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galileo born in 1564 was an italian astronomer  physicist and engineer and has been notably  
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called the father of observational astronomy  he invented the thermoscope and various  
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military compasses and used the telescope for  scientific observations of celestial objects
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galileo's work lives on today but presented  in a different light by harvard professor and  
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theoretical physicist avi loeb avi joins me today  to talk about the galileo project and if maybe it  
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might just answer the age-old question are we  alone join us as we get rebelliously curious  
Chapter 2: A day in the life of Avi
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hi avi thank you for joining me on rebelliously  curious today i'm going to start off really really  
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simple what is a day in the life like the average  day like for avilope well thanks for hosting me  
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and this is a very easy question to answer i wake  up around the 5 a.m every day since the pandemic  
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started and i jog when nobody is around in fact i  enjoy very much the company of birds ducks rabbits  
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wild turkeys there is even a fox that they meet  every now and then and it's much more rewarding  
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i should say meeting nature uh on its own much  more rewarding than interacting with people uh  
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i don't have any social media account i don't care  so much about how many likes i have on twitter so  
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going out to nature for half an hour jogging out  is amazingly relaxing and then when i get back  
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home i have a breakfast and after that well it  depends which day but most of the days during the   last six months since my book appeared most of  them were back-to-back interviews i had about a  
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thousand inter more than a thousand interviews uh  since the end of january when uh extraterrestrial  
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appeared and this book was translated to 25  languages and there might even be a documentary  
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produced about it and it was just a lot of work  and from 8 a.m till 7 pm back-to-back interviews  
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almost every day and that's what my day looks  like and of course within the day i have also some   meetings with the students and postdocs because  i'm doing some scientific work at the same time  
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wow yeah you're busy and i'm not surprised  like you've been doing so much work in so   many different areas along with raising fun with  funds for the new project that you're working on  
Chapter 3: Early career and philosophy
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before we get into the galileo project i'd like to  ask you a little bit about your earlier background   in the early 80s you were working on the  strategic defense initiative also known  
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as the star wars project can you tell me a little  bit about that project that you worked on earlier  
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in your career and then how it compares and is  different to the work that you're doing now right  
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so i was born on a farm uh in israel and i was  mostly interested in philosophy and then at age 18  
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one is supposed to serve in  the military that's obligatory   and but there was a a sort of a loophole that  allowed me to continue to think rather than run  
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in the fields with a gun uh and that loophole  was a special program an elite program that  
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selects 20 to 30 recruits uh every year uh  to study physics and mathematics and then  
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use it for the defense of the country and the  program was established just a year before i  
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was drafted and fortunately i was good in  physics and was admitted to the program and  
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of course that allowed me to work on and research  intellectual activity that resembles the most  
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philosophy the the love of of my life so to  speak and then and then i wanted to continue  
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doing research rather than become a manager of a  project in the industry during my military service  
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and uh i was fortunate enough to be allowed  to do that because i was good in sports i i  
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excelled in the military training we went to we  parachuted we drove tanks we did a lot of physical  
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activity that allowed me to get credited by the  officers and they basically allowed me to do  
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what i really wanted which is research scientific  research and so i established a research program  
Chapter 4: Transition to astrophysics
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that was the first one supported by the strategic  defense initiative internationally it was the  
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first international program to get funded by the  u.s and i remember general abramson was leading  
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that program he visited us and was very impressed  by the proposal and it became a whole department  
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we were funded at a few million dollars a year and  i used to visit the washington dc quite every few  
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months and because we were funded i had to report  about the the results and in one of the visits  
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uh i went to uh visit princeton and then  the institute for advanced study and was   introduced to freeman dyson who introduced  me to john bakar who was an astrophysicist  
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and he invited me for another visit and  then offered me a five-year fellowship there  
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after i finished my military service and then you  know that was under the condition that i switched  
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to astrophysics again it was an offer i couldn't  refuse and just like in the godfather you know  
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i had to accept it uh and then i was offered  a faculty position at harvard i was not their  
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top choice they offered it to someone else and  then i was second in line because that person  
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said that there is no chance of getting tenure at  harvard so i he preferred to go somewhere else and  
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when i got there you know i didn't have great  expectations if i wouldn't get tenure toward i  
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would go back to the farm i had plan b um and i  wasn't stressed out about it uh and then three  
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years later i was tenured and at that point it was  too late to give up on physics or astrophysics but  
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i realized that even though it was an arranged  marriage i'm actually married to my true love   because in astrophysics there are philosophical  questions you know that we can address using the  
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scientific question and the scientific method and  then one of them is are we the smartest kid on the  
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block 100 and that leads so well into the galileo  project can you tell us a little bit about what  
Chapter 5: The Galileo Project origin
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that project consists of and what you're working  on within like the parameters within the project  
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right so um about a month ago the pentagon  delivered a report to congress in the u.s and
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in the report was that mission that there  are some objects above the sky of the us that  
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whose nature is not identified and that's an  admission of failure as far as the intelligence  
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agencies are concerned and it's quite unusual for  the government to say we don't do our job right  
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and that's what they said um and so because if  it was clear that this belongs to another nation  
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as a part of espionage or some other activity then  it would not have been delivered to congress in  
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this way so and people obviously the the thing  to recognize is we are seeing just the tip of  
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the iceberg there is much more evidence that is  classified because it was obtained by classified  
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sensors so the government government will never  release it because it will reveal what kind  
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of sensors are monitoring the sky and that's  not information you want adversaries to have  
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yeah yeah so shortly after the report was  delivered the head of nasa uh stated that  
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it's about time for scientists to look into this   and that's bill nelson and i completely agreed  with him because you know when you see things  
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on the sky that you don't understand you want to  ask astronomers to figure them out right that's   the job of scientists it's not the matter of  the talking points of politicians or military  
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personnel you wouldn't ask a plumber to bake you  a cake these people were not trained as scientists  
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so um at that point i approached people under  bill nelson and asked if i can help i'm i said  
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i'm i'm here to serve and make your boss  happy so nobody got back to me and then  
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a week later the administrator of the astronomy  department at harvard writes me an email and says  
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you have a new research fund and i say what do you  mean i have a new risk that never happens you see  
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in academia uh you can do fundraising and most of  the time you don't get anything uh and i said who  
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gave me that money would you mind please telling  me so that i can thank that person and she said  
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you know i don't know how to contact this person  and i say well i'm making an elementary request  
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someone gave me money and i'm asking to know  who that person is so that i can thank that  
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person don't you think it's elementary like this  is something rather legitimate for me to ask for  
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yes and it took them a day and they got back to  me the contact information of that person and i  
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thank that person but then another person showed  up a multi-billionaire showed up in my porch  
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at home and had questions about my book these  people simply read my book extraterrestrial  
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or followed the thousand interviews  i had since the book came out and   they were excited by the vision and so this other  person asked me questions about my book and then  
Chapter 6: Project goals and funding
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said i'm willing to contribute your project  to your research no strings attached  
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and all together within two weeks  i got a 1.75 million dollars
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yeah without any fundraising uh  attempts on my uh on my behalf and um  
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at that point i said okay i can just do it  i don't need the someone else approval for  
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that i can just go ahead and do it and so i  assembled the team of exceptional scientists  
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and we defined a galileo project  together with one of the founders that  
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i worked with um frank laukien he is the ceo  of the brooker corporation and then and then we  
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announced the project on july 26th exactly a month  after the uap report was delivered to congress  
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and um the amazing thing is since then in the  last few days i got thousands of emails from  
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people that are very interested in supporting the  the project either financially or uh in terms of  
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scientifically in terms of their uh time and and  effort and um it illustrates two points that i  
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tried to emphasize in the past six months that  the scientific community should not shy away  
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from the question of whether there are relics of  extraterrestrial civilizations near earth because  
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the public is very excited about the prospects  of the of discovering something of that type  
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and the public funds science so that's an  opportunity to get more funds into science  
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and moreover it's an opportunity to attract  young people into science i was saying that  
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abstractly but over the past week i demonstrated  both points i got funded and i got a huge number  
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of people showing interest in the project so it's  not abstract anymore it's a reality now and it's  
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called the galileo project and we can talk about  what our goal is yeah and and also i want to ask  
Chapter 7: Overcoming scientific stigma
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you too about you know there's lots of ridicule  within the science community when you start going   down roads like this i'd imagine that you've come  across it throughout your career and now you've  
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come to a point where scientists are coming to you  to work with you and are more interested in people   are funding how do you get scientists out of  their comfort zone and into this type of subject  
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well by arguing for something that makes sense now  i think you know people can resist something that  
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makes sense but not all people will resist it  there would be some people that will be excited  
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by something that makes sense and um it's true  that the scientific community is slow to respond  
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but the public you know i'm going beyond the small  bubble of the people in academia speaking with  
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each other tweeting negative things and so forth  right there is a world out there of people that  
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you know have the right sense of what we should  do and i'm speaking with them and they get excited  
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and i have enough momentum now to have 50 people  in the team of the galileo project working on it  
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and my hope is to bring this subject to the  mainstream of science i think eventually   it will get there but it takes  time and there is a simple way to  
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basically bring everyone to my mindset and that  is getting a high resolution image of an object  
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that shows that it's not natural because you  can see the bolts because you can see the  
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labels saying made on exoplanet x not made in  country why here on earth uh because you can see  
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features that make it not a rock like there was  this object the first one from outside the civil  
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solar system that was discovered in 2017 or  muammua and my book was dedicated to it and  
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it didn't look like a comet or an asteroid so  i said well maybe it's artificial and then i   i was attacked personally for that suggesting  that because people said you need extraordinary  
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evidence before you can even talk about it and  i said well you would never get that evidence  
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if you dismiss it ahead of time you need to  invest funds before you find the evidence  
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you know that's the way gravitational waves were  detected the national science foundation invested  
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1.1 billion dollars in the search we've invested  hundreds of millions of dollars in the search for  
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dark matter we don't know what most of the matter  in the universe is that's part of the mainstream   were searching in the dark people  suggested some types of particles  
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they searched for them didn't find anything so is  that a waste no but it's part of the mainstream  
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to search for something you don't know whether  it exists so why i mean we know that we exist  
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we know that we sent out voyager new horizons we  are sending equipment into space and we know that  
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half of the sun-like stars have a planet the size  of the earth roughly the same separation so if you  
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arrange for similar circumstances why wouldn't  you get things like us in the past that sent a  
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lot of equipment into space why wouldn't we search  for that all i'm saying is let's look for evidence  
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that should be part of the mainstream just like  searching for weakly interacting massive particles   is part of the mainstream of astronomy  despite the fact that we haven't found any  
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so my point is uh it makes sense to the public  it's important because it will have a huge impact  
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on society if we find evidence for a smarter kid  on the block yeah and i actually want to go into  
Chapter 8: Data dissemination plan
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that too so what if you do find something what  is going to be the protocol that you go about  
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explaining this to media or to the general public  because obviously obviously it's privately funded   so that you can really disseminate this  information any way you like and if you find  
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something obviously that is going to be the one  of the most amazing discoveries of mankind so how  
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do you have a plan like a communications plan  of how you're going to go about explaining this   or disseminating this type of information that's  that you're going to find or any type of evidence  
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that you might find well the path would be  quite similar to any scientific experiment   you know when an important discovery is  made then there is a press conference where  
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right the team reveals the result to the public  uh but in this case you know it's just like a  
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fishing expedition we don't know what kind  of fish will come in our hook we just send   the hook in this case it's telescopes looking at  the sky equipped with cameras and taking a video  
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of the sky you know in many locations so we  will have a network of telescopes and the   video that we take of the sky will be fed into  computer systems that will filter it out look  
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for objects of interest and then track them  okay and then that is the hook and then the  
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question is what kind of fish will we catch and  it really depends on the type of fish you know  
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if for example we catch a fish that says  made in a specific country here on earth  
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that would be a matter of national intelligence  right it's not something to do with astronomy that  
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data is not i would not regard as scientifically  exciting it's actually quite boring to know that  
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well that the intelligence agencies missed an  opportunity to realize that another country has  
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a more advanced technology than we imagine okay  so but i don't think that's the case because  
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you know the government would be very careful at  reporting to congress that they don't understand  
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the nature of objects and then it they must have  checked you know you would hope yeah yeah that's  
Chapter 9: Instrument and data approach
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what they're leaving is there any funding that  we know that you've had multiple different types   of funders um and we spoke a little bit about  that previously but has any former government  
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or government officials try to fund this and then  if not would you accept government funding down  
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the road um funding i have yeah maybe but  no i don't want to look at classified data  
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because that would limit my freedom because the  government will put restrictions on what i can say  
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and then even when i deal with new data which  is the goal of the galileo project we don't want  
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to this to to use the data that was obtained by  instruments that were not optimized like a camera  
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in a jittery cockpit of a fighter jet you know  that that is not really data that is useful  
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scientifically because you don't know exactly  what the jet was doing at the time and you  
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have no control over the quality of the camera and  so forth and what we want to do is use scientific  
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instruments that are state-of-the-art that we  have full control over not relying on people by  
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the way i mean even though in the courtroom you  know the corroborating evidence by eyewitnesses  
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can put a person in jail but you can't write a  scientific paper based on what someone tells you  
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you can't say this person said that and that's  my evidence that doesn't hold water in science  
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you have to rely on instruments that give you  quantitative data that you had full control  
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over so you know exactly what what went into  them and then you understand what came out  
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of them and that's the way science operates so  we want to have to use better instruments than  
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those that were used for the information  that was so far leaked to the public and then  
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and then in order to discuss the data openly  and in the transparent way i don't want to see  
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classified information so that i will be free  to act as a scientist and if the government is  
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interested in funding an open data project like  the galileo project that would be wonderful  
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but if it comes with strings attached i prefer not  to have those strings that makes sense i i would  
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agree you want to be able to be free to observe  when you're looking you know using telescopes from  
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around the world how are you narrowing in like  how are you observing the sky when you do this  
Chapter 10: Observation strategies
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are you starting in a specific area um is there  is are there sections within the uh within the  
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universe that you want to be looking at  like how how do you go about doing that   right so first we need to decide on the size of  the telescope that we want to build that we want  
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to use and i should say that all of the components  of the systems that we will use can be brought  
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off the shell we are not the ones building them  but we buy the components so for example we buy  
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a telescope and we need to decide about the size  of the telescope the properties of the telescope   and then the camera that will be connected to  it and then the computer system so all of this  
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is one telescope facility or one system  and then the location of each system  
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will have to be determined so the best location is  of course mountain tops where you don't have much   blurring of the image that's why astronomical  observatories are placed on mountaintops  
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but these are not necessarily the best places  to look for uap because some people claim that   they cluster in some geographical location  so the more telescopes we have the better  
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because then we can put them in in many locations  of course some of them for example near military  
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facilities are protected we can't access them  and we will not do that but most of the sky  
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is not classified and astronomers look at the  sky all the time so the difference between the   systems that we will use and existing  telescopes is that existing telescopes  
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are focusing on distant objects very far away  and if a bird flies above them they ignore it  
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if a bird would fly above our system we will look  at it we want to know that it's a bird and not  
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something else we will try to dismiss birds and  dismiss airplanes things that we know but look for  
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unusual phenomena and it will be a computer system  that will do the filtering because we can't store  
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all the data it's a huge amount of data and then  so the idea is to have as many systems as possible  
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and with the current budget that we have we can  at least have 10 or maybe several tenths but  
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if we get 10 times more funding we could have  hundreds of those systems which would be much  
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better based on rough estimates of the in in  terms of the number of uap that were reported  
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per unit area on earth we need hundreds of such  systems so that means we need tens of millions for  
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the project in order to have a comprehensive study  of this question uh currently we have 1.75 million  
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but we can definitely demonstrate that we get  interesting data with the current funding and  
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my hope is that within a year or two we'll get  interesting data yeah i would imagine and then  
Chapter 11: UAPs vs interstellar objects
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how do you go about planning a timeline like this  like what is the expected timeline and then how  
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often is it that you'll run into or come across  something like a miu again oh okay so i should  
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clarify there are two types of objects one is uap  these are objects close to earth and those can be  
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resolved uh by those telescopes that i was  mentioning before in fact if you imagine an  
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object the size of a person roughly the distance  of a mile you can get a megapixel image of that  
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object meaning you can resolve it down to the  scale of a millimeter the head of a pin uh so you  
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can read off the label where it was made easily  with a one meter telescope so uh telescopes with  
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a diameter between a tenth of a meter to a meter  you know they can do the job of resolving uap  
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for us but we might also use radar systems and uh  infrared sensors and other ways of detecting those  
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objects those are objects that are relatively  close to us at a distance of miles you know um  
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but on like objects these are objects that  came into the solar system from outside  
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and they don't look like a comet or an asteroid  they look weird uh so mum was the first one  
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in this class this discovered in 2017 but we hope  to see more of the same class and then there will  
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be the vera rubin observatory that is much more  sensitive than the telescope that discovered  
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uh omuamua back in 2017. and in principle the  vera rubin observatory that will start operations  
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in a couple of years from chile could find an  object like that every month and here the goal is  
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to analyze the data coming from the vera rubin  observatory using software that we will develop  
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looking for things like that and then designing  a space mission such that we will send out a  
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camera that will take a close-up photograph of an  object that looks weird and a close-up photograph  
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will tell us whether it's artificial or natural  whether it's a rock or some piece of equipment  
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because they say a picture is worth a thousand  words in my case the picture is worth 66 000  
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words the number of words in my book i will need  to write it's not a philosophical question you see  
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it's just having a single image of high  resolution that would sell the issue  
Chapter 12: Analyzing findings
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so here's a question then if you get a picture of  a uap really close up and it's an off-world object  
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how are you evaluating that because if it's  something that we don't have on this planet and   our science isn't able to really explain it how do  we go about describing it then how do we go about  
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analyzing something like that even well hopefully  it will help hopefully it will have a label  
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or a fall on you know there will be some  features on it that look interesting that  
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look technological um and then the question of  what its intent is and what does it actually do  
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uh is a more complicated one so to address that  it's not enough to just see it you know if you go  
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uh on a blind date and you see a person that  doesn't tell you much you you can't judge a book  
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by its cover let's put it this way right right and  so finding the intent of this object would depend  
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on what kind of information is this object seeking  so you have to monitor it for a while and and see  
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what it's doing or this class of objects and you  have any ideas what that might be have you spoken  
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as harvard as a group talk to the the the group  that you're working with now have you talked about   what that could possibly be and what it might  look like no we we just don't have any clue about  
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the uap whether you know we don't know if they  might be a natural phenomena there might be some  
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rare atmospheric uh event you know that we haven't  anticipated that was mistaken for an object  
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maybe but my point is by getting more evidence  we can figure out the nature of these objects  
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and first of all verify that they are  real and second check whether they are  
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natural in origin or artificial okay and if they  are artificial if some of them are it's enough  
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to have one that is artificial you don't need  more so it may be a mixed bag maybe most of the  
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uap reports have some mundane explanations  but even if one just one happens to be an  
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an object from an extraterrestrial origin that  would have huge implications for us for humanity  
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and if we do find one then the question is what  is the intent of that one you know you you might  
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wonder is it the trojan horse i mean if even if  it looks innocent it may have other intentions  
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and the one way to figure out if it's for  example if it has artificial intelligence  
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uh we will need to use our own artificial  intelligence systems to help us it's just   like relying on your kids to interpret them what  you find on the internet because they're more  
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computer savvy uh so our ai systems will be needed  to figure their ai system so to speak and uh  
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we should see you know when we get there uh  and then of course once you realize what kind   of information are these systems seeking uh we  could see how they respond to what we are doing  
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and then eventually there will be a decision  to be made whether to engage with them   but that's down the road first we need to find  an object that is not natural and i'm saying  
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you know even if we don't find such an  object and we just clear up the fog such   that the public is not confused about it that by  itself is a major contribution to the discussion  
Chapter 13: Future timeline and goals
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yeah it really is and then where is  the next timeline then for the galileo   project like you're starting here do you  have any ideas of what it might look like  
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in the next like 10 to 20 years the evolution  of it yeah so the way i envision it is  
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in the coming weeks or months we select  the instruments that we want to use   and then purchase them and the number of  telescope systems that we will use depends  
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on how much funding we have and i very much hope  that we will get to the tens of millions level  
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uh if there is any private donor out there that  cares about this question [Music] please email me  
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and then of course we will test some systems  just to make sure that we design them  
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so that they perform the way we want them to  perform and that includes the telescope the  
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camera connected to it and the computer system  that will analyze the data and once we have  
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a working system that we can trust and we know  that it can identify what we are looking for  
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then we deploy those systems in various locations  and we have to decide where to put them and that  
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will depend obviously on how many we have and my  hope is that within a year we will have already  
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systems that are collecting  interesting data or useful data   it's amazing and i really hope and i think all  of us uh are really really hopeful that you do  
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find something and i think that it's amazing  that you're you're even going down this road   with a group of people from harvard and looking  at uaps and looking at interstellar objects  
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in a very serious light in an academic light so  thank you for that i'd say it's not just my group   at harvard there are lots of most of the people  are actually from other universities and the way  
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i i think of it is as a project for humanity  so uh it can involve people from all nations  
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uh because it's not about us the those that  are involved in this project is more about  
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everyone you know we want to know whether we are  alone whether we are the smartest kid on the block  
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it's about our future as a species so to speak and  before i even end this bunch i should ask you know  
Chapter 14: A project for humanity
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is this project you know the idea is to see if  we can analyze and find more information about   uaps or interstellar objects but is there's an  underlying goal of maybe this is something that  
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might bring us together as as one as a as one as  a planet well if you look at the history of humans  
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what you find is uh we wasted a lot of resources  on trying to feel superior relative to each other  
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and the best example is the second world war which  was driven by racism then by nazi germany and  
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you know 75 million people died that's three  percent of the world population in that war  
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just think about it in the context of covet now  we're talking about 75 million just in one war  
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initiated by racism and then you know two-thirds  of the jewish population in europe was killed and  
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um the u.s alone invested four trillion dollars  in that war and so it shows you that then you know  
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humans do ridiculous things and if suppose  we knew uh that there is a more advanced  
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culture out there then all of our differences  would look miniscule you know who cares what  
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the color of the skin of the person is who cares  what the ethnic origin of the person is if there  
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is something far more advanced out there you know  we are all humans and we should work together  
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and i hope that will be the message and i love  that and i really hope so too thank you so much  
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avi and thank you for being rebelliously  curious with me today thanks for having me