I Don't Know About That - Aliens

Episode Date: February 23, 2021

In this episode, the team discusses aliens with Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science at Harvard University and author of the New York Times Bestseller, Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth, Avi Loeb.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Well you might find out And I don't know about that We're Jim Jefferies With Kelly Jacken-Fox And Louise Hello, welcome to I Don't Know About That I'm Jim Jefferies And that intro has a reason

I just watched the Britney Spears documentary and I'm hashtag free Britney. I'm all over it. If I ever get on a game show as a celebrity and they go, what's your charity? And everyone's like, oh, it's the St. Jude's Hospital for kids. I'm going to go, my charity, free Britney. Yes. Free Britney.

Give me your money. Free Britney. I haven't seen it yet. Okay. Well, she, her father. I mean, I know kind of, I've kept up with what. Her father's been taking care of her money ever since she shaved her head and went a little crazy.

But I think she shaved her head because they were going to give her drug tests over custody and a lot of drugs stay in your hair. So I think she went, fuck you, to Federline, and that's why she did it. That's just my theory, right? Anywho, the father's taking the money, and since then her career picked up. She had a Vegas residency and all that type of stuff. She in and out of mental homes but she doesn't she has no control over money and they started running her money like a business they're saying we should get more money from the merchandise and stuff like that they've started to dig away at different things and

Britney like maybe maybe she needs a bank to be the trustee on her money or another person she doesn't need a father to be a trustee. Well, in the beginning when they brought up having a conservatorship, she said she was fine with it. She just said, I don't want my dad to be in charge of it. And then she hired her own lawyer. They pushed him out. So basically she just hasn't had anybody advocating for her because her dad's a fucking grifter.

Yeah, she doesn't even have – her mother can't even – then this guy decides what medical things she'll have. It's like, have you seen that movie Love and Mercy where Brian Jones, Brian, what's his name, from the Beach Boys, is it Brian Jones? Brian Wilson. Brian Wilson, Brian Wilson. From the Beach Boys, he's basically got Paul Giamatti,

it's not Paul Giamatti who did this, he's playing a character where he's basically drugging this guy and saying, you have mental illness and without my care, without my care. And it looks like Britney had a couple of people like, like that in their life that were like lifestyle experts that were going to help her through things.

And now if I can, dad, she can't go to the doctor or he has to, she has to take pills that are prescribed to her, whether she likes them or not. And yeah, the rumor is that those pills are like kind of sedating her. And like,

if you look at her Instagram, she kind of looks dead inside, but it's supposedly they're just like feeding her with these meds because that's not, why does she take them? Because she's forced to like, she doesn't have any freedom in her life. How she forced it.

No, no, because the, the, the father, I'm on her side. I'm just, I'm trying to understand why doesn't she just get them out of her life?

She's not allowed to, you know, she's not allowed to, she can't make any decisions. She has to go to court to protest against it to have an actual court decide whether she can have her money back and her life back and be in control

of her own life. They don't let her be alone with anybody. This is my thing. I'm on her side and I know that there's certain situations, but why doesn't she just cut them? Stop taking them? What are they? Holding their mouth open and shoving pills in them? Or I don't know.

What's the documentary. She really can't make any decisions for herself. So free. I had an uncle that this happened to. So who can help her? Oh, the media. I mean,

that's why the documentary is coming out. There's like a huge, they don't do shit though. Well, I, but it's the only way we can try to help. She doesn't have anybody internally that's actually helping her. And there's like the rumor that Sam Lufty,

which I think he was like her manager or something for a while. Amanda Bynes is now saying that he was in charge of her conservatorship with her parents and she suddenly went crazy and stuff too. Where is she? Let's go help her. Yeah, let's go. She's probably at her house.

Free Britney, man. Free Britney. Let's go there and knock on the door. Oh, there's already people doing it. If you want to meet some fabulous fans, they're all standing out in the street with their glittery Free Britney banners.

They're on to it. I just feel awful for her because we treated her like shit. Yeah, and when you watch the documentaries, they really did, the paparazzi just kept on hounding it, as bad as Princess Diana. They just kept on going at her. Like that one paparazzi was like, and then she hit my car with an umbrella i'm like if that were me i would have fucking done way worse but we got the shot of her being crazy a million dollars

it's like fuck you it's everything about that made me it broke my heart where is that available it's on hulu it's um it's an fx new york times Oh, cool. Very good. But Free Britney, man. What about your uncle? My uncle was all dry. I had an auntie who kept him drugged up the whole time. Oh, Jesus Christ. And then his kids found him. They took him out.

It was like awakenings. He woke up for a bit and went, oh, God, where have I been the last 10 years? Oh, my God. Yeah, you can't trust anyone. I shouldn't laugh. Jack, speaking of people who I control their money and they're not allowed

to do anything without me saying. Yes, Emperor. Free Jack. Free Jack. Yeah, let's start the campaign. Give me a camera. Yeah, yeah.

Another merch shirt that we're not going to make. Hashtag Jack off. Yeah, there you go. That that we're not going to make. Hashtag Jack off. Yeah, there you go. That's the one. Take this pill. So what do you got for us today, Jack? Lifehackets.

I love Lifehackets. Lifehackets are my favorite. None of them are visual? If you're in your car, pull over. You're going to want to write this down. Still no theme song, unfortunately. Anyway, first Lifehacket. You don't want to sit over at that table for the life hack it.

So you want to get on camera because people like to see your little face. Yeah. It'd be funny if he just, if he just jumped to that spot. Yeah. Life hack it. Life hack it. All right. Light a bag of dog shit.

Put it out with your own foot and then say to your friends, you're going to have to hang out with me all day. You're all going to smell like shit. Got you. I love your impression of Jack. Hey, man. It's pretty close. It's just like an exaggerated.

That was his roast voice for sure. That's my roast voice. All right. Life hack number one. Number one. Are you reading a hardcover book but don't have a bookmark? Oh, God, I hate it already.

Do you read hardcover books? Yes. I have a couple hardcover books. You sit on the train, big hardcover book. Big hardcover book. Do you take the hardcover on holiday with you? Don't have a bookmark. You're not going to use the sleeve.

Yeah, use the sleeve as the bookmark. Use the dust cover. But what if you're well into the book? What if you're in the middle of the book. Yeah, use the sleeve. Use the dust cover. But what if you're well into the book? What if you're in the middle of the book and each bit to the dust cover don't reach over? They make them pretty long. You're usually pretty sad. You never heard of just bending a corner of a page?

No, you're not a dog. You're a page. Good Lord. Good Lord. Good Jesus. Jiminy Christmas. We'll call that one not not just a dust cover, also a bookmark.

Wow. Okay. Here's going to, this is going to help out everybody. You should make videos of these. You're actually doing it because people can imagine it, but until you actually see it, you can't imagine it will work.

You can't picture the genius. Yeah. We'll have to cut, we'll have to go through every lifeack and make an individual video for it. Patreon exclusive. So what you should do when you're getting dressed is you should put on your shirt and socks

before your pants. That way it's easier to tuck in your shirt and then you don't have to hike up your tight pants to pull up your socks taut. And you can do Winnie the Pooh cosplaying. That's not a lifehack. That's how everyone gets dressed. I forget all the time. When you're putting your pants,

put your underwear on first. That's a good one. Otherwise, you look like Superman, which is fine for a small time. Bad on the bus. They're good with the job interviews. Life hack it. You're welcome. Wait, you don't...

Yeah, that's how you... I always put my socks on first. A lot of people don't. I'm just helping the masses. I put the socks on. I always put the shirt on before the pants. Yeah, I'm just letting... I've seen people do it wrong,

so I'm just letting everyone know. Who's getting dressed in front of you? I always put on locker rooms and shit. What locker rooms are you going to? I had a school uniform, so we all had to tuck in. And no one was doing it wrong, so I'm trying to help everybody out.

And then I'd pull my pants up and go, Wedgie, got ya! I did it to myself. Yeah, that was the joke. No one else saw that because we set up the cameras. Alright, this is one my mom gave me. Alright. Clavidia?

Yeah. The transfers in birth. When picking up a pizza, turn on the seat warmers to keep the pizza hot. What? How hot do you think the seat warmers get? Oh, they get hot. Also, how rich do you think I am? I don't have fucking seat warmers.

This is a rich life hack. When you're in your dad's Porsche. I think the life hack, it really is. Lifehack, be rich. On private jets, you don't have to get on first. There'll be a seat waiting for you. So much more convenient. You don't need to get to the airport two hours early.

Take your time. Lifehack. When your bills come in, just pay them because you got money. Don't leave them lying around like an idiot. We also have some user submitted life hacks. All right. This should be good. This one's crazy.

Let's see if we can follow it. This is submitted by Ira Blaine. When you have ice cream, put on the seat cooler. Ira Blaine. Ira Blaine. Ira Blaine. When eating crustaceans, take out your dentures. Make your AARPs that rip you off.

So Jack missed the most obvious life hack with plastic bags. Back in the 90s, every bag in my drawer was missing the corners. How fast can you untie a piece of grocery bag in the dark stall of a bar? Little dime bag Ziplocs always felt wrong when I still fucked around with blow, but a corner ripped from a grocery bag with that fucking folded over seam, trying to untie

the damn thing with my teeth was like me saying, why hello, Mr. Back of the Toilet. How does a 70's sized line of coke sound? Worst thing was getting too pissed and just ripping it open. This person still has a problem with blow. Is this person's life line of coke sound. Worst thing was getting too pissed and just ripping it open than I just... This person still has a problem with a blow.

This person's life hack is don't use plastic bags. I don't know what's happening. I have no idea. It ends with lol fuck the 90s. Yeah. Everything that involves cocaine

has been a hack at one stage. Everyone's going, no, no, no, you don't have to put it in a thing. Put it inside this little plastic bag.

All right, get a key. Get a key and shove it under your nose. Grow one of your nails out. Life hack. Drugs in general. When I used to work in a thing, put it inside this little plastic bag. All right, get a key. Get a key and shove it under your nose. Grow one of your nails out. Life hack. Drugs in general. When I used to work in a kitchen, we smoked weed out of everything in the walk-in cooler. Apples.

We made a bong or a bowl out of it. Oh, making cocaine is a life hack. You think chewing on these leaves is fun? Get some gasoline ammonia. Get some ammonia on them. I just saw an article. I think it was from Australia. It might have been posted

in the Facebook group but someone caught a shark killed it and turned it into a bong yeah no that's fucking gross an Australian bloke was smoking out of a shark

yeah that's Australian anyway last life hack Jimmy John's sandwiches last life hack what last one I'd like 10 more

well leave them wanting more this one's my favorite one. This is from Paul Foss. Whenever you walk into a room, say, smells like farts in here. That way, when you fart later, no one will suspect you. Yeah, that's whoever smelt it dealt it. Yeah.

And also, you know the word Foss, that's like full of shit. You go, he's a Foss back in the day. Sounds like he is. Paul full of shit. You go, he's a Foss back in the day. Sounds like he is. Paul full of shit. That's why he's farting so much. Wait, so you always walk in a room and say it smells like farts in there? Just whenever you enter. Yeah, but then you're the guy who smells like farts guy.

People are going to start to see a pattern with you. You can do it with groups of new people. You can't do it every time you walk into every room. Oh, it smells like farts in here. Oh, no, I live alone. All right. Speaking of things that don't smell like farts,

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Now let's introduce our guest for today. Please welcome to the show, Avi Loeb. G'day, Avi. Hello. Let's judge a book by its cover. Yes, no. Yes, no. Yes, no.

Yes, no. Judging a book by its cover. All right. All right. Okay, so I'm looking at Mr. Loeb here. He's got a nice chair. It seems like he's got a nice house with a fireplace. He's in a suit.

I'm going to say you're an intellectual who's written books because you have books in the background. Have you written books, sir? Oh, yeah. I've written eight books, including the new one, yes. Oh, wow. And about 800 scientific papers. Okay, so you're a doctor?

Yes, I'm a doctor. I cannot solve any of your medical issues. No, no, no. My body's in perfect shape. Don't worry about that. Okay. So are you a doctor of theology? No, of astronomy.

Well, of science, let's put it this way. I just gave something away there. You're an astrologist. Yeah. yeah yeah we've already done astrology no no no but that was that was we might be actually doing the galaxy the real stuff astronomy astronomy well he's a doctor he just told you they gave you a hint there he's a doctor of astronomy but we're not talking about astronomy um keep in mind that i'm fundamentally a farm boy. I was born on a farm. That's a good hint. Every afternoon.

That's what I am. Don't treat me as a university professor. Treat me more like a farm boy. Did your parents find you in a little spaceship when you were about five, where you crashed into the farm and then you were lifting a truck above your head? I actually collected eggs every afternoon and used to drive my tractor on weekends to the hills and read books, you know,

philosophy books, stuff like that. Wow, didn't have the telly. Okay, so I'm going to go. It's farming. It's not. He's a doctor of astronomy. You kind of just touched on something. Space. What's in space, though? Planets. Stars. What else, though? Garbage. What's in space, though? Planets. Stars.

Garbage. What do we not know about? What do you think might be there and not maybe there? Black holes. Those are there. Aliens, aliens, aliens! Oh, I love aliens. By the way, when you mentioned black holes,

I'm the founding director of the only center in the world that focuses on black holes. That's, you know, I'm the founding director of the only center in the world that focuses on black holes. And we have both philosophers and scientists. Yeah. And, you know, there was an image of a black hole that was on all the newspapers about a couple of years ago. And it was derived in this image was obtained in the conference room of our Black Hole Initiative. Oh, wow.

Yeah, so let me give you a proper introduction. Avi Loeb is the Frank B. Baird, I hope I'm pronouncing it right, junior professor of science at Harvard University. He received a PhD in physics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel at the age of 24, led the first international project supported by the Strategic Defense Initiative, and Israel at the age of 24, led the first international project supported by the Strategic Defense Initiative, and was subsequently a long-term member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. Like he said, he has written eight books and over 800 papers on a wide range of topics, including Black Holes, The First Stars, The Search for Extraterrestrial Life, and The Future of the Universe. He is the longest-serving chair of Harvard's Department

of Astronomy from 2011 to 2020. And in 2012, Time Magazine selected Loeb as one of the 25 most influential people in space. His book, Extraterrestrial, the first sign of intelligent life beyond the Earth, is a New York Times bestseller. All right. And yeah, if you could tell us a little bit, you said you grew up on a farm? Yeah, I grew up on a farm and, you know, I was mostly interested in questions of philosophy, you know, the most fundamental questions about our life. And I wanted to pursue that. But I was born in Israel, you know, and you have to serve in the military at the age of 18.

So I had two possibilities, either to run in the fields with a gun attached to me or to to do intellectual work in physics which is useful for the defense of the country so i chose the latter and i ended up proposing a project that was funded by the us as part of reagan's star wars initiative and it was the first international project to be funded. And that brought me to Washington. And then in one of the visits, I went to Princeton, where they ended up offering me a fellowship for five years, if I will switch to astrophysics. And then I was offered a junior faculty position at Harvard. And, you know, one thing led to another. I was tenured three years later. And the thing is, I realized that even though it was an arranged marriage to something that I didn't really, you know, wanted early on, I was actually married to my true love.

Because in astrophysics, we have some very deep philosophical questions that we can address with scientific tools. Like the question, are we the smartest kid on the block? You know, that we will discuss today. Okay. All right. I think I know a thing or two about aliens. Okay. So what we're going to do right now, Avi, is we're going to ask Jim what he thinks he knows about aliens or alien life.

And that's going to take about five, 10 minutes. When we're done with that, we're going to come to you and we're going to ask the expert. I have one question. Sure. Are you planning to discuss legal aliens or illegal aliens? Both. Yeah.

We're talking about outer space. Other planets. Yeah. Yeah. They might be illegal. I don't know. I've seen men in black. They don't have passports. Men in black. They're all illegal aliens. Yeah, they might be illegal. I don't know. I've seen men in black. They don't have passports.

Men in black. They're all illegal aliens. Yeah, okay. All right. By the way, at the end of this time period, when Jim said everything he thinks he knows, you're going to grade him 0 through 10, 10 being the best on his accuracy.

And then Kelly here is going to grade him on confidence. I'm going to grade him on et cetera. If you get 21 through 30, ET. That's a good one. 11 through 20 total, ALF. Zero through 10, those things in Independence Day. I don't know what they're called. Those are pretty gross.

All right. What does the word alien mean? What do you mean, what does it mean? Aliens are things from outer space that are the life forms. An ALF is something life form. alien life form is an elf what about extraterrestrial what does that extra extraterrestrial means et that's where et comes from yeah what does it mean it's it's like we're a terrestrial and they're one extra one let's come down the seas that's probably right um terrestrial beings and an extra one so in are there such things as aliens like other other life forms from other planets i believe there are in my belief there are

other life forms other besides us i believe there's intelligent life forms as well um i don't believe we have ever categorically proven that we've found one a lot of people have claimed to have seen them i myself have seen a ufo it's a ufo so we're talking about aliens and ufo ufo is different than an alien ufo isn't an alien because ufo is an unidentified flying object so i believe i saw something that the military was working because i was in a plane and i saw it as a shared experience where there's a whole lot of other people in the plane who also saw it okay um but aliens are things that come down and they visit. Now, I was an alien into this country,

and then you can be an illegal alien when you come in. So it's something otherworldly to your space. What professions do research into whether there is intelligent life on other planets? Mostly truckers have theories on this. Truckers, okay. Anybody else? Oh, our friend Avi.

What's he? He's an astronomer. Okay. And a farm boy. So people, they send out radio things hoping to get something back and all types of stuff. But they haven't even found like little tiny bugs or anything like on Mars. They haven't found anything yet.

But I think we'd have to go outside of our solar system. So that's what they do. They send radio. That's what I was going to ask you. How do they do it? So radio signals? Radio signals and they also, the telescopes, the powerful telescopes they try to see onto other planets.

But I believe to have life, you need to have water. And Earth is the only thing in our solar system that's the right distance from the sun. That's my next question is what traits do a planet need to have intelligent life? Water? Water. That's it?

Water. You need water for life. Anything else? You need oxygen. You need a good level of gravity, not an overly – you need a place like Earth exists because we have Jupiter so close to us and that pulls meteorites. So we don't get hit by them and stuff like that. You need everything to fall into place very well for life to exist.

And I'm not saying that all solar systems would have life, but I don't believe our solar system has any extra life. Okay. I have a couple more questions there. So there's no proof. This is the next question. Is there any proof of alien life or is it all speculation? Well, okay. But that's depends who you're talking to. I don't believe there's any proof that that has been given to us in the public, but there's also things like there are secret documents that the government has that there's been, there's been military

of senior foes. Uh, if you want to, think there is proof but none that is wildly accepted as 100 true it's a little bit like Loch Ness Monster so you might think it's proof and another person might say it's not proof but there's nothing categoric that we all agree on um but see like Eric okay so so you got like Roswell in New Mexico they had something happen and then they said it was a weather balloon and now there's people who have said, no, we actually saw something, something crashed there. Were you talking about Area 51? No, Area 51 is in Nevada.

Okay. And that's where I was flying over when I saw the UFO. I was flying over Nevada. And the UFO that I saw was a circular ball that was flying similar to that of E.T.'s ship. It wasn't a disc. It was a ball and it was flying similar to that of E.T.'s ship. It wasn't a disc. It was a ball, and it was darting around. What type of evidence is the most compelling case for alien life?

Common sense is that with all these billions of stars, all that type of stuff, there has to be one. We talked about that on another podcast, but I forget with who. Maybe it was Kevin or something like that. Yeah, Dawkins. Dawkins, yeah. Dawkins's Dawkins yeah there has to be you'd be silly not to i don't want aliens to visit us because i think if aliens visit us they will like want to take us over in the same way that the white people visited australia 250 years ago and then then they went oh this is all right and then because the aborig, when they first saw the boats and stuff,

it's like seeing a UFO. It's like seeing aliens come in and landing, and that's happened to lots of different cultures in our society. So I believe if aliens came from another planet to come and see us, they wouldn't be just, hey, we're holidaying. I believe they'd be like trying to get our resources or whatever. They had in and out. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They wouldn't leave. Yeah. Okay. sources or once i had in and out yeah yeah yeah they wouldn't leave yeah uh okay and then um are is there a possibility that aliens are living among us there is a possibility it's not something i believe but there is a possibility okay do you know what is i might mispronounce this um that's in a wine dish it's a pig that you cook underneath the ground that you have with a coleslaw and it's mmm, buh, buh, buh.

Coleslaw? I don't think that's very Hawaiian. Yeah, no, it is. It's a fusion meal. It's like pokey. Come on, Hawaiians. You just had a shit fucking sushi chef and you wanted to call it something else. I made pokey.

You just fucking butchered all the meat and shoved it in a fucking bowl. Oh, no, none of the rice stuff. We'll put it in a bowl. Dump some seaweed on top. Oh, pokey. All right. It's good pokey. I think that's good.

I just want to mention one thing because we get a lot of comments all the time when we have like sophisticated Harvard professors on and people are like, I can't believe you brought this expert on to listen to this. He's having a great time. I'd like to point that out. Yeah, that's the whole thing. I'm speaking for the simple man or alien. I'm having a great time because some of the things you said

are really exactly on target. Maybe Jim is an alien himself. I consider myself more of a lizard person. We've been here for generations. We're not aliens anymore. You know what my wife says that if they if they ever come to visit us you know and something lands in our backyard she wants me to do two things first make sure that i leave the car keys with her when they call

and second make sure that they don't ruin the lawn when they leave home. She's got her priorities straight. I have a friend who I trust, and he has a tattoo of a UFO, and he claims that he saw a UFO. He went down. This is in England. He went down, and he went and talked to the police, and he's not like a weird guy, and he went and talked to the police, and then they said, oh, you've seen it,

and they gave a UFO sighting pad to him to write down what he'd seen. And there was other people in the waiting room who was also seeing it. He went back to where he saw it to show his friend, like this is where it was. And there was a burnt circle disc in the grass. It's real. You know what? Now with the pandemic, if they ever come,

there will be a track form that they have to fill. They'll have to quarantine for two weeks. Yeah, the movie Armageddon, I'm not ringing. What's the one with the Independence Day that Randy Quaid is like kooky the whole time in the movie at the beginning. He's like, I was abducted by aliens. I was abducted by aliens. Everyone's like, whatever, you crazy person. And then when they get him to fly the planes at the end and they're doing like the whole, you know,

they go, when I was abducted and everybody rolls their eyes out i'm like you're about to fucking fight aliens right now why are they rolling his eyes at him like they should be like oh wow yeah sorry i don't know what the stats are on this but i do i do believe it just feels like and i might be wrong it feels feels like UFOs visit America more, and that's what throws me. Yeah. Well, we'll see. It feels like there's more societies. It's because you're number one.

Yeah, it's like if you looked at a map of the world, you wouldn't go automatically, we're going to that place. Well, you'd go to the place with the freedom, right? Freedom and water parks. Disney World and land? I mean, come on. Oh, man. All right, so Avi, and just so everybody at home knows,

I asked Avi if he wants to be called Dr. Avi Loeb, and he said it's fine to call him Avi because I get a lot of shit on the internet when people say I don't say doctor. Well, you know, all the labels that I have are completely, I don't care about them. I'm just the same kid as I used to be. Yeah, he got one of his degrees from the Saturn. So zero through ten, 10 being the best.

How did Jim do on the questions asked about aliens? I would rate him at seven or eight. All right, pretty good. Give him an eight. I'm giving him a 10 on confidence. 10 on confidence. I'm going to give I'll give you a three so you can be E.T.

E.T. 21 total, you're E.T. I tell you what, have you seen E.T. lately? No. It doesn't age well. I've never seen it actually. It doesn't make sense.

It's like E.T. gets sick and then he looks like a dried up dog shit on the side of a river. Like he's all white like a thing and then like Elliot's like I don't want you to get sick

and then they just get better and no one decides why they get better. And no one decides why they get better. It's because of love. Yeah, love heals and the plant blooms again. And didn't they replace all the guns with walkie-talkies? They did, but Spielberg regrets that now and he wants the guns back in. But my son found E.T.

by himself when he was like three. Oh, God. He was just like... By the way, I met Steven Spielberg at the honorary degree dinner because he got a honorary degree at Harvard. And I told him about what I'm working on. He said, if I ever find clear evidence for an ET or meet an extraterrestrial, I should promise to him that he will be the first I contact. Ah. Sick. Trying to keep. You got a movie will be the first I contact. Ah. Sick.

Trying to keep. You got a movie deal in the works. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Till you call me first, mate. I live in Hollywood. Speaking about the movie deal, over the past couple of weeks, I got about 16 filmmakers and producers from Hollywood that contacted me about the book.

Wow. Wow. Congrats. That's awesome. That's exciting. I want to do an alien film for modern day called They Came Without Masks. Amp Human. It's a human amp. Amp Human is a human performance company dedicated to helping athletes

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to get 15% off your D Plus lotion today. We thank you, Amphuman, for sponsoring our podcast. All right, so I asked Jim what alien or extraterrestrial means. Can you tell us what that means, please? Sure. So it's basically a life form that is beyond Earth, that is on another planet or somewhere in space, but not on Earth.

Terrestrial means on Earth. So extraterrestrial means far from, away from Earth. Wow, he said we're a terrestrial and they're an extra one, which is basically what you just said. That's right. Right. Yeah. That's why I gave him an eight.

Yeah. We're terrestrial beings. Um, and then I, I asked him if aliens are real. He says, believes there's intelligent life. Doesn't think any has been,

you know, verified as a contact or anything. So, so how do you, obviously you believe that this is, there are other lives on other planets. So we know from a satellite, the Kepler satellite data, that about

half of all the stars that look like the sun have a planet roughly the size of the Earth at the same separation. And what that means is that you would have you could have liquid water on the surface of billions of planets in the milky way galaxy you know and the trillions of galaxies like the milky way our own galaxy in the observable volume of the universe there are more earth-like planets than the number of grains of sand on all beaches on earth. Okay. And I just think if you have similar circumstances, you get similar outcomes.

You know, that's common sense. Why would we think that we are special and unique? You know, my daughters, when they were young, they thought that they have unique qualities that nobody else shares. And they are at the center of the world. And then I brought them to the kindergarten and they met other kids and, you know, they qualities that nobody else shares. And they are at the center of the world. And then I brought them to the kindergarten and they met other kids and, you know, they got a different perspective, you know, that other kids could be smarter or, you know, have some other skills.

And we as a civilization preferred to believe that first of all, we are at the center of the world. You know, that's what Aristotle argued that we are at the center of the universe. And then now we know that we are not because the earth moves around the sun and that's what Galileo argued. And he was put in house arrest when he argued that because nobody wanted to look through his telescope because everyone knew that the sun moves around the earth. So anyway, we realize now that that's not true, but most, you know, a lot of people still prefer to believe that we are special and unique because that flatters your ego. You know, why

would there be anything like us out there? Well, I think that not only there are many intelligent civilizations that existed in the past and potentially exist right now, that we are probably not the smartest kid on the block, you know, because why would we be? You know, look at the news every day. I mean, we're making so many mistakes. Obviously, you know, we are using most of our resources to fight each other instead of working together, you know. And it just, you know, if you take the soup of chemicals that existed on Earth and mix them in a different way, you could get a different cake.

You can bake a different cake. Why would we be the most tasty cake that you can make out of some random process? I just think out of modesty, I think that there are probably smarter kids on the block. Yeah, I sent a video to Forrest yesterday that it's kind of gone viral, but it's basically a video of showing the planets in perspective to the other planets. And it continues to zoom out. And like really you notice how tiny of a spec we are in the entire universe. And it makes no sense that we would be the planet chosen to be the only ones with intelligent life.

Well, I hope we do find aliens in my lifetime. I would love to see that, but I don't want us to find smart ones. I don't want us to find like bugs either or like little tiny microbes. I want to find like a large creature that's just like, brr, fire. I just want to find that guy. We have a lot of those in America. Yeah, I know.

Do you like this? Just a whole planet of them. More of those dumb shits. Yeah, let's do that. I just want them to have loads of gold and oil and stuff like that. It's easily mine. Bring the supplies. And we can give them like,

Oh, look at that. That's a, that's a Mars bar. You know what I mean? Yeah. But if they have so much gold, it won't be worth as much.

And you make it. But you know, when you get your new version of a cell phone, you think, Oh, okay. Silicon Valley is leading our technology, you know, next year, I'll get something better.

But if you meet another civilization that is much more advanced than ours, you might realize they have a technology that took a million years to develop, you know, and we can copy that. And wouldn't that be great? You know, it would feel like copying in an exam, you know, looking over the shoulder of a student next to you and, you know, but if you save a million years, it's worth it. Yeah, I always think the most remarkable, like, if you want to see how fast we've moved with technology,

look to the aeroplane. So the Wright brothers were like 100 and something years ago, just a little bit over 100 years ago, and we went from them gliding on a thing like in their pants with their goggles and all type of stuff like on a glider to the stealth bomber in a hundred years we did that so what could we do in 500 years with with air travel and that's when you start thinking about like oh different planets and all that type of stuff do you believe doctor that that we have had aliens visit us and do you believe we have already taken some of their technology because there's a lot of theories on that oh no i i don't believe that i don't think that we are that

significant for them to pay a visit you know when i dated my wife you know i she had a lot of friends that used to wait for prince charming on a white horse that will make them a marriage proposal. And you worked in Goodford. And that never came. So why should we believe that we are worthy a visit? You know, that makes, why are we so significant? We may be just like ants on a sidewalk, you know, and when you walk down the street, you don't pay attention to every ant. And moreover, you know, like most of the stars in the Milky Way galaxy are much smaller than the sun and they are cooler and they emit

mostly infrared radiation. So if you have any creatures living next to them, they would have infrared eyes, you know, eyes that are sensitive to infrared, not like us. We are sensitive to visible light because that's what the sun produces. So now imagine interstellar tourist agencies, okay, that send tourists to vacations. Why would they ever come to us? You know, they would say the visible light hurts their eyes. We have green grass, but they enjoy dark red grass. You know, they don't like our grass. They will never come over. So we tend to think that everything centers on us.

We're like the Des Moines, Iowa travel. You're talking about all the things we don't have. What about the things we do have? They don't have Philly cheesesteaks on fucking K-Factor 12. You try, you try. Give them a Twinkie. You try it. You try it. Give them a Twinkie. Just try it.

Just give it a go. They'll be back. They'll be back. Philly cheesesteak is what was going to ring in there. Jack's wearing a Hoagie Haven t-shirt right now. I feel like our new merch should be like the best Philly cheesesteak on K-Factor 12. Yeah, yeah. I want to eat their food.

It's a red bit of grass. You want to smoke a bit of red? Piss off, alien. Leave my party if you're not going to contribute. So you think aliens could travel here, Jim, but they don't have good food? I think if they got here, they'd be amazed by the food. Go to Disneyland, get the Dole Whip.

Okay. So, and so how do we, if you, how do we search for intelligent life on other planets? Like, what are we looking for? What instruments do we use and stuff? So, okay. So first, you know, Jim mentioned the,

looking for radio signals that we have tried to do. You know, that's just like speaking on the phone. You need your counterpart to be alive when you speak on the phone. But there is another approach waiting for a letter in the mail. And, you know, then you can get a letter. If the post service is very slow, you can get it long after the person who sent it is not alive anymore. So, you know, for example, the Mayan culture, you know, that existed on earth, you know,

we cannot have a phone conversation with them. They're not around anymore. But we can have an archaeological dig inside of which we will find relics from their culture and learn about them. So, searching for relics, you know, physical objects that were kicked into space by civilizations is another way to find them that is actually better because these relics keep accumulating over time. For example, think about plastic bottles that you might find on a beach, you know, that most of the time you find rocks that are naturally produced, but every now and then you can stumble across a plastic bottle.

And of course, the more time passes, the more plastic bottles you have on the beach. So the point is that we can search for all the plastic bottles that were thrown into space, and they would tell us that there was a civilization that produced them. And that's exactly what Oumuamua, this object, was about. It was an object that looked very weird, so weird that it didn't look like any rock that we have seen before. And that's why I suggested, and I explained that in the book, that it may be of artificial origin. So that's one way. What was it and where did we find it? I missed that bit. Where did we find the...

Okay. So these are in space. We sent, for example, Voyager 1, Voyager 2, New Horizons, we send them out of the solar system. And just imagine them in a billion years. There will be junk, space junk, space junk floating in space. And just think about every civilization sending out some stuff out. And after a while, all of these things accumulate and you can see them entering the solar system. So Oumuamua was really the very first object that we noticed from outside the solar system. It's just like finding an object in your backyard that came from the street. You don't need to travel to the street to figure out what's out there.

Some objects get into your backyard and you just look at them. And so Oumuamua was a very strange object. And in my book, I explain why it's reasonable to consider it as space trash or some object that was left, that was made artificially by another civilization. So that's one approach. Why is it called a muumuu? It is Hawaiian though, right?

Yes, it was discovered by a telescope in Hawaii, on Maui, that I actually visited a few months before the discovery. Hawaii, on Maui, that I actually visited a few months before the discovery. And it's in the Hawaiian language, umuamua means a scout or a messenger from far away. They gave it that name before it was realized that it's actually really weird. What does it look like? Okay, so we haven't had a picture. If we had a photo, I just wrote a book

that has about 66,000 words in it. They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. I would say a picture is worth 66,000 words. I wouldn't need to write the book at all. I would just make a poster with a photograph and everyone would believe it. But we don't have a photograph. That's unfortunate. And the lesson is that the next one that comes around that looks as weird as this one, we should try to get a photograph. We should get a camera close to it to take a photo.

But it was too far away with our telescopes. We couldn't resolve it. And all we could see is that as it tumbles, you know, it was spinning every eight hours. As it tumbles, we could see the amount of light, sunlight. The sun is just like a projector, you know, a flashlight that is shining on it. And so we could see the amount of light from it changing by a factor of 10. That's huge. You know, we never saw that before. And it implies that on the sky, the object changes the area that it has by a factor of

10. So it was most likely pancake-shaped based on fitting the amount of light as it was tumbling. So think about a pancake-shaped object tumbling and changing the amount of light reflected to us by a factor of 10. That was already very, very unusual, but it didn't convince me that it might be artificial. Then it showed an extra push away from the sun that cannot be explained because it didn't have a cometary tail. It didn't have outgassing. No gas was coming out of it. We couldn't see anything. gassing. No gas was coming out of it. We couldn't see anything. And it couldn't be pushed by the gas. So, the only way to push it was reflecting sunlight. Just like a sail on a boat, you know,

that reflects the wind and gets pushed. In this case, it was just reflecting sunlight. And then it had to be very thin for that to be effective. So, you know, I suggested maybe it's a light sail, you know, a sail that is pushed by light. This is the technology that we are currently developing, a light sail. Anything thin, you know, it could be just a surface layer of a spacecraft or something. Anything thin will be pushed by reflecting sunlight. And just a few months ago, you know, in September 2020, we saw another object that is pushed by reflecting sunlight and no cometary tail. And it turned out to be a rocket booster from a 1966 launch, you know, and we know that we produced it and it's hollow and it's

very thin. Where was that at? Sorry. So they found it, the same telescope found it orbiting not far from the Earth. And then they realized, oh, it's a rocket booster from 1966. All of our trash. Because I know we send trash up into space. Is that a problem, having space trash? Or it doesn't really affect us in any way? Just like old satellites?

No, because the density of such objects, You know, the density of such objects. I mean, the number of such objects per unit volume is really small. So it's just like having plastic bottles on the ocean, but, but then, you know, they're very far apart.

So they, the chance of a lot of them piling up near your feet is very small. Right. So it's not a big risk. We should send some Instagram models up there. They get pictures of that. Just launch them in the space. By the way, speaking about social media, I should tell you I have a class, a freshman class, a freshman seminar last year, and I mentioned it in my book. I asked them, suppose

a spacecraft would land and you would be invited to get in, would you do it? And they said, yes, under one condition that they will be able to share their experience over social media with their friends. Of course. Yeah. Hell yeah.

I could not understand that because, you know, just going to the Himalayas, you know, or doing something extreme, you know, I would enjoy the experience. Why would I care if I share it with other people? Yeah, but you've got to give it up for the camera phone though because I feel like us, everyone having a camera on them at all times has got rid of a lot of myths in our society. It's like we used to get photos of Bigfoot on the regular

when there was film. Yeah. Now every guy has a camera. We haven't had a good photo of him in years. Right, yeah. And they've got TVs trying to find him and all that type of stuff. Aliens, oh, there's a ghost. We used to have people who were abducted by aliens constantly

going off into a spaceship. They anal probed me and all that type of stuff. No one comes back with their phone, even fried or whatever or nothing. Yeah, I have a rule. Anytime I'm anally probed, I have to share it on social media. Normally that's strange. This is an excellent argument because, you know, we have many more cameras now than we had decades ago.

Not just cell phones. You have, you know, drones. You have it on airplanes. You have it like Google Maps and stuff. You have things that are taking photos of us constantly. In satellites. So the fact that the number of UFO reports did not go up in proportion to the number of cameras means that probably most of them are just,

you know, illusions. I will say this. I did not take a photo of my UFO. I was going to say, did Jim see an UFO? Is that possible? They saw an alien.

Well, as I said, it's very unlikely that they are coming to spy on us because we are not that interesting. I mean, anyone that feels that we are visited must have some sense of self-importance, you know? It's not modest to assume that. I don't think I saw an alien. I think I saw an unidentified flying object. I don't think it was alien.

Which could have been anything, yeah. But it was definitely a ball, and it was flying, and it had a light on the top, and it didn't have wings, and it was darting along, and it was flying over Vegas. Was it possible it was like a drone or something? It could have been, but it was a shared experience. There was another 15 people who saw it, and we all didn't know what it was. We all sort of went, eh. I think a lot of people hear UFO and is it always referencing like a spaceship or some sort of alien travel? I mean, a UFO just sounds like something that...

So all the reports, many of them could be interpreted in terms of a malfunction of some instrument that they were looking at or a natural, or something that the military is using. Now, it's important for the government to try and figure out if it's real or not, because you never know. Maybe another nation like the Chinese or the Russians are spying on us with some technology that we are not aware of. So we should always check what it means. No one ever sees them over Australia.

They never go, oh, bloody hell, look at that fucking UFO. Oh, no, Trevor just threw a rock. No one's spying on Australia. We don't have the technology to have experimental planes. We always buy your planes about five years later. Like, we're defending the country. We bought two more planes. They're refurbished.

Like, I'm serious. They always announce it on the news. The Australian government just bought six planes. I should tell you about Australia. There is this Parkes telescope, you know. My relatives own the farms around the sheep farm around the park. I've visited this telescope. There's a movie called The Dish.

Have you seen The Dish? Yeah. Yeah, there's a movie called The Dish. It's the telescope that we watch the moon landing from because you have that one in the southern hemisphere and one in the northern hemisphere, and it's in central New South Wales in a little town called Parks. Sorry, Avi, carry on, mate.

So the Parks telescope, you know, a few years back, reported about some radio signal that keeps repeating. And then the astronomers noticed that it repeats only at lunchtime. And then they realized that, you know, one of the people in the observatory is opening

the microwave oven door before it It's a hot pocket related So, oven door before it's a hot pocket related so now they reported about the signal coming from the nearest star proxima centauri and it's not out yet but there was you know the guardian the british newspaper reported about some signal that was discovered with parks and uh but, I wouldn't be surprised if it's some Australian using some oscillator to do something and it's in the neighborhood of the telescope.

Yeah, you know, the signal has come back to us and it's TNT, bomb. You have 309 aircraft in Australia. Yeah. In the Air Force. Yeah, but when they buy the new ones, we bought more. No, I know, I'm just saying, that's not many. The US has 5,000 something, but Israel has 680.

They have double years. It's a smaller country. We're in Ireland. You're going to come to us by boat, I assume. That's the only way. By boat. We spent a month in Australia and we really loved it. I mean, the people are relaxed.

The nature is so beautiful. If you're into aliens, it's a wonderful place to go. So, okay, when I was a kid, I remember them saying something along the line that there was, you might have already mentioned it, there was a small unmanned spaceship that was travelling to the next galaxy and it was going to be something like 100 years before it reached there. Am I remembering that right?

Is there something visiting another galaxy for us? Have we gotten a spaceship to another galaxy? Okay, so we have a project that I'm actually leading as the chair of the advisory board for that project to visit the nearest star. The nearest star to the sun is called Proxima Centauri and it's about four and a quarter light years away. It means that the

2016 election results are reaching there only now. Oh God, they must be upset. Can you imagine the mayhem? They're just like this, oh God, this is going to put some problems to the galaxy. Fucking Darth Vader's in. All those people are sitting at a gay bar

crying like I was in 2016. Anyway, so the thing's traveling to the next star. When's that going to happen for us? Well, the idea was, so, you know, about in May 2015, a black limousine parked in front of the Center for Astrophysics, where my office is located at Harvard. And an entrepreneur from Silicon Valley came out of that car and entered my office. His name is Yuri Milner.

And he sat on the sofa in front of me and said, would you be interested in leading a project that would design a mission to visit the nearest star within our lifetime, within two decades? design a mission to visit the nearest star within our lifetime, within two decades. And what that means is that the spacecraft needs to move at a fifth of the speed of light because it takes light four years to get there. And I said, well, let me think about it, you know, if it's possible to launch something at a fifth of the speed of light. And then for six months with my students and postdocs, we looked into that. And there was one technology that can do that, a light sail.

Basically pushing a very lightweight sail, roughly a gram, with a powerful laser beam over a few minutes, it can reach a fifth of the speed of light and then reach Proxima Centauri, this nearest star. You should get onto that, mate. That sounds like an easy thing you can slap out this afternoon.

You've got your laser, you've got your light sail, off you go. What are you doing on this podcast? You've got shit to do. Of course, you don't want to put the laser in space because people will be worried that you might point it at them. So that would take, what, 20 years to reach then? 20 years for the trip, and then if it

sends us a photo of the planet next to that star, it would take another four years for the photo to reach us back. I'd upload a dick pic onto it before it left. Just for a long-term joke. Like, oh, how did you get that 24 years later

it's like an airdrop and that'd be the one that it's uh that's what i use so it'd take 24 years basically to total send it there and get a photo send us back a photo near a star hashtag no makeup, hashtag. You know, that's what saves us probably because when you enter into a room full of strangers, you better not speak. First, you want to listen to see who is in the room, right? So the problem is we spoke out, we sent out radio signals over more than 100 years. And by now they reached 100 light years. If there is anyone within that volume, they already know about us if they have radio telescopes like we have.

But it will take them a while to get back to us. We have some time to relax, but maybe we will hear some message from them. Do you believe that within our lifetime—we're a similar age, I them. Do you believe that within our lifetime we're a similar age I assume do you believe that within our lifetime we will know if there is an extraterrestrial out there? Yes. As long, you know, there is one caveat. Right now

the scientific community is ridiculing the search for technological signatures and not really taking it seriously. It's not being funded. Young people are worried about working in this field because it's not clear they will get a job. So, if the

mainstream community of science accepts it as a mission that they need to follow because the public is very interested and the public funds science. If they do it, then we will find it. But you will never find something wonderful if you're not looking for it. And that's exactly the point of my book.

I'm trying to change the culture. I'm saying this is something we can accomplish. We can address this question. And we just need to be open-minded. Unfortunately, the mainstream community of science is ridiculing that possibility. It's not entirely clear to me why, but there are lots of much more speculative ideas that are being funded, hundreds of millions of dollars, and they're much more speculative than this.

This is not speculative at all. Common sense tells you that there should be relics of civilizations that existed in the past, billions of years ago, out there in space. We should search for them because the public cares about it. It will have a huge impact. It will be the biggest discovery of humanity if we find that we are not alone, right? Right. And why would we not pursue that?

It's just like the philosophers in the days of Galileo saying, we don't want to look through your telescope. We know the answer in advance. The sun moves around the Earth. In this case, we know that we are special and unique. We don't need to search for anything else. It's just like my daughters would say, we don't want to go to the kindergarten. We want to stay at home. I'm trying to change this culture. I think it's actually completely inappropriate. At the same time, you have

large portions of the mainstream scientific community working, for example, in the search for dark matter. This is most of the matter in the universe. We don't know what it is. We are searching for it. It's a search in the dark. We don't know what it is. Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent on that.

Why would that deserve a thousand times more funding than the search for civilizations. I don't understand that. There are people that are even working on things that we will never be able to test by experiments. That is considered the mainstream. Something is screwed up in the current thinking of the academic community. My book is trying to correct that. I hope it will have the impact. Within a few days after it came out, it made it to the New York Times

bestseller list. It's between Michelle and Barack Obama right now, ranked there after a week. And clearly the public gets the message. The public has common sense. But something is wrong with the scientific community right now. Do you believe if they do find something that there's a chance that the government could keep it from us? I think the government is incompetent in keeping such a secret because, you know, everyone can look at the sky. Everyone can, you know, astronomers share the information that they find, you know, and You can't hide such a secret.

If there is something out there and we detected some signals, it will leak out immediately. So I don't think the government is capable of keeping a secret on such a matter. Issues of national security, that's a different matter. If they find that either the Russians, the Chinese are doing something, they might not reveal it, of course, and do it just as a matter of national security. But on matters of science and things like that,

there is no way the government will hide it. Do you watch Ancient Aliens? No. Ah, you've got to watch that. You might learn a thing or two. I hate science fiction, by the way. I hate Star Trek and all these science fiction movies because they violate the laws of physics.

You know, I just cannot enjoy it when I do. You don't like Star Wars either? No. I'll tell you what I liked in terms of films. I really liked Arrival. Yeah, that one. Did you see that? Yeah, that one was all about the radio things and waiting for a message.

No, it was mostly about how to communicate with them. You know, that was really nice. And then there was The Martian. That was pretty good. And Gravity, I also liked. What about Mac and Me? Did you ever see the movie Mac and Me? Oh, what is that?

Oh, you've got to. I don't know that one either. It's an E.T. ripoff. It's an E.T. ripoff that was heavily sponsored by McDonald's. And at any given stage in the movie of Mac and Me, they'll just be eating a Big Mac or thinking about Big Macs. They go to McDonald's at one stage and then Ronald McDonald comes out and they all dance with him.

Have you ever seen, I think it's Paul Rudd does a thing, whenever he's on Conan, he shows a clip of Mac and Me, which is like, there's a kid in a wheelchair plays the Elliot. It was like, yeah, we already had E.T. so they gave us Mac and Me. And so the Mac was named after McDonald's is why it was Mac and Me. It's funny because- You know, when I got these 16 email messages from filmmakers and producers in Hollywood, I told my literary agent, I said, look, if the book ever turns into a film, I would like Brad Pitt to play my role. Ah, I know Brad a little bit.

I know him a little bit. I'll make it cool. Yeah, I'll make it cool. He'd be up for that. He was our weatherman on Jim's TV show. Yeah, he likes playing intellectuals and stuff like that. I think he's good in that. He was good in Ad Astra. The only reason I said that is

because my wife likes him. Maybe you don't want him on the movie then. I don't know. Your wife will like him. He's a lovely fella. Yeah, that's what I was told. He's a very nice guy. You know he's good looking. He had an affair with Mike Tyson's wife.

That's when you know you're really good looking. Really? I didn had an affair with Mike Tyson's wife. That's when you know, you're really good looking. Oh really? I didn't know. Mike Tyson talks about it. Mike Tyson. No, I didn't know that. He went out to the driveway.

Mike Tyson was like, all right. You know, and he's like, and she's like, who are you fucking? And he comes out with Brad Pitt's in the car. He's like,

I get it. Sorry, just Mike. It was like 30 years ago. I'm sure it's not a recent thing. By the way, thank you for the compliment. You said that we, we have a similar age. I'm not sure actually. I think you're young. I'm sure it's not a recent thing. By the way, thank you for the compliment. You said that we have a similar age.

I'm not sure, actually. I think you're young. I'm about to be 44. Okay, well, I'm 15 years older than you. Oh, there you go. You look so young. It'd be inappropriate for us even to date. But you know why I look young?

You kept your hair, man. You kept your hair. No. Half of my calories intake every day come from dark chocolate. but you know why I look young? Because I kept your hair, man. You kept your hair. Half of my calories intake every day come from dark chocolate and I exercise and you know, I keep a low carb diet. So it's, I think, you know,

the diet and the exercise helps a lot. Half your calories is dark chocolate. Are you being silly? I eat a bar and a half or so every day. And that's like 800 calories or something and that's roughly half yeah yeah i like how you say you eat dark chocolate and then the next thing you say is low carb diet i don't know that oh yeah because sugar without sugar yeah sugar sugar free chocolate is actually really, really good. Yeah, he's just eating cocoa off a tray all day.

Talking about aliens. It's fucking life, man. It keeps you young. No, don't eat that Philly steak that you mentioned. Well, I'll tell you what, Doctor. I think I'll be alive to see the aliens and you won't. I'm guessing we're going to die about the same time, me and you. Philly cheeseesesteaks.

Okay, this is- Half my diet is Philly cheesesteaks, right? Half my calories, half my calories. The rest of it, I wash it down with Coca-Cola. This is a part of the show called Dinner Party Facts where we ask our expert to give our listeners and viewers some sort of fact that's obscure interesting that they can use to impress people on the subject so is there something you can tell us about aliens or

extraterrestrials or life on other planets that people probably don't know that they could tell other people uh yeah i mean most of the stars in the milky way galaxy are dwarf stars they are about a tenth of the mass of the sun. The sun is unusual. Most of them are 10% of the sun. And that means that they are cooler at the surface and they emit mostly infrared radiation. So that's a tidbit that not many people realize, that the visible light we get from the sun, to which our eyes are adjusted, because it was useful for survival. You have this visible light hitting the ground, and in order to run from an animal that will haunt you, you had to have these sensors that can see the reflection of that light from objects. And that's why our eyes are sensitive to visible light. light from objects.

And that's why our eyes are sensitive to visible light. But if we were to live next to a star that was a typical star, we would need infrared eyes, something very different. And think about infrared goggles, these things that the military puts at night, because the heat emitted by our body is in the infrared. And that's why they put these goggles. They can see people moving, right? Even though there is no sunlight. Like the predator, the predator had infrared vision.

Yeah. So, so here is a tidbit that would be so, uh, animals or any living creature that wants to survive on a planet around a typical star, you know, like most of the star, uh, they would need to have something like typical star, you know, like most of the stars, they would need to have something like these goggles, you know, seeing the heat. And if they came here, they need some sunglasses. So, yeah.

And by the way, the other tidbit about these dwarf stars, the small stars is... Peter Dinklage is one of those, right? In order to have a surface temperature on the planet similar to what we have, like room temperature, you need to be 20 times closer to the star because the star is much fainter. And so as a result, you are... Sorry, there's someone...

It's an alien. Make a contact. It's told us too much. Just answer the call. I want to hear what it is. Oh, you found him. Oh, wait, wait. Oh, good.

Let me finish the point. The planet needs to be much closer to the star. And because of that, it's tidally locked. Just like the moon, it shows the same face to the star the same side at all times so there is a permanent day side and a permanent night side so for example the star next to us it's called proxima centauri it's about a tenth of the mass of the sun and there is a planet in the habitable zone next to it, and it's 20 times closer. The time around one year is equivalent to 11 days.

If there are any aliens there, they celebrate a birthday every 11 days. There are lots of parties all the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But my daughter said, there is a permanent day side, a permanent night side. If we ever go there, they want to buy a house on the strip that separates them because that's where you can see the sunset forever. After elections,

I go like this, 44 more days. Well, the book is currently on the New York Times bestseller list. It's called Extraterrestrial, the first sign of intelligent life beyond Earth. And Avi Loeb, thank you for being with us. Thanks for being on the podcast, man. I appreciate it.

It's been great fun. And if you see Brad, just mention my book to him. He's a big reader. I'll mention it to him if I see him. Okay. If you're ever, oh, you want to? What's that? No, never mind.

Our Instagram? Oh, IDCat Podcast is our Instagram. Go to that. I thought you meant my Instagram. And go watch the Patreon to see us piss fart around with comedians. Okay, if you're ever at a party and someone walks up to you and goes, ah, we're the only living people in the universe, you go, well, I don't know about that.

Good night, Australia.