two is the sudden loss of a critical NASA spacecraft,
the FN probe, a probe that has been working for
a decade, and it goes silent moments after observing that
very commet a.
Speaker 1: Decade first failure. Right. And the third thread, the.
Speaker 2: Third thread brings it all home. It's the ongoing high
stakes debate over UAP's unidentified aerial phenomena and the huge
tension between scientific curiosity and official disclosure, especially when you.
Speaker 1: Get figures like Elon Musk and the Director of National
Intelligence involved exactly.
Speaker 2: So, our mission here is to unpack the controversial questions
that doctor lowbraises. We're going to take his specific scientific
observations pulled directly from that discussion and put them in
full context for you.
Speaker 1: You want to help you understand why these separate incidents
are fueling such serious concerns about well about information control.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's unpack this before we.
Speaker 1: Get into the comments in spacecraft. We really need to
understand our guide here, doctor Avi Lobe. He's not exactly
someone who's accustomed to just going along with the consensus,
not at all.
Speaker 2: He's a prominent Harvard professor Suore, but he's really carved
out this unique identity by being willing to challenge the
scientific establishment.
Speaker 1: The interviewer put it perfectly, he's someone who has determined
not to go quietly into the night right.
Speaker 2: I mean his willingness to entertain hypotheses that others just
dismiss as science fiction.
Speaker 1: Like Umua being an alien solar sale exactly.
Speaker 2: That makes him the ideal lens to view these anomalies through.
His profile adds this massive amount of credibility to the discussion.
Speaker 1: It does because when he suggests that an anomaly might
be technological, it's not based on rumor or blurry photos.
It's based on physics. It's based on observation.
Speaker 2: And he's been tracking this commet C twenty twenty three
A three since July, so his analysis is grounded in
months of dedicated data collection.
Speaker 1: So you've got this pairing of real scientific rigor with
a healthy skepticism of institutional secrecy. That's the key.
Speaker 2: He's not just a scientist, he's more of an investigator,
and he forces us all to ask what data is
really being gathered and what motivations might exist for some
agencies to potentially withhold or even suppress what they find.
Speaker 1: That really sets the stage for our first massive thread.
So let's start with the spectacular astronomical event itself, the
Comet of the Century c. Twenty twenty three A three,
also known as at LA's.
Speaker 2: Doctor Loeb's interview was timed so perfectly to draw attention
to this. He noted at the time that the count
was down to just eight days until the comment made
its closest passage to Earth.
Speaker 1: Okay, so that puts the prime onservation window right on
December nineteenth. And we need to be clear, this wasn't
just some faint smudge in the sky.
Speaker 2: No, not at all. This it was anticipated to be
a really spectacular viewing opportunity, potentially even a naked eye comet,
which is rare because of.
Speaker 1: Its size and its trajectory. So this meant naturally that
every major observatory on the planet was prioritizing it. They
were all pointing their telescopes at it, and.
Speaker 2: That date, December nineteenth, it offered what doctor Lobe called
a truly fortunate coincidence for all of those observers.
Speaker 1: The alignment was just perfect perfect.
Speaker 2: The comet was at its closest to Earth, but the
new moon also happened on that very same night.
Speaker 1: Okay, So help us visualize that. Why is a new
moon so critical for professional astronomers when they're looking at
a faint, distant object like a comet.
Speaker 2: Well, it all comes down to light pollution, but not
the kind from cities. It's from our own moon, right.
A new moon means the mood is basically between the
Earth and the Sun, so we see none of its
illuminated face from our perspective.
Speaker 1: The sky is moonless, which means no moonlight washing everything.
Speaker 2: Out exactly, no moonlight contaminating the atmosphere. So if you're
trying to take a picture, sure, or you do a
spectroscopic analysis of a faint comment, you need the absolute
darkest background you can get, so.
Speaker 1: You're getting the purest, cleanest possible view of the comet's tail.
It's coma all of its activity without our bright neighbor
getting in the.
Speaker 2: Way, precisely, and this is where doctor Lobe introduces his
first major check on any kind of government secrecy narrative.
Speaker 1: Because it would be almost impossible to hide anything, right.
Speaker 2: He noted that even if NASA or any single national
agency wanted to say delay or lie about the data,
they couldn't because the observation is, in his words, not
up to NASA.
Speaker 1: It's a distributed scientific effort. We're talking about hundreds of
observatories around the globe, all looking at the same object
at the same time.
Speaker 2: It's not some proprietary deep space probe that only one
country has access to. This is a public celestial event.
Speaker 1: And he specifically mentioned some of the big guns that
would be getting data he did.
Speaker 2: He cited the web telescope and the Hubble Telescope, plus
countless others across dozens of nations. The sheer volume of
instruments and the global networked nature of modern astronomy means
that if something truly anomalous is captured, it's.
Speaker 1: Pretty unlikely that one organization could effectively suppress all of it.
Speaker 2: It would be next to impossible. The data streams serve
as a kind of mutual check against any localized secrecy.
Speaker 1: But the real question here is why is doctor Loebes
so focused on this particular commet what's he hoping to
learn that goes beyond just tracking its orbit.
Speaker 2: It's not just about its path, it's about understanding the
physics of its activity. He's looking for data that can
settle a really profound question.
Speaker 1: Like, yes, is this just a big, normal icy comet?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Or is it behaving in a way that suggests something
not natural?
Speaker 2: Exactly? And he specified two crucial pieces of information that
he needs to answer that question.
Speaker 1: What were they?
Speaker 2: First the speed of the gas in the jets that
they're observing around the comet, and second, the actual chemical
composition of those jets, what are they made of?
Speaker 1: And this focus is really driven by the fact that
Common Atlas is showing something very unusual, something that kind
of defies the common model.
Speaker 2: It's presenting an anomalous jet activity. He detailed that one
of the jets of gas and dust is oriented towards
the sun.
Speaker 1: Towards the sun.
Speaker 2: Yeah. He described this as very surprising and said it's
not seen that very often.
Speaker 1: Okay, help us understand that. Why does a sun facing
jet just fundamentally contradict the standard model for how comets work?
Speaker 2: Well, the standard model is all driven by pretty simple
thermodynamics and solar radiation pressure. As the comet gets close
to the Sun, the heat causes ices on its surface, water,
carbon dioxide, stuff like that to sublimate. That means it
turns directly from solid ice into.
Speaker 1: Gas, and that gas blasts off the nucleus, creating the jet.
Speaker 2: Correct But that gas and all the dust it drags
along with it is immediately hit by this immense force
from the Sun, the solar wind and radiation pressure.
Speaker 1: Which means the tail and all that material should always
always be pushed away from the Sun, no matter which
way the comet itself is traveling.
Speaker 2: Always that's the rule. So for a jet to be
oriented towards the Sun, well, the material being ejected must
have such an incredibly high velocity that its own thrust
and momentum can overcome that immense.
Speaker 1: Pressure from the Sun you're talking about fighting as the
solar wind.
Speaker 2: It's essentially trying to fly into a continuous hurricane of
charged particles streaming away from the Sun. It takes an
incredible amount of force.
Speaker 1: So we need that data, the speed and the composition
to figure out where that incredible force is coming from.
Speaker 2: And this brings us right to the binary hypothesis. The
two potential conclusions that doctor Lobe suggested.
Speaker 1: Okay, what's the first one, the natural explanation.
Speaker 2: The first is the standard model explanation. It suggests that
the jets are caused by these highly pressurized pockets of ice,
maybe supervolatiles like frozen nitrogen, buried deep inside the comet.
Speaker 1: So when these pockets finally get exposed to sunlight.
Speaker 2: They sublimate so violently that the force of the ejection
momentarily overcomes the solar pressure, causing this really surprising sun
facing jet. It's possible, but it would have to be
an extremely energetic event.
Speaker 1: Okay, so that's possibility one, and then usually violent natural event.
What's the second conclusion, the one that really gets your attention.
Speaker 2: The second is what he calls the technological model, the
possibility that this anomalous activity comes from something.
Speaker 1: Artificial, specifically technological thrusters.
Speaker 2: Yes, and this is where it gets really interesting, because
if the speed of that ejected material is found to
be way too high for any known sublimation rates, or
if the composition of the jet is say metallic, or
involves specific compounds that don't fit with commet geology.
Speaker 1: Then the whole hypothesis has to shift completely.
Speaker 2: Doctor Love is basically asking, is this incredible velocity the
result of some extraordinary natural physics we haven't seen before,
or is it the operation of some kind of propulsion system, And.
Speaker 1: Given his past work on umabua, he's basically demanding that
the scientific rigorously test for that technological possibility instead of
just dismissing it out of hand. When the National explanation
starts to look a little shaky.
Speaker 2: And the data from December nineteenth and the follow up
analysis the speed and the material, that's what holds the
key to ruling one of these options out.
Speaker 1: It's an extraordinary test case. It's conventional physics versus potentially extraordinary,
maybe artificial technology. And it's this very possibility that throws
the fate of our next subject into such sharp relief.
Speaker 2: And now we have to shift from the comets destination
to the asset that was actually monitoring it. We have
to talk about the AVEN spacecraft.
Speaker 1: AVEN, which stands for Mar's Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution.
Speaker 2: And it is an absolute workhorse. It was launched back
in twenty thirteen, got into Mars orbit in twenty fourteen
and has been operating flawlessly for a decade.
Speaker 1: A decade circling Wares studying its upper atmosphere. This is
crucial context. This isn't some new, faulty prototype, not at all.
Speaker 2: This is a stable, mission critical probe. It has years
and years of data processing and communication protocols under its belt.
It knows what it's doing, and.
Speaker 1: That stability is what makes the incident in question so bizarre.
Speaker 2: We really need to detail the exact sequence of events
that led to this sudden loss of communication as it
was laid out in the source.
Speaker 1: Okay, so it starts with a totally routine orbital maneuver.
M AV goes behind Mars.
Speaker 2: An event astronomers call occultation. Basically, the planet blocks the
line of sight between the spacecraft and Earth, so communication stops.
This is normal, it happens all the time, right, But.
Speaker 1: When the spacecraft was expected to come out from behind
Mars pre emerged.
Speaker 2: There was no contact, no signal, just nothing silence. For
a craft that has done this hundreds of times over
ten years, this is deeply, deeply troubling.
Speaker 1: Doctor Loeb confirmed it right. This is the first time
in an entire decade that NASA has suddenly lost contact
upon re emergence.
Speaker 2: Yes, a failure right after ocultation suggests some kind of
immediate catastrophic damage, either to its power system or crucially
to its communication dish, something that would prevent it from
even trying to re establish a link with the Deep
Space Network on Earth.
Speaker 1: And NASA's official line at the time of the interview
was that they were actively trying to figure out what
to do.
Speaker 2: About it, which implies they hadn't given up hope, but
it also confirms the severity of this unprecedented blackout.
Speaker 1: But you know, the failure of an old satellite on
its own isn't necessarily a huge conspiracy. It's the timing
that's so suspicious.
Speaker 2: It's all about the timing. The connection to commet at
tells Maven wasn't just observing Mars. It had a front
row seat to the comet's close flyby exactly.
Speaker 1: The source material really emphasizes that the last valuable scientific
data we got from Maven was specifically tied to the
passage of this comet C twenty twenty three A three.
Speaker 2: That flyby happened on October second, about two months before
the interview. The comet passed within thirty million kilometers of.
Speaker 1: Mars, which sounds like a lot, but in Solar system.
Speaker 2: Terms, it's extremely close, well within range for Avon's sophisticated
and means to analyze the comet's extended atmosphere.
Speaker 1: It's coma, and we have to remember what AVAN is
designed for. It's meant to study atmospheric evolution and volatiles.
Speaker 2: So it's instruments like the imaging ultraviolet spectrograph or the
neutral gas and ion mass spectrometer. They would have been
perfectly calibrated to sniff the volatile gases of that comet's
coma as it passed.
Speaker 1: By Mars, so we know it should have been watching.
Did it get any data back?
Speaker 2: Yes, and doctor Loeb confirmed this. He said AVAN not
only theoretically should have taken photos of atils, but it
did already, and we saw some data from it at
a recent NASA press.
Speaker 1: Conference, so we know was observed. We know at least
some preliminary data made it back to Earth.
Speaker 2: Right, but all the rest of the expected data, that's
where we have a data black hole.
Speaker 1: The sudden failure of maeven means any further high resolution imaging,
detailed spectroscopic analysis, any sustained calmetry related to the comets activity.
It's all potentially lost forever.
Speaker 2: And that's what is so fascinating here. You have this
perfect storm. A ten year veteran spacecraft suddenly suffers a catastrophic.
Speaker 1: Failure right after gathering potentially paradigm shifting data on a comment.
Speaker 2: That is already exhibiting anomaloust behavior that sunfacing jet. The
coincidence is just it's too potent to just dismiss out
of hand.
Speaker 1: It's the correlation that really feeds the skepticism. H I mean,
think about it. If the data from Maven strongly favored
the technological thrusters hypothesis, or even.
Speaker 2: Just showed weird structures that were hard to classify, the.
Speaker 1: Government would suddenly be in possession of evidence that shifts
this whole narrative from an astronomical curiosity to a matter
of intelligence.
Speaker 2: And the interviewer in the source material they didn't hold
back at all. They directly suggested that NASA's claim that
Mavin is gone is just a very expedient way to
make sure they can't release those photos publicly.
Speaker 1: The failure becomes the ultimate form of plausible deniability. Sorry,
we'd love to show you, but the probe is dead
exactly now.
Speaker 2: From a purely technical perspective, a failure if your occultation
could just be random a component finally gave out after
a decade.
Speaker 1: Sure, that's possible.
Speaker 2: But from a critical thinking perspective, why would a government
agency responsible for national security prefer a suspicious technical explanation
over releasing inconclusive or highly controversial data.
Speaker 1: Because transparency in context like this could be seen as
a threat multiplier.
Speaker 2: That's the heart of it. If the data showed non
natural activity, especially from technology we don't understand, the immediate
reaction of the entire intelligence community is to classify it.
Of course, if the truth is just too world chattering,
or if it suggests a non terrestrial presence, the default
bureaucratic reaction is always to control the narrative until they
can figure out the implications themselves. The Loss probe story
is just so much cleaner than a public debate about
alien technology.
Speaker 1: So the possibility is that Maven's instruments might have captured
something something that could be interpreted as evidence of exotic
technology near Mars, And it's a finding that the scientific
establishment in the intelligence community are just fundamentally unprepared.
Speaker 2: To release, and that suspicion it naturally deepens when we
look at the official discussions around UAPs right here in
our own atmosphere.
Speaker 1: This is where the conversation makes that sharp transition, right
It links the possible withholding of deep space data from
Maven to this very real, very terrestrial problem of UAPs
and government transparency.
Speaker 2: It does, and the interviewer brought up Elon Musk. He's
this central figure who has immense government contracts with SpaceX,
and he really sits at the nexus of private innovation
and classified aerospace programs.
Speaker 1: And Musk recently commented on UAPs during a podcast, and
his stance was, well, it was one of complete.
Speaker 2: Dismissal, utter dismissal. He claimed, unequivocally, I've seen no evidence
of aliens. And then he just simplified the entire UAP
debate by saying a UFO is just an unidentified flying object.
Speaker 1: And his explanation for what these things actually are was
completely conventional totally.
Speaker 2: He suggested there most likely a new weapons program or
some hypersonic missile or something like that. His final conclusion
was that they're just basically some weapons prototype. It's not
like aliens.
Speaker 1: That's a very powerful, very authoritative statement from someone in
his position, and if you accept it, it just it
shifts the entire mystery.
Speaker 2: It suggests there is no mystery, it's just human secrecy.
The UAP debate, in Musk's view, is simply a defense
intelligence concern. It's either a US black project or you know,
a secret platform from a foreign adversary.
Speaker 1: But both the interviewer and doctor Love immediately jumped on
that with a lot of skepticism.
Speaker 2: He did, it's just hard to imagine someone running SpaceX
with all its classified government launches and deep aerospace partnerships,
being genuinely excluded from all knowledge if these things were
purely domestic US prototypes.
Speaker 1: Right, So the question is, is Musk minimizing the phenomena
to protect his governmental relationships and keep those contracts, or.
Speaker 2: Does he genuinely not know because the phenomena are actually
outside the per view of the military industrial complex that
he operates in.
Speaker 1: And this is where doctor Lowe offered a really critical,
evidence based counterpoint that just fundamentally undermines that idea that
these UAPs are just our own secret prototypes.
Speaker 2: He invoked the official testimony from the highest levels of
US intelligence the Director of National Intelligence, the DNI.
Speaker 1: The DNI who is supposed to have total visibility across
the entire intelligence community.
Speaker 2: And this DNI has delivered, he says, more than three
reports to the US Congress in recent years publicly detailing
the UAP issue, and.
Speaker 1: The content of those reports. That is the critical piece
of evidence here.
Speaker 2: It is the dn I basically testify that there are
objects in the guy that we don't fully understand. The
language they use is always that they don't have enough
data to figure out their nature.
Speaker 1: Let's just pause and think about the weight of that statement.
The Director of National Intelligence is not reporting on things
they know but can't disclose.
Speaker 2: No, they are reporting that things exist in our most
highly controlled, sensitive airspace that they cannot classify because they
don't understand them. It is a public admission of an
intelligence failure on a basic identification level.
Speaker 1: And this brings us to doctor Loeb's critical deduction. Yeah,
it's this beautiful piece of logic that really separates his
analysis from just mere speculation.
Speaker 2: He says, Look, if the UAPs that the DNI is
reporting on were produced by American defense contractors like Lockheed
Martin or Northrope Grumman or were.
Speaker 1: A product of a highly classified US military program.
Speaker 2: The Director of National Intelligence would absolutely one hundred percent
know about it, and they would never ever mention it
publicly to Congress in a way that suggests they are
completely ignorant.
Speaker 1: They would say that data is classified, but they wouldn't admit,
as the head of the entire intelligence apparatus, that they
can't figure out what the object is.
Speaker 2: Precisely so, since the DNI did testify about objects that
define known classification and understanding, doctor Lowe assumes the government
has a problem, and he's very.
Speaker 1: Clear that this is a problem of national security that
is fundamentally related to external factors, not internal ones.
Speaker 2: Which means, if the objects are real and they are
not our own black projects, they have to be one
of two things, either extremely advanced platforms from a foreign adversary, or.
Speaker 1: Perhaps something truly nonterrestrial. The moment the DNI admits ignorance,
the Elon Musk hypothesis of it's just a weapons prototype
loses a significant amount of ground.
Speaker 2: And this national security problem leads doctor Lobe to a
very direct and very serious critique of the Pentagon and
defense officials.
Speaker 1: It's about transparency and resource allocation right.
Speaker 2: He argued that defense officials don't want to be scrutinized,
and he ties this directly to the absolutely staggering financial context.
Speaker 1: The US pays one trillion dollars a year on the
defense budget.
Speaker 2: A trillion dollars a year. That is a monumental amount
of money that is intended to guarantee US security and
technological superiority.
Speaker 1: So if objects are maneuvering through US airspace in ways
that defy physics as we understand it, and the D
and I is publicly admitting they can't identify them, then.
Speaker 2: The natural logical conclusion is that defense officials are not
doing their job.
Speaker 1: The implication isn't just that they're hiding things, it's that
they might be hiding incompetence.
Speaker 2: That's a huge part of it. If they cannot identify
these potential threats, whether they're foreign or something else, entirely,
it suggests that the one trillion dollar budget is being
misspent on technologies that don't provide adequate identification or defense
against these unknown phenomena, and that.
Speaker 1: Lack of performance creates a massive, massive incentive for secrecy.
Nobody wants to admit.
Speaker 2: That, so you have this deepening tension. The military requires
secrecy to protect its capabilities. That makes sense, of course,
but the public has a right to know if unknown,
potentially disruptive phenomena are operating in our skies, especially if
our multi trillion dollar defense apparatus can even tell us
what they are.
Speaker 1: And that's where the thread connecting all three sections really
becomes taught.
Speaker 2: It does. The mav In probe may have gathered data
on exis xotic propulsion from commet atls, which, if it
were released, would confirm the possibility of non conventional technology
in our solar system.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, the DNI is confirming that non conventional objects are
already operating in our skies.
Speaker 2: And the institutional gatekeepers doctor Loebe suggests, would much prefer
the status quo of secrecy over the disruptive transparency of
admitting both their technological vulnerability and their scientific uncertainty.
Speaker 1: Wow. This has truly been a thrilling threads deep dive.
I mean, we've gone from the nucleus of a comment
all the way to classified reports being delivered to Congress.
Let's try to synthesize the connections doctor Lobe has exposed
for us.
Speaker 2: Okay, First, you have the ATLS comment, it's bizarre sunfacing
jet challenges are basic models of physics, and it forces
us to seriously consider two very different.
Speaker 1: Options, extraordinary natural volatility or non conventional possibly artificial propulsion exactly.
Speaker 2: Then, second, you have the sudden decade first loss of
the may In spacecraft.
Speaker 1: Which happened immediately after it gathered valuable scientific data during
that atla's flyby near Mars. This leads to this very
legitimate suspicion the key data about the comet's weird behavior
has been conveniently silenced or suppressed.
Speaker 2: And third, you have the UAP context right here on Earth.
Doctor Loeb uses the official testimony of the Director of
National Intelligence.
Speaker 1: Who admits to objects that defy classification.
Speaker 2: To argue pretty compellingly that these phenomena cannot simply be
our own secret weapons prototypes, and this directly conflicts with
the narrative put forth by people like Elon Musk and
demands we take a much deeper look at defense spending
and accountability.
Speaker 1: It really feels like doctor Loeb's work is continually challenging
the establishment view, doesn't it, Whether that establishment is the
traditional view of how comets work or the complex machinery
of US intelligence.
Speaker 2: He forces us to consider where that boundary lies, the
boundary between phenomena that are purely natural, those that are
conventionally military, and those that are truly unknown and potentially revolutionary.
Speaker 1: His core message seems to be a reminder that we
have to pursue objective data, especially when these nominalies pop up,
and that.
Speaker 2: We have to demand ritorous accountability and transparency from the
institutions that are tasked with safeguarding both our scientific knowledge
and our national security.
Speaker 1: So what does this all mean for you as you're
listening and processing this confluence of information.
Speaker 2: I think it means we have to be highly attuned
to these moments where critical scientific discovery intersects directly with
institutional control.
Speaker 1: The pursuit of pure knowledge can so often get derailed
by what are perceived as national security risks.
Speaker 2: And that creates this constant tension over what information is
deemed safe for public consumption.
Speaker 1: So we want to leave you with this final provocative
thought to mollover, if.
Speaker 2: A major, decade long space mission like AVAN can suddenly
go dark just after gathering data on an interstellar object
that might be exhibiting artificial behavior, and.
Speaker 1: If at the same time, high ranking intelligence officials are
testify that objects exist in our own skies that defy
classification by a one trillion dollars a year defense budget.
Speaker 2: Where do you personally draw the line between pure scientific
discovery and necessary government secrecy.
Speaker 1: Is the sudden, unprecedented silence of the NAVE and probe
just an unfortunate coincidence that we have to.
Speaker 2: Accept, or is it the telltale sound of a definitive
gait slamming shut on potentially paradigm shattering knowledge.
Speaker 1: We will definitely be tracking all the data that comes
out from those global observatories about comedy TLS, and we
look forward to hearing your thoughts on this complex balance.
Speaker 2: Until the next time we pull a thread, keep questioning
the Cosmos n and the cover ups.