Joe sits down with is Israeli-American theoretical physicist, Avi Loeb. Avi is a professor at Harvard and works in the fields of astrophysics and cosmology. In December 2012, Time magazine selected Avi as one of the 25 most influential people in space.
More From Avi Loeb:
Show Notes:
0.30: Lex Fridman
1:00: ʻOumuamua - first known interstellar object detected passing through the Solar System
6:30: Solar Sail - method of spacecraft propulsion using radiation pressure exerted by sunlight on large mirrors
7:10: Sci-fi movie - Sunshine
7:20: 2020 SO - Near-Earth object identified to be the Surveyor 2 Centaur rocket booster launched on 9/20/1966. The object was discovered at the Haleakala Observatory on 9/17/2020. The object was initially suspected to be an artificial object due to its low velocity relative to Earth and later on the noticeable effects of solar radiation pressure on its orbit.
21:20: Winston Churchill 1939 essay about the possibility of extraterrestrial life
23:00: Tribalism
28:00: Albert Einstein's mistakes at the end of career including black holes don't exist
30:00: Quantum mechanics
32:00: Harvard Gazette interview with Avi Loeb - One Thing to Change: Think More Like Children
45:00: Interstellar object - Borisov comet
50:00: Copernican Principle - humans, on the Earth or in the Solar System, are not privileged observers of the universe
65:00: Images of ʻOumuamua
69:00: Chile VLT telescope facility
69:00: Vera Rubin Observatory
70:00: Pan-STARRS Program - Computing facility that is surveying the sky for moving or variable objects on a continual basis, and also producing accurate astrometry and photometry of already-detected objects.
77:00: Proxima Centauri - Closest star to Earth other than the sun
79:00: Harvard professor - Jack Szostak - Jack is focused on laboratory synthesis of simple living systems.
82:30: Keck observatory in Hawaii
84:00: Henry Thoreau - American naturalist, essayist, poet, and philosopher
88:30: Fermi paradox - apparent contradiction between the lack of evidence for extraterrestrial civilizations and various high estimates for their probability
90:00: LIGO experiment - large-scale physics experiment and observatory to detect cosmic gravitational waves and to develop gravitational-wave observations as an astronomical tool.
97:00: 1987 Ronald Reagan speech to UN General Assembly - uniting in common efforts to live in peace and avoid wars and bloodshed
102:00: Space/visitation movies: Gravity, The Martian, Annihilation
112:00: Story of Abraham
121:00: Former Israeli space security chief says extraterrestrials exist, and Trump knows about it
125:00: Video - "Go fast" UFO
137:00: Movie - Contact based on a novel written by Carl Sagen