Posted on 03/06/2021 8:41:33 PM PST by nickcarraway
An oddly shaped object hurtling through space led Israeli astrophysicist Avi Loeb to write a book proposing the existence of outer space civilizations.
Dinosaurs might still roam the Earth if a giant ancient asteroid had taken a slightly different course.
If Prof. Avi Loeb had followed his expected trajectory, he’d have become a philosopher rather than Harvard University’s longtime chair of astronomy and founding director of its Black Hole Initiative.
And if a shiny space object dubbed ‘Oumuamua hadn’t deviated from an orbit shaped by the Sun’s gravity, Loeb wouldn’t have written his bestselling Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth.
“The starting point of a trajectory is extremely important because a small deflection at the beginning can change everything afterwards,” Loeb tells ISRAEL21c.
It was approximately his 270th interview in the two months since his controversial book got everyone talking about outer-space civilizations.
The book was inspired by an 11-day observation of an oddly shaped football-field-sized object seen hurtling through space from an observatory in Hawaii in October 2017.
While most astronomers theorized that ‘Oumuamua (Hawaiian for “scout”) was a peculiar comet passing through our solar system, its deviated trajectory led Loeb to a radical hypothesis putting him at odds with most of the scientific establishment.
His hypothesis: ‘Oumuamua was a light sail designed, built and launched by intelligent extraterrestrial beings.
Though space aliens – smart ones, at that – strike many as a cuckoo idea, the concept makes perfect sense to this 59-year-old Harvard professor chosen as one of the 25 most influential people in space by TIME magazine in 2012.
“It would be arrogant to think we are alone,” he says.
“Overall, about a quarter of our galaxy’s two hundred billion stars are orbited by planets that are habitable in the way Earth is, with surface conditions that allow liquid water and the chemistry of life as we know it.”
Loeb’s life trajectory began in an Israeli farming village, Moshav Hanan, south of Tel Aviv. His boyhood afternoons were spent collecting eggs and reading philosophy.
Shoshana Loeb and her brother Avi, 5, on a tractor on Beit Hanan in 1966. Photo courtesy of Israel National Library His passions for nature and philosophy veered into scientific exploration of the universe only because the Israel Defense Forces set him off in a different direction.
Having shown an exceptional aptitude for physics during high school, Loeb was selected for Talpiot, a multi-year IDF program in which a few select recruits earn university degrees, undergo intense military training and work in defense-related research.
“I wasn’t a typical nerd interested in mathematics and physics from youth, like most others in Talpiot,” he says. “I ended up in this program because it was the best choice I had. I was different and that made me do my own thing.”
After three years of training and academics, he presented his commanders with an outside-the-box research proposal: Instead of working on an industrial or military project with immediate practical applications, he wanted to work in the Soreq Nuclear Research Center while pursuing his PhD.
“It wasn’t really allowed because Soreq is a civil, not military, research center. But because I’d excelled in training, my commanders let me do this for three months and ultimately allowed me to continue there for the remaining five years of my service, from 1983 to 1988.”
Loeb’s project at Soreq was the first international effort to receive funding from the United States’ “Star Wars” Strategic Defense Initiative. That led him to Washington, which led him to Princeton University, which led him to start teaching astrophysics at Harvard in 1993.
“If I weren’t admitted to Talpiot, or if Talpiot hadn’t allowed me to be at Soreq, I wouldn’t have gone to Princeton and gotten to Harvard and do the work I do now,” he reflects.
“Nothing I have now would have come to fruition. It’s just like that asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. If it were deflected a little bit, everything would have been different.”
Who else is on the stage with us?
Extraterrestrial, Loeb’s eighth book, is already translated into multiple languages. Loeb is making endless media appearances and negotiating contracts for a feature film and a documentary based on the book everyone is discussing.
“I hope it will convince a kid somewhere to go into science,” he says, relating that a young woman in Malawi recently wrote to say she is thinking of becoming an astronomer after reading Extraterrestrial. “So I’m already satisfied,” he says.
Prof. Avi Loeb with his wife and daughters. “I’m blessed to always have been surrounded by very smart women,” he says. Photo courtesy of Avi Loeb But he’d also like to shake the scientific community out of its comfort zone and touch off a new astronomy discipline he terms “space archaeology.”
In other words, looking for evidence of civilizations past or present from other planets or galaxies, such as the one he believes launched ‘Oumuamua.
“If we dare to wager that ‘Oumuamua was a piece of advanced extraterrestrial technology, we stand only to gain. Whether it prompts us to methodically search the universe for signs of life or to undertake more ambitious technological projects, placing an optimistic bet could have a transformative effect on our civilization,” he writes.
Speaking of ambitious technological projects, Loeb took pride in Israel’s SpaceIL initiative to land an unmanned craft on the Moon.
“Entering the club of space explorers is impressive for such a small nation with few resources,” he says.
The Beresheet spacecraft crash-landed on April 11, 2019, and SpaceIL is now planning Beresheet 2’s moonshot.
“I was contacted afterward by those in charge for my advice and connections,” Loeb says.“I think Beresheet 2 will be successful after learning lessons from the first attempt.”
A childlike approach
In addition to many other prestigious appointments, Loeb is a member of the advisory board for the “Einstein: Visualize the Impossible” interactive exhibition launched by his alma mater, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
He writes that he is proud to maintain a “childlike” approach in his teaching and research. “In my experience, children follow their inner compasses more honestly and with fewer pretensions than many adults do.”
In an unexpected way, following his inner compass landed him where he is today.
“I ended up in an ‘arranged marriage’ to astrophysics. I later realized it is my true love because it addresses the philosophical questions that I was interested in at a young age and gives us a scientific method to address them. These are aspects of my childhood that shape me to this day.”
“We must understand who else is on the stage with us. It may one day come to haunt us if we don’t. Even now, with the pandemic, we discovered that something that happens in Wuhan ends up at our doorstep. You always have to worry about the big picture. That’s what my science is about.”
You have posted two ad hominem attacks against an expert, yet have not offered a single scientific argument to refute him.
You come off as desperate and near panic at the thought that someone else believes that in the vastness of the universe other living beings may be found.
Curious.
“In every disaster throughout American history, there always seems to be a man from Harvard in the middle of it.” -Thomas Sowell
They’ve already begun to disclose - surprisingly, without any fanfare, and most people never even noticed, because the media mostly ignored it. But there it is - they’ve been reverse engineering extraterrestrial craft, which obviously did not create nor fly itself into our atmosphere, ergo, they’ve admitted the existence of intelligent life from outside of our planet. And if they’ve admitted over 150 pages detailing this, and released the three military pilot videos, they know way more than they’re sharing.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9257395/Pentagon-admits-testing-wreckage-UFO-crashes.html
PS: We are still looking for “intelligent life” here on Earth. Have you seen our Congress lately? No “intelligent life” there.
MSNBC, CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, Wash. Post, NY Times? Nope, not there either.
I long ago dubbed Jamie Gorelick the Mistress of Disaster. She was at the heart of the wall of separation between the FBI and the CIA that allowed 9/11 to happen. She was also top management at Fannie Mae when they had their huge accounting scandal.
I just looked. Harvard JD.
Thomas Sowell is continually full of amazing wisdom.
When I found this quote I also did some research and found it to be golden. Thanks for the info on JG. I hadn’t found that. I agree about the reverse Midas touch!
Read later.
From Prof. Avi Loeb:
“If we dare to wager that ‘Oumuamua was a piece of advanced extraterrestrial technology, we stand only to gain. Whether it prompts us to methodically search the universe for signs of life or to undertake more ambitious technological projects, placing an optimistic bet could have a transformative effect on our civilization,” he writes.
Nonsense. Of course, Professor Loeb stands to gain a great deal. Not so much the rest of us.
Resources spent on this prevent resources spent on something else.
Generally, technological research has been beneficial.
But how about the billions of dollars spent on non-sensical "research" such as what crop yeilds will be 50 years from now, assuming non-sensical predictions from unverified computer models?
That is not science. It is grubbing for grant money.
So when this prof says that there’s extraterrestrial civilizations, everyone oooohs and ahhhhs, because, it’s science, you know.
But call them God, angels, and demons, you’re just a science denying Luddite who believes in fairy tale people in the sky.
He’s coo-coo for Cocoa Puffs.
That may be absolutely correct, but of course, at this point, it is pure speculation.
On the other hand, abduction experiences have gone on for a very long time. Long before the government would have had the means for contriving such. Same for visual/abduction encounters like the Pascagoula event in 1969.
I don't know what is going on with disclosure, abductions, and ufo encounters. But, government involvement or not, something is going on that is quite real. Scientists other than Avi Loeb have reached this conclusion and are now recommending research into this matter. Even Scientific American has joined the fray: ‘Unidentified Aerial Phenomena,’ Better Known as UFOs, Deserve Scientific Investigation
Need more coffee.
If you have some other good examples handy, you should share.
Curious? Really? Thought ad hominem attacks were all the rage lately. but consider what your venerable “expert” is saying.
First given the observation that there are “billions and billions of galaxies, with each containing billions of stars, then it is indeed possible and perhaps likely that life, even intelligent advanced civilizations exist. However what your venerable expert chooses to ignore is the immense distances that separate Earth from any purported civilization. Try to formulate the distances and speed that this cigar shaped “scout” craft would have to achieve and transverse to travel even one light year. Given the laws of physics the maximum speed any mass entity robot or biological can go is the speed of light. No mass entity could ever approach the speed of light without becoming incredibly dense. No doobt that advanced civilizations may exist but outside science fiction and unprovable, far fetched theories they cannot reach us and we cannot reach them other than through radio signals. Who knows since Earth has been broadcasting in analog for about 120 years and in digital for over 50 years, an answer and wonderful revelations may be forthcoming.
Also you would do well to recognize that homo sapiens may be the only species with the capacity if not the need to exercise mystical thought. Through most of mankind’s history this has been expressed by all sorts of superstitions and ritualistic beliefs based on unprovable thoughts. Your venerable expert at Harvard also has a mystical component to his brain. Its also likely that he has no belief in a traditional divinity to express that center of his brain. Yet it is there and continues to function. So is it so suprising that your venerable expert ignores the laws of physics, admits he does not know everything about comets, where they originate or the trajectories of their course, but instead claims that this “scout” is the probe directed toward Earth sent by an advanced civilization many light years away. No doubt the thoughts make him as happy as his ancestors thart worshipped the sky and sun.
The accepted source for those who have purportedly abducted humans is not other stars, but other dimensions.
This goes back to the point in time at which Allan Hynek stopped being a skeptic and became a believer.
Whether these aliens are real or not, they are commonly thought to be extradimensional (less than a millimeter away, not light-years).
It’s arrogant to think we are alone, and it’s arrogant to think that a rock proves that we are not alone.
But this object doesn’t carry any proof that it was made by intelligent creatures.
He’s raking in money from the book, media appearances and film, so he’s not very likely to accept a critical look at his unproveable hypothesis.
Too bad all those people wasted their money on the book.
In the Twilight Zone, Rod Sterling claimed that dogs had the capacity to sense those adjacent dimensions. Actually Sterling was wrong. Squid has the sensory capacity to sense and communicate with those adjacent dimensions. You are going to have to learn and speak the beautiful language of the squid. What nonsense! Believing in adjacent dimensions is just another way of exercising the mystical capacity of your brain.
Are you saying that adjacent dimensions exist or do not exist?
There is only creative speculation within the physics community. There is absolutely no conclusive evidence or even the hint of evidence that such dimensions acrually exist. But as Einstein said, immagination is critically important when seeking knowledge.
If the asteroid hadn't wiped out the dinosaurs you can bet that today someone would have one as a pet, prepared to release it into the everglades or some such place when it outgrew their apartment.
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