The sincerest expression of love is the desire to know everything about the subject of that love. I love nature. This is why, as a scientist, I wish to obtain as much experimental data as possible about nature. There are an infinite number of virtual realities, some of which are flattering to our ego. But merely expressing them without knowing whether they apply to reality, is like imagining a possible love story with an idealized fictional character, akin to “Prince Charming” or “Princess Charming.”
This was my message to an audience of fifty spiritual leaders who were hosted by the “Harvard Law School Program on Biblical Law and Christian Legal Studies”. My Fireside Chat was moderated by Tim Dalrymple, President and CEO of “Christianity Today”. After Tim introduced me as a farm boy born in the Holy Land and turned into an astrophysicist, I added the disclaimer that my knowledge is limited to the observable Universe. “What lies beyond that is Tim’s expertise,” I reciprocated.
During the next hour of conversation, I explained that science and spirituality both seek to understand the unknown. Our knowledge is an island in an ocean of ignorance. After a century of observational studies, cosmologists do not even know the nature of 85% of the matter and 95% of the energy in the Universe. Not to speak of what happened before the Big Bang. A century ago, Albert Einstein thought that a static Universe is more philosophically appealing than a universe with a beginning in time. Between 1935–1939, Einstein also argued that gravitational waves do not exist, quantum mechanics should not have spooky action at a distance, and black holes do not exist. The experimental teams that proved Einstein wrong by discovering the cosmic microwave background, black holes, gravitational waves and quantum entanglement, received the Physics Nobel Prize. These are all good reasons to stay humble and treat science as a learning experience. Nature is under no obligation to make us happy.
We tend to position ourselves at the center of the Universe, but our default assumption should be that we are not important in the cosmic scheme of things. Nevertheless, our ability to learn about the richness of nature is what makes life worth living. The more we learn, the more difficult it is to avoid being at awe with what nature had before we came to exist. It is humbling to recognize how difficult it is for our modern technologies to imitate nature. The natural neural network of our brain consumes 12 watts, whereas neural networks of artificial intelligence have fewer connections but consume gigawatts of power. In 2024, physicists demonstrated fusion at the National Ignition Facility in Livermore by producing a megajoule of energy, which the Sun produces in a few thousandths of an attosecond (namely, a few times 10 to the power of -21 of a second). Our current technologies are unable to produce a self-healing car or a self-reproducing gadget, whereas the human body heals after minor accidents and can produce new bodies just like it.
Nevertheless, science holds the potential for fulfilling our greatest spiritual aspirations. If physicists develop a predictive theory that unifies quantum mechanics with gravity, they might be able to figure out the conditions that led to the Big Bang. Having that recipe would allow science to artificially create these conditions in the laboratory and give birth to a baby universe. This would fulfil the job requirement for the biblical God who according to the opening of Genesis created our Universe.
This feat might take a very long time to accomplish, perhaps billions of years of science and technology instead of the one century we had since quantum mechanics was discovered. But there is a shortcut. Most stars formed billions of years before the Sun, and another civilization may have figured out quantum gravity by now. Knowing what aliens already know would save us time. Forget about disclosure of what our government knows about aliens. What really matters is disclosure of what aliens know about the Universe.
Having a smarter student in our class offers a future opportunity for bringing science and spirituality together. The Messianic age might be ushered in by a visitor from another star. This will deliver the much-needed shock therapy to humanity, which is currently wasting resources in pointless conflicts on Earth, a tiny residue from the formation of the Sun.
Tim noted that religious Americans are less likely to believe that intelligent life exists on other planets, although in his view God has the attention span to care for beings on multiple planets. I confirmed that I have two daughters and the love I extend to one does not take away from the love to the other. We often think in terms of zero-sum games, but the most fulfilling aspects of our life involve infinite-sum games. A recent poll showed that more Americans believe in extraterrestrial intelligence than in the biblical God. “You have an opportunity to get them into your congregation,” I suggested to Tim.
My hope is that humanity will encounter an interstellar messenger with an uplifting message during my lifetime. Just as in our private life, finding a cosmic partner will give a new meaning to our existence. After that, the night sky will not appear as dark and lonely anymore. The standard cosmological lore will not regard the Universe as a pointless mix of particles and radiation. If we find other actors on the cosmic stage, we can ask them what the play is about. We can visit their homes and witness their technological infrastructure, just like kids visiting neighbors who marvel at their toys.
To pursue this search scientifically, I am leading the Galileo Project which is seeking objects near Earth that may have been manufactured by extraterrestrial technological civilizations. Following the discovery of the first interstellar object, `Oumuamua, on October 19, 2017, I became interested in the scientific study of anomalous objects that visit us from outside the Solar System. The brightness of sunlight reflected off `Oumuamua changed by a factor of ten as this football-field-size object tumbled every eight hours. These extreme brightness variations implied that `Oumuamua was shaped like a pancake. This mysterious object accelerated away from the Sun without signs of cometary evaporation, and receded from Earth faster than any human-made rocket. A similar push by reflection of sunlight was detected for another object, 2020 SO, which was verified to be a rocket booster from a 1966 launch by NASA. To separate technological artifacts from rocks, astronomers can now collect better data on interstellar objects using the Webb telescope and the upcoming Rubin Observatory in Chile.
My conversation with Tim and the spiritual leaders ended after an hour, because I had to teach a class of students at the Harvard Astronomy department. Training young students is key to assuring that we will continue to learn more about our cosmic neighborhood. Hopefully, the Messianic message of peace and prosperity will arrive before humanity will trigger an existential catastrophe with its emerging technologies.
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.
