14: Extraterrestrial Life

Today’s disagreement is on whether or not extraterrestrial life exists. We’ve brought on two guests who are out of this world. ;)

Dr. Avi Loeb is an astrophysicist and professor of Science at Harvard University. As head of The Galileo Project at Harvard, Dr. Loeb directs the search for evidence of extraterrestrials. Avi is also the author of more than eight hundred scientific papers and the books Interstellar and Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth.

Dr. Michael Shermer is the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine. He is the bestselling author of many books, including Why People Believe Weird Things and The Believing Brain. Michael is the host of the podcast The Michael Shermer Show and a Presidential Fellow at Chapman University.

Today we ask a wide range of important questions about extraterrestrial life:

• Do we already have evidence of intelligent extraterrestrial life?
• What would it take for us to all agree there are technological civilizations beyond earth?
• How does the media complicate our understanding of the subject?
• And why is there so much tension in the scientific community about this work?

 Show Notes

• Fermi’s question: where is everybody? [3:45]
• Addressing anomalies [6:45]
• Radio communication versus finding objects [10:00]
• Why media coverage loves “aliens” [12:00]
• Skepticism and anomalies [14:00]
• Disagreements in the scientific community [16:00]
• Real material evidence and the US government [21:00]
• Machine learning for observing anomalous objects [27:00]
• Steelmanning [31:30]

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