- 3 months ago
How much time?! Loeb: "It's the size of Manhattan Island." What exactly is this Space Object '3I/Atlas' that has been identified?
"That's not much smaller than the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs"- Harvard Astrophysicist Avi Loeb joins!
"That's not much smaller than the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs"- Harvard Astrophysicist Avi Loeb joins!
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00:00it is harvard astrophysicist dr avi loeb who joins us now earlier this week he suggested
00:10that uh earthlings ought to schedule their vacation quickly because we may not have much
00:19time left here doctor good morning good morning uh just briefly i did i did not graduate from high
00:28school so if you could you may have to speak layman at times this morning on the program well that's who
00:33i am okay yeah i can speak that way okay very good uh now you and others in your field have
00:43identified this space object uh 3i atlas am i correct about that yes um it's the third
00:53interstellar object that was discovered over the past decade uh interstellar means that it came
01:00from outside the solar system so it's just like finding an object in your backyard that came from
01:06the street okay this one though is apparently uh is not acting like a normal interstellar object am i
01:16correct about that well yeah it shows some weird properties it's very big uh it's at least a
01:25thousand times more massive than the previous two that we uh had uh it also uh moves along the
01:33plane of the planets around the sun so all the planets are sitting in the same plane and moving
01:39around the sun and this one comes in exactly in that plane within five degrees and the chance of that
01:44happening at random is really small it's one in 500 so then the question arises as to whether
01:51this trajectory that it follows was designed by some intelligence so a designed uh the plan of the
02:02of of uh of attack or or perhaps uh they come in peace i don't i don't know which it is well that's
02:10that's a good question when you go on a blind date and you see your dating partner on the other side
02:16the first question is whether that one is friendly or it may be a serial killer
02:21the prediction was that it was going this this object was going to go behind the sun
02:29on tuesday and that was going to help propel it from what i've read this is what and i i'm not a
02:36yes it's a maneuver it's some sort of a maneuver correct but then but then you're saying 33 gigawatts
02:41how fast actually is that and how could some object actually land on earth and not cause mass chaos
02:49yeah so this object is very big it's the size of manhattan island um it weighs 33 billion tons
02:58so it's really a massive object that not not much smaller than the asteroid that killed the dinosaur
03:0466 million years ago and it's moving at 60 kilometers per second you know uh on saturday
03:11i'm attending a nascar car race uh in california uh because one of the racers decided to put my image
03:19together with the image of this interstellar object uh three atlas to put it on his on the hood of his
03:25car and i told him your car is moving at least 600 times slower than three atlas so it's really fast
03:34it's it's traversing a distance that the car makes in an hour it does it in one second um and so um
03:43so it's moving fast and then the question is will it maneuver because it's coming right now it's on
03:50the opposite side of the sun relative to where earth is so we can't look at we can't see it if
03:55you look at the sun during the daytime just imagine the three atlas is flying behind it right now and
04:02then uh perhaps that was for a reason so we won't be able to see if it does a maneuver um and this is
04:08this is the best time for it to do a maneuver because it's uh in a week it will come closest to
04:14the sun and then it would move at the fastest speed and if you want to uh fire an engine and get as
04:21much boost as a result of your engine the best time to do it is when you are closest to a massive
04:27object like the sun uh and that's what we do with spacecraft and it's called gravitational assist by
04:34by the sun and so we have to wait and see if it changes course or if it releases any mini probes you
04:42know if it's a mothership that continues along its course but just sends out probes to the various
04:47planets that would also be uh very impactful and on our future now uh the reason we need to consider
04:54that i mean maybe the probability is small that you know maybe it's just a natural object just a rock
05:00but um the implications would be huge so this is called the black swan event you know when
05:06intelligence agencies have to deal with the risks they often consider very seriously events that have
05:13a low probability but just because they have a huge impact on on on society is is it accurate that
05:21because i see things that nasa is has gone into some sort of uh emergency mode prep mode or something
05:29like do you have any information about that not emergency currently shut down because of the
05:35government shutdown and they had a camera orbiting mars that took a very high resolution image of 3a atlas
05:46with the 30 kilometers per pixel resolution uh it did that on october 2nd and that was the day after the
05:54government shut down so we haven't seen the data and i very much would like to see this image because
06:00you know a picture is worth a thousand words yes uh and then but yesterday there was an announcement by
06:07uh an organization called the uh international asteroid warning network um that uh uh as a matter of
06:17planetary defense this is an organization related to the united nations and i actually wrote in a white
06:23paper to the united nations encouraging them to to get involved so they will now have a campaign observing
06:30this object between november 27th and january 27th so that we can get the most information about it
06:39now what about those naysayers doctor who say this is just a comet or this is just an asteroid why are we
06:47scaring everybody about an alien mothership well we are not scaring everybody we just need to be aware
06:54that it's a possibility because we launched the technological equipment to space we have a spacecraft
07:01out there so we know that it's not only rocks that populate the solar system we have a lot of space trash
07:08that we put out there uh and if we did it over the past 50 years someone else might have done it we may
07:15have a neighbor and we might find them you know a tennis ball that was thrown by a neighbor in our backyard
07:21so we just need to watch it so wait we need to watch it and and make you know it's a matter of
07:27just being cautious and and and checking uh and and the fact that this object is weird it has
07:33eight anomalies and i i listed them uh on medium.com i write an update about this object every few days
07:41and you can read it there doctor it could be excuse me curtis quickly this could be just 33 billion pounds
07:47of alien trash which is uh that would say released in space well if it's if it's trash we shouldn't
07:53really worry too much it would be interesting to check what what it includes you know just like
07:58checking if there is any letter in the trash of your neighbor but um but um uh yeah what what should
08:06be of concern is if it's a functional device if it's alien technology that could pose a threat
08:13and then obviously no no politician will do anything about it until the first encounter you know once
08:20we identify a piece of equipment that was extraterrestrial then after that everything will
08:26change and then uh so we we you know we can be blind and not look up that's what the dinosaurs did
08:33they didn't care much about the sky and they're not around anymore right doctor i what is the most common
08:40misconception by us regular morons about our plans well it's not morons i mean i would say it's the most
08:51people in academia uh they uh believe that we are the most intelligent thing that ever happened since
08:59the big bang you know that 13.8 billion years ago and then you know they they call the possibility that
09:06we may have a neighbor as intelligent or more intelligent than we are they call it an extraordinary
09:11claim and i say it's a very ordinary claim because we see you know a hundred billion earth sun analogs
09:18systems just like the solar system we see in the milky way galaxy a hundred billion of them
09:24and you know it's quite likely that things like us existed you know for billions of years
09:31around other stars so so we should be you know when we when we ask are we alone you know that's
09:37a question that every lonely person asks and what you tell a lonely person is you know if you want
09:42to find a partner you should then be proactive they don't think that you're so attractive that everyone
09:47will come to you you need to to search for them can you predict with the path that this is on
09:52what part of the world it could collide with oh if we knew that it's approaching the earth then we
10:00could but just keep in mind that any technological object can maneuver and you can't really forecast
10:07it depends on the intent uh as to how it it will move and uh the point is we need to monitor it just to
10:15make sure that there is nothing uh you know nothing if it continues along the current path it will not
10:22cross the earth it's passing far from earth and the closest it will get to earth will be on december
10:2819th um and just a week before christmas and uh at that point it will be uh still quite far
10:36about the 250 million kilometers from earth but we don't know because they are we don't know they're
10:42very sneakily hiding behind the sun the aliens exactly exactly that's that that's the key right that's
10:49why next week you know it's a week before you know it's just around the time of halloween when it will
10:55be yeah it will be closest to the sun so we have to watch out last one from me uh for those who are
11:02concerned uh about meeting our uh interplanetary neighbors uh what is what is your fear level one to
11:12ten what how how yeah so in fact i defined the scale that is now called the lobe scale which after
11:19my last name that zero means a natural object ten means a technological object and i gave it a four
11:26at this point so it is a four it's a four as uh on a scale of one to ten it being a technological
11:32object from from uh aliens out there yes doctor i i just i have so many questions and i if i had worked
11:39harder maybe i could have gotten to one of your classes but oh well um the what happened with the
11:45pyramids if you had to guess who built them how were they built well that's an excellent question
11:51i i'm not sure uh we don't have that information and it's quite possible that on earth there were
11:57civilizations that were very sophisticated or they had a visit by by another you know by aliens that
12:04helped them uh we it's just not documented well enough we can't tell so um the best we can do is
12:12just look at the sky and check if there is any evidence for anything out there you know that i
12:18take the approach of a kid you know that uh instead of listening to stories of of the adults in the
12:24room you know we have stories from religions we have stories from historians i don't care about these
12:29stories i don't care about the past i just want to see if there is something right now around us that
12:35would indicate that you know and that we can do we can look at the sky we can all do that you are
12:41recommending though still that we use our vacation days within the next week just in case
12:49yeah because you know the future can be very different i see it as an opportunity like any
12:55blind date you know it could make us better if we realize that someone else was more accomplished you
13:01know like uh and it's i i was jogging this morning at the before sunrise and it's just beautiful if you
13:07look at the sky you know just look up that's that's all i'm saying don't focus because if you read the
13:14news every day you get depressed um about the people engaging in conflicts and thinking very small
13:21term and um you know the universe is far more exciting doctor i don't want to get too personal
13:27but we have a lot of ladies who listen to the show and and you've offered a lot of dating analogies
13:31are are you are you are you solo dolo available for the ladies who uh who might go brain first over
13:38over appearance well my wife tells me not to offer any expertise about dating but then i cannot you know
13:45resist that but uh my my advice to anyone that goes on a blind date is first observe the other side
13:53before you have any opinion before you say anything and this is the principle that i think we should apply to
13:59encounter with alien technology we just want to observe it see what it's capable to do of doing
14:06try to figure out the intent before we say anything because you know we just don't know what what will
14:13come from the other side which celebrity in the world do you think is most likely an alien
14:22no i think they're all um terrestrial okay i have met many of them actually just a few months ago and
14:28they were quite interested in the kind of things i'm doing and but then yeah and also if you you're
14:35interested in in more details and in in tomorrow i'm i have a podcast with joe rogan and uh it should
14:43appear over the weekend so you might want i scooped rogan look at that greg yeah that's pretty good
14:49curtis i mean it was your idea sorry doctor have have you ever met fellow astrophysicist katie perry
14:56oh yeah what do you think about the blue origin that was weird she went um she went to quote
15:05unquote space just for a few minutes and uh but uh anyway yeah well uh the latest i heard them
15:14about her was the the the relationship she has with uh justin trudeau yeah all right doc we lot
15:21honestly thanks for taking the time really appreciate it i i would have paid attention
15:26in these classes if this was my professor you are so good would you like to call some socks
15:32games on any chance one of these aliens could play wide receiver that's all i care about
15:38by the way i'm very much into sports but you didn't ask me anything about that and next time
15:43you can ask me about that is that on your secret profile on tinder i don't have any social media
15:50footprint really no i i i really enjoy you don't have any social media you would crush on tick tock
15:56no wow nothing i have nothing but the interest i'm sure the interest in this is over the top when
16:03people like oh yeah because um you know every essay that i post on medium.com is now read by 50 to
16:09100 000 people and it takes five minutes for them to read it so you know it's not like a tweet that
16:16takes a few seconds so i'm really surprised by how much interest there is in this he could be an alien
16:20spy it could be we are we would we would we would love love to have you on again if that's okay doctor
16:26as this as sure as this continues especially if we figure out that we're not alone i'll be glad to to
16:33explain okay dr avi loeb thank you so much sir thanks for having me
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