If there’s one name associated with ʻOumuamua, the cigar-shaped first known interstellar object detected passing through our Solar System, it’s Harvard astronomy professor Avi Loeb, who from the day its discovery hit the news has promoted the idea that it’s not a space rock but quite possibly an alien-made object like a light sail that. Read more »
May 16, 2021
Theoretical physicist Avi Loeb of Harvard wants you to think seriously about the possibility that an artifact made by an extraterrestrial intelligence passed through our solar system in 2017. This object – called ‘Oumuamua, or
scout, by earthly astronomers – was traveling at a speed indicating an origin outside our solar system. But we never got close enough to it to see what it was. For the past few years, Loeb has argued that ‘Oumuamua was an alien artifact. In this episode of the University of Chicago’s Big Brains podcast, Loeb talks about the controversy and explains why he thinks we need to invest more in the search for alien life by developing the field of
One scientist claims aliens have already visited us and we should invest more in searching for extraterrestrials.
Avi Loeb is a theoretical physicist, former chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University, and author of a new book called
For the past few years, he’s argued that an alien artifact, called Oumuamua, passed by Earth in 2017.
As you can imagine, a Harvard professor going on record that aliens exist caused quite a stir in the scientific community.
“People tend to have an opinion ahead of time, and I think that’s dangerous because we just don’t know who lives in our neighborhood and what their objectives are,” says Loeb.
For Nobel laureate Jack Szostak, the biggest question in science today is fundamental: What is the origin of life?
Szostak, a professor of genetics at Harvard University, has dedicated his lab to piecing together the complex puzzle of life’s origins on Earth.
The story takes us back billions of years and may provide answers to some of our most mysterious questions: Where did we come from and are we alone in the universe?
“We all want to know one way or another how we came to be here,” says Szostak.
“If you just look around at life and the world, it’s so amazing and varied and beautiful and it’s so different from everything that’s inanimate. It just raises the question of: How did this difference arise and how did it lead to us?”