YouSaid · the spoken record

Avi Loeb

lines on the record: 200
first: 2021-01-14
most recent: 2021-01-14
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“So I think you might ask why aren't they looking for us? One possibility is that we are not interested, like we were talking about”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. And the other thing I should say is, you know, it could be just an outer layer of something else. Something that was ripped apart, like a surface of... An instrument that was, and you can have lots of these pieces, if something breaks, lots of these pieces spread out like space junk. And, you know, that.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it's a long journey. So when it started the journey from the edge of the solar system to get to us now, we were rather primitive back then. We still didn't have any technology. There was no reason to visit there was grass around and so forth. But maybe it is a problem.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A very powerful beacon, but it's not true. Even on Earth, we have these relay stations. So you have not so farful beacons, so it can be heard only out to a limited distance. But then you relay the message. And it could be one of those. Now, after it collided with the solar system, of course, it got a kick. So it's just like a billiard ball. We gave it a kick by colliding with, but most of them are not colliding with stars. And so that's one possibility. Okay? And there should be lots of them if that's the case. The other possibility is that it's a probe that was sent in the direction of the habitable region around the sun to find out if there is life. Now it takes tens of thousands of years for such a probe to traverse the solar system from the outer edge of the Oort cloud all the way to where we are.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A lot of them, another possibility is that these are relay stations, you know, that for communication. You might think in order to communicate, you need a huge beacon.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was sitting still. Now you ask yourself why is it so unusual in that context? You know why? Because if it was expelled from another planetary system, most likely it will carry the speed of the host star that it came from. Because the most loosely bound objects are in the periphery of the planetary system. They move very slowly relative to the star, and so they carry when they are ripped apart from the planetary system. Most of the objects will have the residual motion of the star relative to the local star. But this one was interesting in the local star. One thing I can think of, if there is a grid of road posts, you know, like for navigation system. So that you can find your way in the local frame.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Stars is so much at rest in that frame. And that's why I was saying it's like a parking lot. It was parked there. And we bumped into it. So the relative speed between the solar system and this object is just because we are moving.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“An excellent question. And let me lay out, I mean, we don't have enough evidence to tell if we had a photograph, perhaps we would have more information. There is one other peculiar fact about Omu Well, other than it was very shiny that I didn't mention, we didn't detect any heat from it. And that implies that it's rather small and shiny. But the other peculiar fact is that it came from a very special frame of reference. So it's sort of like finding a car in a parking lot, in a public parking lot that you can't really tell where it came from. So there is this frame of reference where you average over the motions of all the stars in the neighborhood of the sun. So you find the so-called local standard of rest, of the galaxy, and that's a frame of reference that is obtained by averaging the random motions of all the stars. And the sun is moving relative to that frame at some speed. But this object was at rest in that frame. And only one in 500...”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so obviously it came from outside the solar system. And the question is who produced it? Now, I should say that when I walk on vacation on a beach, I often see natural objects like seashells that are beautiful and I look at them And every now and then I stumble on a plastic bottle. And that was artificially produced. And my point is that maybe Omuamua was a message in a bottle. And this is simply another window into searching for artifacts from other civilizations.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now this rocket booster was sufficiently hollow and thin for us to recognize that it's pushed by starlight. So here is my point. We can tell from the orbit of an object. Obviously this object didn't have any cometary tail. It was artificially made. We know that it was made by us. And it did deviate from an orbit of a rock So just by seeing something that doesn't have cometary tale and deviates from an orbit shaped by gravity, we can tell that it's artificial. In the case of a mu-amua, it couldn't have been sent by humans because it just passed near us for a few months. We know exactly what we were doing at that time. And also it was moving faster than any object that we can launch.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Objects, astronomical objects found in the solar system, and they gave it that name 2020 so because it looked like an object in the solar system and it moved in an orbit that is similar to the orbit of the earth, but not the same exactly. And therefore it was bound to the sun, but it also exhibited a deviation from what you expect based on gravity. So the astronomers that found it extrapolated back in time and found that in 1966 it intercepted the Earth. And then they realized they went to the history books and they realized, oh, there was a mission called Lunar Surveyor, Lunar Lander Surveyor 2 that had a rocket booster. It was a failed mission, but there was a rocket booster that was kicked into space. And presumably this is the rocket booster that we are seeing.”
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 would not deny that working on light sales expanded my ability to imagine this possibility. But let me offer another interesting anecdote. In September this year, I mean. 2020. There was another object found and it was given the name 2020 so by the minor planet center. This is an organization actually.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Nature does not produce such things, but we produce it because it's called the technology of a light sail. So we are, for space exploration, we are exploring this technology because it has the benefit of not needing to carry the fuel with the spacecraft. So you don't have the fuel, you just have a sail and it's being pushed either by sunlight or by a laser beam or whatever. So perhaps this is a light”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, so I operated just like Sherlock Holmes in a way. I said, okay, what are the possibilities? And the only thing I could think. So I ruled out everything else and I said, it must be the sunlight reflected off it. So the sunlight reflects off the surface and gives it a push, just like you get a push on a sail on a boat, you know, from the wind reflecting off it. Now, in order for this to be effective, it turns out the object needs to be extremely thin. It turns out it needs to be less than a millimeter thick.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No sign. 10% of the mass evaporating, it's huge. Think about it a hundred meters size object losing 10% of its mass. You can't miss that.”
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 gravity, the sound. And if it was a comet, you would need about a tenth of the mass of this comet, the weight of this comet, to be evaporated in order to give it.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You can trace. And the question was what is this excess push? So for comets, you get the rocket effect. When you evaporate gas, you know, just like a jet engine on an airplane, a jet engine is very simple. You throw the gas back and it pushes the airplane forward. That's all. That's how it is. So in a case of a comet, you throw gas in the direction of the sun and then you get a push. So in the case of comets, you can get a push, but there was no cometary tale. So then people said, oh, wait a second. Is it an asteroid? No, but it behaves like a comet, but it doesn't look like a comet. So, well, forget about it. Business as usual.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, okay, no problem. Then, and that's the thing that convinced me to write about him And then in June 2018, you know, significantly later, there was a report that in fact the object Exhibited an excess push. In addition to the force of gravity, so the sun acts on it by gravity, but then there was an extra push on this object that was figured out from the orbit.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now, you might say, okay, it's not a com. So that's what the community said. Okay, no problem. It's still a rock. It's not a comet, but it's just a rock.”
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 easy to detect, it's very prominent. You see these cometary tales that look very prominent because they reflect sunlight and you can see them. In fact, it's sometimes difficult to see the nucleus of the comet because it's surrounded and shrouded with. And in this case, Was no trace of anything”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Survey the perseverance mission will try to find out whether it had liquid water, whether there was life perhaps on it at the time. But at some point it lost its atmosphere. And then the liquid water was gone. So the only reason that we can live on Earth. Is because of the atmosphere. But a comet is in vacuum pretty much. And when it gets warmed up on the surface, the water becomes, the water ice becomes gas, and then you see this cometary tale behind it. In addition to water, there are all kinds of carbon-based molecules or dust that comes off the surface.”
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 just a rock. It's just a rock. Yeah. So when you have ice on the surface, when the rock gets close to the sun, the sunlight warms it up. And the ice sublimates, evaporates. Because the one thing about ice, water ice, is it doesn't become liquid if you warm it up in vacuum, you know, without an external pressure. It just goes straight into gas. And that's what you see as the tail of a comet. The only way to get liquid water is to have an atmosphere like on Earth that has an external pressure. Only then you get liquid. And that's why it's essential to have an atmosphere to a planet in order to have liquid water and the chemistry of life. So if you look at Mars, Mars lost its atmosphere. And therefore, no liquid water on the surface anymore. I mean, there may have been early, and that's what the perseverance.”
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 a comet is a rock that has some water ice on the surface, so you can think of it as an icy rock. Actually, comets were discovered a long time ago, but the first model that was developed for them was by Fred Whipple, who was at Havan. And I think the legend goes that he got the idea from walking through Harvard Square and seeing during a winter day and seeing these icy rocks, you know.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so that's the very first unusual property. But to me, it was not unusual enough to think that it might be artificial. It was not significant enough. There was no cometary tale, no dust, no gas around this object. And the Spitzer Space Telescope really searched very deeply for carbon-based molecules. There was nothing. So it's definitely not a comet the way people expected it to be.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you assume the reflectivity is the same, Then it's just geometry. If you assume the reflectivity may change, Then it could be a combination of the area that you see and the reflectivity because But the point is that it's very extreme. And actually the best fit to the light curve that we saw was of a flat object. Unlike all the cartoons that you have seen of a cigar shape, a flat object at the 90% confidence gives a better model for the way that the light varied. And it's also...”
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 amount of light, sunlight that was reflected from it was changing over eight hours by a factor of 10, meaning that the area of this object, even though we can't resolve it, the area on the sky that reflects sunlight was bigger by a factor of 10. In some phases, as it was tumbling around, than in other phases. So even if you take a piece of paper that is razor thin, there is a very small likelihood that it's exactly edge on. And getting a factor of 10 change in the area that you see on the sky. Is huge. It's much more than any other. It means that the object has an unusual geometry. It's at least a factor of a few more than any of the comets or asteroids that we have seen before.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To the unusual properties of Muomua is with the hope that next time around when we see something as unusual. We would take a photograph, or we would get as much evidence as possible because science is based on evidence, not on prejudice. And we will get back to that theme. So anyway, let me point out what is...”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But don't worry, I mean, there will be more. There will be more because I operate by the Copernican principle, which says we don't live at a special place and we don't live at a special time. And that means if we survey the sky for a few years and we had sensitivity to this region between us and the sun and we found this object with pan stars, you know, there should be many more that we will find in the future with surveys that might be even better. And actually, in three years' timescale, there would be the so-called LSST. That's a survey of the Vera Rubin Observatory that would be much more sensitive and could potentially find an or like object every month. Okay, so I'm just waiting for that. And the main reason for me to alert everyone.”
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 would like to find is an object like it approaching us because then you can send the camera irrespective of how fast it moves. And if we were to find it in July 2017, that would have been possible because it was approaching us at that time. Actually, I was visiting Mount Haleakala in Maui, Hawaii, with my family for vacation at that time in July 2017. But nobody knew. At the observatory That is very close.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it was tumbling, spinning every eight hours. And as it was spinning, the brightness that we saw from that direction, we couldn't resolve it because it's tiny, it's about 100 meters, a few hundred feet, size of a football field. and we cannot from earth with existing telescopes we cannot resolve it the only way to actually get a photograph of it is to send a camera close to it and that was not possible at the time that Omu Mua was discovered because it was already moving away from us faster than any rocket we can send it's sort of like a guest that appeared for dinner and then by the time we realized that it's weird the guest is already out the front door into the dark street”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But then, so at first they thought maybe it's a comet or an asteroid, but then it didn't look like anything we've seen before. Borisov did look like a comet. So people asked me afterwards and said, you know, Doesn't it convince you if Borisov looks like a comet, doesn't it convince you that Omua is also natural? And I said, you know, when I went on the first date with my wife, she looked special to me. And since then I met many women Didn't change my opinion of my wife. So, you know, that's not an argument. Anyway, so why did look weird? Let me explain. So first of all, astronomers monitored the amount of light sunlight that it reflects.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“None has been. Well, since then there was one called the Borisov. It was discovered by an amateur Russian astronomer. Gennady Borisov and that one looked like a comet. And just like a comet from within the solar system.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“would find anything from interstellar space given what we know about the solar system. So if you assume that other planetary systems have similar abundance of rocks and you just calculate how many should be ejected into interstellar space, the conclusion is no we shouldn't find anything with pan stars”
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 this is the first object that was spotted close to Earth from outside the solar system. And it was found on October 19, 2017. And at that time, it was receding away from us. And at first, astronomers thought it must be a piece of rock, you know, just like all the asteroids and comets that we have seen from within the solar system. And it just came from another star. I should say that the actual discovery of this object was surprising to me because a decade earlier I wrote the first paper together with Ed Turner and Amaya Moro Martin that tried to predict whether the same telescope that was serving the sky, pan-stars, from Hawaii”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, think about it, all these emperors and kings that conquered a piece of land on earth and were extremely proud. You know, you see these images of kings and emperors that... Usually are alpha males and they stand strong and they're very proud of themselves. But if you think about it, there are 10 to the power 20 planets like the Earth in the observable volume of the universe. This view of conquering a peace. Right, so what does it teach you first to be humble, modest, you never have significant powers relative to the big scheme of things. And second, you should appreciate every day that you live. And learn about the world”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“By yours, no, no, I actually don't, you know, if you look at the big, if you're an astronomer, one thing that you learn from the universe is to be modest because you are not so significant.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Spaceship, but that's not true because all you need to know is the DNA making, the genetic making of these animals, put it on a computer system that has AI. Plus 3D printer so that this CubeSat, which is rather small. Can go with this information to another planet and use the raw materials there to produce synthetic life. And that would be a way of producing copies, just like the Gutenberg printing press.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And currently all our eggs are in one basket, but we can spread them. It's sort of like the printing press, if you think about it, the revolution that Gutenberg brought is there were very few copies of the Bible at the time, and each of them was precious because it was handwritten. But once the printing press produced multiple copies, if something bad happened to one of the copies, it wasn't a catastrophe. It wasn't disaster because you had many more copies. And so if we have copies of Here on earth elsewhere, then we avoid the risk of it being eliminated by a single point breakdown catastrophe. So the question is, can we build NOx spaceship that will carry life as we know it? Now, you might think we have to put elephants and whales and birds on a big...”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Animals on it so that they were saved from the great flood. Now you can think about doing the same on earth because there are risks for future catastrophes. You know, we could have the self-inflicted wounds that we were talking about, like nuclear war, changing the climate, or there could be an asteroid. Impacting us just like the dinosaurs died. The dinosaurs didn't have science, astronomy, they couldn't have a warning system, but there was this big stone, big rock that approached them. It must have been a beautiful sight just when it was approaching, got very big and then smashed them. Kill them. So you could have a catastrophe like that or in a billionaires the sun will basically boil off all the oceans on earth.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“May well be May well be. I should say something about AI because I do think it offers a very important step into the future. If you look at the Old Testament, the Bible, there is this story about Noak's ark that you might Know about No knew about a great flood that is about to endanger all life on earth. So he decided to build an ark. And the Bible actually talks about specifically what the size of this ark was, what the dimensions were. Turns out it was quite similar to Umu Amua that we will discuss in a few minutes. But at any event, he built this ark and he put...”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Look for dead civilizations, and perhaps we can learn a lesson why they died and behave better so that we will not share the same fate. So I think there is a lesson to be learned from the sky. And by the way, I should also say if we find a technology that we have not dreamed of, that we can import to Earth, that may be a better strategy for making a fortune than going to Silicon Valley or going to Wall Street. Because you learn, you make a jump start into something of the future.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, but if you look on Earth, there are lots of cultures that existed throughout time and they are dead by now. The Mayan culture was very sophisticated, died, but we can find evidence for it and learn about it just by archaeology, digging into the ground looking. And so we can do the same thing in space”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Things that went beyond the circumstances they were born into. I would think that even if they're short-lived, these are the creatures that made the biggest difference to their environment and we can search for them. Even if they are short-lived and most of the civilizations are dead by now. Even if that's the case”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we are developing means for our own destruction through self inflicted wounds. And it might well be that creatures like us are not long-lived, that the crocodiles on other planets live for billions of years. They don't destroy themselves. They live naturally. And so if you look around, the most common thing would be dumb animals that live for long times, you know, not those that have conscious. In terms of changing the environment, I think since, I mean, humans develop tools, they develop the ability to construct technologies that would lift us from this planet that we were born in. And that's something animals without a conscious consciousness cannot really do. And so in terms of looking for...”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so that's a good question. I think what is most abundant depending on how long it survives. So if you look at us as an example, we are now... We do have conscious and we do have technology, but the technologies that we are developing are also As we can tell. We can change the climate if we are not careful enough. We can go into nuclear wars”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, that's another thing that we have our technology only for 100 years and it's evolving exponentially right now on a three-year time scale. So imagine what would happen in 100 years, in a thousand years, in a million years or in a billion years. Now, the sun is actually relatively late in the star formation history of the universe. Most of the sun-like stars formed earlier. And some of them already died, you know, became white dwarfs. And so if you imagine that a civilization like ours existed around a typical sun-like star. By now, if they survived, they could be a billionaires old. And then imagine a billionaire technology. It would look like magic to us. An approximation to God. We wouldn't be able to understand it. And so in my view, we should be humble. And by the way, we should probably just listen and not speak.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That and you just continue to walk. And so I think that we are sort of average, not very interesting, not exciting. So nobody cares about us. We tend to think that we are special, but that's a sign of immaturity.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And my question is, I mean, it's pretty obvious to me that we are probably not alone because half of all the sun-like stars we know now as astronomers, half of the sun-like stars from the Kepler satellite data have a planet the size of the Earth, roughly at the same distance that the Earth is from the Sun. And that means that they can have liquid water on their surface and the chemistry of life as we know it. So if you roll the dice billions of times just within the Milky Way galaxy, and then you have tens of billions of galaxies like it within the observable volume of the universe, it would be extremely arrogant to think that we are special. I would think that we are sort of middle of the road, typical forms of life. And that's why nobody pays attention to us. If you go down the street on a sidewalk and you see an ant, you don't pay attention or special respect.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You can make very different cakes depending on how you put them together and how you heat them up. And what is the chance that by taking the soup of chemicals that existed on Earth and cooking it one way to get our life that you got the best cake possible? I mean, we are probably not the sharpest cookie in the jar.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's the next to ninth question. For me, the answer is sort of clear because I start from the principle of modesty. If we believe that we are alone and special and unique, that shows arrogance. My daughters, when they were infants, they tended to think that they are special, unique. And then they went out to the street and realized that other kids are very much like them. And then they developed a sense of a better perspective about themselves. And I think the only reason that we are still thinking that we are special is because we haven't searched well enough to find others that might even be better than us. I say that because I look at the newspaper every morning and I see that we do foolish things. We are not necessarily the most intelligent ones. And if you think about it, if you open a recipe book, you see that out of the same ingredients.”
2021-01-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #154 – Avi Loeb: Aliens, Black Holes, and the Mystery of the Oumuamua · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source