Harvard’s Avi Loeb- Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth (#113)

Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

Brian Keating

Physics, Natural Sciences, Science

4.7 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 2 February 2021

⏱️ 94 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In late 2017, scientists at a Hawaiian observatory glimpsed an object soaring through our inner solar system, moving so quickly that it could only have come from another star. Avi Loeb, Harvard’s top astronomer, showed it was not an asteroid; it was moving too fast along a strange orbit, and left no trail of gas or debris in its wake. There was only one conceivable explanation: the object was a piece of advanced technology created by a distant alien civilization. In Extraterrestrial, Loeb takes readers inside the thrilling story of the first interstellar visitor to be spotted in our solar system. He outlines his controversial theory and its profound implications: for science, for religion, and for the future of our species and our planet. A mind-bending journey through the furthest reaches of science, space-time, and the human imagination, Extraterrestrial challenges readers to aim for the stars—and to think critically about what’s out there, no matter how strange it seems. https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~loeb/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi everyone welcome to this episode of the Into the Impossible
0:03.5	podcast I'm your fearful host Dr Brian Keating doing a continuing series of
0:08.4	pandemic podcast today we have a phenomenal guest and that is Avi Loeb who's a legend in our community is the author of literally
0:17.7	700 research referee journal articles
0:21.2	several textbooks a new textbook on the way, I think he was writing it,
0:25.2	as I'm doing the interview with him.
0:27.2	He's so productive, but his book today that we're discussing is a popular science book that
0:31.1	you're going to love called Extraterrestrial and it's about this rather startling claim that
0:37.7	He believes that the discovery in 2017 of an object traversing our solar system at an extremely high velocity
0:46.9	much higher than even the Saturn V rocket achieved on its way to the moon
0:51.5	leads credence to a claim that he makes and fleshes out in this book that there's only one conceivable
0:58.0	explanation for this object.
0:59.9	It was a piece of advanced technology created by a distant alien civilization.
1:06.4	So certainly it's a controversial claim, but it also really illuminated and exposed a dark, deep
1:12.3	secret of the scientific underbelly in
1:14.4	obvious opinion when he had colleagues and even former students etc they
1:19.5	turn their back on him they shunned him And I think it's really kind of a glimpse
1:24.9	into the psychology of science, herdism,
1:28.4	and other phenomena that you find in science
1:31.2	where authorities can either be accepted without question or they can be
1:36.4	targets of approbation and maybe even a desire to take them down a peg to get to get them back or to get them back or to somehow benefit from their
1:47.0	from their accomplishments. So we talked about a lot of things. We talked
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