111 - Avi Loeb: Alien Life, Extraterrestrial Spacecraft, and Oumuamua

Avi Loeb is Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science in the Department of Astronomy at Harvard University, and former chair of the department. Before joining Harvard he spent fifteen years working in theoretical astrophysics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He is also the Director of the Institute for Theory and Computation, the Founding Director of the Black Hole Initiative at Harvard, and Head of the Galileo Project. In this episode, Avi and Robinson discuss his controversial and compelling research on—and theories about—Oumuamua, a comet that passed through the solar system in 2017, and which Avi believes was a spacecraft of extra-terrestrial origin. They also talk about the likelihood of life outside earth, Avi’s current investigations into the same, and his upcoming book Interstellar: The Search for Extraterrestrial Life and Our Future in the Stars, which will be released on August 29, 2023.

Interstellar: https://a.co/d/8Or10aM

Avi on Medium: https://avi-loeb.medium.com

OUTLINE

00:00 In This Episode

01:38 Introduction

04:56 Avi’s Interest in Extra-Terrestrial Life

25:04 Avi’s Background in Astrophysics

33:14 The Fermi Paradox

45:09 Was Oumuamua an Alien Spacecraft?

01:31:27 Interstellar

Robinson’s Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com

Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between.