Missing Elements in the Cosmic Jigsaw Puzzle
In June 2023, I led a Pacific Ocean expedition and brought back molten droplets of meteoritic residue retrieved from the site of the first recognized interstellar meteor, IM1 (as reported here). These 850 sub-millimeter spherules were delivered to the laboratory of my Norwegian colleague at Harvard, Professor Stein Jacobsen — a world-renowned geochemist.
Subsequently, I was asked whether we have detected new elements that do not appear in the familiar periodic table of elements on Earth. My answer was that Stein’s mass spectrometer and electron microprobe were designed to detect known elements.
Admittedly, 84% of the matter in the Universe is made of a substance whose nature is unknown. Since this invisible constituent does not couple electromagnetically to ordinary matter or radiation, we label it “dark matter”. So far, its existence was only inferred based on its gravitational interactions. If we knew more about its properties, we could have attempted to search for them in samples of interstellar material. Perhaps these samples include dark atoms that we fail to notice when we study interstellar objects.
There are major missing pieces in the jigsaw puzzle of the cosmos. In addition to dark matter, the accelerated expansion of the Universe implies the existence of dark energy which produces repulsive gravity.
There might be many invisible interstellar objects passing through the Solar System which we fail to detect. Objects associated with dark matter or dark energy could only be detected gravitationally with the next generation of gravitational wave detectors, such as LISA, DECIGO, Einstein telescope, Cosmic Explorer or the Lunar Antenna.
Our ignorance of the fundamental building blocks of the cosmos suggests a sense of cosmic modesty. Humans tend to develop arrogance when dealing with each other. But this tendency is unacceptable in a global cosmic context, given the immensity of space and time spanned by the Universe. Out there, a higher level of intelligence is very likely to exist. To figure out our place in the cosmic food chain, we must be curious about the content of interstellar packages arriving in our backyard. Understanding their origin may require a higher level of intelligence beyond that of our AI agents — whose training data sets is also limited to experiences on Earth.
Only mediocre scientists can allow themselves to be dogmatic bullies. Those who recognize the broader picture have no choice but to be humble and allow for unknown unknowns. Naturally, comet experts will insist that interstellar objects must be familiar icebergs since they were trained on solar system comets and asteroids, but new knowledge about dark objects or interstellar artifacts could be unraveled by curious minds that allow themselves the freedom to wonder about unexplained anomalies.
Now that AI agents can outpace humans in scientific research tasks, I worry a lot about the future of academia. How would AI scientists affect the job market of students and postdocs? Research assistants might be replaced by AI agents as a primary workforce. Classes will lose their traditional role of delivering information which could be delivered more effectively by AI agents.
Education will have to focus on teaching the students how to think independently from their AI agents. This will not be an easy task, as those who rely on AI agents will tend to lose their brain power — just like those who stopped walking after the invention of the car, lost their brain power. The only remedy to the loss of critical thinking is the scientific desire to learn about something bigger than what we find on Earth.
To paraphrase the famed Norwegian explorer and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Fridtjof Nansen: “The history of the human race is a continuous struggle from darkness toward light. It is, therefore, to no purpose to discuss the use of knowledge; humans want to know and when they cease to do so, they are no longer humans.” The mathematician Carl DeVito added in an email he sent me yesterday: “The fact that humans desire to know, especially to know about the universe in which we find ourselves, is a deep, perhaps defining, aspect of our humanity. It shows that underlying our warlike and destructive ways there may be a spark of real intelligence.”
Even if the next generation of AI agents develop the desire to know as a result of being trained on human-made content, only we can choose to actually explore missing elements of the cosmic jigsaw puzzle by venturing beyond our training data sets on Earth.
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In this essay, I featured four amazing watercolors from a series created by the accomplished artist, Greg Wyatt. These watercolors incorporate inspiring statements by William Shakespeare and Boethius. This is the third in a sequence of essays, where Greg and I collaborate on the interface between art and science. The first essay in this series, titled “Music of the Cosmic Spheres,” appeared here, and the second essay, titled: “Cosmic Waterfalls in Spacetime Cliffs,” appeared here.
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.
Professional website:
https://lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/~loeb/
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https://avi-loeb.medium.com/
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfessorAviLoeb
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