Hunting for Alien Technology with Avi Loeb, Harvard Astrophysicist

(Intro Narrator at 00:00:00) Today, we're talking to Avi Loeb, Harvard astrophysicist, about his experience leading the White House UAP Science Advisory Council, searching for signs of extraterrestrial life, and more. You're listening to Joel Beasley, Modern CTO.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:21) I am excited to hear that. So new day, new news. You got a call an hour ago. Tell me about that.

(Avi Loeb at 00:00:28) Yeah. So I just spoke with the owner of a property that used to be owned by Carl Sagan, and we will probably put an observatory in that property that engages with public outreach but is also collects scientific quality data that could help in figuring out whether we are being visited by some extraterrestrial civilization. There are many threads through my life right now that are similar to those that were pursued by Carl Sagan. He was a junior faculty in my department, astronomy department at Harvard. His office was not far from mine, and he used to live in the same town that I live in, Lexington, Massachusetts.

(Avi Loeb at 00:01:16) I know that from the dry cleaner that said that the last name Sagan appeared on his books. And then moreover, over the past decade, I was very much interested in finding out whether we have a sibling in our family of intelligent civilizations. If you are religious, whether God is a parent to only one child or more than one child. So that was obviously the passion of Carl Sagan in his research and public outreach. So I very much resonate with his work, and this will allow me to help celebrate his legacy with this observatory on a property that he once owned, where he would get inspiration. He would go there to write.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:07) Oh, that is so cool. Would you get the guys from SETI involved, like Seth and those guys?

(Avi Loeb at 00:02:13) We should see how it proceeds. But indeed, when Carl Sagan was alive, we were listening for any radio signals from far away, and it's sort of like waiting for a phone call from someone on our street. But so far, we haven't received any phone call, and perhaps it's about time to search for a package in our mailbox, which is the approach we're taking.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:38) Oh, so it's a different approach. That is awesome.

(Avi Loeb at 00:02:40) It's a different approach. It's looking for physical objects that might represent extraterrestrial technological artifacts. And obviously, it's very different because radio signals propagate at the speed of light. And if you don't catch them at the right time, you will never witness them because they're moving at the speed of light. So if, for example, there was a signal that passed through the Earth, let's say a million years ago, now it's a million light years away.

(Avi Loeb at 00:03:11) We can't see it. We just have to be at the right time at the right place. Whereas with physical objects, for example, Voyager, the Voyager spacecraft that will leave the solar system, within a billion years it will end up on the opposite side of the Milky Way galaxy relative to the sun, and it will be gravitationally bound to the Milky Way galaxy because it's moving at a tenth of, or even less than a tenth, about 5% of the escape speed from the Milky Way galaxy. So it's gravitationally bound. And so, you know, these Voyager-like probes that were sent by other civilizations over the past few billion years, because, you know, the sun is a latecomer.

(Avi Loeb at 00:03:51) Most of the stars formed billions of years before the sun. The sun formed only in the last one-third of cosmic history. And so all of the space debris that was generated by technological civilizations like ours that made it to interstellar space like Voyager, over the past few billion years, they keep accumulating like plastics in the ocean. And the question is, are we being visited by any of them, or can we check if there's anything in our backyard that may have been manufactured technologically and is not an iceberg or a rock? And that's pretty much the approach we're taking. Very different from looking for a radio signal because you're looking for physical objects nearby.

(Avi Loeb at 00:04:32) And it makes a big difference because if we receive a radio signal from tens of thousands of light years away, we have plenty of time to establish a committee about how to respond to it, what to say, because it takes tens of thousands of years for the signal to go one way. If we respond, it will take tens of thousands of years for it to go the other way. So if we have a committee that takes several years to decide what to do, it's not much of a delay. Our conversation partner will not notice the delay. But on the other hand, if we have a visitor in our backyard that is technological, we have to respond promptly.

(Avi Loeb at 00:05:23) And that depends on the intent and the qualities of that visitor. So you cannot make a protocol about how to respond to a visitor in your backyard because it depends what the visitor wants to do. I mean, if you see a person in your backyard, you know, you wouldn't shoot that person because it might be the postman or someone comes to fix something at your home. You have to find the intent and the qualities of that visitor. And it's a very different approach that needs to take into consideration all the information that can be collected about the visitor, and the response needs to be prompt because, for example, the interstellar object 3I Atlas that came through the inner solar system over the past year or so.

(Avi Loeb at 00:06:16) You know, it crossed the inner solar system over a period of a few months. It's really fast, and you have to respond in time if it happens to be a technological visitor because it might do something. It might pose a threat to humanity.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:38) What is the current thought about that object?

(Avi Loeb at 00:06:41) 3I Atlas? Well, there are anomalies. There are unusual facts about it, but it followed a path that is fully dictated by gravity with a very small deviation as a result of outgassing. We saw a plume of gas coming from it.

(Avi Loeb at 00:07:00) There were some anomalies. I listed about 22 of them relative to objects that we are familiar with, but none of them constitutes a definite demonstration that it might be technological. For example, it arrived in the plane of the planets around the sun to within five degrees, and that's a chance of one in five hundred. That was unusual, and nobody explains it. It also came very close to Mars and Jupiter.

(Avi Loeb at 00:07:29) It had an unusual abundance of deuterium, which is used in nuclear fusion, a thousand times more abundant than the average cosmic abundance. It also released methane, which is a biosignature, a biological signature. It released it close to the sun. And if it was just methane on its surface, we would have expected it to appear before any other gas because it's more volatile, for example, than carbon dioxide. And we saw carbon dioxide much earlier when the object was far from the sun without methane, and methane appeared only close to the sun.

(Avi Loeb at 00:08:14) So that raises the question of whether the sunlight revived some microbes or created some brine or liquid water that allowed microbes to generate the methane that we saw. Nobody discusses that as well, by the way. And then, you know, you never know. These icebergs may also be Trojan horses. And now that the Odysseus film came out, obviously we know the trick of masquerading as a natural thing.

(Avi Loeb at 00:08:50) In that case, it's the Trojan horse inside of which there was something quite threatening to the city of Troy. And so we should consider that just because, you know, if we want to reach interstellar space, 3I Atlas was moving a few times faster than Voyager. And therefore, it would be a very useful vehicle for us to hitchhike on if we want to reach interstellar space much faster than our fastest rockets.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:25) How do you study these nearby objects? We're not looking at objects in other galaxies that might be pollution of an intelligent species. We're looking at things near us that might be objects other than just natural objects. Is that correct?

(Avi Loeb at 00:09:39) So my work splits into three avenues. One is interstellar objects recognized by telescopes. These are survey telescopes looking at the sky, and every now and then they see an object that moves faster than the escape speed from the solar system, so they identify it as an interstellar object. There were three of them. The latest is 3I Atlas.

(Avi Loeb at 00:10:02) But then there are also some smaller objects, roughly the size of a person that collide with Earth. They appear as meteors because they burn up in the Earth's atmosphere as a result of friction on air. And most of the rocks that collide with Earth come from the solar system, but, you know, one in a thousand or so happens to be interstellar. And I discovered a few in the catalog that NASA compiled of meteors based on US government satellite data. And I even led an expedition to the Pacific Ocean where we looked for the materials from an interstellar meteor that was spotted back in 2014 near Papua New Guinea.

(Avi Loeb at 00:10:45) And there will be a Netflix documentary about that, hopefully coming out within the next six months or so. So that's the second path of — first path is objects passing at some distance comparable to the Earth-sun's separation away from Earth. These are interstellar objects. However, the more abundant population of smaller — I mean, those that are passing at a distance, we can recognize them only if they are of order the size of a football field or bigger. And the first object discovered this way was Oumuamua.

(Avi Loeb at 00:11:19) It was roughly the size of a football field, and it was strange because its geometry was most likely flat. And also, it was pushed away from the sun by some mysterious force without showing any evidence for outgassing, so it didn't look like a comet. And, you know, the comet experts call it a dark comet. In other words, a comet where you don't see the evidence for it being a comet, which is an oxymoron.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:50) Are you supposed to be scientists? Come on.

(Avi Loeb at 00:11:52) Well, that's the strange thing, you know, because it's like you become an expert on zebras, and when you see an elephant, you say it's a zebra without stripes. But it's actually not the same animal. And there is another dark comet that they pointed out that belongs to the solar system, and we noticed that its trajectory is just like one of the lost Soviet spacecraft called Phobos 1 that was launched in 1988. So now the mainstream comet experts, they said it's a dark comet because we don't see outgassing, and we see some non-gravitational acceleration, some mysterious force acting on it.

(Avi Loeb at 00:12:35) And then the Japanese space agency is planning to land on it in July 2031. And in preparation for that, last year, telescopes around the world collected data on it and found that it's roughly 10 meters in size, and it is very shiny. It reflects half of the sunlight impinging on it. And also it's very sturdy because it's spinning every five minutes, so it cannot be just a rubble pile, you know, a collection of rocks that are loosely bound because they would fly apart with such a fast rotation. And we say, no.

(Avi Loeb at 00:13:11) It's actually a spacecraft, the Soviet spacecraft. So it would be interesting to see when they land on it. It's called Hayabusa 2. That's the spacecraft that the Japanese plan to land on it in about five years. And then when they land on it and they expect to witness the outgassing from a dark comet, they might find actually a label saying made in the USSR. And that would be a very important teaching moment for those guys.

(Avi Loeb at 00:13:41) But at any event, I suggested that Oumuamua, the first interstellar object, was also artificial, but we didn't produce it. So that's one brand of interstellar objects that, you know, could potentially be technological. We just need to pay attention to anomalies. That's the best way to find a technological object relative to a rock or an iceberg. And then there are these objects that collide with Earth and appear as meteors.

(Avi Loeb at 00:14:12) For them, the benefit is that we can collect the materials from the surface of Earth, and that was the expedition that I led to the Pacific Ocean. And the third type of objects are those that, you know, are very close to Earth, but appear as if they are not necessarily human-made or natural. And that's a whole new ballgame because it involves also US government data. And just a month and a half ago, I was asked by a representative from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office in the Pentagon and the White House, the FBI, the intelligence agencies, to establish and lead the Science Advisory Council that would help the US government in resolving the nature of these unidentified anomalous phenomena that they notice in their data.

(Avi Loeb at 00:15:33) This cannot be dismissed because we're dealing with objects that behave in unusual ways and based on the most sensitive sensors that the US government employs. And so there are two unusual things about them. First of all, that the US government comes to scientists like myself in order to get advice. That by itself is unusual because if they were confident that they're dealing with technological objects of human origin, then they would write a classified memo to the Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, and talk about the potential risk to national security because these objects are hovering near strategic assets. However, the fact that they approach me means that they cannot resolve these cases, and it looks like it may not be of human origin, these objects. So that's very interesting.

(Avi Loeb at 00:16:16) And the second thing is, you know, how often does the US government admit that they're not doing their job? So they are willing to make it publicly known that there are objects they cannot identify. And just an hour ago, there was a new directive from President Trump, basically telling all agencies within government that they should not hold people with knowledge about UAP — these are the unidentified objects — from coming forward as a result of NDA, nondisclosure agreements, that they have with government. That's extremely significant.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:04) That's the case now?

(Avi Loeb at 00:17:05) Yeah. Just now.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:08) They've been waiting for that for a while. I talked to Ryan Graves, and they've been waiting for something like this for a little bit now.

(Avi Loeb at 00:17:13) That is very significant. Just happened. I'm telling you, my life is quite interesting.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:18) This is an interesting day for you. This is the news day.

(Avi Loeb at 00:17:22) No, no, no. I mean, it happens to me every day. It's just that this is very significant because if there is indeed some knowledge of objects that are not human-made, you know, we will know about it.

(Avi Loeb at 00:17:40) And frankly, I haven't seen that data, but we heard a lot of people testify under oath in front of the US Congress about such information within government. We haven't seen it. And once they open it up, I can look at it as a scientist, try to resolve it. Or if the data is not good enough, we can get better data with future sensors. So I'm very optimistic.

(Avi Loeb at 00:18:12) You know, there is a huge interest in this subject. There were 2 billion views, 2 billion views of the website of the Department of War where the four releases of batches of information about —

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:30) Are they still coming out, or are they all out?

(Avi Loeb at 00:18:32) Yeah. There was one on May 8, May 22, June 12, and July 10. These were four releases, but they did not include any conclusive evidence for non-human-made objects, but some of the cases are unresolved. The data is not good enough, but it's definitely possible that it's not human-made. However, it's not clear.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:57) Did they say that it was only going to be four, or are they continuing to roll more out?

(Avi Loeb at 00:19:03) Oh, it will continue. I mean, the existence of my council is to help the U.S. government release more data and advise them. I mean, we submitted a request for 50 items of information, and then we also submitted the recommendation about what kind of sensors the U.S. government may employ to give us higher quality data.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:25) Well, that was the, your CBS interview that you did got a lot of views, and I looked through the comments of it, and the biggest thing was like, enough with the blurry photos. Let's get some 4K. And my first thought was, you know, my dad was Air Force, and I've been in technology building and designing systems for 20 years. If we say today that we want better sensors, it's five years before we start getting footage from

(Avi Loeb at 00:19:47) the better

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:47) sensors. Right?

(Avi Loeb at 00:19:48) Well, two things. First, the Galileo Project is already employing such sensors.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:52) Oh, really? We can?

(Avi Loeb at 00:19:53) Yeah. We can, for example, identify distances to objects to within 1%. I just put an essay about that on Medium.com yesterday. You can check it out. Every day or two, I put an essay.

(Avi Loeb at 00:20:08) And my latest one was about distance measurements that we do with the Galileo Project to within 1%. Just by looking at the same object from different directions, we do triangulation. So this will not require higher quality cameras, it will just require more than one. Looking at the same object from different directions, using different instruments as well, that's also obviously of help. But it's clear that not all the data was released because, or the highest quality data was not released, because we know that the U.S. government gets data from satellites.

(Avi Loeb at 00:20:46) You know, they are employed when the Iranians launch a ballistic missile. I mean, during the Iran war, in a fraction of a second, the U.S. immediately knew about launches. And that's from the heat generated during the launch of a missile, and they can spot it with great precision using the network of satellites that orbit the Earth, and because they have infrared sensors. So there is definitely a lot of data from satellites and it's quite high resolution. Satellites can reach a resolution of a few centimeters. I know that because, like the kind of lenses that were used two decades ago were considered trash by the intelligence agencies, so they donated it to the astronomers who found it to be extremely useful.

(Avi Loeb at 00:21:41) And those two lenses will be used in an upcoming observatory. So for the astronomers, it was a great gift, even though, you know, astronomers had to put a lot of time into, you know, putting them in an observatory that looks out rather than looking down at Earth. But for the intelligence agencies, that represents, you know, a previous generation kind of lenses of the order of meter size, and they must use bigger ones now. And so my point is they have amazing images, and if they noticed an unidentified object, they can get very high resolution of it. And that could easily clarify whether it's human-made or not.

(Avi Loeb at 00:22:35) And we haven't seen those images. So you can also measure the motion of an object from space much better than from the ground. You don't need to have a camera in a cockpit of a moving airplane. You can look at it from a satellite.

(Avi Loeb at 00:22:49) So I haven't seen those.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:51) That's the better way. The better way is to get better equipment, not necessarily in the planes themselves, but just around and searching for it. Now you just became, last month, you got appointed to a new position. Tell me about what that position is and what that board is doing.

(Avi Loeb at 00:23:06) The council that I mentioned, and I recruited about 18 brilliant scientists with expertise in physics, in oceanography, data analysis, statistics, and psychology, so that we can cover all aspects of the interaction of unidentified anomalous phenomena with humans. And the idea is to look at the data that the U.S. government has, or request data that was not released so far, and we actually did that, as well as recommend the new sensors for the U.S. government to use. And it's like a detective story, and the goal is to get to the bottom of it. And the best way to do it is by evidence rather than attending to social media.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:00) And the way I—you mean TikTok's not the place to go for this?

(Avi Loeb at 00:24:05) The way I phrase it is that we should keep our eyes on the orbs, not on the audience. And unfortunately, you know, I see two trends in the way that people comment on this subject. Well, I see, first of all, they don't read substance. You know, when I write a long essay, they just look at the title and immediately make a comment, and I can tell that because very often the comments miss the main point of the essay.

(Avi Loeb at 00:24:35) And that is very disappointing to me that people cannot allocate more than a few seconds to any item they see on the Internet. Because my essays take about five minutes to read. It's not a huge chunk of their time, but they just look at the title, respond, and move on. Like, that to me is a great disappointment. And the second thing is that I see that people have a very strong prejudice.

(Avi Loeb at 00:25:01) That includes skeptics who think that they know that this is not worth attention, and therefore, they don't want anyone to collect evidence, and they would attack me forever just for attempting to collect evidence on a subject that the U.S. government says that they don't fully understand. Okay? So that, to me, sounds completely ridiculous. And then, on the other side, there are believers who are very upset that I'm trying to collect evidence because they already know the answer and they say, how dare you question our belief by trying to collect evidence about it? Which again is a crazy approach.

(Avi Loeb at 00:25:39) Because if you're absolutely sure that you know the answer, what's your problem? I will find out something that agrees with your belief. You know, and even when Vice President J.D. Vance said that he thinks that UAP are demons, I was asked about it and I said, yeah, anyone is allowed to have their conjecture about the nature of UAP, and, you know, we will just collect a lot of data on them. And if it looks like they behave like demons, so be it. I have nothing against the people having their conjectures, but as long as everyone agrees that by collecting more data, we should get to the bottom of it.

(Avi Loeb at 00:26:23) And that to me is the sane and responsible approach. But I get attacked from both sides, believers and skeptics. And both of them have a very short attention span. And the other thing is, you know, when I speak to reporters, very often they're motivated to get a lot of clickbait, and so they put a title of their article which completely, which is something that I didn't even say that makes it sound very extreme.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:51) Aliens are real is the title of this episode.

(Avi Loeb at 00:26:54) Yeah. And then all these people with short attention span just look at the title and then say, Avi said that, and start attacking me on that. And the same is true if someone misquotes me. Avi said that based on someone else. And I say, just listen to what I say rather than telling people how uncredible is the statement that you read from someone else that told you that I said that.

(Avi Loeb at 00:27:23) Like, what are you doing? If you want to be upset about me, just listen to what I say. Read what I write, and refer to that. But you don't want to do that. You just want to attack, and you look for an excuse.

(Avi Loeb at 00:27:38) And that is part of the reality of social media, you know, that is very disappointing. And if you thought that this represents a small minority of the people interested in the subject, no. It actually is a vast majority. It's a huge number of people that just respond superficially and do not attend to primary sources. And I only ask one thing: that if you are trying to have an opinion about someone, listen to what that someone says.

(Avi Loeb at 00:28:08) That's all. Don't have an opinion without listening to that person. What someone else said about that person is irrelevant because that someone else has an agenda. The reporters have an agenda to get clickbait. The skeptics have an agenda to quote me as if I'm a skeptic.

(Avi Loeb at 00:28:27) The believers have an agenda to quote me as if I'm a believer. And the other thing that is not fully understood is how science operates. So when I deal with, let's say, an item that was released in the UFO files from the U.S. government, you know, it could be that this item, like, for example, the blue dots in the photographs taken by the Apollo astronauts. The blue dots appeared also in parts of the film that were not exposed to the camera lens. So I said, these may be cosmic rays. These may not be UFOs because they appear in parts of the film, the Kodak film that was not exposed to the camera lens.

(Avi Loeb at 00:29:08) So how can it be that these are real objects? And also there was Artemis II, you know, this spacecraft that passed near the moon. They didn't see any UFOs with the best cameras we have today. So how is it the Apollo astronauts saw them and Artemis doesn't? You know, or like, what happened?

(Avi Loeb at 00:29:27) Anyway, so as soon as I said that, they said, how dare you consider the possibility or how dare you say that 'Oumuamua was technological and at the same time say that the blue dots in the Apollo astronauts images are not UFOs. Like, this is inconsistent. But what they don't understand is that it's fully consistent because when you have anomalies of an object, it's actually the duty of every scientist to consider possibilities, and I'm willing to consider the possibility that 'Oumuamua is technological. Why? Because there are these anomalies.

(Avi Loeb at 00:30:02) But at the same time, when I see a phenomena that I can explain as being natural, like these blue dots that appear in parts of the film that were not exposed to the camera lens, you know, my obligation as a scientist is to say, well, this cannot be real objects because otherwise you would not have the blue dots in parts of the film that were not exposed to the camera lens. It must be cosmic rays. That's my duty and there is no contradiction. You know, in the case where you have uncertainty in the data, as a scientist you are allowed to consider possibilities, possible interpretations. In case there is an explanation to something, you should explain how this accounts for what is seen.

(Avi Loeb at 00:30:44) Both are allowed within the realm of science. You know, you are not forbidden from coming up with conjecture for some anomalies that cannot be explained. You are not forbidden just because you explain something else as noise. These two are completely consistent, but people do not see it. They feel that it's just like a political debate.

(Avi Loeb at 00:31:04) If you are siding with the Republican Party, you should endorse everything that the Republican Party is advocating. In science, it's not like that. The blue dots can be cosmic rays, whereas, you know, the orbs that the Anomaly Resolution Office is reporting about could be unidentified anomalous phenomena of extraterrestrial origin. It could be, both of them. So the fact that one is noise and the other is signal doesn't mean that I always have to assume that anything that we see is UFOs.

(Avi Loeb at 00:31:40) Like this is not science. This is politics. So what people do not understand is the difference between politics, religion, where it's a matter of belief. And as long as you sit within your group of people who believes in the same thing, you are always locked to say the same thing as the rest of the people. In science, it's not like that. You are not locked.

(Avi Loeb at 00:32:02) If I see blue dots, I can say whatever I want. Believe me, it's not a political statement. It's not a statement about the orbs if I say something about the blue dots. Like these are two different phenomena. As a scientist, I'm free to consider each item on its own merit.

(Avi Loeb at 00:32:17) And I'm not subscribed to a tribe that will always insist that anything we see must be UFOs. If we see satellites moving, and there was an example of a television crew that saw a white object coming out of a volcano after a meteor smashed to the ground behind the volcano. They said, that's a UFO. And I said, no, if you calculate the likelihood of that happening from a satellite, it's actually quite large. And they said, how is it possible there are clouds and the clouds should have blocked the view of this satellite?

(Avi Loeb at 00:32:58) And I explained, this volcano is at an elevation of two kilometers. It's above the clouds. The volcano is above the clouds. So when you look at the volcano with a camera, television camera, it's above the clouds and the satellite would appear, will not be blocked by the clouds. It's above the clouds. And so, you know, people just get upset that I'm saying something is a satellite because they want everything to be UFOs, everything.

(Avi Loeb at 00:33:28) And the same happened with the war in Ukraine. There were some astronomers there that noticed black dark objects moving and they said, oh, these are at a distance of 10 kilometers, therefore they are moving at more than 10 kilometers per second, which is the speed by which, you know, meteors burn up in the atmosphere, create a giant fireball. Any object moving at that speed through the air would create a fireball, but they claimed it's a dark object. And I said, well, maybe they got the distance wrong because they didn't have a good distance estimate. So if you make the distance 10 times smaller, it actually moves at the speed of an artillery shell, or a bullet, which, you know, these are common in a war zone. And you have to measure distance reliably before you say that this is an object that represents something that is new physics, an object that can move through the atmosphere faster, you know, than the speed of sound and will not generate a sonic boom or a fireball.

(Avi Loeb at 00:34:35) You know, and so people get upset because, oh, we don't know the distance for sure, but it must be a UFO. By the way, another possible origin for something that moves through the atmosphere very fast is a laser spot. You know, just think about the laser spot that tricks a cat to chase it. It's not a real object. The cat thinks it's a real object, runs around the laser. The laser spot can move at arbitrary speed. It's not a real object. If it moves through air, it could move very fast without generating a sonic boom or a fireball because it's not a, it doesn't have a hard surface. So you always need to consider these possibilities before you conclude that there must be some new physics.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:21) Okay. There's a lot to respond to that. But to your point about humanity, I feel you. Being an online content creator and seeing how all of this happens in the comments we get, I have gotten so fascinated by it. I've started calling it, like, the pitchfork mindset. You know, back in the 1800s when they, or the 1500s, they'd get the pitchfork and go through the town and just demand blood.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:46) I see that kind of happening online with almost every topic that comes up. And so my current thing that I'm looking into is finding psychologists who can help me understand the pitchfork concept from early humanity to how it's being applied online. So when that episode comes out, I'll let you know because it seems like you're experiencing this quite a bit.

(Avi Loeb at 00:36:08) I am. Yeah. I mean, I have some psychologists that started collaborating with the Galileo Project.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:13) Really?

(Avi Loeb at 00:36:13) Yeah, it's their domain. I let them look into that. There are also claims that UAP somehow interact with humans and they can attract them to some sites by thinking about them. And so we will test that. You know, that can be tested empirically. Again, it's not as a—

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:36) I did read. I saw that guy's documentary, the meditation to attract the, yeah.

(Avi Loeb at 00:36:42) Yeah. Yeah. There are some people who claim that. You know, I prefer to focus on the physical reality, not on stories that people tell me. But if it turns out that indeed some humans have the power to attract objects—

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:57) Great. We can set some sensors up, have a party, have them do their meditate. Let's take pictures. Yeah. Let's do it.

(Avi Loeb at 00:37:03) Yeah. Exactly. It's possible to test that. But my point is that, you know, people can tell you a lot of things, but many of them might be wrong. How do we know that?

(Avi Loeb at 00:37:16) Well, we know that from politics, and we know that from religion, and we know that from any other circumstance. You know, sometimes people are put on death row because there are eyewitnesses that under oath say that they must be killed, those people, because they committed the crime. And then somehow the defense gets access to the DNA evidence, and it turns out that they're exonerated. So we know that people can be very strong believers in something that is wrong. And, you know, if you have a car accident, immediately you can witness that because, obviously, different people have different recollection of what actually happened.

(Avi Loeb at 00:38:06) That's why FIFA, you know, in the World Cup of soccer, they use cameras to figure out the truth. They don't go around and ask the audience or the players. And believers should understand that. Why isn't the referee going to the believers and asking them what really happened? Because you can't trust people.

(Avi Loeb at 00:38:28) You have to look at what the camera shows. And if you are a believer, you are absolutely sure that you are correct, but that doesn't cut it for FIFA. Okay? And if FIFA is not happy with it, science should not be happy with the approach of believing stories. And the point is, humans are not good detectors.

(Avi Loeb at 00:38:52) They have wishful thinking, hallucinations, all kinds of things that drive them to say one thing and not the other, and they can be absolutely sure and with full conviction that they're telling the truth, but they're not telling the truth. And so that's why science uses instruments. And in order to limit the level of bias, of course, there is still bias remaining, but it's much worse if you involve people in the assessment, if you just believe stories. So hopefully, in the coming months or years, we will get to the bottom of these unusual objects based on evidence. And the good news is, if you have, for example, a high resolution image of a technological object that is definitely not human-made, or if you have materials from a crash site of such an object, then everyone can see it and everyone would agree.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:52) Oh, I did have a question for you on that one. I remember maybe a handful of years ago, I had seen an article come out from a major news publication that says we have confirmed we've got, like, evidence of off-world vehicles. Do you remember that one that came out?

(Avi Loeb at 00:40:10) Oh, okay.

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:11) It was like a major news story or something. Yeah.

(Avi Loeb at 00:40:14) But what was the evidence?

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:16) I don't know. That's why I was asking you if you heard of anything.

(Avi Loeb at 00:40:17) We don't have such evidence. So my point is, I mean, the government may have such evidence hidden from view, but my point is, once we present it publicly, then everyone will agree to it. How do I know that? Because the Vatican, for many years, insisted that the sun moves around the Earth.

(Avi Loeb at 00:40:41) And when the evidence was beyond any doubt that there are—

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:44) In jail.

(Avi Loeb at 00:40:44) Yeah. Yeah. And none of the bureaucrats in the Vatican was put in jail for misleading the public knowingly. They knew that they're misleading the public for centuries after the death of Galileo Galilei, and they still did it.

(Avi Loeb at 00:41:00) But then once we figured it out, then cosmologists decided to learn more about the universe and, you know, get more details. But people don't look back once a major discovery happens. They just focus on learning more about it. So the same will happen here. If we see a vehicle that came from out of this world, we have clear evidence for it, and everyone would agree, it will be beyond a reasonable doubt. It will not be a question of whether you're a believer or a denier.

(Avi Loeb at 00:41:32) In fact, if you look at the evidence and you are still in denial, you may be put in a lunatic asylum. Okay? And, you know, that's where you would put people who still claim that the sun moves around the Earth given all the evidence we have as of now. Okay? So the point is that once the evidence is clear beyond a reasonable doubt, everyone will accept it.

(Avi Loeb at 00:41:55) There wouldn't be these camps on social media fighting with each other because the evidence would convince everyone.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:01) You haven't heard about flat earthers then.

(Avi Loeb at 00:42:05) Well, okay. Let's put it this way. Those who will ignore the evidence, you know, will be a small minority.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:16) Yes. Yes.

(Avi Loeb at 00:42:17) Yeah. So let's get to that point. Let's see if there is, and if there is no such evidence, then we can move on, you know. If we examine all the data that the US government has and there is nothing there to indicate anything that is not human-made or natural, then okay, so be it. Let's move on. And of course, that would help national security because those technological objects that will be identified near strategic assets of the US, you know, those are a potential national security risk. And if we resolve them, we help the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies fulfill their mission. So, you know, it's not as if we are wasting our time trying to figure these things out.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:59) No. You know, that was similar conversation I had with Ryan Graves. He was just approaching it from a technology and safety standpoint. He's like, we're flying these missions, and there's things up there that can interfere with our missions. We need better technology. We need to figure out what these things are, not because they're little green men, but because we could wreck our jets. We could have big issues.

(Avi Loeb at 00:43:20) Exactly. And there is another point that needs to be made, which is, you know, science is supported by taxpayers. And this subject is extremely of great interest, extremely interesting to the general public. How do I know that? Because there were 2 billion views of the release of the files on the Department of Defense website. And moreover, it's important potentially for national security.

(Avi Loeb at 00:43:47) So the two subjects that unify all Americans, that all Americans believe are important, are national security and are we alone? You know? And this subject brings them together. So it's a bipartisan consensus, and when I visited the US Senate a few weeks ago, there were both Democrats and Republicans supporting disclosure of any information on UAP.

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:21) Which is great.

(Avi Loeb at 00:44:22) From the US government. Yeah. So my point is, this is not a political matter on which the nation is divided. It's actually something everyone agrees on. And it's an opportunity to bring science to the forefront after it lost some of its credibility during COVID and other things.

(Avi Loeb at 00:44:40) So this is a great opportunity for science to be featured as a way of resolving a mystery. And what bothers me is that the mainstream of the scientific community is not standing up to the commitment they have to the public in helping the US government resolve this matter. The mainstream of academia is shying away from this subject for many years, ridiculing it, dismissing it. And even when the council was announced, if you look at, for example, there was a report by Associated Press where the reporter just went around to some scientists to say bad things about the council. And I asked myself, what good does it do for those scientists to ridicule the work of the council? Like, I did not ask those scientists to do anything. They are not—it's not as if I asked them to work or do anything. So why would they be negative, toxic against the approach of science, which is to collect evidence and figure it out? Okay. What's their problem? Now I am not intending to solve their problem because I think that's the job of their therapist.

(Avi Loeb at 00:45:52) But I complain about the fact that they're going against science because science is supposed to be driven by curiosity and the evidence. And yet, they are not curious, definitely. And they ridicule and dismiss those who are curious. And how dare they? Because I didn't ask them to do anything.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:18) Well, I think you are the perfect person for this council. I don't know who appointed you, but I'm glad that they did. And my piece of evidence for this—I'm a very curious person. I'm not super smart, but I'm very curious. And my evidence I have is the clip of this interview where we brought up this concept of someone meditating to attract UAPs. And with a straight face, you're just like, yeah, we should explore that. And that's like an unbiased—those are the people I—do you know how starved I am of conversation, Avi, of people who can take their personal beliefs, which I have, and I can just put them aside, and then we can just engage in, like, a logic, evidence conversation and leave all that? Most people can't do that. Most people live 100% of their time in this logicless, emotionless phase, and they'll cite—yeah, they'll cite things and pretend that that's their—it's so—

(Avi Loeb at 00:47:07) And by the way, there is a study that was published in Nature magazine that disruptive discoveries in science are in decline. And one of the reasons within the academia—I'm not talking about people who are non-professionals on social media, but even within academia, you know, people that dedicated decades for becoming experts—they are very conservative. They decide about priorities based on a consensus view, which is very dangerous because if you're not allowing yourself to take some risks and explore things that you don't know—you know, the biggest discoveries will come from the unknown unknowns. These are things that we don't even know that we don't know. And they are not willing to do that, and they ridicule whoever deviates from the beaten path.

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:58) Yeah.

(Avi Loeb at 00:47:59) And that's really very bad for innovation in science. And that is separate from those people in the public who are behaving in similar ways.

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:10) Yeah. Well, that's like, you know, us going back to, I don't know, the 1700s and me being like, Avi, there's—I think there's this light that's all around us that we just can't see with our retinas. Right? You're like, you're crazy. Put them in an asylum.

(Avi Loeb at 00:48:22) Yeah. Also, you know, meteors were realized only in the beginning of the 1800s, in 1803, when there was a meteor shower in Liège, France. And before that, all the eyewitness testimonies were dismissed by the mainstream of science. The same was true for centuries about ball lightning. That phenomenon was dismissed by the mainstream of science, and now we know that it's real, and we have a working model for explaining it.

(Avi Loeb at 00:48:50) So if you just follow the mainstream of science, which is what is exactly done by influencers, you know, the Kardashians of science—those are people like Neil deGrasse Tyson or others—and they just want to be liked. They just follow whatever the mainstream in science is saying at the time. And they will be wrong, just like the mainstream of science, every now and then. The difference between me and those influencers is that I'm actually engaged in doing science. I'm actually doing the science. I'm not just talking about what other people are doing like they do. And in that sense, you know, it's just the difference between players in the field versus commentators on the bench. Because as a player in the field, they can score a goal. They cannot.

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:41) Well, I'm glad you're out there in the field playing the game and reporting back to us. Avi, I wanna be professional. I know you had a hard stop about three minutes ago. I don't want you to be late for your next thing. But we made a podcast. Thank you for doing this. How do you feel?

(Avi Loeb at 00:49:54) I feel great, and thanks for having me. And I'll be glad to speak again when we have some results.

(Joel Beasley at 00:50:00) Thank you so much for listening. And if you found this episode useful, please share it with a friend or colleague who you think would get value from it. And if you have topics that you would like to hear discussed on the podcast, either add me on LinkedIn or send me an email: [email protected]. Every time I get an email or LinkedIn message, it absolutely makes my day and inspires me to keep going.