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Avi Loeb (2021) - Unnatural Interstellar Object · The Joe Rogan Recap

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Welcome to the Joe Rogan recap. Great to be.
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Here today we're diving deep into a really mind bending
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conversation from the Joe Rogan Experience episode #1596.
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That's the one with Abby Loeb, the Harvard scientist.
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Exactly. And we're going to unpack his
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whole take on Ummua. You remember that first
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interstellar object detected passing through our solar system
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back in what was it, October 2017?
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Yeah, I remember wild stuff. Just think, something from
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another star system literally flew past our doorstep.
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Right. And what makes it so compelling
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and controversial is that it didn't really behave like we
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expected. Not at all.
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I mean, the standard assumptions, comet or asteroid,
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they just didn't quite fit, did they?
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Nope. So when they first spotted it,
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OK, sure, maybe it's a space rock.
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But then almost right away it starts throwing these curveballs
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like it swings close to the sun, which, you know, normally makes
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comet light up. Grow that tail.
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The classic cometary coma and tail.
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Yeah, made of gas and dust burning off the ice.
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But. Umamua nothing 0 tail.
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Zip. And that lack of a tail, that
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was like the first big anomaly because that outgassing that
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tail, making it also acts like a tiny rocket engine.
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Giving the comet a little. Push exactly a non gravitational
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push. Which brings us to the second
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weird thing. Umumua had this extra push, this
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acceleration away from the sun that gravity alone couldn't
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explain. Right, it was moving faster than
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it should have been based purely on the Sun's gravity.
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But with no visible engine, no tail, no out gassing to explain
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why it was getting that extra kick.
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So the push was there, but the expected cause wasn't.
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That's a major puzzle. And then there was the way it
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pumbled every 8 hours or so. The amount of sunlight it
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reflected changed massively, like by a factor of 10.
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A factor of 10 is huge. Yeah, that implies really
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extreme shape. Not spherical, not even potato
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shaped like many asteroids. Loeb suggests something maybe
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really flat, like a pancake, or extremely elongated, like a
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needle. He threw out the size comparison
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of maybe a football field long but potentially very, very thin.
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Imagine something like that, tumbling end over end.
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Sometimes you see the big flat side, lots of reflection,
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sometimes the thin edge, much less reflection.
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That explains the brightness variation.
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OK, so let's pause there. If it was a comet and it was
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outgassing enough to cause that push, how much stuff would it
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have had to lose? Load calculated it would need to
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shed about 10% of its total mass.
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That's a significant amount. And we should have seen that
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right? Like a cloud of gas and dust.
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Absolutely. The Spitzer Space Telescope,
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which is super sensitive to the heat signature of dust and gas,
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looked right at it. Nothing, Nada.
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No sign of the debris cloud that should have been there if it was
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a comet generating that push throughout gassing.
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OK, so just to recap for everyone, no tail.
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This mysterious extra push, a really bizarre extreme shape,
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and no evidence of the mass loss needed if it were a comic
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causing that push. That's the core set of
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anomalies. Which leads us directly to Obby
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lobes, let's say unconventional hypothesis.
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Right, he puts forward the idea. What if it's not natural?
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What if it's a piece of alien technology?
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Specifically, maybe something like a light sail?
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Exactly. A very thin, lightweight object
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designed to be pushed by the pressure of sunlight itself.
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Like a sail catching the wind but catching photons instead.
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Could sunlight pressure actually be enough to Causeway that
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observed acceleration? Loeb argues yes, if the object
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was extremely thin and had a large surface area relative to
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its mass, The mass works out, and critically, it explains the
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push without needing any outgassing.
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So it kind of neatly ticks both boxes, the push and the lack of
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a tail. It does.
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He even mentioned that sci-fi movie Sunlight as sort of an
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analogy. And he also brought up a real
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world example, didn't he, that object 2020 SO.
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Yes, 2020. SO that was fascinating.
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It showed a similar kind of gentle push from sunlight.
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No commentary activity and it. Turned out to be.
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A discarded rocket booster. A Centaur upper stage from the
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Survey Year 2 mission back in the 60s.
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Definitely artificial, hollow, lightweight, large surface area.
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So we have proof that human made objects can get pushed by
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sunlight in this way. We do.
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But lobe is clear. Umumua couldn't be ours.
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Why not? Because of its trajectory and
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speed. It came from interstellar space
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moving way too fast and was already heading out when we saw
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it. There's no way we could have
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launched something decades or centuries ago to meet it like
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that. It's not physically possible.
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So if it's artificial, it's not ours, which leaves.
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Extraterrestrial technology and suggesting that, well, that's
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where Loeb ran into significant pushback from the scientific
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community. Yeah, he tells the stories, kind
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of shocking actually, about a colleague who basically said he
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wished Umua had never been discovered.
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Wow, that really shows the level of discomfort, doesn't it?
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A resistance to even considering possibilities outside the
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standard framework. It seems like it.
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Loeb compares it to historical resistance, like people refusing
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to look through Galileo's telescope or the reaction to
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Giordano Bruno suggesting other stars have planets.
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History is full of examples where the establishment resisted
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ideas that turned out to be correct.
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It's a recurring pattern, unfortunately.
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Loeb's mantra seems to be keep your eyes on the ball, not on
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the audience. Just follow the data.
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And he seems genuinely surprised by the pushback, given that
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science is supposed to be about exploring the unknown.
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He uses a great analogy. If you're walking on a beach,
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find seashells, rocks, and then a plastic bottle, you
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immediately know the bottle is artificial.
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Of course it stands out because its properties are inconsistent
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with natural formation processes in that environment.
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So, he argues, if Umamua has properties inconsistent with
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known natural objects like comets and asteroids, why isn't
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artificial origin at least on the table for discussion?
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It's a fair question. He even floats the idea, maybe
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poetically, that it could be like a message in a bottle, a
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piece of defunct tech drifting through space.
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And this ties into his broader view that we should be more open
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to the idea that we're not alone and maybe not the smartest kid
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on the block, as he puts it. Well, statistically, given the
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sheer number of stars and potentially habitable planets,
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astronomers are finding, the idea that Earth is unique seems
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increasingly, well, arrogant. Maybe.
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Right. And if there are other
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civilizations, maybe more advanced ones, studying their
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artifacts, even their space junk could be incredibly valuable.
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We might learn something some. Argue advanced civilizations
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would just cocoon themselves in virtual realities, not caring
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about us. But Loeb counters that right
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using the biologist analogy. Yeah, he points out that we
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study insects meticulously. Why assume advanced aliens
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wouldn't find us or life like us interesting for some reason?
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And there's another angle, too. Maybe we can learn from their
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failures if we find remnants suggesting, say, a civilization
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that destroyed itself through nuclear war or climate change.
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That would be a sobering but potentially crucial lesson for
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our own future, though Loeb admits he's not super optimistic
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about our immediate future, given our tribalism and
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limitations. He really challenges the
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mainstream scientific approach here.
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He asks why is it OK to spend fortunes looking for faint
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biosignatures like oxygen on exoplanets, which aren't
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definitive proof of life anyway, right?
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Oxygen can be produced by non biological processes too.
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But it's almost taboo to seriously search for techno
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signatures, things like industrial pollution like CFCS
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in an atmosphere, or unnatural heat signatures or well, objects
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like umamua. Techno signatures would arguably
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be much less ambiguous evidence of intelligence, wouldn't they?
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Finding CFCS where they shouldn't exist naturally would
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be a smoking gun for industry. And he finds it weird this
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disconnect, speculative physics, extra dimensions, multiverse
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string theory gets huge funding, awards, prestige.
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Despite having 0 observational evidence, yeah, it's mostly
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theoretical elegance at this point.
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But searching for actual evidence of other technologies,
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something potentially observable, is often seen as
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fringe. It is a puzzling double
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standard. Low reminds us that even
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Einstein made mistakes, showing that what matters is whether an
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idea is testable, not just who proposes it or how smart they
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sound. He insists he's just treating
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Umumu as an anomaly following the evidence, and he's ready to
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change his mind if new evidence points to a natural explanation.
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And he pushes back hard against the idea that because there's a
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lot of nonsense around UFO's and stuff, we shouldn't do serious
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science on potential extraterrestrial signals or
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artifacts. His analogy was great.
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Just because people wrote fictional stories about COVID
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didn't mean scientists stopped working on vaccines.
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Exactly. The existence of pseudoscience
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shouldn't shut down legitimate scientific inquiry.
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It's like, as he said, stepping on the grass and concluding it
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won't grow because you're preventing it from doing so.
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So why the resistance? He suggests.
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Maybe it's just fear of ridicule and academia looking foolish.
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That seems plausible. Academia can be conservative.
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He mentioned Otto Struve suggesting exoplanets back in
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1952 and being basically ignored for decades until we actually
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found them in the 90s. History repeating itself, maybe?
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He also noted that the commercial sector sometimes
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seems more willing to fund blue sky high risk research than
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universities are. That's an interesting
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observation. Maybe less constrained by peer
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review politics sometimes. He did say his interest in
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anomalies is nothing new, but yeah, the alien topic is
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uniquely sensitive compared to to say, the early universe.
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And just to ground this, he shared his background, grew up
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on a farm, studied philosophy, military service, physics,
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worked on SDI, then astrophysics at Princeton, chaired Harvard's
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astronomy department. Yeah, he's got the credentials.
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He's not some random person off the street.
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He's coming at this from a deep scientific background.
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Definitely. So back to Umua itself.
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Key facts Speed over 50 kilometers.
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Way faster than solar system objects.
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Clearly interstellar. Found by Pan Stars in Hawaii,
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the name means scout or messenger from afar.
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Kind of fitting. And importantly, contrasted with
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Borissov, the second interstellar object found later,
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Borissov looked and acted exactly like a comet should.
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Which just makes Umumua stand out even more.
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Precisely. Borissov was the confirmation of
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what we expected interstellar comets to look like.
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Umua was not that. And the Spitzer telescope not
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detecting heat helped pin down on its size football field range
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and implied it must be quite shiny, highly reflective to be
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seen at all without giving off heat.
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Some asteroids are shiny sure, but Loeb's point is none have
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that combination of extreme shape, high reflectivity and the
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non gravitational push without out gassing.
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OK, So what about the natural explanations astronomers have
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proposed? Loeb addresses those right?
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He does things like the dust Bunny idea, a super fluffy low
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density aggregate, but that struggles with the inferred size
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and shininess. The hydrogen iceberg.
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The idea is that solid hydrogen is transparent when it's
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sublimates, so no visible tail. But the problem is hydrogen
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would evaporate incredibly quickly from Starlight, even in
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deep space. It likely wouldn't survive the
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journey or the past near the sun.
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What about it being a piece of a planet or moon shredded by a
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star? That tends to produce elongated
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fragments, yes, but maybe not something so thin and cohesive
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the models don't quite match Umumu's inferred properties
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perfectly. And we need to be clear, we
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don't have a photo of it, do we? No, absolutely not.
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It was just a point of light in the telescopes, too small and
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far away to resolve any shape. All the property, shape,
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reflectivity, push are inferred from the light, curve and
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trajectory data. Loeb also mentions something
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pretty revealing that other scientists privately agree with
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him that it's weird, but won't say so publicly.
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Yeah, he says many colleagues have told him privately that
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they find the natural explanations lacking, but
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they're hesitant to publicly associate with the alien
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hypothesis. Fear of career damage, perhaps?
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That leads back to the core issue, the pushback.
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People say it's never aliens, but Loeb asks why is that the
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default when the natural explanations seem increasingly
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contrived? It's a challenge to the
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scientific status quo. He also briefly mentioned things
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like the Commander David Fraver UAP incident.
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The tic tac video guy. Right.
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Suggesting the scientific community should be applying its
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tools, proper instruments, rigorous analysis to these
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unexplained phenomena instead of just dismissing them.
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Because science should be about evidence, not assumptions or
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taboos. Exactly, his argument isn't I'm
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100% right, it's aliens. It's more the possibility is
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strong enough based on the anomalies that we should be
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openly discussing it and actively looking for more
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evidence. It's that unique combination of
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features again. The shape, the push, the lack of
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tail, the reflectivity, the speed, the origin all together.
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Yeah, finding a natural explanation that convincingly
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explains all of those simultaneously has proven very
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difficult. And he says his motivation isn't
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just about umumua, but about creating a more open
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intellectual climate, especially for younger scientists.
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Yes, encouraging them not to shy away from anomalies or
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unconventional ideas just because they might be
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controversial. It's that contrast again.
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OK to speculate wildly about string theory, but not OK to
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discuss potential techno signatures based on actual,
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albeit puzzling, observations. It seems inconsistent to him,
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and he clarifies again. He's not saying Umua was
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necessarily a working spaceship. Maybe just debris?
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A defunct probe part? A sail fragment.
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Still artificial though. Still artificial in origin.
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Yes, that's the key distinction he's making.
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OK, so he systematically goes through the natural explanations
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dust Bunny, H2, iceberg Shard and points out the flaws in
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each. Right, highlighting why none of
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them seem to be a perfect fit for all the data we have.
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And reminds us again it was just reflected sunlight, a point
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source, no actual picture. Correct all inferences.
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And the private support from colleagues who are afraid to
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speak out. He finds that situation quite
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sad. Understandably, it suggests a
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problem within the scientific culture.
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Perhaps. But he also notes the huge
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public interest. Yeah, he seems to think the
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public is actually more open minded about this than many
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scientists. He feels the public is starved
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for this kind of discussion about our place in the cosmos,
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which is why his work got so much attention.
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And he still seems genuinely baffled by the strong negative
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reactions from some colleagues, given he sees his approach as
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just common sense based on the data.
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He does float possibilities like professional jealousy or maybe
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just resistance to ideas coming from outside a specific clique.
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Human factors in science. Ultimately, it comes down to
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those big questions. Are we alone?
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Are we the smartest? And the only way to answer them
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is evidence. Keep looking, keep an open mind.
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He urges modesty, comparing the resistance to how Galileo was
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treated. And public opinion does seem to
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be shifting, doesn't it? More people seem willing to
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entertain the possibility of extraterrestrial life may be
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partly due to those more credible UAP reports lately.
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Possibly. Loeb himself used to be
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skeptical of anecdotal UFO stuff, but the sheer number of
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planets now known combined with anomalies like Umua makes the
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scientific question more pressing.
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What about the Fermi paradox? Where is everybody?
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Lobid suggests maybe signals are faint, or maybe we haven't
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looked long enough for with the right tools.
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He uses the analogy of gravitational waves.
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People were skeptical for decades until LIGO reached the
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necessary sensitivity. Or maybe depressingly, advanced
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civilizations don't last long. That's another possibility.
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But even if they're extinct, he argues, we could still find
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their relics. Space archaeology, he calls it a
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fascinating concept. It really stretches your
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imagination thinking about what alien life or tech could even be
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like. We're so stuck in our Earth
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based perspective, right? He used an analogy of different
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cakes made from the same ingredients.
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The chemistry might be universal, but the forms life
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takes could be wildly diverse. Maybe even non territorial
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intelligence like his orca example.
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Civilizations totally unlike human societies.
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It's all speculation, but it opens up possibilities.
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He also mentioned a debate on militarizing space.
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Arguing against it, right? Saying exploration should unify
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us. Exactly.
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He sees space science as a potential global collaboration
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far more valuable than trying to achieve military dominance up
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there. And quoting Reagan, even
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suggesting finding ET could unite humanity.
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It's a hopeful thought, yeah. If we actually had undeniable
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contact, what would we even do? Loeb emphasizes.
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Just listening first. But we don't have a plan, do we?
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As a species, it would likely be chaos.
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Probably a very mixed reaction globally, he quoted Oscar Wilde.
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We are all in the gutters, but some of us are looking at the
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stars. He had that funny line too about
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aliens saying take us to your leader and having a say.
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I'll wait till January 20th A. Little political humor there.
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But his serious point is we've already been shouting into the
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void with our radio waves, even powerful military radar.
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We're not exactly hiding. He hopes if anyone visits,
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they're like anthropologists of space, wise enough to understand
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us. But he also brings up the
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cautionary tale of colonization on Earth.
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Encounters between technologically disparate
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societies haven't always gone well for the less advanced one.
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So keep an open mind, but maybe be a little cautious too.
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Seems prudent. Be open to discovery but aware
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of potential complexities. He's not a big sci-fi fan,
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generally finds the physics often wrong.
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Yeah, though he liked Gravity and The Martian for being a bit
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more grounded and mentioned the Ex Machina creators.
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Upcoming Alien film sounded interesting.
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But he acknowledges sci-fi can help expand our thinking.
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Absolutely. It primes the imagination for
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possibilities science hasn't reached yet.
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Circling back to UA PS, he did express some skepticism about
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older reports lacking clear images given modern cameras
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wonders about instrument glitches.
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But he strongly advocates for scientifically investigating the
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recent credible reports, like the Navy ones, using proper
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sensors for science and for national security.
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He suggested putting instruments right where the sightings
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happened, like near the Nimitz groups in counter zone.
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Believing that if we apply rigorous science, we can figure
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out what these things are. If, hypothetically, the
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president gave him funding, what would he do?
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Assemble top scientists. Deploy the best instruments,
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Collect data openly, publish everything transparently.
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Focus on cases like Fravors. Address the national security
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angle seriously. Definitely discussed funding
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options to government. Private sector, like Musk,
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seemed open to collaboration. And then he coined that term Uma
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Mua's wager. Yeah, like Pascal's Wager for
18:42
God, the potential payoff of finding extraterrestrial
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intelligence is so immense. Even if the probability seems
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low now that it's worth investing resources to look, the
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potential downside of not looking and missing it is huge.
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And the public interest is huge. He cited massive online
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readership for articles about his work.
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People are fascinated. He mentioned Carl Sagan, another
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popularizer of science who was briefly at Harvard near him.
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Building on that legacy, perhaps.
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Loebus stressed his focus is the science, but the public
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conversation is vital. Hoping his work is just a first
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step toward the bigger understanding of our cosmic
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neighborhood. He found it interesting his
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paper blew up right around a State of the Union address.
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Maybe people crave bigger, more hopeful news.
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Perhaps a sense that humanity could have a better future, and
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maybe he's seeing we're not alone could inspire that.
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And he comes back to the resistance from colleagues
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believing it's rooted in fear or jealousy, not solid science.
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Using quantum mechanics as an example.
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Initially bizarre and resisted even by Einstein, but proven
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true by experiment. The ultimate test is reality.
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You have to test your ideas against observation.
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That's the core of the scientific method he's
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championing. Well, Avi Loeb certainly gives
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you a lot to think about. It's a fascinating perspective,
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pushing the boundaries of conventional thought.
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It really is. And his willingness to challenge
20:01
the status quo but grounding it in data and scientific reasoning
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is what makes it so compelling. It really encourages you to keep
20:08
an open mind. Yeah, the whole Umumua story,
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the object itself and the reaction to Loeb's ideas.
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It tells you a lot about how science works, the human side of
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it, and just the power of curiosity.
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Hopefully this deep dive has sparked some of that curiosity
20:23
in you. The listener makes you think
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about the universe and our little place in it.
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So what really jumped out at you listening to this?
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What questions are still buzzing around for you after hearing
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about Omamua and Loeb's take? Because this really is just
20:37
scratching the surface. If you're intrigued, definitely
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check out ABI Loeb's book and papers and keep an eye on the
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ongoing search for answers out there.
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Absolutely. Thanks for joining us on the
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Deep Dive. We'll catch you next time for
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another exploration into the knowledge that matters.