Transcription
It's arrogant of us to believe that we
are at the top of the food chain, that
we are the only intelligent
civilization. This is all controversial
what you're talking about. I don't think
it should be controversial. Just look at
the mainstream.
>> Are aliens real?
>> They're real, but I haven't seen them.
>> He gave us to find information. He's not
supposed to be doing that.
>> There are 10 billion houses like our own
on the cosmic street. It might be easier
to find evidence for technological
signatures. Do you truly believe that
you would ever find such evidence?
>> Yes. They would not want to alert the
public to the conversations they have
about black swan events.
>> Why would CIA care about threeatas?
>> That was during the summer of 2025. A
journalist asked if they have any
records in relation to freeatas. And the
response was by the CIA. We cannot deny
nor confirm which to me implies that
they do have such records. Once a year
there is also meeting with journalists
by Vladimir Putin in Russia. And one of
the questions that was asked, what do
you know from your intelligence agencies
about 3A Atlas? He knew everything about
this object.
>> Today we are sure that 3A Atlas is not
advanced aliens aircraft. Right. No, I
would not say that.
>> Professor Loe, honor being here. You are
presenting very optimistic approach. Can
you imagine any dark scenarios involving
contact with other civilizations?
>> I think it's arrogant of us to believe
that we are at the top of the food
chain, that we are the only intelligent
civilization that the universe ever
produced since the big bang. I think
it's arrogant. It's not a matter of uh
just asking the question and and
thinking that is a reasonable
possibility. Uh the most likely outcome
is that in billions of other systems you
had life as you had on earth simply
because I don't think that we are unique
or special that what happened on earth
is unusual. In fact, we find the
building blocks of life uh amino acids
on
rocks like for example the asteroid
Bennu where uh the Osiris Rex mission
brought 120 grams back to Earth. We
found um most of the amino acids there
and it means that this was a rock
without life on it but the building
blocks of life were on it. So it's
probably on many other rocks and the
earth the early earth had these
ingredients and all you needed is the
circumstances to start building up more
and more complex structures biological
structures and you end up with us and we
create artificial intelligence I think
this is potentially very common how
common we don't know but there are 10
billion systems with similar conditions
so I would say you know maybe at least
one out of um out of a million of those
had uh things even smarter than we are.
That's not unreasonable. And that means
there would be 10,000 of those previous
civilizations that predated us. We
arrived late to the party and we are not
at the center of stage. The earth is not
at the center of the universe. So if you
arrive late to a party and you're not at
the center
uh the party is not about you. Okay. So
we tend to think that everything is
about us that if we are visited it's
because of us. It may be a
>> we are just get lucky in the universe.
Right.
>> Yeah. And we should be modest. We should
assume that it's not unusual to be
something like us. But we have the great
benefit of observing the universe and
trying to learn who else is in our
neighborhood. The fact that this is not
part of the mainstream of science that
we don't have billions of dollars
allocated to the search for surprising
>> for things like us. We know we exist
here. We see a lot of other systems
earth sun analoges that could
potentially give rise to something like
us.
>> Let's invest billions of dollars to
search. Why is that controversial? Why
is that considered uh heresy or
speculation?
It's not speculation at all to imagine
that if you arrange for similar
conditions on 10 billion systems that
you would have many realizations of what
you have here and since the stars are
billions of years older then you had
that a while ago and therefore they
could have now reached us those
intelligent technological civilization.
>> How did your Harvard world colleagues
react when you said the word aliens out
loud?
Well, I was chair of the astronomy
department at Harvard for nine years and
the director of the institute for theory
and computation and director founding
director of the black hole initiative.
So I was in leadership positions over
the past decade and people know me at
Harvard uh and uh they're not surprised
because that's the way I always spoke
about the innovations in science. uh I
first uh innovated in the context of
cosmology, the study of the universe.
Then I did some research on black holes
and founded the black hole initiative
where the first image of a black hole
was taken. And I then in 2017 when the
first interstellar object was discovered
MUA that intrigued me because the object
looked anomalous. So I approached it the
same way that I approached other
subjects. And what I was surprised by is
the response because on other topics
like black holes or the first generation
of stars in the universe there was
resistance initially but first of all
there was not so much public interest
and second the push back was not
personal on this matter. the public
cares a lot and as soon as I started
working on it there was a huge amount of
media interest and um as a result of
that uh my colleagues um started
attacking me but those are people who
did not know me before and at Harvard I
didn't face any such scrutiny um and so
in general
you know it's not about me it's about
the message that I'm trying to convey
and In my opinion, let's keep our eyes
on the ball, you know, and uh instead
what happens, I think, is that common
sense is not common in academia if you
look at the response because pursuing
the search for microbes, allocating more
than 10 billion dollars to that and
sidelining the search for intelligent
beings to me doesn't make sense given
that the public cares so much about this
other possibility. and that the public
funds science. We have an opportunity to
entice the public's interest within
science to get more funding to science
and we are losing that opportunity just
because some of my colleagues are
reluctant to discuss it.
>> I'm asking because I know scientists who
think that such controversial despouse
physics to the charge of being
unfalifiable.
No, that's exactly the opposite because
what I'm suggesting is experimental work
that will
explore our cosmic neighborhood and
figure out if we have technological
projects visiting uh the solar system
any spacecraft or other devices by
observing the solar system. Uh it's a
new method that was not tried before
because we were focused on looking for
for example radio signals coming from
far away. But this is just like waiting
for a phone call if you're waiting for a
radio signal because it propagates at
the speed of light and if it passes you
then you know you can't see it
afterwards. If it's not there anymore uh
it leaves the Milky Way galaxy and
that's it. You can't chase it. However,
if there are any packages that were sent
to our backyard uh or to our mailbox,
even if the sender is dead, you know, it
doesn't really matter because these
packages are still bound by gravity, you
know, to the Milky Way galaxy. So, we
could still find them. Uh and it's a
very different approach. It's like space
archaeology. You're looking for physical
objects that might indicate what other
uh civilizations may have existed before
your time. And frankly, the reason that
it makes a lot of sense is because most
stars are billions of years older than
the sun. And it takes less than a
billion years for a Voyager-like
spacecraft with technologies from the
1970s to cross the Milky Way galaxy.
So it means that they could have arrived
at our backyard with technologies that
we developed back in the 1970s.
And um because if you imagine something
like us, a duplicate, a copy of us
existing around the star just shifted in
time by a few billion years, they have
already
developed technologies of our future. So
it could provide us with a glimpse at
our future. And we know that all of our
technologies stem from the past century
because quantum mechanics was discovered
just a century ago. Einstein's theory of
gravity was discovered 10 years earlier.
So 110 years ago. It's all the last
century or so the modern science and
technology that we are using now. And
just imagine what we might discover
within a thousand years, within a
million years, within a billion years.
And if another civilization did that, it
could inform us uh give us a shortcut
into our future. Now the caveat is that
we might not recognize it because we are
thinking about radio signal which is a
very old technology that we used about
100 years ago. Uh and they may be using
some other means of communication, other
means of probes that we cannot even
detect because we know that we are
lacking information about the universe.
Um because most of the matter in the
universe is a substance that make up 84%
of the mass budget of matter in the
universe. But we don't know what it is.
We call it dark matter. It doesn't
interact with light.
>> 90% of our reality, right?
>> Yeah. But in addition, there is dark
energy which actually makes a bigger
proportion of the mass budget of the
universe than matter today. And we don't
know what these substances are but just
imagine that they can be useful in terms
of engineering spacecraft or you know we
would not be able to see those things.
We know that we can't see dark matter.
We've invested billions of dollars
searching for it. We haven't found it.
Now the point to keep in mind is you
might say this is all controversial what
you're talking about. I don't think it
should be controversial. Why? Because if
you look at the mainstream which is
supposed to be the orthodoxy that
follows the least controversial things
because you everyone agrees we should
spend billions of dollars in some
direction. Just look at the mainstream
a couple of weeks ago a mainstream a set
of two experiments by the mainstream to
search for sterile nutrinos which are
basically ghost particles that were
suspected to exist because of anomalies
in previous experiments. Everyone within
the mainstream said, "It's a great idea.
Let's put $90 million searching for
those." And there were two papers in
Nature magazine reporting the results.
No sterile nutrino. You go back another
decade, you find the large hard collider
that CERN built at the investment of $10
billion. The main motivation was to find
a new symmetry of nature called super
symmetry to discover the particles that
make up the dark matter. And everyone
within the mainstream said that's a
great idea because we think that it's
very likely that super symmetry exists.
>> Still we have no idea what dark matter
is.
>> We didn't find dark matter. We didn't
find super symmetry in the natural
parameter space. And what does that
shows you is that science is a learning
experience. So when people say imagining
extraterrestrial intelligence and
putting money in the search for it is a
controversial statement. Considering
interstellar objects as potential probes
like Voyager that come into the solar
system from other stars is a
controversial unlikely proposition. When
they say that I say okay well what are
you saying? The ideas that of super
symmetry, the ideas of string theory
that was never tested and there is no
experiment in the coming century that
anyone is forecasting that could test
string theory simply for the reason that
it doesn't make a very definite
prediction that can be ruled out by
experiment. These are things of the
mainstream that everyone says, "Yeah,
that's completely legitimate for us to
discuss and invest, you know, billions
of dollars in the large hydron collider
to check super symmetry, to invest
hundreds of millions of dollars in the
search for dark matter. You know, these
are things that the mainstream
considers as non-controversial and they
end up being wrong. And so my point is
in order for us to find whether the idea
that we might not be the only
intelligence where to find out that we
are not at the top of the food chain to
find out whether this is controversial
or speculative we have to invest funding
in the search for it in the search for
the evidence which is the standard
scientific method. So when you said
there is no evidence as of now the
reason for that is that we didn't invest
time resources if we invest for 50 years
billions of dollars in the search for
extraterrestrial intelligence and we
will not find anything we will be
exactly the same point as the dark
matter searches are right now. And one
point to keep in mind about dark matter,
everyone says there is a lot of evidence
for dark matter because we just see that
there is stronger gravity than expected
from ordinary matter in the universe in
the expansion of the universe in the in
galaxies and so forth. But this is using
Einstein's theory of gravity. And if
Einstein's theory of gravity is wrong,
there is no dark matter. So even the
notion of dark matter is not as robust
because it could be that gravity is
modified. You mean that dark matter
could be a mistake of Einstein's
equations?
>> Yes. And there are alternatives that
propose for example that at very low
acceleration
uh gravity behaves differently than we
assume. And these are the circumstances
in galaxies where dark matter suddenly
appears. It appears always when the
acceleration is below some threshold. uh
but such a a proposal does not have a
complete relativistic
extension that could be applied to
cosmology and agree with all the data we
have. I'm just saying until we find dark
matter, we are not 100% sure that it
exists. Why? Because we are using just
gravity to infer its existence.
What if your observatory
showed the dark matter is a mistake of
Einstein's equations?
>> That would be remarkable. We learn
something new. And I also calculated I
wrote a paper saying if that happens to
be the case that at low accelerations
for example uh the for example inertia
is different than we assume then you can
actually build a rocket that would
propel itself at low accelerations
with you know a very small amount of
payload. uh just the payload and the uh
and and and um the rocket fuel will be
comparable in mass. Um and so you will
end up uh reaching the same speed that
you expect from the rocket equation at
high accelerations. If you operate at
low accelerations, you would just need
much less fuel. And so there are all
kinds of technological implications to
the possibility that our law of inertia
or gravity is incorrect. Even if it's at
low accelerations, we haven't yet
realized what is the solution to the
dark matter problem, it's still a
problem.
>> So what did you see in interstellar
object mua mua that made you think this
is something more? It was just
anomalies, things that we didn't expect
based on what we know about rocks in our
backyard. This was the first object that
was identified by astronomers as coming
from outside the solar system. And it
was strange because as soon as it was
discovered, it was tumbling every eight
hours and the amount of sunlight
reflected from it changed by a factor of
10 as it was tumbling. And that meant
that it has a very extreme shape, most
likely flat. at the 92% confidence. It
was flat and in addition there was no
gas or dust around it. The Spitzer Space
Telescope searched for that and no
evidence for carbon-based molecule, no
evidence for a cometary tail. But the
most surprising fact is not only that
it's it has an extreme geometry, most
likely flat and no gas or dust around
it. It was actually pushed away from the
sun. uh it had a non-gravitational
acceleration away from the sun which
declined roughly inversely with distance
squared from the sun and I suggested
well that seems to me like it's the sun
pushing it sunlight is pushing it and
for that it needs to be very thin so
that uh it has a lot of surface for its
mass so it get can get pushed like a
sail or maybe a surface layer of some
other object that was torn apart or
maybe a broken piece of a mega structure
like a Dyson sphere that broke off. But
the point to keep in mind is the star
stars evolve and they get brighter and
then they would break apart any any
structure around them. And so you can
imagine those pieces of broken Dyson
spheres going into space. And so maybe
Mua was just one of those pieces. It
just a thin
>> just trash from another civilization.
>> Yeah. That was pushed by reflecting
sunlight. And the same telescope in
Hawaii that discovered Amua Mua, the
name is Pan Stars, discovered three
years later, another object that was
definitely pushed by reflecting
sunlight. Then they took a spectrum of
this object, they realized, oh, it's
made of stainless steel. And then they
said, "Oh, this object that they gave a
name to as 2020." They said, "Well, that
one actually is a rocket booster that
was launched by NASA in 1966. So, we
know it's technological and it's being
pushed by sunlight because it has very
thin stainless steel walls. And I say we
know that this is technological because
we produced it. You know, in January, a
year ago, in 2025, January 2nd, there
was an object discovered uh near Earth
and the Minor Planet Center, that is the
official body uh to catalog near-Earth
objects, gave it a name as if it's a
near-Earth asteroid. And then a day
later they realized, "Oh, this one, this
object is actually moving along the path
of the Tesla Roadster car that was
launched by SpaceX in 2018." So they
said, "That's a technological object. We
take it out of the catalog. It's
definitely not a rock. It's a car."
Okay, a Tesla car that was launched by
SpaceX in 2018. The only reason they
knew that is because we launched it. But
if a car like that would have been
launched by a more accomplished space
entrepreneur than Elon Musk, and I can
imagine lots of those in the Milky Way
galaxy, uh then an interstellar car
arriving to our neighborhood would not
be recognized as as such because we
would not know that something like that
was launched. And I'm sure that the
astronomers in the Minor Planet Center
and everywhere else would just say it's
a rock of a type that we've never seen
before. And by the way, this is also the
response that a cave dweller, just
imagine a cave dweller finding a cell
phone. A cave dweller is used to seeing
rocks. He would say, "Oh, this cell
phone, this thing is just a rock of a
type that I've never seen before."
>> And correct me if I'm wrong. Today we
are sure that 3A Atlas is not advanced
aliens aircraft, right?
>> No, I would not say that yet. Uh I would
say there are anomalies. Uh one is the
chance of one in 500 for it to be in the
plane of the planets around the sun.
That is not explained. Uh the object is
rotating and the rotation axis uh based
on a paper that I just completed
is aligned with the direction to the sun
at large distances to within 10 to 20
degrees. That's a chance of order a
percent or so. uh why would the rotation
axis be in the direction of the sun? Um
and then it comes close to Jupiter at
the hill radius distance which is very
special. In addition, we found in the
plume of gas around it, we found a lot
of nickel and almost no iron. And in all
astrophysical objects until 3 atlas
there was always comparable amount of
nickel and iron because both elements
nickel and iron are produced in stellar
explosions and they are always together.
The only place where you don't find much
iron next to nickel is in nickel alloys
that are produced artificially by our
industries. And there is a process for
doing that for separating the iron. It's
called the carbonil pathway. And the
observers that discovered nickel with
very little iron around threeas said um
well maybe this carbonil
pathway is also manifested in nature. We
don't know that. The only place where we
know that that this process takes place
is is in our industries when we we try
to make very strong materials for
aerospace applications. So I would say
there are all these anomalies. If I w
was asked today to um
give my verdict about Riatas, I would
say it's most likely a comet of natural
origin. But I still allow for the
possibility that it might be something
else just because we haven't completed
the data analysis as of yet. Once the
object gets to Jupiter and lives on its
way out of the solar system, then I will
be able to give it an a definite rank on
the lobe classification scale. That's
the scale I came up with. Uh and I
recommended
there to be within government an
organization that basically classifies
on my scale um every interstellar
object. and I thought nobody pays
attention to what I say. That was during
the summer of 2025. And then a couple of
weeks ago um a journalist or um
person who is interested in finding out
what the government is doing uh filed a
freedom of information
uh um
uh request to uh the central
intelligence agency to ask if they have
any records in relation to 3i Atlas. And
the response was by the CIA uh that we
cannot deny nor confirm the existence or
the non-existence
of such records which to me implies that
they do have such records and they had
conversations about it and potentially
it makes a lot of sense because uh you
have to consider within the intelligence
agencies black sworn events. We all know
about uh September 11th uh 2001 and and
October 7th, 2023 when intelligence
agencies had a theory that something is
unlikely to happen and they learned
their lesson. So now they are
considering low probability events
because they might have a big impact on
society. So just think about three at
last.
>> Did CIA
hide data about it? No, they would not
want to alert the public to the
conversations they have about black swan
events. That's my point. Because they
don't want to create panic for no good
reason. They don't want the financial
markets to respond to that. So if they
have discussions about black swan
events, they want to keep those
discussions under wraps. So the public
would not know about it. And that would
explain why they were considering three
Atlas. And that as far as I know is the
only astronomical object that was ever
uh discussed in that kind of a context.
And potentially it's because I brought
up uh the the importance of considering
each and every interstellar object as a
potential black swan event just because
we don't want to be surprised. The
implications would be huge to humanity
if it if it happens to be a Trojan
horse. But I don't understand why would
TIA care about free aas
>> just to find out that it it poses no
threat to society or to just discuss
that possibility without believing that
the probability is significant at any
event. I wouldn't be surprised if they
had discussions because um you know once
a year there is also
meeting with journalists by uh President
Vladimir Putin in Russia. And one of the
questions that was asked on December
19th, 2025 was um what do you know from
your intelligence agencies about 3las?
He knew everything about this object. Uh
he made just one small mistake. He
referred to the object coming from other
galaxies instead of other stars. But
other than that, his description of the
object was scientifically accurate and
um I wouldn't be surprised if this was a
planted question because he knew the
name of the journalist. Uh and so it
just illustrates the fact that people
high up in the political system probably
were made aware of this object. But um
they were told that it poses no threat.
>> Where did this object come from? Do we
know more?
>> No, because um the extent for example of
the solar system uh is marked by the or
cloud uh which has an edge out to
100,000 times the earth separation. So
that's the solar system. It has rocks,
the building blocks, the Lego pieces of
of the planets in the solar system.
There were some left behind. They were
scattered into a volume that is has a
radius of a 100,000 times the Earth sun
separation. Uh and then you know the
next star is twice as far as the edge of
the or cloud. So that means if the alpha
centuri system of stars has an or cloud
of itself, the two or clouds are
touching each other. And so just think
about billiard balls that are densely
packed. And that's the way that stars
are organized. So if you imagine an
object entering the solar system, you
you only know the direction from where
it came. But if you follow this
direction, go back in time, you are
going through numerous or clouds. Okay?
So it could have originated from any
star along the path and um we just don't
know the duration of the journey. If we
knew how long the journey took, for
example, if there was a clock, if it's a
technological device that you can time
to when it started, you could tell where
it came from. or if we use radioactive
dating, for example, to figure out the
age of the object. And in fact, this is
a method that I thought about when I was
on a boat in the Pacific Ocean looking
for the materials left over from an
interstellar meteor. I thought that if
we find materials from that interstellar
object that impacted the earth back in
2014, if we find those materials, we
have enough of those materials, we can
in principle
uh date the radioactive isotopes on it
and in infer the duration of the journey
that this the time that elapsed since
the object was made until it arrived to
us. And that would tell us perhaps where
it came from if we go back in time. But
otherwise, we don't have information
about the duration of the journey of a
mua mua. So we cannot tell where it came
from.
>> Could mua mua have collected information
about us and send it somewhere there
into space?
>> That's possible. Uh when it was passing
by u I recommended to observers to look
for radio signals from it. They haven't
found anything. They put a limit. They
just looked at it for
a few days and they put a limit of a
power uh less than that of a cell phone
transm in transmission of uh the kind of
frequencies radio frequencies that we
use for communication. But the point is
such a device will probably transmit a
beam not necessarily in the direction of
the earth. It will be a sporadic
transmission just in a pulse and not
necessarily at the time that you're
looking for it because such an object
takes
more than 10,000 years about 30,000
years or so to go through the or cloud
of the solar system. So over this period
of 30,000 years, why would if you look
at a few days out of that, why would you
be so lucky to detect a transmission
signal? that that is a small probability
and also one thing to keep in mind is we
are used to sending spacecraft or
equipment to the moon or Mars and
control them. There is no way by which
an interstellar traveler would seek
guidance from the sender because it
takes tens of thousands of years just
for a one-way uh trip of at the speed of
light for the signal and there is no
point for the uh probe to actually wait
for response because
it takes so much time that it's just
like you're you're sending your kid out
of home and you don't you shouldn't
expect the kid to be in constant
communication. Uh the kid may send you a
message every now and then. So an
interstellar traveler most likely has to
be autonomous. It needs to have its own
brain uh potentially artificial
intelligence deciding what to do under
circumstances that it cannot share with
the sender. How would we even detect an
outgoing transmission from something
that's small at the distance?
Well, it depends in what form the
transmission is. So the only uh method
that we so far explored is radio
communication. But in fact, we ourselves
are also moving away from that now to
communication through lasers in space.
uh and perhaps there are even better
ways of communication. So we don't know
what the other
technologies alien technologies are
using. Um that will be a big obstacle
when we encounter an object that is
definitely not a rock. You know people
often say how would you know if it's
natural or not? And you know in July
2025 I defined a new scale
classification scale for interstellar
objects where zero is a natural object
like a comet or an asteroid that we are
sure is is natural in origin and 10 is a
technological object that is a potential
threat to humans. And the point is how
would you tell the difference? Well, in
principle, if you take a photograph
very close to the object, you can easily
say whether it's it has buttons on it,
you know, or it looks like a rock. And
so what we need is a system of
interceptors that whenever an
interstellar object comes into the solar
system, they would be able to maneuver
and and get close to the object, take a
close-up photograph. And we haven't done
so. And it's a lost opportunity for the
interstellar objects that we looked at
so far. But in the future, you know,
especially if we detect some unusual
technological signature like an art
artificial lights coming from an
interstellar uh visitor or we see
maneuver that cannot be explained by
cometary
activity or if it looks like there is
heat produced by some engine within the
object that is not just the result of
reflecting sunlight. uh then we would be
convinced that we should allocate a
large sum of money to protect the earth.
That will be a planetary defense
initiative but not against rocks because
right now we just think about rocks
hitting the earth and that's why we
built those telescopes to monitor the
sky. In the future, if we detect
evidence for a technological visitor, we
would invest in defending the Earth
against alien technology. And that's a
much more difficult task because objects
can maneuver. They can have an intent.
We should be careful about Trojan
horses. You know, these are objects that
look completely innocent, but inside of
them there might be something dangerous.
What is the biggest difference between
3A Atlas and OUA mua?
>> Um 3 Atlas has dust and gas around it.
It definitely sheds gas and dust. Um
whereas Mua didn't have any and in
addition uh the shape of three atlas is
not known. the nucleus is not and the
amount of light reflected by the nucleus
is not measured yet. Uh what we see most
of the light that we see is coming from
uh the plume of gas and dust around it.
Mostly the dust reflecting sunlight and
um the one of the unusual facts about 3
atlas is that it has this outflow sort
of like a jet pointed at the sun. And
usually for comets we see dust and gas
being swept away from the sun by the
solar radi I mean the gas is pushed by
the solar wind whereas the uh the dust
particles are pushed by the solar
radiation and we see that as a tail.
However in the case of three atlas we
see the most prominent feature is a glow
that extends from the object towards the
sun.
The most unusual thing about three atlas
that was not true for Omo MUA is that
the fact that it came in the plane of
the planets around the sun the ecliptic
plane to within 5 degrees or more mo
came at a large angle. It was also
moving at a speed that was onethird of
the speed of 3 atlas at large distances
about 25 km/s
and 3 atlas is coming at 60 km/s from
outside the solar system and
the coincidence that it came in the
plane of the planets is very fortunate
because it allows us to use all the
observatories we have on earth and
around other planets to observe it. uh
that was not true of a mua. We will were
able to observe it only for a short
period of time because it crossed the
ecliptic plane and then it moved away
and became too faint for us to see. So
three atlas is a gift in terms of the
ability for us to observe it because it
spent a lot of time close to planets. It
came close to earth on the 19th of
December but it was not very close to
earth. In fact, it came closest to the
sun on October 29th when the earth was
exactly in the opposite side of the sun.
So, we couldn't look at it. So, maybe it
wanted to avoid us. That's the
interesting question. But, uh before
that it came close to Mars. Uh and it
will come close and that was October 3rd
or so and it will come closest to
Jupiter on March 16, 2026.
And in fact it will get to Jupiter
exactly at the distance where Jupiter's
gravity dominates over the sun's
gravity. And the question is why does it
get to this hill radius? Is it in order
to deposit some device that would be
remain bound as a satellite of Jupiter.
So it would be interesting to watch out
if it leaves behind any objects. But um
all in all you know the in fact on
January 22nd
there will be a great opportunity to
observe it because the earth would be
between three eye atlas and the sun h to
within a precision of 0.69 degrees. I
just wrote a paper about that and that
means that we would see it from the
direction of the sun just like we see a
full moon you know we would get much
more light reflected back at us because
we are looking at it from the direction
of the uh lampost you know the sun is
like a lampost and we are searching for
keys under the lampost so we we find
those interstellar objects because
they're illuminated by the sun and on
January 22nd
will be just at the right alignment
between the sun, earth and and three
atlas and that would be fantastic to
watch.
>> What would we need to see in a third
future interstellar object to establish
the pattern? So the most important thing
is to get close to the object and take a
photograph of it, a resolved photograph
because you know if we do see buttons on
it of course it would raise the question
should we press a button? We can in
principle land on an on a spacecraft or
an object and do something to it. Um but
first we need to know uh whether it's a
rock or something else and the best way
to know is to get a camera close to that
object and take a photograph that
resolves it. We cannot use the web
telescope to resolve an object even if
its size is a few kilometers like three
I atlas um because um at the distance of
a few times the earth sun separation
that corresponds to less than one pixel
even with a web telescope but if you
bring a camera close in then you can see
it uh and I believe that uh it would
make sense to have at least one or maybe
a fleet of interceptors that do that and
that would be very helpful. But before
we approach an object, we need to
discover that it exists. And right now
there is a new observatory in Chile
called the Reubin Observatory that was
constructed and funded by the National
Science Foundation and Department of
Energy and it was inaugurated in June
2025.
It employs a 3.2 two gigapixel camera
and observes the southern sky every four
days. And this particular discovery
machine, the Reubin Observatory, will
likely find an interstellar object
bigger than a football field uh every
few months. So we are entering a
completely new era where within the next
decade we'll find several dozens of
interstellar objects and we need to
apply this approach that I was talking
about class classifying them. This is
the discovery machine for the southern
sky. It would make a lot of sense to
build a copy of it that looks at the
northern sky so that we can look at the
entire sky and that would cost another
billion dollars to do. Once we have
those discovery machines that monitor
this the entire sky, we can find objects
bigger than a football field coming from
interstellar space. Then we can decide
whether to use an interceptor to come
close to them, whether they look
sufficiently interesting like for
example OMU MUA or 3II Atlas. And for
that we need a a system of interceptors.
But my point is the funding for such
research will increase dramatically the
moment we recognize the potential of
learning more about these objects. For
example, just to give an example, right
now astronomers are thinking about
finding evidence for the for primitive
life by using a big telescope on Earth
on Earth or in space and looking for the
chemical fingerprints of life in the
atmospheres of exoplanets. That's remote
observing. But think about an
interstellar rock or an iceberg that
comes to our backyard. It spent billions
of years traveling. And then if we land
on it and bring a sample of a 100 grams,
let's say, back to Earth, we can search
for the building blocks of life in the
actual materials from another star. And
that's a completely different approach
to searching for life because you're
actually searching the material itself
that was part of uh the planetary
debris.
In your approach, what's the minimum
number of interest object we've need to
study before we could distinguish if
something is natural or artificial? So,
I make the analogy with blind dates. If
you ever went on a blind date, uh when
you go on the first blind date, you
don't know how exceptional the partner
is because you have a sample of one.
Okay? And some people decide to marry
that one, but they have a very limited
experience and uh they might be happy as
long as they don't explore other
possibilities.
Um but it makes much more sense to have
a sample that is much bigger than one.
So when we discover more and more
interstellar objects, we'll start seeing
that they can be grouped into classes
that are uh conventional. And then if we
see something really unusual, it would
become very evident that it's an outlier
because it would not look like the
familiar interstellar objects that we
are used to. It may well be that the
first encounters would be you know
technological and the reason for that
may be that rocks you know they don't
have a prescribed trajectory so they go
on random trajectories. So for example,
suppose a mua mua was a natural object
just a rock or something of some unusual
shape. Uh you can ask how many mua like
rocks are within the solar system right
now. We detected one coming through the
orbit of the earth around the sun.
The conclusion is given that the solar
system is
100,000 times larger than the earth's
orbit around the sun there should be a
quadrillion or more mo like objects
right now 10 to the^ 15 right now within
the solar system all the way out to the
edge of the or cloud 10 to the^ 15 is a
big number and as I mentioned before the
or clouds of other stars are touching
our or cloud so that means is that every
star during the age of the Milky Way
galaxy had to produce a quadrillion
objects like Omuo. On average, you
should have 10 to the 15 such objects
produced per star in the Milky Way
galaxy. Well, that is in the case of
rocks.
>> Yeah. But if you have technological
gadgets, they may target the inner solar
system and what you find around the
inner solar system may not be
representative of far away if they're
interested in our. So it's just like if
you interact with humans, you might be
in a party where there lots of people
clustered. It doesn't represent the
average distribution of humans outside
the party. Uh and so
if we find technological gadgets it may
well indicate that they are targeting us
that they are interested in our
environment for some reason we don't
know why or interested in Jupiter
interested in the inner solar system but
in the case of natural objects there
should be huge number of them for us to
be able to detect those that we have
found so far and that means that we will
have a lot of opportunities of more and
more of them coming in and we will start
seeing uh these classes, these groups of
objects that belong to the same
population coming back again and again.
So another object and another object
that look similar and of course that
would make our life easier because we
would say oh all these objects are
belong to the same population of stars
that sent them and then if we see some
something like Voyager a technological
object it would look very different. So
the more experience we have, the more
dates we go on and these are blind
dates, the better we will get as as as
to identifying something really
exceptional, something really unusual.
And just like the training data set of
of artificial intelligence, we are
learning about our environment in a new
way. And that's the whole point about
doing science. Maybe we should call
another civilizations machine
civilizations because AI development.
>> Yeah, in my view most likely um
technological
uh gadgets will have artificial
intelligence in them across interstellar
distances because they need to make
decisions and they need their own brain
and biological brains are very
susceptible to damage. They cannot
survive long trips. They get bored.
uh and so I believe that artificial
intelligence would likely be uh the core
of a functioning device that we receive
from another star. Now the the thing to
keep in mind is that we've never
launched artificial intelligence to
space so far. Um
>> so far
>> so far but I do believe it's the wave of
the future. Nobody talks about it. But I
do think that at some point when we send
missions to long journeys or we send
missions, you know, that are small that
there are many components to them, we
just cannot really
monitor what each one of them is doing.
If if there are hundreds, thousands of
them. So then we will equip each of them
with a brain just like self-driving
cars. Okay? We will let them do the job
that they were tasked to do and they
will report back at the end. They don't
need to communicate with us all the
time. You know, I call that u
helicopter parenting. U there was a
helicopter sent to Mars uh ingenuity and
it was parented by engineers in the Jet
Propulsion Lab in Pasadena. And um this
is the old approach where just like
parents that really want to monitor what
their kids are doing at any point in
time and tell them what to do. But this
is not a wise approach as we know also
with interaction with kids. I think it's
much better to let kids use their own
intelligence and decide what to do uh
autonomously and I think that is the
future of space exploration. We will
build smaller units. the there will be
lots of them just like our technological
kids and they will explore Mars, the
moon or elsewhere on their own and then
report back to us at the end. They we
don't need to see what they are doing at
every step of the way. And if one of
them gets damaged, who cares, you know,
we have others and nature adapts that
strategy. You know, every flower that
sends out seeds in the wind, you know,
the flower is not connected with an
umbilical cord to every seed to to make
sure that it gets the nutrients that it
needs. It sends a lot of seeds and some
of them land on an infertile ground and
never make copies of that flower, but
some of them succeed. So, it's a
completely different approach to
exploring space. Is there kind of recipe
behind our universe as you mentioned
before? Isn't that a strong hint that
the multiverse may be real?
>> No. Um, we have no idea if the
multiverse is real. The idea of the
multiverse is that um we see only a
limited region of space and time because
since the big bang light could propagate
over a finite distance and we don't know
what lies beyond our cosmic horizon. We
know in fact that maybe the conditions
continue for at least 4,000 times larger
distance because we don't see a cliff uh
that would affect gravitationally the
cosmic relic radiation from the big
bang. So, so we know at least to 4,000
times the cosmic horizon conditions are
similar to what we have here. We don't
know what lies at very great distances.
And the idea of the multiverse is that
there are many different parts to the
landscape on much larger scales that we
can't observe but they realize
conditions that are not manifested in
the region that we inhabit and it's
called the multiverse. Now it could have
different variance. It could be that
even the laws of physics are different
in different parts of space and time.
And we just know the laws of physics
operating in our region. But
other than the laws of physics, you can
imagine the conditions being very
different in the multiverse. But um
uh we have no clue as to whether the
multiverse exist. It may well be that
if you were to board an imaginary
spacecraft and leave the cosmic horizon
and and extend and go very far out, you
know, uh conditions would be the same
everywhere. I mean, we don't just don't
know.
>> During our interview, you mentioned
natural evolution theory in the
universe, right?
>> Is it the theory of of Professor Smolin?
No, no. I'm well, he has a version of
that, right? But um I just make a
general statement that I'm expanding uh
Darwin's natural selection to the Milky
Way galaxy as a whole. And I'm asking
what does it mean for the fittest to
survive? Um it needs to survive a
civilization needs to survive all the
calamities, all the catastrophes that
>> is it very similar to small in research.
Yeah, but I I'm making a general point
about it that um if we will have
visitors that were managed to somehow
survive the journey or their products
survive the journey that would actually
be the fittest civilizations. There
might be many more of them that were
left on their home planet and perished
by now. So um this is a good filter for
us to learn from those students in our
class that are better than us because
they managed to get to our backyard
before we managed to get to their
backyard. So there is a filter here that
all the dumb civilizations not very
smart. They stay on their planet. They
continue to fight each other, kill each
other, you know, they engage in zero sum
games on the small rock that they were
born on. But the smart civilizations are
able to escape from that and
send those mon technological monuments
that we might find. And so that for us
is a learning experience.
>> Why you are so interested in intelligent
life beyond earth?
>> There are two reasons. One is that I
read the news every day and I'm
disappointed by our own intelligence.
And my hope is that once we realize how
intelligent are our neighbors, we might
aspire to be better.
Uh the second is just curiosity because
uh I want to know who lives in our
cosmic
street. There are 100 billion stars and
about 10% of them have a planet the size
of the earth roughly at the same
separation that we have from the sun.
And so you can think of those as houses
on our cosmic street. There are 10
billion houses like our own on the
cosmic street. And we insist that they
have no residence and it's difficult to
imagine someone as smart as we are. But
I think the reality is that we are not
at the top of the food chain. And if
there is an intelligent being out there,
uh, in principle, we might see evidence
for that in the form of a tennis ball in
our backyard that was thrown by a
neighbor or a visit to our front door or
we might see a construction project at a
distance in the neighbor's yard. And it
might be easier to find those signatures
than looking for microbes, which is
currently the favorite mission of the
astronomy community worldwide.
Um, the highest priority is to invest
more than 10 billion dollars over the
next two decades in search for the
chemical fingerprints of microbial life
in the atmospheres of exoplanets around
other stars. And I'm saying it might be
easier to find evidence for
technological signatures. We should
invest in both because we don't know
where the discovery will come from. And
moreover, when you are dating, it's
better to aim high than to aim low. I
would much rather date a more
intelligent being than a microbe. And so
why invest all these funds only in the
search for beings that are lower than us
uh on the food chain? We should aim high
and that would revolutionize our future
if we find it.
>> Do you truly believe that you would ever
find such evidence?
>> Yes, it all depends whether nature
provided us with such neighbors. I don't
know the answer for that. But I do
believe that we should invest in the
search. When Enrio Fermy 1950 asked
where is everybody
back in Los Alamos, he was wondering why
he can't see them at lunch. Uh, and if I
were there, I would basically put my
hand around his shoulder and say,
"Enrico, this is a question that every
lonely person asks. Where is everybody?"
And what you tell a lonely person is,
"Don't be so presumptuous. You are not
that attractive. They will not come to
you and sit next to you at lunch. You
have to search for them. And I'm
actually surprised at this question
because Enrio Fermy was an
experimentalist. He didn't build a
telescope to check. Uh space is vast.
Even just limiting ourselves to the
Milky Way galaxy. We're talking about
tens of thousands of light years. Um and
so just imagining that sitting in 1950
in Los Alamos, you will immediately see
evidence around you for your neighbors.
That's a bit presumptuous. Uh we are not
that attractive. If you look at
geopolitics, we are not that
intelligent. We are investing most of
our resources in military budgets,
engaging in conflicts, in zero sum games
just to prevent others from killing us
or to kill others in disputes about
territories on this small rock that we
were born on. But guess what? Most of
the real estate is out there. It's not
on Earth. And we nevertheless focus all
our attention on Earth. That shows to me
that we are not that intelligent. And
what I'm hoping for is to see evidence
for a space fairing civilization.
Civilization that decided to leave their
planet because that's the only way by
which you will be remembered in the
history books of the Milky Way galaxy.
If anyone writes history books, nobody
would remember those civilizations that
stayed on the rock that they were born
on and basically either destroyed
themselves through self-inflicted
wounds, changed their climate, fought in
some nuclear wars, or were hit by an
asteroid just like the dinosaurs were
killed here on Earth. Um, I don't know
how much longer we have, but if we
venture into space, there is a chance
that some of us or some of our
descendants will carry
the torch of all the guiding principles
that we care about. And for me, that's a
sign of intelligence because you're
leaving a monument of yourself in space.
And if we find monuments of other
civilizations, technological products,
it will inspire us to do the same.
>> You said our neighbors. Doesn't that
mean you are implying that aliens
definitely exist?
>> Um, yeah, I think it's very likely that
they exist because there are 10 billions
Earth sun analoges in the Milky Way
galaxy alone and about a trillion
galaxies like the Milky Way in the
observable volume of the universe. So
there are many if you roll the dice
um so many times you know 10 billion
times it's very likely that things like
us or better than us existed because
most of the stars from billions of years
before the sun there was plenty of time
for them to evolve to something even
better than us. And also you know the
most um uh common or popular view is
that we started from a soup of chemicals
on earth and the soup of chemicals
started to form primitive life that
became more and more complex to end up
the way we are now with our own natural
intelligence and in the future with
artificial intelligence. That would be
the future. So if this happened from
random
conditions on earth, it's probably also
happening many other places. That's my
my uh uh common sense. I think this
should be our starting point that we
should assume that we are not unique or
special that that this is the copernican
principle that what we find here if you
arrange for similar conditions would
arise under those
conditions elsewhere near other stars.
>> Thank you very much for your time.
Thanks for having