YouSaid · the spoken record
Avi Loeb
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- 2021-01-14
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- 2021-01-14
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“Of its present age, you know, infant. Already back then you had black holes of a billion times the mass of the sun, which is quite remarkable. It's like finding giant babies in a nursery, you know, like how can these black holes grow so fast? You know, less than a billion years after the Big Bang, you already have a billion times the mass of the sun in these black holes. The answer is presumably there are very quick processes that build them up”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just like water running down the sink, the gas swirls and then rubs against itself and heats up and shines very brightly because it's very hot close to the black hole by viscousity. It heats up. And in the case of black holes, it's the turbulence viscosity that causes it to heat up. We get these very bright sources of light just from black holes that are supposed to be dark. Nothing escapes from them, but they create a violent environment where gas moves close to the speed of light and therefore shines very brightly, much more than any other source in the sky. And we can see these quasars all the way to the edge of the universe. So we have evidence now that when the universe was about 7.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it's an interesting question because black holes were considered a theoretical construct and Einstein even denied their existence in 1939. But then in the mid-1960s quasars were discovered. These are very bright sources of light, a hundred times brighter than their host galaxy, which are point-like at the center of galaxies. And it was immediately suggested by Ed Salpeter in the West and by Jakov Zeldovich in the east that these are black holes that accrete gas, collect gas from their host galaxy that are being fed with gas. And they shine very brightly because as the gas falls towards the black holes,”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Founding director of the Black Hole Initiative at Harvard, which brings together astronomers, physicists, philosophers, and mathematicians. And we have a conference once a year. And at the end of one of them, since I'm the director, I had to summarize. And I said that I wish we could go on a field trip to a black hole nearby. And I highly recommend to my colleagues that were constrain theory to enter into that black hole because then they can test their theory when they get inside. But one of the... String theories in the audience Nimar Khani Hamad immediately raised his voice and said, You have an ulterior motive for sending us into a black hole, which I didn't deny, but at any event.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Through the sewer to some reservoir somewhere. And the question is what happens inside a black hole? And one possibility is that there is an object in the middle, just like a star, and everything collects there. And the object has the maximum density that we can imagine, like Planck density. It's the ultimate density that you can have, where gravity is as strong as all the other forces. So you can imagine this object, very dense object at the center that collects all the matter. Another possibility is that there is some tunnel just like the sewer. It takes the matter into another place. We don't know the answer, but I wrote a scientific American essay about it admitting our ignorance. It's a fascinating question. What happens to the method that goes into a black hole? I actually recommended to some of my colleagues that work on string theory at the closing of a conference.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At a point. Now, we can't really predict what happens at the singularity because Einstein's theory breaks down. And we know why it breaks down because it doesn't have quantum mechanics that talks about small distances. We don't have a theory that unifies quantum mechanics and gravity so that it will predict what happens near a singularity. And in fact, once a couple of years ago, I had a flood in my basement. I mean, I invited a plumber to come over and figure out. And we found that the sewer was clogged because of tree roots that got into it. And we solved the problem. But then I thought to myself, well, isn't that what happens to the singularity of a black hole? Because the question is, where does the matter go? In the case of a home, I never thought about it, but the water, all the water that we use, goes in.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly the point. So for the black hole, they said no because obviously you can find your death after you get into it. You crash into singularity. There is the singularity in the center. So inside the event horizon, we know that all the matter collects”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, exactly. But putting, so I was surprised to hear that for students, it's extremely important to share experiences, even if they go on a spaceship with aliens, they still want to brag about it rather than look around and see what's going on.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“She was wise enough to recognize the risk And it also keeps me away from crowds. I don't have the notion of what a lot of other people think. So I can think independently.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. So black holes are the ultimate prison. You know, you can check in, but you can never check out. Even light cannot escape from them. So, there are extreme structures of space and time. And there is this so called schwarchield radius or the event horizon of a black hole. Once you enter into it with a spaceship, you would never be able to tweet back to your friends and tell them, by the way, I asked the students in my class, freshman seminar at Harvard, I said, let me give you two possible journeys that you can take. I said, suppose aliens come to Earth and suggest that you would bother a spaceship? Would you do it? And the second is suppose you could board a spaceship that will take you into a black hole, would you do it? So all of them said to the first question, yes, under one condition that I'll be able to maintain my social media contacts and report back, share the experience with them.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In the analysis of mathematics saying, even though the solution exists, I don't think it's realized in nature. And his argument was, if you imagine a star collapsing, stars often spin and the spin will prevent them from making a black hole, collapsing to a point.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But the point is that this solution was known shortly after Einstein came up with his theory. But in 1939, Einstein wrote a paper.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exist in nature, don't when Einstein came up with his theory of gravity in 1915, November 1915, a few months later another physicist, Carl Schwarzild, he was the director of the Potsdam Observatory, but he was a patriot, a German patriot. So he went into the First World War fighting for Germany. But while he was at the front, Sent a postcard to Einstein saying a few months after the theory was developed saying, actually, I found a solution to your equations. And that was a black hole solution. And then he died a few months later. And Einstein was a pacifist, and he survived. So the lesson from this story is that if you want to work out the consequences of a theory, You better be a pacifist”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And they had astronomers in their culture, had the highest social status. They were priests. They were elevated. And the reason was that they helped politicians decide when to go to war because they would tell the politicians, the planets would be in this configuration, it's a better chance for you to win the war. Go to war. And in retrospect, they collected wonderful data, but misinterpreted it. Because we now know that the position of Venus or Jupiter or whatever has nothing to do with the outcome of World War I or World War II has nothing to do. And so we can have a prejudice and collect data without actually doing the right thing with it.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, the Mayan civilization basically believed in astrology that you can forecast the outcome of a war based on the position of the planets.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then you can put a source behind the cluster of galaxies, and then you will get these arcs. And actually Einstein predicted it in 1940. And so these things were expected, but people just had them in the images, didn't pay attention. So I'm sure there are lots of opportunities sometimes. Even in existing data, you have things that are unusual and exceptional and are not being addressed.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I believe that along the history of astronomy there are many missed opportunities, and I speak about astronomy, but I'm sure in other fields it's also true. I mean, this is my expertise. For example, the astrophysical journal, which is the main primary publication in astrophysics, if you go before the 1980s, there are images that were posted in the astrophysical journal of giant arcs, you know, arcs of light surrounding clusters of galaxies. And you can find it in printed versions of the astrophysical journal. People just ignore, they put the image, they see the arc, they say, who knows what it is, and just ignore it. And then in the 1980s, the subject of gravitational lensing became popular. And the idea is that you can deflect light by the force of gravity.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What we should do is say, look, there is some evidence for something unusual. Let's try and build instruments that will give us a better image. And if you just dismiss extraordinary claims because you consider them extraordinary, you avoid discovering things that you haven't expected.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Really subjective. For one person, a black hole is extraordinary. For another, it's just a consequence of Einstein's theory of gravity. It's nothing extraordinary. The same about the type of dark matter, anything. So we should leave the extraordinary path of that sentence. Just keep evidence. Okay, so let's be guided by evidence. And even if we have extraordinary claims, let's not dismiss them because the evidence is not extraordinary enough. Because if we have an image of something and it looks really strange and we say, oh, the image is not sufficiently sharp, therefore we should not even pay attention to this image or not even consider. I think that's a mistake.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, so Pascal had this wager about God. And by the way, there are interesting connections between theology and the search for extraterrestrial life. You know, it's possible that we were planted on this planet by another civilization. We attribute to God powers that belong really to technological civilization. But putting Two possibilities either God exists or not. And if God exists, the consequences are quite significant and therefore we should consider that possibility differently than equal weight to both possibilities. I suggest that we do the same with other technological signatures that we keep in mind the consequences and therefore pay more attention to that possibility. Now, some people say extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. My point is that the term extraordinary”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, the only way for us to stay modest. And learn about what really happens is by looking for evidence. Again, I'm saying it's not about ourselves. It's about figuring out what's around us. And if you close yourself by surrounding yourself with people that are like-minded, that refuse to look at the evidence, you can do bad things. And throughout human history, that's the origin of all the bad things that happen. And I think it's a key. It's a key to be modest and to look at evidence. And it's not a nuance. Now, you might say, oh, okay, the uneducated person might operate. No, it's the scientific community operates this way. My problem is not with... People that don't have an academic pedigree include everywhere in society.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because when you look at society, it operates by the same principles. People look for affirmation by groups. And people segregate into herds that think like them, especially these days when social media is so strong, you can find your support group. And if you don't look for evidence for what you're saying, you can say crazy things as long as there are enough people supporting what you say, you can even have your newspapers. You can have everything to support your view and then bad things will happen to society.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly, because that's the way for us to improve our understanding. If you look at quantum mechanics, nobody dreamed about it, and it was revolutionary. And we still don't fully understand it. It's a pain for us to figure out.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now to me, I mean, I just couldn't hear that. What do you mean? Nature is whatever it is. You have to pay attention to it. You cannot say you cannot bury your head in this. I mean, you should bless nature for giving you clues about things that you haven't expected. And I think that's the biggest fault that we are looking for confirmations of things we already know so that we can maintain our pride that we already knew it and maintain our image, not make mistakes, because we already knew it, therefore we expected the right thing. But science is a learning experience, and sometimes you are wrong. And let's learn from those mistakes. And what's the problem about that? Why do we have to get prizes and why do we get to be honored and maintain our image when the actual objective of science is learning about nature”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The thing that worries me the most is that people pay attention to how many likes they have on Twitter. And rather than basketball coaches tell the team players. Keep your eyes on the ball, not on the audience. The problem is we keep our eyes on the audience most of the time. Let's keep our eyes on the ball, and what does that mean? First of all, in context of science, it means pay attention to the evidence. When the evidence looks strange. Then we should figure it out. You know, I went to a seminar about Umuamua at Harvard, and a colleague of mine that is mainstream. Conservative Would never say anything that would deviate from what everyone else is thinking, said to me after the seminar, I wish this object never existed.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah. And that's why I think we should be open-minded and explore. And however, at the same time, because of the reasons you pointed out, I'm not optimistic that we will survive more than a few centuries into the future because people do not think long term and that means that we will only survive for the short term.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And by the way, it was destroyed everybody on the, but it was a commercial interest that drove that for trade. And, you know, it might happen again in this context. You have people like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk that are commercially driven to go to space. But it doesn't mean that what we will ultimately find is not new worlds that have nothing, have much more to offer than just commercial interest.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And we can start from the moon and then move to Mars. That would be a natural progression. But it's a big issue that needs to be dealt with. I don't think it's a showstopper. I think we can overcome it. But just like anything in science and technology, you have to work on it for a while, figure out solutions. But it's not as rosy as Elon Musk talks about. I mean, Elon Musk can... Obviously, be optimistic. I think eventually it will boil down to figuring out how to cope with this risk, the health risk”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think it's worthy, but the real issue that is often underplayed is the risk to the human body from cosmic rays. These are energetic particles and we are protected from them by the magnetic field around the Earth that blocks them. But if you go to Mars where there is no such magnetic field to block them, then a significant fraction of the brain cells in your head will be damaged within a year. And the consequences of that are not clear. I mean, it's quite possible that humans cannot really survive on the surface. Now, it may mean that we need to dig tunnels, go underground, or create some protection. This is something that can be engineered”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And just like the space station, but bigger, and it will be a platform in space. And the advantage of that is if something bad happens on Earth, you have that complex where humans live. And you can also move it back and forth depending on how bright the sun gets. Because within a billion years, the sun would be too hot and it will boil off all the oceans on Earth. So we cannot stay here for more than a billion years. That's for sure.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You might think that humans cannot really survive, and there are risks by going there But my point is Know we started from Africa We got to apartment buildings in Manhattan. It's a very different environment from the jungles to live in an apartment building, in a small cubicle And you know, it took tens of thousands of years, but humans adapted, right? So why couldn't humans also make the leap and adapt to a habitat in space? Now you can build a platform that would look like an apartment building in the Bronx or somewhere, but have inside of it everything that humans need.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I need to make the presentation. And there was no internet connectivity except in the office of the goat farm. So the following morning at 6 a.m. I sit with my back to the office of that goat farm looking at goats that were newly born and typing into my laptop the presentation, you know, the PowerPoint presentation about our ambitions for visiting the nearest star. And that was very surreal to me.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I should tell you how it was conceived. So I was at the time, so after six months passed, after the visit of Yurimila, I was usually I go in December during the winter break, I go to Israel. I used to go to see my family, and I get a phone call just before the weekend started. I get a phone call. Yuri would like you to present your concept. In two weeks at his home. And I said, well, thank you for letting me know because I'm actually out of the door of the hotel to go to a goat farm. In the Negev, in the southern part of Israel, because my wife wanted to have sort of to go to a place that is removed from civilization, so to speak. So we went to that goat farm.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's about exploration. And the biggest problem, I think, to human history is that humans tend to think about egos and about their own personal image. Rather than look at the big picture, we will not be around for long. We are just occupying a small space right now. Let's move out of this, the way that Oscar Wilde said, I think, is the best. He said, all of us are in the gutters, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No aggression. There's no wars. And beyond that, if you think about the global economy, Right now, there is a commercial interest. That's why Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are interested You know, Mars and so on. There is a commercial interest which is international. It's driven by money. not by pride And nations can sign treaties. First of all, there are lots of treaties that were signed even before the First World War and the Second World War and the World War took place Cares's treaties do not safeguard anything. But beyond that, even if nations sign treaties about space, exploration, you might still find commercial entities that will find a way to get their launches. And, you know, so I think we should rethink space. It has nothing to do with national pride. Once again, nothing to do with our egos.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And all the other debaters were worried about the military threats. And I just couldn't understand what they're talking about because military threats come from hovering above the surface of the earth, right? We live on a two-dimensional surface. We live on the surface of the earth. But space is all about the third dimension, getting far from So if you go to Mars or you go to a star, another star, there is no military threat. What are we talking about? Space is all about... You know, feeling that we are one civilization. In fact, not fighting each other, just going far and having aspirations for something that goes beyond military threats. So, why would we be worried that the space race will lead?”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is And the point is people didn't get excited about space. Since Apollo Era, and it's about time, you know, for us to go into space. A couple of months ago, I was asked to participate in a debate organized by IBM and Bloomberg News, and the discussion centered on the question is the space race between the US and China good for humanity.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You basically produce a very powerful laser beam on Earth so you can collect sunlight with photovoltaic cells or whatever and convert it into Stored energy and then produce a very powerful laser beam that is 100 gigawatt and focus it on a sail in space that is roughly the size of a person a couple of meters or a few meters that weighs only a gram or a few grams very thin and through the math you can show that you can propel such a cell if you shine on it for a few minutes it will traverse a distance that is five times the distance to the moon and it will get to a fifth of the speed of light”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“10, 20 years, meaning it has to move at a fraction of the speed of light. So, can we send a spacecraft that would be moving at a fraction of the speed of light? And I said, let me look into that for six months. And with my students and postdocs, we arrived to the conclusion that the only technology that can do that is the light sail technology.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Actually, I am involved in a project whose goal is to develop the technology that would allow us to live the solar system and visit the nearest stars. And that is called the Starshot. In 2015, May 2015, an entrepreneur from Silicon Valley, Yuri Milner, came to my office at Harvard. And said, Would you be interested in leading a project? That would do that in our lifetime. Because as we discussed before to traverse those distances with existing rockets would take tens of thousands of years. And that's too long. For example, to get to Proxima Centauri with the kind of spacecrafts that we already sent, like New Horizons or Voyager 1, Voyager 2, you needed to send them when the first humans left Africa so that they would arrive there now. And that's a long time to wait. So Yuri wanted to do it within our lifetime.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of the planet, and I calculated that it must be much bigger than observed, so it cannot just be a transmitter sitting on the planet and sending in our direction a radio signal unless they want to cancel the Doppler effect, but then they need to know about us because in a different direction it will not be cancelled. Only in our direction they can cancel it perfectly. direction of proximacentauri but I have a problem imagining a transmitter on the surface of a planet in the habitable zone emitting it but my main issue is really with the likelihood given what we know about ourselves”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Then I calculated that the frequency would drift through the Doppler effect, you know, just like when you hear a siren on the street, you know, when the car approaches you, it has a different pitch than when it recedes away from you. That's the Doppler effect And when the planet orbits the star, Proxima Centauri, you would see or detect a different frequency when the planet approaches us as compared to when it recedes. So there should be a frequency drift just because of the motion.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the other argument I have is that they detected it in a very narrow band of frequencies, and that makes it, you know, it cannot be through natural processes, very narrow band. Just like some radio transmissions that we produce. But if it were to come from the habitable zone, from a transmitter on the surface of Proxima B, this is the planet that orbits Proxima Centauri.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The reason I think it's human made, without getting to the technical details, is because of this very short window by which we were transmitting radio signals out of the lifetime of the Earth. As I said, 100 years out of four and a half billion years that the Earth existed. So what's the chance that another civilization, a twin civilization of ours, Is transmitting radio signals exactly at the time that we are looking with our radio telescopes. 10 to the min”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which is always the worry because actually the same observatory, the Parks Observatory. Detected a couple of years ago some signal, and then they realized that it comes back at lunchtime. And they said, okay, what could it be? And then they figured out that it must be the microwave oven in the observatory because someone was opening it before it finished and it was creating this radio signal that they detected with a telescope every lunchtime.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, I think it's some Australian guy with a cell phone next to the observatory or something like that because it was the Park's telescop in Australia. I was like, why is Australian guy? Yeah.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Maybe we can lengthen that period if we get smarter. But the most natural assumption is to say that we would live into the future as much as we lived from the time that we started to develop the means for our own destruction, the technologies we have, which is quite pessimistic, I must say. So several centuries, that's what I would give, unless we get our act, unless we become more intelligent than the newspapers report every day. Point number one. And by the way, this is... Perhaps a radio signal detected from proxima centaur”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I as I mentioned before operate by the Copernican principle, meaning that we are not special, we don't live in a special place and not in a special time. And by the way, it's just modesty encapsulated in scientific terms. Right? You're saying, I'm not special. You know, I find conditions here, they exist everywhere. So, if you adapt the Copernican principle You basically say our civilization transmitted radio signals for 100 years, roughly. So, probably it would last another hundred or few hundred, and that's it. Because we don't leave at a special time So that's well, of course, if we get our act together and we somehow start to cooperate rather than fighting each other, killing each other, you know, wasting a lot of resources on things that would destroy our planet.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“By the way, yeah. But on the moon, this doesn't happen. The only thing that happens on the moon is you have objects impacting the moon and they go 10 meters deep, so they produce some dust. But the moon keeps everything. It's like a museum. It keeps everything on the surface. So if we go to the moon, I would highly recommend regarding it as an archaeological site. And looking for objects that are strange. Maybe it collected some trash from interstellar space.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“More than 100 million years ago, and it's completely lost. You cannot excavate and find evidence for it because in archaeological digs, because the earth is being mixed on these timescales and everything that was on the surface more than 100 million years ago is buried deep inside the earth right now because of geological activity.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source