Science offers the privilege of staying curious. By this I mean that it offers the opportunity to stay open minded and be guided by evidence. Having a scientific mindset is not a simple task, because collecting evidence requires time, effort and research funds. Having an opinion is an easy alternative. Ironically, the illusion of saving time by “knowing the answer in advance” is the shortest path for wasting time. It is easy to get fooled by the abundance of noise.
People say a lot of things, many of which are wrong. The trick is to separate substance from nonsense or the wheat from the chaff. We are most influenced by those closest to us, including the tribe that we belong to. This makes us vulnerable to the loudest noises from the nearest sources, whereas the signal may originate far away.
The meaning to our cosmic existence could be revealed at night when all the local noises fade away. The dark sky offers us a global perspective of the cosmic neighborhood in which we play a humbling role. When looking up, our telescopes and cameras could help us separate the wheat from the terrestrial chaff that floods us. If we ever find a partner in our cosmic neighborhood, our local noise will become insignificant relative to the signal associated with a technological product of an intelligent cosmic neighbor.
The terrestrial chaff involves pointless conflicts about identity or territorial disputes. Between February and December 1916, my grandfather, Albert Loeb, was stuck in the mud as a German cavalry soldier in the battle of Verdun with France. Three hundred and fifty thousand Germans and four hundred thousand French soldiers died there, with no impact on the border line separating the two countries. Twenty years later, Albert left Germany because he recognized the risk to Jews from the Nazi party, but 65 members of his family chose to stay in Germany. They promised to leave in the last train, if necessary. They indeed followed this promise, but the last train led to concentration camps where they were killed in gas chambers. Despite his patriotic loyalty to Germany, Albert had the ability to separate the signal from the noise in Nazi Germany. Fast forward ninety years, and you can find faculty and students from the progressive left at Harvard University arguing in support of a terrorist organization whose declared goal is to kill as many Jews as possible. Is this noise or signal? What would Albert say to his grandson, Avi, who is named after him?
What makes the scientific experience distinct is the recognition that what matters is the ratio between the signal and the background noise. Measuring the noise is as important as measuring the signal in the interpretation of reality.
If we follow what people say on social media, we would be flooded by noise. And this noise could lead us to a random walk throughout life, sometimes violating the principles that we advocate for.
I mentioned these underlying principles at the opening of my lecture about the scientific Galileo Project at the Sol conference on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) in San Francisco today. I described the commissioning scientific-quality data on UAP from the first Galileo Project Observatory and the first Interstellar Expedition to the Pacific Ocean, and described our plans for two new observatories and a follow-up expedition by summer 2025. My wish is to collect as much data as possible, so as to recover a signal that is way above the noise. A high signal-to-noise ratio is the meaning of evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. If extraterrestrial artifacts are found near Earth, we would know that we are not alone.
In another Sol lecture, the distinguished scholar for International Relations, Alex Wendt, described his insights from a book in preparation, and suggested: “We might be the last humans to know what it is like to be alone.”
If scientific research reveals that we have intelligent partners in our cosmic neighborhood, the current geopolitical fabric might crumble and lose its legitimacy. Afterwards, one can imagine two states of equilibrium for humans: mutual destruction in anarchy or mutual survival in cooperation. It would be prudent to adopt a policy that promotes the second over the first.
But first, scientists must search for indisputable scientific-quality evidence for extraterrestrial partners. The scientific mainstream argues publicly that we are alone until proven wrong. The scientists who advocate this notion choose not to be curious and therefore not to seek the evidence that may prove their underlying assumption wrong. I regard their opinion as noise. It makes much more sense to be guided by the Copernican Principle which postulates that we are not special until proven wrong. In the cosmic scheme of the known unknowns, it would be foolish for us to figure out the nature of dark matter before we figure out the nature of dark extraterrestrial civilizations lurking out there.
I already see some of my critics changing their tunes and transitioning from noise to signal in accordance with Arthur Schopenhauer’s prophecy: “All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”
Finding space products of extraterrestrial civilization will inspire humanity to venture into space. Last night, the inspiring ambition to settle humans on Mars by the visionary Elon Musk, was ridiculed as lacking geopolitical incentive by Neil de Grasse Tyson on “Real Time with Bill Maher.” This is the noise associated with the first stage in Schopenhauer’s prophecy. I wonder how quickly will we get to stage three. Wishing you godspeed, Elon.
Here’s hoping that the mainstream of science will seek evidence and make our generation the last who knows what it is like to believe that we are alone.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Avi Loeb is the head of the Galileo Project, founding director of Harvard University’s — Black Hole Initiative, director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the former chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University (2011–2020). He is a former member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and a former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies. He is the bestselling author of “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” and a co-author of the textbook “Life in the Cosmos”, both published in 2021. The paperback edition of his new book, titled “Interstellar”, was published in August 2024.
