Avi Loeb on Daniel Dushy: the search for alien life

In an interview with Daniel Dushy, Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb discusses the search for life beyond Earth and the possibility of finding evidence of extraterrestrial technology. He revisits a NASA experiment on Mars from about fifty years ago, which he says may have produced evidence of life, and asks why a similar experiment has not been repeated.

Loeb also addresses US government documents and testimony about unidentified objects, and the debate sparked by the interstellar object ‘Oumuamua. He explains why he considers the possibility that it was technological in origin, and describes a marine expedition that searched for fragments of an interstellar object that struck Earth near Papua New Guinea. These are questions and hypotheses, not confirmation of extraterrestrial life.

The conversation turns to the Big Bang, dark matter, belief in God, and how the discovery of an extraterrestrial civilization might affect humanity. Loeb argues for what he calls “cosmic humility” and discusses the possibility that we may learn more in the near future about whether we are alone in the universe.