Avi Loeb: theoretical physicist who works on astrophysics and cosmology

Avi Loeb is an Israeli-American theoretical physicist who works on astrophysics and cosmology and is a Professor of Science at Harvard University. He had been the longest serving chair of Harvard's Department of Astronomy, founding director of Harvard's Black Hole Initiative and director of the Institute for Theory and Computation (within the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics). In July 2021, Avi became head of The Galileo Project. The project was inspired by the detection of ʻOumuamua' and by release of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence report on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP). In this episode, Ben and Avi discuss how Oumuamua (the first interstellar object detected to pass through the solar system) could be space junk or it could be a message in a bottle from an extra terrestrial civilisation. They discuss the importance of interstellar archeology and why we should be looking further for evidence that we are not the only sentient beings in the universe! Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsor: Spaced Ventures: https://www.spacedventures.com/ to invest shares of actual space startups! OUTLINE: Here's approximate timestamps for the episode. 00:00 Introduction to episode with Avi Loeb and the incredible podcast sponsor – Spaced Ventures 01:00 Who is Avi Loeb? 01:54 How Ben heard about Avi over Covid 02:57 What is Oumuamua (or what it isn't!) 09:45 Project Galileo https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/galileo/home 10:28 What Avi thinks Oumuamua is and where is it going? 14:00 How did it escape the suns gravity?  16:30 US government 2019 announcement - UAPS? 19:00 New telescope in Chilli - like a dating app! 20:58 Where to look first? 22:42 NASA's Dart Mission - planetary defence - job done? 26:15 Project Lyra (chase Oumuamua) is it possible? 29:00 What scientific discoveries does Avi want to live long enough to witness? 33:15 Physics is a dialogue with nature  35:00 Wrap up and socials  Follow Avi Loeb Website - https://lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/~loeb/ Essays - https://lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/~loeb/Opinion.html   Buy Avi's latest book   Stay connected with us! Use #Astroben across various social media platforms to engage with us! Website: www.astroben.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/astrobenpodcast/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Gambleonit Linked-in: https://www.linkedin.com/company/astrobenpodcast/