Harvard Astrophysicist Professor Avi Loeb joins Captain Ron for a discussion on the search for extraterrestrial life and the mysteries surrounding UFOs. Enjoy this week’s show as Professor Loeb will talk about his latest theories and reveals details about upcoming projects for 2025.
Episode Transcript
Captain Ron (01:12):
Welcome to Beyond Contact on Captain Ron, and today we
are honored to have a very special guest with us
Professor Avilobe. Professor Lobe is the Frank B. Bard Professor
of Science and Institute Director at Harvard University. He chaired
Harvard’s Department of Astronomy and was the longest serving chair
in the department’s history. He is a best selling author
of nine books, including Extraterrestrial and Interstellar, as well as
(01:36):
over one thousand scientific papers on a wide range of topics,
including black holes, the first Stars, the search for extraterrestrial life,
and the future of the universe. He has been a
paramount voice in our community for years, as he believes
in the importance of using empirical data to investigate UAP
sightings rather than dismissing them outright, a mission shared by
(01:59):
this very show and contact in the Desert as well. Professor,
thanks so much for taking the time to talk.
Speaker 5 (02:04):
To us today.
Dr. Avi Loeb (02:05):
Thanks for having me. It’s a great pleasure.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
Absolutely Listen. We are always pushing for more scientific study
of the data and putting more resource into researching UFOs
and extraterustrial civilizations. Yet for the most part, it seems
like most of science still seems resistant to study these things.
Why do you think that is.
Speaker 7 (02:27):
Well, I think part of it is because we have
science fiction, and we have unsubstantiated claims from members of
the public that did not really take careful data of
the sky and claim to have seen things that are unusual.
Maybe even some people claim to have been in contact
with extraterrestrials, and scientists are worried of maintaining their reputation,
(02:52):
their prestige, and as a result they avoid taking risks,
which is exactly the opposite of what you need in
order to make big discoveries. So there is this tension
here between a lot of unsubstantiated claims that put your
reputation at risk if you were to attend to them.
And on the other hand, the biggest question in science
(03:13):
are we alone? And is there a neighbor on our
cosmic street? I mean, we see many Earth sun systems
roughly at the same separation from surveys that we have
by now, there should be of more than one hundred
billion of them within the Milky Way galaxy, and so
there are lots of houses in our cosmic street. We
(03:34):
know that we live in one of those houses, and
the only question is whether there are residents in those
other houses that we can tell exists. To me, it
doesn’t sound speculative at all, because we exist. You know,
science invested billions of dollars in questions to which we
have no clue, like what is the nature of dark matters.
So the way people approach it is that scientists think
(03:58):
about hypothetical parts that make up most of the matter
in the universe, eighty five percent of it. We don’t
know what it is, and then we build experiments that
can search for those particular types of particles. And this
way billions of dollars were invested and we haven’t found anything.
It’s not a waste because it’s like a detective story.
(04:18):
You don’t know what the answer is. But all I’m
saying is we should apply the same approach to the
question of whether there is a technological civilization beyond ours
in this cosmic street that I was describing, and in
the past, you know, there is a community of SETI
the Search for Extraterational Intelligence that invested most of its
(04:40):
resources in searching for radio signals, which is pretty much
like waiting for a phone call at home. Nobody may
call you when you’re waiting. A different approach is actually
to search for objects in your backyard, perhaps the neighbor
through a tennis ball you know that you might find,
or you might find package in your mailbox. That’s a
(05:01):
completely different approach because the center may be dead. You
don’t need the center to be active when you are
searching for these things. If they just keep accumulating over time,
you might find some of these objects. We should check
near Earth. And the reason to do it near Earth
is because there is the Sun that illuminates such objects,
so we can find them more easily. It’s like looking
(05:23):
for your keys under the lamp post. And we haven’t
truly done that. Astronomers only over the past decade found
the first interstellar objects within the orbit of the Earth
around the Sun. And it’s just over the past decade.
You know, we don’t know if there are technological artifacts
among those rocks that may arise from outer space. And
(05:47):
I was intrigued by the fact that some of these
interstellar objects, like the first interstellar meteor that was reported,
or the first large object that passed near Earth the
size of a football field anomalies, they didn’t resemble the
type of rocks that we find in the Solar system.
Speaker 4 (06:05):
You know, what sort of objects are we looking for?
I think I heard you once say that you were
actually looking for another civilization’s space trash. You know, who
knows one civilization’s trash is another treasure for ours. Well,
you’re in an article about how much debreed we have
in the air, imagine what they might.
Speaker 7 (06:23):
Have, right, And the whole point about archaeology is that
you’re searching for artifacts, and you can learn a lot
from what you find.
Speaker 6 (06:32):
In space.
Speaker 7 (06:33):
It may be that most of the technological stuff that
we find is debund, is not really working. It’s defunct,
that it was destroyed by cosmic rays and energetic particles,
or by collisions with dust particles or micro meteorites. After
a few billion years, these things may break up, and
then we could find pieces of those things, just the
(06:54):
way we find broken spacecraft around the Earth. Right now,
there are lots of piece the size of a few centimeters,
about ten million of them. And so the idea is
whatever we find that is not natural in origin, that
doesn’t look like an icy rock, would be a messenger
(07:14):
that tells us something new, that we are not alone,
that we should have a different perspective about our priorities.
Because if another civilization existed before us, you know, billions
of years ago, and developed some technologies that we don’t possess,
we can actually learn a lot from their history. It’s
just I think prudent for us to conduct this search,
(07:37):
invest billions of dollars. In fact, I wrote in one
of my recent essays that I’m willing to have a
bet with Elon Musk. I will put one percent of
my networth against one percent of his networth, which is
about four billion dollars, and then we will have enough
money to do the search for a decade, and if
we don’t find anything, then I will give him a
(07:59):
second the one percent of my net worth, because I
think the main reason we haven’t found the evidence so
far is because we haven’t searched.
Speaker 6 (08:09):
And that’s a circular argument.
Speaker 4 (08:11):
Sure, which came first. You know, as we’re talking about
exploring the universe for science of extraterustrial civilizations, you’ve suggested
that we should be looking for techno signatures, not just biosignatures.
Can you explain what you mean by that?
Speaker 7 (08:25):
Yeah, So the mainstream of the astronomy community came up
every decade the sides about priorities, and came up with
a report for the twenty twenties that defined the future observator.
It called the habitable World Observatory is a very high
priority to be constructed by the twenty forties. So we’re
(08:46):
talking decades away from the current time, but the priority
is to look for molecules such as oxygen, methan, carbon
dioxide in the atmospheres of exoplanets planets around other stars
when they transit the face of the star, you can
actually see look for the fingerprints of various molecules in
(09:10):
the light that passes through the atmosphere of the planet.
And that would cost more than ten billion dollars. The
problem is that you can in principle make these molecules
also by natural geological processes that have nothing to do
with life. And also, I mean, as much as it
would still flatter our ego to think, oh yeah, we’re
(09:31):
still the most intelligent round because we’re finding only evidence
for microbes, you know, it would be far more conclusive
if we found a piece of equipment near us that
was not human made, because not only we will learn
that there is life elsewhere, but we will also realize
that there is intelligent life, technological life. And to me,
that is a much more conclusive realization if you hold
(09:55):
in your hand the gadget that is very different from
what we produce. Until we that possibility, I mean, we
have to hedge our beds. And my recommendation is as
much as we want to invest more than ten billion
dollars in the Habitable World observatory. I think we should
invest billions of dollars in the thing that we haven’t
done yet, which is to check to search for objects
(10:17):
near Earth that might be of extraterrestrial technological origin within
the orbit of the Earth around the Sun. There are
currently millions of such objects that came from outside the
Solar System that are roughly a meter in size, and
we cannot see them easily with existing telescopes because they
don’t reflect enough sunlight. But if we had several billion dollars,
(10:37):
I would be able to design an observing program that
will search for any technological artifacts among the rocks that
are out there that.
Speaker 6 (10:46):
Came from outside the Solar System.
Speaker 4 (10:47):
When we come back, we’re going to talk to Professor
Lobes precisely about that and how artificial intelligence and these
new telescopes and these other developments will help us in
the search for extraterrestrial civilizations. Listening to Beyond Contact on
the iHeartRadio on Coast to Coast am Paranormal podcast network,
(11:24):
we are back on Beyond Contact. We’re talking with Professor
Avi Lowe. Professor for me, I feel like this could
all possibly just be a matter of technology. Just like
when we had no concept of microorganisms till sixteen seventy
four when we invented better microscopes. Then we just thought
that the entire universe was our galaxy until nineteen twenty
(11:46):
four when we invented better telescopes. And just how we
believed throughout history that there were no exoplanets up until
nineteen ninety two when we found one, and now today
we think most planets have them. I think we believe
seventy five percent of all stars have planets around them.
So my question to you, sir, is is it possible
that extraterustrial life could be so different from what we
(12:09):
might think of it as that we can’t recognize it.
But perhaps a new technology could make us aware of
these life forms that have always been around. We just
didn’t know how to perceive that.
Speaker 7 (12:20):
Yeah, definitely quite possible. The one thing that we will
have very soon is the help of artificial intelligence. We
already employ it in data analysis because huge data sets
will come from the next generation of telescopes, for example,
the Rubin Observatory in Chile that we’ll use a three
(12:40):
point two gigapixel camera to servey the southern sky every
four days, and in processing that data and looking for
additional interstellar objects like the size of a football field
that we discovered back in twenty seventeen and that looked
really weird, I mean, was stumbling every eight hours. The
amount of sunlight reflected from it would change by a
(13:03):
factor of ten during those stumbles, and that implied a
very extreme shape that is most likely flat like a pancake.
And the object also exhibited an excess push away from
the sun without showing any evidence for cometary evaporation the
rocket effect that push it, And so the question.
Speaker 6 (13:21):
Was what was it?
Speaker 7 (13:21):
And actually three years later, the same telescope in Hawaii
pant Stars that discovered on MoMA discovered another object pushed
by reflecting sunlight. It was actually a nineteen sixty six
rocket booster that was launched by NASA. So here you
have an example of a technological object that is just
space trash that we produced. But I’m really looking forward
(13:45):
to interstellar objects that are found to be technologically produced
that are not human made, and it should be straightforward,
as straightforward as it was to find this rocket booster
that was named the twenty twenty so and with a
large data set like the one that the Rubin Observator
will start giving this year twenty twenty five. We will
(14:06):
be able to use AI machine learning and go through
the data and look for things that in the past
would take us a long time to do just using
humans to explore the data. In terms of science and
what science addresses, there is another obstacle, which is what
is considered reasonable to do at any given time. And
(14:29):
one of the reasons that exoplanets were not discovered decades
earlier is that nobody expected Jupiter like planets tenth of
a percent of the mass of the Sun, and it’s
located quite far from the Sun. But if it were
closer to a star like the Sun, it would move
the star back and forth in a very measurable, easy
(14:51):
to detect way. And this prediction was already made back
in nineteen fifty two in a scientific paper that people
in the community ignore. As a result, for decades time,
a location committees on telescopes would not provide any observing
time to search for hot jupiters jupiters that are close
to their host star.
Speaker 6 (15:13):
But lo and behold.
Speaker 7 (15:14):
In nineteen ninety five, such a system was discovered and
the Nobel Prize was awarded to the discover discoverers. So
what this teaches us is very often scientists are reluctant
to take a risky approach and check for things that
are not expected. The person who discovered most of the
(15:38):
objects in the Coiper Belt at the distance of about
one hundred times the Earth sun separation, Mike Brown from Caltech,
visited me about a decade ago. I asked him a
simple question. I said, for all these objects in the
Coiper Belt of the Solar System, did you ever check
whether they get dimmer as they increase the distance from
(15:58):
the sun. You might expect for just reflection of sunlight.
In that case, the object will get dimmer inversely with
distance to the fourth power, because the fraction of sunlight
intercepted by the object declines inversely with distance squad. And
then there is another factor of one of a distance
squad for what we see from that reflection, So altogether
(16:21):
it’s one over distance to the fourth However, if you
have an object that produces its own light, then you
would just have dimming inversely with distance squads. So you
can tell the difference as the object recedes from us
as to whether it produces its own light or just
reflects sunlight, And as him, did you ever check? Because
(16:41):
he has data on all these objects? And he said,
why should I check? It’s obviously one over distance to
the fourth. And so that shows you the psychology of
even observers. You know, they’re not supposed to behave like
theories that have a prejudice or some prior notion. They’re
supposed to say, I have the data, why don’t I
check for it? Or why don’t I collect data that
(17:02):
will allow me to decide because maybe, you know, maybe
there is some spacecraft out there that produces its own light,
that was the reason I asked for it, or maybe
there is a city on Pluto who knows, and to
check that it doesn’t cost much because he already has
the data.
Speaker 5 (17:20):
And so I.
Speaker 7 (17:20):
Think part of the reason that science progresses more slowly
is the prejudice and the reluctance of scientists to take risks.
Speaker 5 (17:29):
I find that very frustrating.
Speaker 4 (17:30):
You know that that telescope that you mentioned, I love
the name that they gave that telescope and Chili the
extremely large telescope.
Speaker 7 (17:38):
Oh yeah, question the problem with that name is what
would you call the next one?
Speaker 5 (17:43):
Right.
Speaker 7 (17:44):
I mean, obviously we’re on a path where telescopes will
get bigger as in the next century. And we keep
imagining that we are at the end of history.
Speaker 5 (17:53):
Right, right, We’re always at the top. That’s our that’s
our you know.
Speaker 7 (17:56):
Well, that will soon be proven wrong because AI is
about to get smarter than us within the coming decade,
maybe even sooner. And AI usually represents artificial intelligence, but
in my mind it also represents alien intelligence, meaning perhaps
we will also find that another civilization or another planet
(18:19):
around another star is smarter than us, and there is
a race between two threats to our sense of superiority.
It will either come from AI outsmarting us and manipulating
us this is our own technological kid that we created,
or it will come from another star, and in both cases,
(18:39):
for the first time in human history, we would feel
that we are not the smartest kid in the class.
Speaker 4 (18:47):
So we have new artificial intelligence coming forward. We have
these new space telescopes. How do you think they could
specifically help us find extradustrial life?
Speaker 7 (18:56):
Right, So this is actually touching on the Galileo project
that time leading at Harvard University, we have built an
observatory that monitors the sky twenty four to seven in
the infrared, optical, radio, and audio, and the data is
being analyzed by artificial integence and machine learning. So the
approach in general is to look for things that are
(19:18):
not familiar because we know about airplanes, balloons, drones, satellites.
These are things we know about and we know how
they move. So if we have an estimate of the
distance of any of these things, objects that we see
in the sky, we can identify by training the machine
(19:38):
learning software. And I’m not trying to imagine when we
do this work what the anomalous objects would look like,
because you know, as you said before, there might be
technologies that we cannot even imagine. Let’s just see if
there is anything that is not familiar, anything that is anomalous.
We just published a paper paper got accepted for application
(20:01):
on the first half a million objects that we monitored
over the past five months. And the next thing we
are doing is triangulating, having multiple units of our detector
separated by a few miles so that we can look
at the same object from different directions and figure out
its location precisely. The distance is really important because an
(20:23):
object moving close to you could move across the sky
very fast, so the distance is critical as to assessing
what is the actual speed of the object. Moreover, we
are building two additional observatories, one in Pennsylvania, another one
in Nevada, and by summer twenty twenty five we hope
to have three working observatories that will collect data on
(20:45):
more than a million objects every year. And that means
that even if one in a million behaves in ways
that cannot be described by human made technologies, we can
potentially find it and report about it to the public.
You might say, okay, well maybe the US government has
data that indicates that. Well, they don’t focus on one
(21:05):
in a million, and they’re happy if they explain ninety
seven percent. It’s not good enough for science. They’re really
focused on national security. That’s their day job. But my
day job is to figure out what lies outside the
solar system, and that’s what we will do with the
Garillo Project observatories.
Speaker 4 (21:23):
When we come back, we’re going to talk to Professor
Lowe about his expedition to see what fell into the ocean,
perhaps from the discovery. You’re listening to Beyond Contact on
the iHeartRadio on coast to coast am Paranormal podcast Network.
(22:00):
We are back on Beyond Contact. We’re talking with Professor Avilobe.
Professor Lobe, this expedition you led out to Papua New Guinea,
I believe to search the ocean for any debris that
could have found.
Speaker 5 (22:11):
Can you tell us what you discovered there.
Speaker 7 (22:13):
Yeah, So the story starts from twenty twenty when I
was interviewed on the radio for a meteor that landed
near Kamchatka, and I looked online and realized that in fact, NASA,
through the Jet Propulsion Lab, compiles a catalog of meteors
discovered by US government satellites. There are these satellites that
are seeking any flashes of heat generated by ballistic missiles
(22:38):
when they’re launched around the globe. And every now and
then they see a fire ball from an object colliding
with Earth from far away, and obviously these are no
interest to national security, so they just put the data
about fire balls from meteors in a site, a website,
and together with my student, we were searching whether any
(23:01):
of these objects over the past decade could have arrived
from outside the Solar System. Whether you know, that is
easy to identify because such an object moves at a
speed that exceeds the escape speed from the Solar System.
So once the object moves fast enough, it cannot be
bound by gravity to the Sun like the planets are.
(23:22):
And so we found such an object that was actually
outside the Solar System. Based on the data, was moving
at sixty kilometers per second, which is faster than ninety
five percent of the stars near the Sun. And so
that was a very unusual object. And it actually was
roughly half a meter in size. It exploded about twenty
(23:43):
kilometers over the Pacific Ocean outside the territorial waters of
Papua and New Guinea. After the US Space Command confirmed
that indeed the ninety nine point nine to nine percent
confidence this object indeed came from outside the Solar System,
I decided to lead an expedition to the Pacific Ocean
(24:03):
location that was identified for the fireball, which was specified
to within a seven mile region, and we went on
a ship. The ocean depth is about a mile in
that location, and we used a sled cover with magnets
to go across the ocean floor back and forth twenty
(24:25):
six times and collect any meteoritic material magnetic particles from
the ocean floor, and we collected about eight hundred and
fifty molten droplets, and they were less than a millimeter
in size, and we brought them back from an analysis
at the laboratory of one of the world the renowned geochemists,
(24:48):
the best ones in the world and Steyn Jacobson. We
analyzed the materials and found that ten percent of those
molten droplets are made of a chemical composition that was
never potted before in the Solar system. So it looks
like we found materials that may have arrived from definitely
outside Earth, but most likely outside the Solar System. And
(25:11):
what we want to do is go there again, perhaps
in summer twenty twenty five if we get the funding.
It will cost six and a half million dollars for
us to use a remotely operated vehicle that’s a robot
that we will place on the ocean floor with a
video feed that allows us to pick up big pieces
from the wreckage of this meteor. And if we find
(25:35):
any big pieces, they will tell us the identity the
nature of this original object, because maybe part of it
survived and we can easily tell whether it was a
rock or some technological gadget if we find the bigger pieces.
So as of now, I’m waiting patiently. There are a
few potential donors that are considering the possibility of funding us.
(25:59):
If we don’t get the funding within the coming weeks,
we might lose the ship. We won’t be able to
reserve it for August twenty twenty five. But if we
do get the funding to at least make a down payment,
then it would be very exciting. The previous expedition was
filmed by Netflix, and there will be a documentary that
(26:20):
will come out in twenty twenty towards the end of
twenty twenty five on that expedition, and also about the
study of a muamua that I mentioned before. You know,
these are very different objects. So Mua Moa was about
the size of a football field, never collided with Earth.
It just looked anomalous. It passed near Earth and didn’t
look like any rock we have seen before in terms
(26:41):
of its properties. And this meteor was half a meter
in size, much smaller, and it collided with Earth and
we can potentially find the materials from it.
Speaker 4 (26:52):
Well, what would be the other pieces of compelling evidence
that you feel would suggest that something off world, maybe
another civilization has been here.
Speaker 7 (27:02):
Well, if you just need to find the technological object
that was clearly not produced by humans. For example, if
it features a knowledge that we currently don’t possess, a
new propulsion system that is not based on chemical rockets,
for example.
Speaker 4 (27:20):
Would metal be enough like it was a different kind
of metal or a different processed metal.
Speaker 7 (27:24):
Well, just from the material composition, we can tell if
the object came from outside the Solar System, because all
the material in the Solar System was made around the
same time. I mean, the Solar system is four point
six billion years old. You know, most stars in the
Milky Way galaxy formed billions of years before the Sun,
and so they have different ages than the Sun. And
(27:47):
if you find an object that was built out of
materials around another star, the age of that material would
be quite different. How can you tell the age? You
can do that with isot topic radioactive dating. Basically, you
find isotopes of some heavy elements that have some lifetime.
Depending on how much of the original isotope you find
(28:11):
and relative to the decay products, you know, these daughter
nuclei that are made as a result of the decay,
you can tell how long ago the material was made.
Speaker 6 (28:22):
It should be straightforward.
Speaker 7 (28:23):
If there is you know more than a gram of material,
one can immediately tell whether that material came from outside
the source system by isotope analysis, and we can do it.
I mean, the only problem with the first expedition was
that we found tiny molten droplets that are less than
a millimeter in size, and there wasn’t enough material in
(28:43):
them to allow us.
Speaker 6 (28:44):
I mean it was only the.
Speaker 7 (28:46):
Milligram level per fragment. We couldn’t really get good the
isotopic analysis. But if we find bigger pieces, that will
be the key to being able to date the material.
Speaker 5 (28:59):
I wonder if everybody would accept it too, though.
Speaker 7 (29:01):
Well, that’s the way science works. The evidence, you know,
is key. So first you have to collect the materials.
Then you know, if anyone disputes it, we can share
the material with them, and you know they will reach
similar conclusions. I mean, there is no way out of that.
So if you date materials of an object that most
(29:22):
likely came from outside the solar sism because there was
evidence for a.
Speaker 6 (29:26):
Very fast moving meteor, let’s say, and you.
Speaker 7 (29:29):
End up finding that the isotopanalysis indicates an age very
different than the age of the Solar System, I think
it will be clear beyond any doubt that this is
indeed the material of that interstellar object. And moreover, if
you find a big enough piece that indicates that it’s
technological rather than piece of rock, you know that also
can be quite conclusive. I should say that I asked
(29:51):
my students what to do. Suppose we find the gudget
that has buttons on it. Should we press a button?
Speaker 5 (29:59):
It’s a great question. What do you answer? You say? Yes?
Speaker 7 (30:02):
Well, so half of the class said, please don’t push
it because it could affect all of us. And then
the other half of the class said, please push it
because we would like to know. Maybe it’s aid GPT
one hundred.
Speaker 5 (30:16):
And maybe it blows up the earth.
Speaker 7 (30:19):
But then a student from the class said the Professor Lobe,
what would you actually do, because it looks like there
is a split vote here in the class. And I said,
I will take it to the laboratory and examine it
before engaging with it.
Speaker 5 (30:34):
Well, I guess that’s the right answer. There, you go.
Speaker 4 (30:36):
Okay, when we come back, we’re going to take one
left break here. We’re going to ask Professor Lobe another
question about AI. You’re listening to Beyond Contact on the
iHeartRadio and coast to Coast am Paranormal Podcast Network.
Speaker 5 (31:14):
We are back on beyond contact.
Speaker 4 (31:16):
We have the pleasure of speaking with mister Avi Lobe today,
Professor Lobe. If we were going to use AI ourselves
to communicate with another civilization, obviously that’s what we would
probably do because we wouldn’t know what they speak, so
we would use some sort of AI. Do you think
it’s reasonable to assume that the other civilization would be
doing the same thing? Therefore, isn’t it probable that if
(31:40):
we did have an official contact with another civilization, it
would most likely be a form of AI talking to
a form of AI.
Speaker 6 (31:48):
Yeah, that’s quite possible.
Speaker 7 (31:50):
The thing to keep in mind is any visit by
a messenger may not involve biological creatures because of.
Speaker 6 (31:59):
The risks and into space.
Speaker 7 (32:01):
They are energetic particles bombarding any spacecraft.
Speaker 6 (32:05):
There are X rays.
Speaker 7 (32:06):
The journey takes a long time, well beyond the current
lifespan of all forms of life that we know about.
Takes a billionaires for voyager to move from the Solar
System to the opposite side of the Milky Way galaxy.
Speaker 5 (32:19):
You just wrote a paper.
Speaker 6 (32:21):
Yes.
Speaker 7 (32:22):
The point is that you can design technologically systems that
will have their own artificial intelligence. And also it takes
a long time for signals to cross interstellar distances, and
there is not enough time for the gadget to wait
for guidance from the center. It’s sort of like sending
out your kids, and you don’t expect them to ask
(32:45):
for guidance at every moment any decision they have to make,
they just report back on the highlights of their trip,
and the same should be true for interstellar travelers. One
hundred years ago, there was a philosopher named the Martin Buber.
He was at Prince He came up with the philosophy
that there are three types of interactions that humans have.
(33:06):
One is a human human interaction, another one is a
human object interaction. And finally, he also since he was religious,
he talked about human God interaction. He came up with
these categories before computers came along, and if he were
to live today, he would have needed to add human
(33:29):
AI interactions and AI AI interactions. And in the latter
category of AIAI interactions, I’m not just thinking about our
own AI interacting with our own AI, but I’m thinking
also about terrestrial AI interacting with extraterrestrial AI, because they
(33:50):
might feel if they’re made of silicon chips on both sides,
they might feel kinship to each other more than to us.
We are made of flesh and blood, and whenever we
try to align AI systems made of silicon chips is
to align them with our goals, with our hopes. To me,
it looks like trying to put lipstick on a pig
(34:12):
to make it more beautiful. It’s it’s just a different beast,
you know. It’s at some point, you know, AI is
very different than previous tools that we use because you know,
when you drive a car, you hold the steering wheel
and you’re in full control because the car is dumber
than you are. AI, for the first time in human history,
will represent a tool that could outsmart us, and that
(34:34):
would cause a lot of frustration because it may it
could manipulate us, and you know, there are risks to
mental health, there are risks to national security because of that, and.
Speaker 5 (34:45):
We know what’s manipulating us.
Speaker 7 (34:47):
That’s right, just the same way that you know when
we have a pet, the pet doesn’t realize if you
manipulate them, you know, and a higher level of intelligence
could be such that we would trust and think that
we are in control, but in fact it’s the other
way around.
Speaker 4 (35:02):
One more question for you here is how do you
reconcile the Fermi paradox with the potential for extraterrestrial civilizations.
Speaker 6 (35:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (35:09):
So when Enrico Fermi around nineteen fifty one, set at
lunch in Los Alamos, ask these colleagues where is everybody?
Speaker 5 (35:17):
You know?
Speaker 7 (35:17):
That reminds me of lonely people who keep asking this question.
Whereas you know, I don’t have a partner. Where is everybody?
And what you often tell these people is that they
shouldn’t be so presumptuous and arrogon. They shouldn’t think that
they are so attractive that their partner will come to them.
They should engage in seeking a partner, looking through the
(35:40):
windows of your house, going out to dating sites. And
Rico Fermi didn’t build a telescope. He just asked the question.
You know, you might say, it’s an extraordinary claim to
assume that we have a partner, someone like us that
may have existed before us.
Speaker 6 (35:56):
I don’t think it’s extraordinary.
Speaker 7 (35:57):
I think it’s an extraordinary claim and arrogon to think
that we are unique and special.
Speaker 6 (36:03):
Moreover, people say, well.
Speaker 7 (36:04):
For extraordinary claims, you need extraordinary evidence, but those people
are not seeking the evidence, So it’s a circular argument.
It’s really all about the hard work of using the
scientific method, searching for data, using the data to find
out whether we have a neighbor.
Speaker 4 (36:21):
Yeah, you don’t seem to think that Earth is such
a unique thing that everybody’s going to be looking for us.
Planets like ours are probably out there in the universe, right. Yeah.
Speaker 7 (36:30):
In fact, I don’t think we are that interesting all
in all. You know, when I look at the news
every day, we are not that intelligent. You know, people
ask me why am I doing the research that I’m
doing it, and I say that I’m searching for a
higher intelligence in interestar space because I don’t find it
often here on Earth.
Speaker 4 (36:51):
That’s a T shirt, Professor Loebe, You’ve got a T
shirt right there that can make a million dollars that
could fund your next expedition. Hey, one more question I
want to ask you is do you have any credence
in the idea of us possibly living in a simulated universe?
Speaker 7 (37:05):
You know, I prefer to you know, maybe I belong
to an order generation, but I prefer to believe that
the reality is real, the physical reality of course, if
you have enough money in the bank, you can imagine
that there is nothing but a simulation. But if you
go through life and have to work hard for what
you accomplish, and you realize sometimes you’re disappointed, and you know,
(37:28):
there is this sense that reality is independent of us.
It exists, we are part of it, and it’s not
a simulation, it’s something real, you know. I think the
problem with this assumption is that you lose responsibility for
what happens to you. So if you get a low
grade in an exam, you say, okay, well it’s just
a simulation.
Speaker 6 (37:46):
Who cares?
Speaker 7 (37:48):
And that’s really irresponsible and that would not bring a
bright future to humanity. I think we should assume that
the reality is real.
Speaker 6 (37:57):
Now.
Speaker 7 (37:58):
On the other hand, I I think that the universe,
you know, what was there before the Big Bank, before
the beginning that we know about is an open question.
And you know, if I had one question that I
can ask an alien scientist, it would be what happened
before the Big Bank. Now, it’s possible that if we
(38:19):
understand how to unify quantum mechanics and gravity, which we
don’t at the moment, with a predictive theory, we’ll figure
out the ingredients that were put together to make our
big bank our universe, so we will know the recipe
for making a baby universe. It doesn’t mean that we
could make a baby universe because you also need an oven,
(38:42):
and you need the ingredients, and you know, we may
not have a particle collider that reaches the necessary energy
density to make a baby universe.
Speaker 6 (38:52):
At least we would know the recipe.
Speaker 7 (38:54):
And that’s, you know, part of the way to becoming God,
because you know that if you had to define what
what is the requirement if you want to apply to
the job of God, you know, one requirement is that
you should be able to make a universe. The quantum
gravity engineers could potentially do that if they’re advanced enough.
So as to the origin of our universe, you know,
(39:15):
there is this possibility that a scientist in a white
lab coat created it, and we call that scientist God
because we just don’t have the technology to create baby universes.
Speaker 6 (39:27):
Now, this is not the same.
Speaker 7 (39:28):
As arguing that we live in a simulation, because all
I’m saying is, you know, we were born out of
the womb of our mothers, and so were they born
out of a womb of their mothers and so forth,
and so you can imagine a physical reality that we
see in the universe being born out of another universe
(39:52):
in which there were quantum gravity engineers that created our universe,
and then this cycle continues indefinitely.
Speaker 4 (40:00):
All right, everyone, you can help support Professor Lobe and
the Galileo Project. Just do a search for Galileo Project
and Harvard University. Please support that cause we are behind
at one thousand percent. He’s doing everything that I really
really want in this world. Thanks so much for your time, Professor.
It was really great honor and a lot of fun
to talk to you.
Speaker 6 (40:18):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 4 (40:20):
Thank you so much again, Professor, and thank you all
for listening to be on Contact.
