36. Dr. Avi Loeb: Light-Sails, UAPS, Extraterrestrial Objects and Seeding the Milky Way

In this episode, Peter Garretson hosts Dr. Avi Loeb (astronomy.fas.harvard.edu/people/avi-loeb), Director of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics’ Institute for Theory and Computation, head of the Galileo Project (projects.iq.harvard.edu/galileo/home), and Chair of the Breakthrough Starshot Initiative Advisory Committee. They discuss recent discoveries of extraterrestrial objects (Oumuamua (solarsystem.nasa.gov/asteroids-comets-and-mete…), Comet Borisov (nasa.gov/feature/interstellar-comet-borisov-re…), and 2 meteors). Avi provides insights into the big ideas in his book amazon.com/Extraterrestrial-First-Intelligent-…, including the hypothesis that Oumuamua might be a lightsail from an alien civilization. Interestingly, Avi’s team is trying to create one via the Breakthrough Starshot (breakthroughinitiatives.org/initiative/3)Initiative–Avi hopes to achieve 10% the speed of light with a laser-lightsail (lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/~loeb/Loeb_Starshot.pdf) carrying a Starchip (businessinsider.com/breakthrough-starshot-spri…) to get to our closest neighbor star Proxima Centauri. They address the story of the 2014 meteor, journal rejection (timesofisrael.com/israeli-scientist-proves-his…), as well as, the story behind the USSPACECOM release (cbsnews.com/news/first-interstellar-meteor-to-…) of the data on the extraterrestrial meteor, and Avi’s plans to recover it (thecrimson.com/article/2022/9/21/avi-loeb-paci…). They cover Avi’s recent paper, ‘PHYSICAL CONSTRAINTS ON UNIDENTIFIED AERIAL PHENOMENA (lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/~loeb/LK1.pdf)’ for the Pentagon’s AARO (defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/3100…), the controversial headline it created (‘Pentagon UFO chief says alien mothership in our solar system possible (militarytimes.com/off-duty/military-culture/20…)’), and why the subject of UAP’s or extraterrestrial civilization is a puzzlingly taboo subject in the science community despite significant public and government interests. They consider UAP’s, and the efforts of Project Galileo (projects.iq.harvard.edu/galileo/home)to capture anomalous signatures, and what sort of funding would be required to deploy at scale. They review the White House tasking to DoD for Planetary Defense (nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/ostp-…), and the utility of looking for extraterrestrial signatures as part of an in-space Space Domain Awareness (SDA) sensor architecture. Finally, they question what potential discoveries might arise from attempting to test the extraterrestrial hypothesis, a long-term vision for the preservation of humanity and its values and seeding the galaxy with life and intelligence, as well as short-term opportunities for policy to align government (and perhaps even USSF) funding on extraterrestrial objects, SETI, and UAP with public interests.