Avi Loeb: This Is a Blind Date of Interstellar Proportions

[upbeat music] I wanted Avi Loeb on The Puck because this conversation is not really about aliens. It's about how serious people think about the unknown.

Avi is a Harvard astrophysicist. He's the former chair of Harvard's Astronomy Department. He's the head of the Galileo Project, and author of Extraterrestrial and Interstellar. He became famous and controversial for arguing that the first known object from outside our solar system to pass through our neighborhood may not have been simply a rock or comet, it may have been artificial. Avi and I are both drawn to the same deeper question: how do we remain open to wonder without abandoning skepticism?

The universe is very, very large, and so the question is not whether we wanna believe, the question is how should honest, intelligent people think about evidence at the edge of the universe? Avi, welcome to The Puck.

Thanks for having me.

So there's nothing really traditional about you, right? You really jump into the pond and shake things up. I mean, what do you think drew you to this whole area? Oh, it was circumstances, although that there is some skeleton, uh, that you can see throughout my, my life, which is, uh, interest in nature. I grew up on a farm, and I care more about nature than about what people say about me. So I don't care how many likes I get.

Another way to think of me is like a player in the field, you know, of a football game. I'm interested in scoring a goal. I, I'm not, uh, I don't care what the audience says, so I keep my eyes on the ball, not on the audience. That's rule number one. Therefore, as a scientist, you know, that's a great privilege 'cause it means that I can just attend to data, not to the popular view. So one way, you can find a lot of influencers, I call them the Kardashians of science.

They basically tell the public what, uh, they regard as popular within the scientific community. So they are just influencers. They want to get as many likes as possible. But, uh, my approach is very different. You know, I am not trying to be popular. I'm trying to do the right thing, which is to, to be guided by evidence. Sometimes, you know, the evidence is preliminary, and it's not really embraced by the mainstream, and so it's not popular, and I don't care if it's popular or not.

So being a scientist is just, uh, the privilege to be curious, to follow your, your compass as to here is something I don't understand, let me figure it out. You know, which is pretty much the approach of kids. You know, they are... And what I tell kids is, "Never become the adult in the room. Uh, maintain your childhood curiosity," 'cause, and actually being a scientist is that privilege to stay wondering kid, to, to make mistakes sometimes, but to keep an open mind rather than pretend to be the adult in the room so everyone respects you.

And you know, I once heard a businessman, I will not mention his name, who said, "Everything I do throughout my life is in order for people to say good things about me after I die."

And I thought to myself, that is a ve- what a stupid motivation for your life. Because when you die, who cares what people say about you? You need to be happy living, you know, just the way that your p- passion guides you, you know, and you do it your way, so to speak. That's, that's the real privilege of being alive. It's not, uh, to worry about what people will say after you die. It's about doing the right thing when you are alive.

A- anyway, so the second thing is, o- other than not caring about people and caring more about the substance, the ball, you know, keeping your eyes on the ball, the second thing is that, you know, uh, that I, I care about the big questions. Uh, a- and I was interested in philosophy as a young kid, and, uh, I didn't have the ability to pursue that because I grew up in Israel. I had to serve in the military, so I ended up doing, learning physics, finishing my PhD at age 24 in physics, and then eventually getting a tenured appointment at Harvard University in astrophysics.

And, uh, it's all a matter of circumstances 'cause I couldn't do what I really want to do, which is philosophy, the, ask the big questions. But now in retrospect, you know, I say, well, even though it was an arranged marriage, not so bad because I'm married to my true love. Let's go back to the beginning for a second 'cause I, I, I agree with you, like, whether or not Shakespeare who said, you know, in Hamlet, "Above all else to," you know, "thine self be true," or Frank Sinatra saying, "I'm gonna do it my way," I, I totally get that, and I try to live my life that way too, Avi.

But when I was a kid, for instance, I loved My Favorite Martian, I loved Lost in Space. I got into Star Trek later, but you know, there's a lot of unknowns in the world. I mean, we could, we could debate like I did with Neil deGrasse Tyson about God, infinity, right? So you, you picked, you know, UFOs and extraterrestrial life and all that, and I totally get it. But what do you think about your personality, your life story that got you interested in this particular element?

Oh, well, first of all, when I started dating, my approach was to always aim high, not low. In other words, try to find a partner that is smarter than I am.

And of course, it's much easier to aim low because, you know, there are lots of mediocre dating partners, and, you know, you can, you can marry the first one comes along. It seems like this is the approach that the astronomy community is taking right now. They say microbial life, microbes are very common,

so they are, they must be out there. Let's try and find them. Let's invest more than $10 billion in the Habitable World Observatory searching for mi- microbial signatures, you know, the chemical fingerprints in the atmospheres of exoplanets around other stars. And I say

No. I mean, let's try and find someone who is smarter than we are so that we can learn from them about new science, new technology, and maybe they're out there, and maybe their signatures are easier to detect than microbes, even though microbes are more abundant. So, so this is one difference, you see, between me and the mainstream of, of astronomy right now, which is basically sidelining the search for technological signatures, and maybe the disclosure initiative that government has right now.

The Pentagon is releasing batches of data, and the White House is into it, so maybe we learn something from those data, maybe not. I don't depend on the government to tell me what lies in the sky, you know, what lies beyond the solar system. We can observe, we can look up, okay? The only thing we need is to change our priorities instead of just putting $2.4 trillion every year towards military budgets worldwide just to kill other people or prevent others from killing us.

That's a very down-to-earth concern, you know, just worrying about what happens on this rock that was just a, a residue left from the formation of the sun. So we just, by conquering a piece of land on this rock, we feel good about our nation or whatever. And this is a very narrow-minded view. If most of the real estate is out there, most of the action is out there, you just need to look up and realize that. And that means that what happens on Earth is really a, a tiny part of the story.

Nobody would remember us in the history books of the Milky Way galaxy unless we explore space much more vigorously, and that doesn't mean that we should just go to the Moon or Mars, the nearest rocks that happen to be near us. The-- Again, this is a narrow-minded view. It's very difficult to live on the Moon. There are lots of health hazards. It's very difficult to live on Mars. We-- If we want to explore space, we should be smart about it and build a, a, a space platform that can accommodate humans or send robots with AI.

That's another option. But the point is, we are not that intelligent. You know, we are probably not at the top of the food chain cosmologically speaking, but we keep bragging. You know, maybe there is nobody out there. We started by saying, "Maybe, you know, the Earth is at the center of the universe." We believed in that, and thanks to Galileo Galilei, who just was the first to look through a telescope at the sky, you know, he realized that there are objects moving around Jupiter, not around us.

And I just spoke now with the producer of a, a new show on Broadway that will start in December called Galileo,

and he wanted to speak with me because, you know, it, it's really an important lesson to learn that, you know, don't think so highly of yourself. When you s- ask, "Where is my dating partner?"

You know, you need to put some effort and seek it. You need to build telescopes. You need to look for it, you know? And, uh, bec- it's very presumptuous to assume that everyone cares about us, we are at the center. So look, you're not gonna get any argument from me, Avi, that humility is important, that seeking the unknown is important. How we go about it, we can debate all that, and so great. You, you had me at hello with this is the question we should be looking at.

But here's where I wanna push back, and again, not for the sake of pushing back, but just to really understand the science. We're talking about astronomical distances, and whether or not we have warp drives or we have teleporting abilities eventually, or we go from one wormhole to the next, right now, at least, with what we know about

speed of light and what Einstein proved, it's pretty hard to cover these distances. And again- Oh, no ... you had n- That's, that's not true. Okay. I should emphasize what you alluded to, that there are societal laws, and the legal system that we have in society is meant to punish people who violate the societal laws. So it means that you can break the law, of course. However, in physics, when you have a law of nature, a physical law,

nobody can break it.

If you find an atom, one atom out of all the atoms in the universe that disobeys the laws of physics, quantum mechanics, or any other law, law of gravity, you will get a Nobel Prize for it because nobody can disobey the laws of physics. They are universal. So the speed of light, uh, is the limit based on everything we know so far. We haven't seen any deviation from that limit,

and as you say, you know, that allows you to travel a distance, a, a, a minimum timescale. You can't go shorter time than that. But the point is that let's consider Voyager, the, you know, the, the spacecraft that we launched in the '70s. It's moving at a percent of a percent of the speed of light, one part in 10,000 of the speed of light moving out of the solar system. How long will it take it to cross the entire Milky Way galaxy disk where the stars are concentrated?

It will take it less than a billion years, even with the 1970s technology. So if you wait a billion years, Voyager will be on the opposite side of the Milky Way galaxy relative to the Sun. That's a fact. You can do the calculation. I did the calculation with my student last year. So

with our current technology, you can cross the Milky Way galaxy in less than a billion years,

and then you ask yourself,

is the sun a typical star? Turns out the sun formed exactly in the last one-third of cosmic history. It formed 4.6 billion years ago. The age of the universe is 13.8 billion years ago, which is exactly three times longer. So most of the stars in the universe formed before the Sun by billions of years. What does it mean? If they had the same technological clock, if a technological civilization like ours formed around sun-like stars-

Then they would have been ahead of us by billions of years, and meaning that Voyager-like spacecraft could make it to our backyard, no problem, violation of the laws of physics. Not to speak about faster propulsion that we may have in the future, you know, that shorter timescales. So it's definitely doable. How many of, what fraction of those stars have a planet the size of the Earth, roughly the same separation? Current data indicates roughly 10%.

We don't know exactly. It, it ranges between a few percent up to a few tens of percent, but around 10% would be a reasonable guess, and, uh, based on the data we have. And that means that there are billions of Earth sun analogs, and that means that you could have potentially the chemistry of life as we know it in water on those billions of Earth-like, Earth, uh, mass planets. And so, you know, out of the soup of chemicals, if you start with similar initial conditions, why wouldn't you get similar outcomes like we, uh, are?

You know, the outcome of what happened on the early Earth. And so if I had to guess, I would say we are sort of in the middle of the class of intelligent civilizations that ever existed. The thing is, we see billions of houses like our own in the Milky Way galaxy,

which you can think of as the town that we live in. And currently, the mainstream astronomy community argues, "Oh, these houses do not have any residents. That's the default assumption. Let's search for microbes in these houses." And for that is, you know, it's challenging to do at a distance. But I say, "Well, let's check our backyard. If there is any tennis ball that was thrown by a neighbor, let's check our mailbox if there is any package." Completely different approach.

The SETI community was searching for a radio signal for, you know, 66 years. That's just like waiting for a phone call, and, you know, nobody may call you when you are waiting. It may have happened a million years ago, and now the, that signal propagates, uh, at the speed of light, so it's a million light-years away. The point is, if you look for physical objects, uh, they can still hang around because they are bound by gravity to the Milky Way galaxy, and they keep accumulating over time.

So, um, like plastics in the ocean, you know? This is a new approach, and that's the path that I'm pursuing, and, uh, I hope we will find something, or maybe even the US government has already some data that I don't know. Again, just logically, when you think about infinity and you think about billions,

the odds, as you would say, are of course, you know, you, you could have parallel universes. I mean, there's so many

possibilities, and I, I get all that, and that's a philosophical question. And, and, and I can even see from a science perspective, 'cause the probability is a scientific question. My question to you is, when you're looking at the actual evidence, whether or not it's the 'Oumuamua, you know, situation we had where we, you know, we first observed an object. I mean, is there

reason for hope based on real evidence at this point, as opposed to what I do not discount at all, your point that of course we should have the humility- Right ... to recognize that the fact that there's billions and billions of stars. The odds are... But odds are different than scientific facts. So- Right. Right ... bring us back to, bring us back to Earth. What is the- Right. So- ... real science behind this? So the thing to understand about science, you might say, "Well, sci- science will discover the facts." That's not true, because science is done by scientists, and if the scientists decide that it's not worth investing money in a particular search, they will not find the data related to that.

That's a big obstacle towards innovation in science, because very often the mainstream asks for consensus and accepts a view that is shaped but by our past knowledge. So, for example, right now we should search for microbes because we think that microbes are common, and we should put more than $10 billion in that direction, and zero federal funding towards the search for technological signatures. I think it's not the right approach, because you want to hedge your bets, and perhaps technological signatures are easier to detect.

And, uh, for one reason, because they arrived close to us. You know, if you think about bees, uh, they cluster around flowers. And you can think of the habitable zone of stars, like where the Earth is, where life is possible. That may attract attention from alien probes that would cluster in the habitable zone around the sun and, in particular, Earth for a long time in the past. So asking what's the likelihood is not really...

I mean, it's not a philosophical question because we can actually look. Now, the problem is that when scientists say we don't have evidence, of course you don't have evidence because you are sidelining the collection of evidence. And the only way to get a thread of, you know, that will intrigue our curiosity is if by chance something happens to be noticed that looks anomalous. And this was the case of 'Oumuamua. That was the first interstellar object discovered in 2017, and, um, it was, uh, most likely flat in its shape.

E- every eight hours as it was spinning, the amount of sunlight reflected from it changed by a factor of 10. That's huge because it means the surface area projected on the sky was changing by a factor of 10 as the object was tumbling. And then on top of that, it was pushed away from the sun by some mysterious force. There was no evaporation of gas or dust that could give it the rocket effect. So what, what was pushing it?

And I just said, "Maybe it's the sunlight pushing it." Three years later, the same telescope found another object that was definitely pushed by sunlight. It was made of stainless steel, turned out to be a rocket booster from 1966, launched by NASA. You know, and, uh, obviously we know that it's, uh, technological, but in the case of 'Oumuamua, the question is, who produced it if it's technological? I should say also that the, the astronomers who are comet experts, you know, that monitor the sky, they have a training data set in which only rocks or icebergs exist in space.

But we know that there are space objects that we produced, and all I'm asking them is to expand their training data set so that it will include also technological objects. So, you know, this is a subject where we can make advances by collecting data. That they know the answer, that everything in the sky is rocks and icebergs, then they will not seek the data. They will not collect the data. And people like you will say, "Oh, there is no evidence." Of course there is no evidence because the scientific community is not trying to collect it.

You know, uh, there is another puzzle, big puzzle about the universe. We don't know what most of the matter in the universe is. We call it dark matter. But there we invest billions of dollars over decades searching for it. We haven't found it. We went in directions that the community recommended, the community of experts, and we haven't found it. And, uh, you know, despite the enormous amount of work and, and money invested, we haven't succeeded, probably because it's some other, something else, you know?

But

in the context of searching for technological signatures, we haven't invested those funds. We haven't put the attention of the mainstream community to it, so then after several decades, we can say, "Oh, we haven't found it." And on top of that, you have people that served in government saying, "We are seeing unusual things." And these ideas are being completely ridiculed. You know, when I discussed 'Oumuamua, I got personal attacks.

So this is, you know, if you ask yourself, why isn't there evidence? It's because the people who are supposed to collect the evidence are not pursuing it. When I hear you talk, and based on reading different things in this discussion,

you're not saying anything controversial. Uh, what I hear you saying is that we have a certain amount of curiosity, we have a certain amount of money, and we, the people, should be open enough and humble enough not to close our eyes, but to be open to the possibility of life. And instead of looking at a black-and-white interpretation of the Bible or a black-and-white interpretation of science, we should have the humility to open our, the horizon, so to speak.

And, and I totally get that. And then it's a discussion not about whether or not you are a true scientist. What you're really saying is you're saying, "Open up your horizons. Open up your eyes. Don't be afraid of the unknown." There is another thing that is often missed in this conversation, and that is what are the implications to society of a scientific finding, okay? And so just think about if we find evidence for a visitor from outside the solar system or some probe that was constructed by alien civilization, it could open up new avenues for science and technology that we don't possess.

It would change religious philosophical beliefs about our place in the universe. It would motivate us to explore their backyard if they visit our backyard. Lots of things. It would have a huge impact on society. And if we find microbes, what will it do? People would say, "Oh, great. Now the question is, is it the same type of, uh, life in terms of its DNA and so forth?" But it will not fundamentally affect society in the same way as finding intelligence or superior in alien intelligence.

And so my point is, at the very least, let's invest similar levels of funding because if we find int- uh, alien intelligence, it would have a huge impact on our future. Just for that reason, we should pay attention to it. That is the argument that Blaise Pascal raised and the mathematician philosophers raised about why should we discuss God. He said, if God exists, the implications are huge, so therefore we should definitely discuss this notion.

We can't just dismiss it and move on. And, uh, for the same reason, we should definitely, I argue, you know, and that's a completely secular, uh, statement that has nothing to do with God. But I argue, let's search for beings that are superior in their intelligence relative to us because we can benefit greatly from finding them. That's my approach. And you know, of course, we generate, uh, AI, uh, artificial intelligence, but if you just think about it, you know, even the $700 billion invested in the data centers for the a- the next generation AI systems that we are now putting in, in the US this year, $700 billion.

All of the data in the world that will go into these data centers is based on what we learned on Earth, on this rock, okay? And there is, I can guarantee to you that there are bill- you know, the, the amount of real estate beyond this rock is billions of times larger, just within the Milky Way galaxy. And then you have a trillion galaxies beyond that in the observable volume of the universe. So

it's, you know, if we had to build data centers for everything in the universe, it, you know, it would be, I don't know, 10 to the power of $45 billion or whatever. Uh, you know, so the point is that, uh, if we meet alien intelligence, it may have a much larger training data set than we find here on Earth, and that would be far more impactful on the future of humanity than developing our AI systems. Much as we are talking about the singularity from AI and so forth, the impact on society, I think the The encounter with alien intelligence will be far more important for the future of humanity.

I'm sure this observation has been made to you before, but I can't help but make it. If you look at life on a continuum, and you go back to the Stone Age period, and you look at ... I'm reading Shogun right now. I mean, in our DNA, we are explorers, and we really have, in a relatively short period of time, the thousands of years as opposed to billions of years, we've gone from thinking the world was flat to basically now, right, we all on this planet are able to communicate with each other.

And I, I mean, I think built into the human condition is this desire to know. Now,

here, here's, here's an interesting paradox for you. You know, we could also find out, right, that oops, we discover an a- you know, an alien intelligent life that turns us all into a bunch of slaves, right? You know, if you're gonna have- Yeah ... the curiosity, you, you don't know. Just think about when the Spanish and the Europeans came to Central and South America and brought with them a lot of diseases. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean- So I, I- ... you know, this, this, this is gonna be turbulent ... but here, here is the... Yeah. So first of all, when you ... This is a blind date, okay, of, of interstellar proportions, and on a blind date, you know, your dating partner can either be friendly or hostile. Could be a serial killer, for example. And what do you do? So obviously you listen, but ignoring the existence of dating partners is the wrong approach because you might be surprised that there would be a knock on the door one day, and you will have very little time to respond, uh, compared to a situation where you appreciate the envi- the, the neighborhood that you live in that could bring such a visitor.

So I think it's always good for us to be aware of our cosmic neighborhood. But with respect to the impact on us, I think they had a lot of ... You know, if we are visited, they had a lot of opportunity to kill us a long time ago or prevent where we are right now, because they are probably superior to us. If not because of their intelligence, also because of the fact that they existed for longer than we did. You know, just imagine where we would be in 1,000 years, a million years, or a billion years.

You know, AI is the, uh, evolving exponentially with, uh, a, an e-folding time of a year or two, you know, right now. So, uh, it's really difficult to extrapolate our technologies 1,000 years from now. But they already, you know, their present is our future, so to speak, if they manage to get to us before we got to them. So, um, they care much about us as far as I can tell. It's again, our self-centered approach where we say, "We are at the center of the universe.

Oh, whoops, that was a mistake. Sorry. We are not at the center of the universe." But if anyone comes to visit the solar system, it will be because they are curious about us. They want to save us. They want to do ... No, they don't care about you. So when a biker goes down the street, you know, they don't, the biker doesn't care about any ant in the, in the cracks of the pavement. You know? That is irrelevant. They have their own ambitions, their own motivation for doing whatever they are doing.

But we, the, it's an opportunity for us to learn from them more than a, a reason for us to worry about their coming here. And, you know, in terms of disease, I, I highly recommend not to shake, uh, if we ever meet alien beings, biological beings, I highly recommend not to shake their hand because, you know, there is our, all of our life here on Earth, all forms of life have DNA that is right-handed, the way the molecules are organized is right-handed.

A- and, uh, uh, the chemistry of life could have a mirror symm- symmetric, uh, version, where it's left-handed, the DNA, and it's, it will work exactly the same way. But somehow this symmetry was broken on Earth. The, all the DNA of all the life forms that we have on Earth, uh, are right-handed. So we are not protected against viruses, bacterias, diseases that are mediated by left-handed DNA beings, you know? So don't shake their hand, because if they have the flu, you will not be protected.

Uh, uh, not to speak, uh, on, on the fact that you should never breed with them. That's a separate matter. You, you, you got a good sense of humor, and I appreciate that, but if you think about colonization in this world,

most societies have thought they were superior and wanted to bring something to the heathens. So I'm not so sure that if somebody discovers us, they're not gonna wanna, quote-unquote, you know, culture us and elevate us. So that's one observation. But here, here's a question for you. You know, at the Puck, right, among other things, we're trying to see where the world is going, and searching for extraterrestrial life is certainly part of that.

But another thing we're trying to do is not blow ourselves up, meaning I've really focused on this whole issue of polarization and, you know, whether or not you wanna think about the League of Nations leading to the United Nations leading to whatever comes next.

One question I have for you is, in a weird way, whether or not it's luck or divine perspective, isn't there something to said about us being united as a people? Yes. Because if, God forbid, we, you know, it, we, we find extraterrestrial life and, and, and it's not completely friendly, it certainly would be nice if we were all rowing in the same direction on this planet. Right. So when a neighbor knocks on the door, that quiets down all the loud arguments within the house, obviously.

And, and, uh, my hope is that this will change our priorities from killing each other in wars and conflicts to actually working together, because we would realize that we are all in the same boat. And also, if one of the passengers misbehaves, it can drown the entire boat, you know? So we should make sure that we cooperate internationally about the response, uh, to, to such a visit. It should, there should be some international board or committee.

And I try to encourage the United Nations, I try to reach out to the International Astronomical Union last summer When 3i Atlas, an interstellar object was visiting, and I actually defined the, a classification scale that is called the Loeb scale, where zero means that it's nothing to worry about, it's an iceberg or a rock of natural origin. It will pass by and we shouldn't worry about it. 10 means that it's a technological object that could be a threat to humanity.

And I thought it's just an academic exercise, but it turns out that when the CIA was asked by a FOIA to report about any record on, uh, 3i Atlas, they said that they cannot deny nor confirm such records. Uh, I might to be technological, you know? Um, and then, uh, Vladimir Putin, uh, at the summary of 2025, was asked by, uh, a, a journalist what his intelligence services tell him, and he had a very detailed answer about 3i Atlas.

Uh, and, um, this illustrated to me that they took it seriously. The- it's the first astronomical object that was discussed within government because it could be a black swan event. You know, like September 11th was a black swan event. The probability for it being realized was very small, but nevertheless, it happened and had a huge impact on society. So right now, governments, intelligence agencies do appreciate getting more data on events that are not very likely, but could have a huge disruption.

And so this was one of them data center object. So anyway, I reached out to the United Nations, I reached out to the International Astronomical Union, and they said, "Well, to establish such a committee, such a board, will take months. We have to get approvals, and we have to..." You know, the, it's the standard bureaucratic drag that kills all good ideas. Uh, and so it looks to me like we will

have to respond to it in real time. We will change our priorities, and it will become a very important topic. It will also become the hottest frontier in science once there is clear evidence. And on that, I should say, you know, all the astronomers, scientists, astrobiologists who are currently, uh, ridiculing the discussion of such a visit, um, you know, they remind me of, uh, a congressman that, um, about five years ago, uh, was, uh, supporting anti-gay legislation.

And then when he left Congress and when he retired, he declared that he's gay. And so, um, all these people that ridicule the subject and say bad things about it, at the end of the day, if we find, uh, clear evidence, uh, for an encounter, for a visit, they would admit that they always were fascinated by this. Look, could not agree with you more, but I wanna push back on one thing, because I think we've already had a test recently.

COVID. We had an alien invasion, and we, the world, could have come together and dealt with it in a very unified way, and, and I think we failed the test. You know, it's Darwin's principle all over again, you know, that let the fittest survive. So if we are not fit to survive, we shouldn't survive, cosmologically speaking. You know, there must have been a lot of planets with things like us, and those civilizations perished by now.

We didn't hear their cries for help because we were not around. But I'm sure there are lots of tragedies over the past 13.8 billion years that we don't know about on other planets. And by the way, the sun will die in 7.6 billion years, b- and before it dies, it will expand and engulf the Earth, burn everything we put on Earth. So all the monuments, all the important, you know, halls and the sculptures, and whatever we constructed on Earth will just be surrounded by fire from the envelope of the sun.

The moon, as a result of drag on the material from the sun, will crash on Earth. It will come back, crash on Earth. The Earth will spiral into the center of the sun and become part of the remnant of the sun, the corpse of the sun, which is a white dwarf. And that will happen in 7.6 billion years. And how do we know the sun will die and will end up like that? Because lots of stars already died, stars like the sun. We can look at the graveyard of the Milky Way galaxy.

We see a lot of white dwarves. So when you go to the graveyard, you see a lot of corpses. So, you know, you know that you will be dead one day because you are a human, just like they were. And so we see a lot of stars like the sun that died by now and became a white. So there is no way out of that, and the only way for us to preserve a longevity of our species is to en- go into space and build a spacecraft that can accommodate humans.

You know, we shouldn't count on the moon or, or, or Mars as being our saviors, because they would also disappear. Sure. So we should just venture into space. Now,

we might get that message from finding other civilizations that did it. Those are the survivors. So those are, according to Darwin's principle, those are the ones that were fit to survive. If we keep engaged in conflicts on Earth, you know, conquering a piece of Ukraine while the sun is dying, you know, we, we, we do not deserve to survive. Avi, look, I'm an impatient person. But- [laughs] ... I think a billion, let alone seven billion years, gives us a lot of time to figure out how to get out of this galaxy, so to speak.

And I would also push back and say part of the human condition is the entire universe is gonna die i- in that sense. And so ultimately, whether or not the big bangs- The universe, uh, the universe lives forever. Uh- Well, well, well, hold on. Let, let's push back on that. But, but let- Does the universe live forever or... In other words, we-- I had this discussion with Neil deGrasse Tyson. Einstein says energy can't be created or destroyed.

In all rational way of thinking, Avi, everything has a beginning and an end. But, but here's the tautology. Either something has always existed or it came out of nothing. And all I'm saying is when I use the word physical universe, I'm saying that physicality eventually breaks down. Now, whether or not it reinvents itself, meaning it goes, it goes away and comes back, over my pay grade. I'm just saying that when you're in the realm of physicality, when you're in the realm of what number's closer to infinity, 1,000 or a trillion, there is no number close to infinity.

Uh, one thing for you to recognize when we deal with the future is that the sun is not a typical star. The sun is a rare star. It's relatively massive. The most common stars are about 1/10 of the mass of the sun, and those live 1,000 times longer than the sun. 1,000 times longer. So there are, you know, the most common type of star would live, uh, up to 10 trillion years compared to 10 billion years. Okay? Wow. And the, you know, these are the most common stars.

So the nearest star to the sun has 12% of the mass of the sun. It's called Proxima Centauri. We can-- It's the first star that we will encounter if we wanted to arrive near a star that, you know, i-in, in the shortest amount of time. That's the nearest one, and it has a planet in the habitable zone around it. Amazing. So if we want to live for 1,000 times longer without worrying about the sun, we can go to that planet, you know?

So there is other types of real estate that we can inhabit and, and, and survive just using the energy from nuclear furnaces, nuclear reactors that nature gave us. But on top of that, we can create our own,

uh, nuclear reactor and stay warm with it. You-- We can put it in a spacecraft and, you know, not worry about the rest of the universe as much as that is, as long as we have fuel that we can continue to harvest, uh, for that nuclear reactor. So the point is, we don't need a star to survive. We just need a plan. And even though it sounds like seven billion years is a long time, I would recommend starting to think about it now, not going to the moon or Mars as a solution, because these are very dangerous habitats.

You know, the, the temperature on the surface of Mars changes by hundreds of degrees between day and night. You're exposed to cosmic rays. There is no atmosphere. It's really dangerous. You won't survive there. Most people that will go there will die within years at the longest. The same is true about the moon. And we need to be more ambitious and develop our own technology so that we can put out a spacecraft that can provide even artificial gravity and so forth.

The point is that we need to be ambitious in order to do that. And of course, we can decide to do that because we realize there are lots of risks, existential risks on Earth that have nothing to do with the sun. You know, there are impacts by asteroids. A giant asteroid killed the d-dinosaur 66 million years ago. You know, another one may come any time. But, uh,

also we have self-inflicted wounds from AI, from new technologies. But going to Mars as a second home is, is similar to saying, "I want a second house just in case there is fire in my house," and you buy some real estate in the South Pole. That's not a good idea. It's not a good place to live in. Mars is not a good replacement to our home at, here on Earth. We need to build a platform that accommodates the needs of humans, and that I think is the big message that we will get if we discover another civilization that did that already.

Then we would say, "Let's imitate them." You know, uh, uh, as Oscar Wilde said, "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery." If we see someone accomplishing this task, we would say, "Oh, it's feasible. Let's do it ourselves." Avi Loeb, I'm with you. It's fascinating. I mean, what, what creates this sense of urgency in you? Ah, the, uh, the reading the news every day. You know, about, um, a decade ago, I, you know, I asked my wife, I said, "If a, a, a spacecraft lands in our backyard, you know, I might actually join them, uh, for a one-way trip." And she said that, "Go ahead, uh, just make sure you leave the car keys with me."

And, uh, now she says, uh, that's 10 years later, she says, "I will join you." Uh, and the reason... I mean, you can think that it's probably a result of our marriage getting better, but I w- I would not, uh, suggest that interpretation. I would say it's because she reads the news, and she gets more frustrated with where we are heading. Uh, you know, if, if I am part of discovering that we are being visited by some alien technology, it will change everything, and I think it will bring humanity to a better place.

Uh, it's sort of if you are religious and you believe that the Messiah will arrive, just think of an alien visitation as the Messiah from another star. So again, you're, you're someone that would love to see more world peace. Why can't we all get along? There's different approaches to that. You, you're preaching to the converted. Totally agree. And, you know, there's different ways to do that. I mean, I try to get people to focus on the fact that, you know, candidly, I think the world's better today than it's ever been, meaning that the moral arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice.

And what I would argue is that AI and algorithms and our economic model has taught us to be angry and afraid because that's what capitalism is doing. It's we're blowing ourselves apart. Whereas if you look back and you said, "Okay, well, I want a, I want a time machine and go back to 1963." Oops. You know, John F. Kennedy assassinated. Oh, '68, Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy. You wanna go back to the Vietnam War?

You wanna go back to the Civil War? So from my perspective, things are not as bad as we're led to believe. I agree. I agree. And I agree that the AI is inheriting many of our faults because we are training it on human-made data, uh, from the internet. That's why I'm hoping that we will find some alien data, uh, because that may bring, um- The, the, uh, AI to, to a better standard.

You know, humans are not the best role model. So one

reason I'm seeking alien intelligence is in order to... for us to have better role models than ourselves or than our politicians. And, you know, that's, I think, a worthy, uh, reason for us to look for a dating partner. Again, not to aim low, but to aim high. We're really pivoting this year, and we're foc- I'm trying to focus on what I call character-based capitalism. And one of the things that I'm interested in doing, and I'm dead serious, is in the same way that there, when you look at Sukkot, there's the 70 nations of the world, if you look at the Sanhedrin, it was 70.

I wanna go out and seek alien life. I wanna go out and find 70 wise people, man, woman, wherever, anywhere on the planet, and basically bring them together and basically say, "Okay, guys, based on all your experience," the Dalai Lama, the Pope,

Avi Loeb, bringing all of it together, right? Why... in our own backyard, why can't we figure out a way to do better? And whether we find it on planets in another solar system or we find it on this planet, we all have to search for this alien wisdom. Right. I completely agree with you. I, I'd be delighted to be in such a c- the company of such a group of people. But I would even enjoy more the company of an alien who can tell us what is the recipe for survival.

How did they manage to survive for billions of years? Because as far as I can see, the way we are going, you know, maybe we have another few centuries, but it's not clear we would go beyond that if we keep doing what we are doing. Just because we get more and more power at our disposal that is destructive as much as it could be constructive. So you are right to say that we are getting better, but that's sort of the mean, and then there are fluctuations ar- around the mean.

But if you have nuclear weapons, a- a- a- a- and, you know, there are good guys and bad guys that can use it, if the bad guys use it, it will be devastating. So the pendulum, when it sweeps back and forth around the mean, which gets better, could be devastating and, and, and create a situation that you cannot recover from, as long as, you know, the, the ability for us to inflict wounds gets better and better. And it's certainly the case with nuclear weapons, with AI, that we have tools at our disposal that are far more destructive than previous generations.

And so as we go along this path, you have to absolutely make sure that they're not being used by bad guys. Now, you could have done that with nuclear weapons because it's only governments that are capable of, you know, getting the raw materials. But the point is that with AI, you could have a kid in a basement. You don't need a government. And so, you know, we're getting to develop things that could harm all of us, b- but cannot be monitored very easily, and that's what I worry about.

I worry about the fluctuations around the mean. I agree with you, the mean is going, uh, i- in a good direction, but, but the fluctuations could get larger and larger back and forth, and the pendulum can kill us if it goes to the bad side. Agreed. And you know, I grew up in the '60s, and I remember, you know, having to do drills to jump under the desk because, uh, the fear of, you know, the Cuban Missile Crisis. And you know, I, I, I do wonder though, Avi, is, is it part of the human condition to, you know, worry about, again, a meteor- Yes ...

hitting us or otherwise? And- Yes. It's definitely ... and, and, and could it also be that the wisdom is already out there? For instance, there's a famous story where Rabbi Hillel was asked, you know, kind of how... what, what's the, what's the real philosophy of how you make the world work better? And he said, "Look, keep it simple. Don't do to others what you'd find hateful to yourself," right? I mean, at the end- Yeah ...

of the day, we're seeking all this wisdom, but- Right ... sometime... is, isn't it possible that it's already right in front of us, but we just have- Yeah ... to open the door and live by it? Yeah, definitely. Definitely. I think man, much of, um, the suppression of progress comes from us not, uh, being sufficiently open-minded about what we are capable of doing. You know, we... obviously, the weather we can't control very well, but, but the future of humanity we can control very well.

And we should just come to the realization that we will all benefit from more cooperation than, than from conflicts. You know, I, I can see that a lot of the conflicts were initiated by men more than women, so maybe if we had more women

in, in charge, we would have less conflicts 'cause it's part of the nature of men to, to fight with each other. There is a better path forward, and that a little more wisdom would really save us from a lot of wasted energy, wasted resources, and wasted opportunities to bring us to the next level. But if we do find someone else who did it,

perhaps we would, uh, be jealous of our siblings in the family of intelligent civilizations and ask for advice of how to do things better. And you know, I had a group of religious people from Christianity Today, an organization, who asked me, uh, what will happen if we find extraterrestrials with respect to our religious beliefs. And I said, "Um, you know, I have two daughters, and when the second one was born, it didn't take away any of the love that I have to the first one.

And so believing that God is a parent that can attend to only one child is very limiting." And they accepted that. And I think all together, I think when we realize that we are not at the top of the food chain, cosmologically speaking, we will acquire the sense of modesty,

uh, that, uh, in the past was always delivered by religions, you know, because there is God that is a superhuman entity. But if there is just a neighbor that is more accomplished, it's the same message, you know, that we should learn from that neighbor. When you look at 10,000 years of history and you look at modern civilization-

Women have only voted in the last, you know, 100, 150 years, and the fact that we have evolved to a point where we, we, you know, where we don't just have landed aristocracy in Rome voting, but that women are voting, should recog- g- be part of that arc of history that we're moving in the right direction. And I know you're pushing us to go faster, which I think is terrific, so I do think there's room to be optimistic.

Yes, I'm optimistic, and my message to young people who will carry us, uh, forward, you know, because they represent the future, is that we should stay curious and not pretend to be the adults in the room. Because, you know, when the adults tell you that they know something, it's based on past knowledge. S- very often they pretend to know something.

You know, it's just

a, a way of showing off, and the approach of kids to wonder and, and be curious and figure out the truth, uh, i- is a far more healthy approach. That's the one I am happy to, to follow as a scientist. You know, it's a great privilege, because it's not about us. You know, the universe exists out there not for us and not, uh, to amplify our importance. It's out there for us to look at it, like a, a- an amazing play that we can watch.

We are not the main actors. We are not the center of stage, and we came late to the play, and the best we can do is look for other actors that can tell us what the play is about. It's funny because science is about curiosity and, and solving puzzles, but I think you're also a mystic, because you're talking about awe and wonder, which I think exist at a higher level than science. Oh. And you're challenging us to go all the way.

If you look at all the projects that are funded within science, all the projects that are funded right now by federal agencies, by private funders, they are engaged with the known unknowns. These are things that we don't know,

but we know that we don't know them. These are known unknowns, and so we can define a project to look for the nature of these things, okay? Because we just don't understand them, but we know that we don't know them. But the most important, most impactful discoveries will be of the unknown unknowns. These are things that we don't even recognize that we don't know. That's what makes life worth living, the unknown unknowns.

I love that, the unknown unknowns. Avi, thank you so, so much for your time today. Thank you. [upbeat music] The Puck: Venture Capital and Beyond is brought to you by CMBG Advisors. If you enjoyed the conversation today and haven't yet subscribed to our show, you can find us on YouTube, iTunes, Apple Podcasts, and SoundCloud. Feel free to leave a review while you're there, and maybe even a five-star rating. You can also follow us on TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube for updates, highlights, and more content from our team.

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