Somewhere in the Skies - A Cosmic Conversation with Avi Loeb

Episode Date: April 18, 2022

On episode 261 of SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES, Ryan and Chrissy welcome back Avi Loeb to discuss breaking news of an interstellar object (NOT 'Oumuamua') that crashed here on planet Earth. Then, they discuss all the latest developments with The Galileo Project and what we can expect moving forward with his continued efforts to capture and analyze possible extraterrestrial intelligence and techno-signatures. Loeb then answers your listener questions! Avi Loeb's most recent article: https://bit.ly/3JIk5oj  Learn more about The Galileo Project at: https://bit.ly/3jE8Q5R  Help the people of Ukraine: https://bit.ly/37ELIRS Patreon: www.patreon.com/somewhereskies Website: www.somewhereintheskies.com YouTube Channel: CLICK HERE Official Store: CLICK HERE Somewhere in the Skies Coffee: CLICK HERE Order Ryan’s book in paperback, ebook, or audiobook by CLICKING HERE Twitter: @SomewhereSkies Follow Chrissy Newton on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/chrissynewton Instagram: @SomewhereSkiesPod Read Ryan’s Articles by CLICKING HERE Watch Mysteries Decoded for free at: https://bit.ly/3rJpbd7 Opening Theme Song, "Ephemeral Reign" by Per Kiilstofte SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES is part of the eOne podcast network. To learn more, CLICK HERE Copyright © 2022 Ryan Sprague. All rights reserved. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/somewhere-in-the-skies. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Netflix. Most valuable promotions in Netflix are hosting a blockbuster triple headliner Saturday, May 16th. Rhonda Rousey returns to face fellow woman's MMA pioneer Gina Carano in the main event. Plus co-main's Nate Diaz versus Mike Perry. And the best heavyweight in the world, Frances Ngano versus Felipe Lenz. Watch Rhonda Rousey versus Gina Carrano, live only on Netflix. Saturday, May 16th at 9 p.m. Eastern Center time, 6 p.m. Pacific time. Today on the show, Harvard professor, astrophysicist, and founder of the Galileo project, Dr. Avi Loeb.

This is Somewhere in the Skies with Ryan Sprague. Hey guys, Ryan Sprague here from Somewhere in the Skies. And I really do have to change the theme, the opening theme for the show, to not just say with Ryan Sprague, because I have my co-pilot with me today for this very special live stream interview. We are doing with the one and only Avi Lope. returning to someone in the skies again. So let's bring Chrissy in first and catch up. Chrissy, how you doing? Hey, good. How are you? I'm awesome. Again, you were the one to put this one together. So I have you to thank. A lot's going on. Some exciting stuff. A story that Avi actually just

released an article about a few days ago, if not yesterday, I believe, that we're going to talk about another interstellar object. Now, a lot of people know Avi's name because of of Amua Amua, the interstellar object that came in and got out of here. But we have an object that actually is on the earth and interstellar objects. So we're going to talk to him all about that, all about the Galileo project and what's new with that. All the fascinating stuff with Hubble and James Webb. But yeah, I guess should we just bring them in, wait a more time? Yeah, let's bring him in. Yeah, let's do it.

Avi, let's do it. That's good. Awesome. Avi, welcome back to somewhere in the skies. Thanks for having me. It's a great pleasure. Good to see you. Thank you. I think the last time I had you on this show was right when your book came out. And there have been some incredible developments since that, including Galileo, which we will talk about. But let's talk about the most recent breaking story. You wrote an article on Medium recently, like I mentioned earlier, about an interstellar object that actually came to Earth.

So I would love, if you don't mind, can you update us on this, what it is, where it happened, and why it's so important with the work that you're doing right now? Right. So this story starts in March 2019 when I was asked for a radio interview in New York City about a meteor that was detected above the Bering Sea near Kamchatka. And I didn't know much about meteor, so I went online. and I realized there is a catalog of data on meteors that the government released,

and it was put online by the Jet Propulsion Lab. And I then reached out to my undergraduate student, Amir Siraj, and said that, why don't we check whether the fastest moving meteors could have come from outside the solar system? It's a very simple idea. When we launch a rocket, if the rocket moves fast enough, it escapes the pool of the earth. And if it moves even faster, it escapes the pool of the sun.

So you can imagine objects that move faster than the escape speed from our neighborhood so that they must have arrived from outside the solar system. And we then, Amir looked at the fastest moving object in that catalog. It turned out that it was a head-on collision with the Earth. So the fastest speed that it had relative to Earth was just because it was, moving in the opposite direction. So it looked as if that object is probably bound to the sun. But the second fastest ended up being unbound to the sun.

In fact, if we extrapolate its trajectory back in time, it had a speed of 40 kilometers per second relative to the sun, faster than the earth moves around the sun. So when it was very far away from the sun, it was already moving faster than the earth is close to the sun. So it was clear that this one looks like an interstellar object. And we wrote a scientific paper, submitted it for publication. And then the referee, the reviewer of the paper said,

well, the government released this data, but there are no uncertainties in the data. And to me it was obvious because the government uses satellites and ground-based sensors to monitor the sky, as a matter of national security. So the uncertainties must be small because they need to know whether a ballistic missile will hit Boston or New York City.

They can't afford having large uncertainties. And they don't want to release the uncertainties because that would inform adversaries of the capabilities of the defense system that the U.S. has. And so we try to convince the referee, the reviewer, without success. And at the time, I was the chair of the board on physics and astronomy of the National Academies. And a member of the board was from Los Alamos. And at dinner, I expressed my

frustration that the paper was not accepted for publication and asked that person who had access to people beyond the national security fence, whether he can try and promote the release declassification of the uncertainty in the measurements of this particular meteor, nothing else. And he worked on it and sent us an email saying, the uncertainties are less than 10%. That was sufficient to imply that it is of interstellar origin. But again, the reviewer said, I cannot accept the paper for publication. It must be declined because it's based on an email.

And how do I know that I can trust that person? And then the editor of the journal tried to find a reviewer that has clearance that can look at the data but without success. So the paper was not published from 2019. And at the same time, you know, within government, there were people trying to allow the government to make a statement that confirms the fact that, you know, indeed the uncertainties are small enough for this to be interstellar for sure. And it took three years. And just last week, this letter was released publicly. It was a letter sent from the Space Command Office of the Department of Defense to NASA, the science division led by Dr. Thomas Zubruhe, saying explicitly that the 99.99% confidence,

this meteor is of interstellar origin, came from outside the solar system. Now, this meteor was discovered on January 8th, 2014, nearly four years before Oumuamua. So in the history books, it should be documented as the first interstellar object that was identified by humans. Not Omuamua because it's four years earlier. And this meteor produced a fireball. That's the way meteors are discovered, that, you know, it's an object entering the atmosphere. and burning up as a result of the friction with the atmosphere. And the amount of energy released was about a percent of the Hiroshima bomb.

So one can infer that this object was roughly the size of half a meter to a meter. And then, you know, like half the height of a person, kind of. It was a small object, a hundred times smaller than Omuamua. Now, the reason that we can detect it is because it burns up in the atmosphere. Whereas to discover Omuamua, we needed to rely on the reflection of sunlight. And the telescopes can only detect an object the size of a football field that Omuamua was within the orbit of the Earth around the sun as a result of reflecting sunlight. But existing telescopes cannot survey the sky for objects as small as a meter,

because they don't reflect enough sunlight unless they collide with the Earth and burn up and then we can see the fireball. So this discovery is important, first because it's the first interstellar object, four years predating on Muamua, but second, because we are looking at a smaller object. And frankly, NASA never launched a spacecraft as big as a football field.

So we expect many more small objects. And if you just do the calculation, there should be a million of them within the orbit of the Earth around the sun. And you can think of the Earth as a fishing net that is, you know, collecting any object along its path. And the size of the fishing net is small. It's the size of the Earth.

And that's why, you know, we see such events every few years. But there are lots of these objects, we can infer a million of them within the orbit of the Earth around the sun. And they're roughly the size of a person. And they came from outside the solar system. And the question, the fundamental question, is any of them of artificial origin, is any of them of equipment?

Now, the good news, again, in this case, if we wanted to figure this out about an object like Omuamua, what we need is to come close to it or land on it. You know, come as close as a thousand kilometers so we can take a photograph that resolves the object and tells us whether it has screws and bolts on it, or maybe a label saying made on exoplanet Y. If we can land on it, we can press some buttons maybe if it's artificial.

We can definitely say whether it's a nitrogen iceberg or a hydrogen iceberg or a dust bunny, the way some of my colleagues argued for things that we've never seen before. But it would be even more exciting if it's artificial. And such a mission to come close to an object coming near Earth but never colliding with the Earth, it would cost us at least a billion dollars. We had such a mission to visit the asteroid Benu. It was called the Osiris Rex, and it will actually bring a sample back to Earth next year

from that piece of rock. But it costs a billion dollars. However, when you have a meteor or the size of emitter and it burns up in the atmosphere, you know, some fragments from it land on the ground. Okay? In this case, it was off the coast of Papua New Guinea, and the fragments should land in the ocean off the coast.

And the ocean is about 1.7 kilometers deep, about a mile deep in that region. And it's possible to design an expedition that will go to the ocean floor with a magnet and collect the debris from the... that meteor. We know the region where the debris must have landed within five miles or so within 10 kilometers. And then it's relatively straightforward. Such an expedition will not, I mean, it will cost maybe one part in 10,000 of a space mission. Okay. And we can do it. And then we can bring the debris to the laboratories and examine it. Whatever bike you're looking for from mountain to road, either pedal powered or electric, we've got what you want ready for super fast delivery.

Quality gear at prices you won't find in your average bike shop. Bikeshomeline.com, ride more for less. Wow. That's a great explanation. I know. I mean, again, like it would cost billions to like land on an asteroid or study it in space, as it were. But the fact that it's, you know, not so much in our backyard, but I guess in the pool of the backyard, like we can now actually study it. So I mean, I guess to kind of play off of that, Avi, like, so what do we do

next? Are there any expeditions set up? Is this something you're interested in pursuing? What comes next for them? I'm very interested and we are, I'm discussing it with my student, Amir, and with some experts that worked on such expeditions in the past. And it's not very expensive. And even, you know, if it costs some tens of thousands of dollars or $100,000, I can fund it from the Galileo project or get someone that will be excited enough to give us the funds. That's not an issue at all. It's not a billion dollars where we need to appeal to NASA's interest. And the interesting point is there would be most likely fragments that are very small. but suppose, just imagine a piece of equipment, okay, that a component of it survived, okay?

And then you can bring it to the lab and examine it. You know, that would be amazing. In the worst case scenario, you know, we will find it's just a rock, okay, that came from interstellar space. I say worst case just because it will not be as exciting. But Papua New Guinea is a beautiful site and spending a week there would be fascinating. anything anyway. Yeah, it's great. Yeah, I know. You're hitting up all these places people dream of going. Oh, Muamua, Hawaii, Papa New Guinea with this one. I love it, man. Hey, you might as well take pleasure in your work. That's what I say, for sure. Well, Chrissy, do you have any follow-ups

on this developing story before we move on? Yeah, I'm just curious to see what people have said back to you. What is your peers, you know, have they messaged you recently since this conversation and the discovery and the article that just came out? You know, are they excited? Is there criticism? You know, what's the thought right now in the science community? It splits into two camps. There are people that are very excited. These are the curious people.

And, you know, I was asked yesterday, I had an interview from Chile. And I was asked, what needs to be changed in the academic community so that we will promote innovation more often? And I said, it's very simple. We just need to behave like kids. I mean, it's not very difficult. Look at kids. You know, they explore the world with curiosity. They just are open-minded.

And that's the way we should behave. The big problem is that a lot of people try to behave as the adults in the room and pretend they know answers to questions based on their past knowledge. But the thrill about life is, you know, finding new things. Let's not pretend we know the answers. Let's enjoy the process of learning new things. And in this case, you know, it's the first interstellar meteor, so let's be excited about it, figure it out. see what it is. And it opens a new avenue of research where we will look for very fast-moving

meteors. And whenever it looks like it's interstellar, based on the measurements, we can go and examine what this object was made of and whether it was technological in origin. I think that's very exciting because there are two types of objects you can imagine from an extraterrestrial technological civilization. There could be objects that are just space trash, you know, the kind of object that New Horizons or Voyager would become in a billion years. So there could be a lot of trash out there, and if such an object impacts the earth, it would just behave like a rock, you know, but land eventually, some fragments from it will land on earth, and then we can examine them.

And, of course, there is a second class of technological object, technological equipment, that is operational. And that will not behave like a rock. that may actually behave more like these unidentified aerial phenomena that the government is talking about. So, you know, those require a completely different set of observations. And that's part of the Galileo project. That's what we are trying to do, build telescopes systems that would look at objects whose nature is unclear and the government is uncertain about.

And frankly, what I really wish, what I really hope, are two things. for those objects that behave like meteors that land on the ground, I want to find this piece of equipment and see if there are any buttons that I can press on it. That would be amazing. That will give me the thrill of my life. For the others, I would like to remove this term of unidentified aerial phenomenon or unidentified flying objects. I would like to remove these terms from our lexicon, not to use them anymore again,

because we will identify what they are, okay? So we don't need to use these words if we have good enough data. You know, if we can resolve an object and figure out whether it's a bird, a drone, a meteor, or, you know, maybe something from outside of this earth. You know, once we figure out what it is because we have a high-resolution image or because, you know, we see how it behaves.

then we will not need the term unidentified. It will be identified. So these are my great hopes that within a few years, either I would be able to press a button or remove the term unidentified from the lexicon of those objects. That's wonderful. Nice. Yeah, well, I love both options. I just hope that button isn't a Trojan horse of some count.

But that's my biggest spirit. Not a scary button. I've watched too much Twilight Zone. I know. Well, Avi, I guess kind of playing off of that. And I do want to read this message really quick from Mark. Thank you for the super chat. Mark.

He said, I first discovered your show when you interviewed Dr. Loeb on Omoa Muamua over a year ago. This was before my interest in UFOs. Dr. Loeb is an inspiration. You and Chrissy are great. Avi, I couldn't agree more. When I had you on the show, it just it was amazing seeing so many young people get interested and not just people interested in UFOs. I'm talking, you know, aspiring astronomers, astrophysicists reaching out to me.

And then you go to the Galileo Project website and you look at all the researchers that are involved with what you have founded. And it's so refreshing to see young people, students even, getting involved in this. Whereas, gosh, five years ago, none of them would touch this in fear of what, you know, the mainstream scientific community would think. And it's amazing, the strides that have been made in the past few years. So thank you to Mark and thank you to you. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, last Friday, I took part in a discussion at the Bitcoin 2020 in Miami, Florida,

and you can find the video online. And the one thing I said to the audience, there were 100. thousand viewers of that discussion. And, you know, I really appreciate the fact that they're mostly young people, because young people do not carry a baggage of past knowledge. They are not really obsessed with themselves, you know, the way the adults in the room often are. You know, that's the biggest problem we have that people at a certain age start focusing on themselves and promoting their image. And that implies that they should pretend. that their past knowledge can explain anything they see

and they are not open to discovering new things because then they would lose their title as experts. An expert is a person who pretends to be able to explain anything based on part knowledge, right? That's where the reputation of an expert comes from. So when I left a room after a lecture about Omuamua, an expert, a colleague of mine that works on rocks for decades, said, Omoa is so weird, I wish it never existed.

And why does he wish that it never existed? Because that threatens his expertise. He prefers to argue this object can be explained based on my past knowledge. And that is exactly the opposite to the way a scientist should think, which is if nature shows me an anomaly, that's nature's way of education. me that I'm missing something. I should be open-minded. Now, of course, it may well be that Oumuua is a nitrogen iceberg, okay?

But to find out, we should not argue that it must be a nitrogen iceberg. We should collect evidence. And, you know, when people say, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, my reply, and that's based on what Carl Sagan said, I say, extraordinary evidence requires extraordinary funding. And by the way, we invested billions of dollars trying to find out what the dark matter is, what most of the matter in the universe is. We still don't know. You know, we were exploring the universe for a century now.

And since 1933, we know that most of the matter in the universe is not the material that we are made of. It's something else. We don't know what it is. And we invested billions of dollars trying to find out through experiments. And we went in directions that were very popular, mainstream. and we didn't find anything. So if we search for technological equipment of other civilizations, something that we sent into space and we say,

there are so many other planets just like the Earth, why don't we just see if anyone else sent equipment to space? You know, that sounds to me like not very speculative. And if we do that for 40 years and invest billions of dollars and not find anything, then we would be exactly at the same point as dark matter searches are right now. And they are part of the mainstream. So I ask myself, how is it possible that the mainstream of astronomy is pushing back on the search?

And that was the reason that I established the Galileo project. I hope it will make a difference. Yeah, it's a first time ever, too. Like a wonderful group of affiliates on the board and researchers. I recently watched your YIP lecture that you did, and it was fabulous, Avi. And I found, you know, some new stuff that you were talking about. And I was like, I'm really excited to talk to you about this with Ryan. You mentioned CERN in that lecture and being able to use CERN with the Galileo project.

Can you talk a little bit about that and how CERN would play a part in it? Because that's very, very exciting. Well, I mentioned CERN to illustrate the fact that we invested $10 billion in the large Hadron Collider. And that was partly to find the Higgs boson, which was found. But that's all news in terms of physics. It's just a confirmation of something that for decades was believed to explain. exist. But in terms of opening new frontiers, Sun was hoping to find the lightest super-symmetric particle, which was the favorite candidate for the dark matter. And nothing was found as of yet.

And, you know, we know that our understanding of physics is incomplete. We know that because we don't know what the dark matter is. And then in order to find out, we have to invest. money and so far we haven't followed the dark matter. So you can't ask for extraordinary evidence without investing the funds to collect that evidence. And otherwise, it's a circular argument. And that's the way that the subject of searching for technological equipment from other civilizations is being dealt with.

People say, we don't have the evidence, therefore forget about it. Everything in the sky must be natural, must be rocks. And, you know, that would be the approach of a cave dweller. finding a cell phone saying it's a rock of a type that we've never seen before. If you have to imagine rocks of a type that we've never seen before, like a nitrogen iceberg, hydrogen iceberg, dust bunny, to explain the anomalies of a muamua, I say you should allow for the possibility that it's artificial because it's something of a type that we've never seen before.

So how can you be sure that it's natural unless you collect more evidence? And, you know, the biggest mistake we can make is be complacent, basically say, oh, there are these anomalies, but don't worry about them. Let's move on and continue to interpret anything we see in the sky as rocks, you know, of some type that we've never seen. That would be the wrong approach. And, you know, one thing we knew about Omuamua is that it's probably flat at the 90% confidence based on the reflection of sunlight as it was tumbling. the other thing we know that it was pushed by some mysterious force, which I explained to be the result of reflection of sunlight.

So if you imagine a thin, flat object, you know, what could be that? And one possibility is that it was a leaflet, you know, a letter, a love letter, in our mailbox from another civilization advising us of what to do. And it would be really tragic if we do not read any letter that comes, in our mailbox because we have an expiration date. That's when wars or climate change or whatever we do damage this environment that we live in will bring an end to our technological civilization. And we better, first of all, figure out if there is a smarter kid on the block.

And second, learn from that kid because that could bring us to. our salvation in some sense. Amen. Yeah. Yeah. Shakespearean at its finest. I know, I know. Well, I heard through Chrissy and through the lecture that you gave, Avi as well,

that you actually were working with the James Webb Telescope. Is that correct? You got to use that. Now we saw the stunning images or image that recently came through on that. So I'd love to know what. What access were you given? And what did you do with your time with the James Webb Telescope? Well, so the story starts in the mid-1990s.

I was on the first scientific advisory committee that designed the web telescope. And at the time, it was called the Next Generation Space Telescope. And the reason I was there is because at the time, I was mainly working on the first stars in the universe. So you can think of it as the scientific version of the story of Genesis, let there be light. And we want to figure out when the first stars formed, because they established our cosmic roots, we would never exist unless carbon and oxygen were produced by stars. They were never produced by the Big Bang, and mostly out of the Big Bang came hydrogen and helium. So for life as we know it to exist, you need

carbon and oxygen and heavy elements. And that was produced in the interiors of stars. And the process started with the first stars about 100 million years after the Big Bang, when the universe was less than a percent of its current age. So we want to see those first stars because that's our roots. That's our cosmic roots. And the James Webb Space Telescope was designed to give us the deepest images of the universe so that we can see the first galaxies, the first stars.

And it was designed to observe in the infrared because the wavelength of light emitted by those stars is stretched by the cosmic expansion, starting from the visible light or ultraviolet light and being stretched into the infrared because red is longer wavelengths. And so that was the original intent. And then, of course, by now we know that there are planets

around other stars, so there are other goals for the James Webb Space Telescope, such as imaging the birth places of planets. You know, like that would be exciting. But the lesson we learned from the Hubble Space Telescope is often a new instrument finds things that you haven't expected. So we shouldn't necessarily forecast what it will find. I was involved most recently, actually, the press release about this discovery came out a day after the announcement about the meteor that we discussed. So the meteor represented the nearest object that was discovered from outside the solar system.

It came so close that it collided with the Earth. but I was also involved a day later in a press release about the farthest object that we ever detected, which exists, that's a galaxy from 300 million years after the Big Bang. And perhaps that galaxy has a very massive black hole at its center because we see a lot of light coming out. We don't know if it came from a black hole or from very massive stars in that galaxy. But that was very exciting. So in the same week, I was part of discovering the closest and the farthest objects from outside the solar system. And of course, with the James Webb Space Telescope, we can learn much more about those early galaxies like the one that we reported about a week ago.

And the other thing we can learn is about objects like Omuamua, because the Webb Telescope is one and a half million kilometers. or about a million miles away from Earth. So when you observe an object like Oumuwa, passing within the orbit of the Earth around the sun, you can see it from two different directions, if you observe it from Earth and from the Webb Telescope, and that allows you to figure out the trajectory in three dimensions. It's called Parlax in astronomy

when you observe something from two different vantage points. And so that would allow us to observe the next Omuamua from two directions and pin down the motion of it very precisely, much better than we did with Oumu-a-Mua and figure out whether there are any forces in addition to the force of gravity from the sun acting on it. And also the James Webb Space Telescope could allow us to learn about the composition of the object from doing spectroscopy of the reflected light and emitted light,

light from the object. So altogether, it offers us much more sensitivity and information about the next Omoa-Mua. And previously, I mentioned the fact that the Galileo project might want to design a space mission to image the next Omuam-Mua, but with the web telescope and with existing new telescopes on Earth, we will get much more information about the next Omu-Mua. even before we date it, before we rendezvous with it. So altogether, I'm very excited that the coming years, you know, will bring us new data, either from the Galileo Project or from other telescopes that, you know, will advance our knowledge because rather than relying on prejudice, we can rely on data, on evidence.

And, you know, that's the way kids behave. if they learn from experience. And I very much hope that, you know, so people ask me, how would you change the opinion of your colleagues? And I say, you know, first of all, I don't feel an obligation to change their opinion. If I do get a high-resolution image of an object that shows that it's a piece of equipment from another civilization,

you know, let other people catch up with me. It's just like Galileo Galile, looking through his telescope, realized that the earth moves around the sun. It took a while for other people to catch up. Today they would have canceled him on social media while he was alive. But that's not an issue because the Earth moves around the sun. It doesn't really matter.

So we just need to figure out what's going on. And then whether people catch up with it or not, whether it's popular on Twitter, is a completely secondary issue. Yeah, I'd love to ask you a question too and circle back with the Hubble Space Telescope because, you know, we're looking the information that just came out about finding an image or sorry, having the distant star in the image that came out. The Hubble is using something, a technique called gravitational lensing that magnifies this distant star.

Are you going to be looking, and I have to bring in the UFO conversation, are you going to look at using gravitational lensing for something to identify smaller objects like UFOs, you know, within even our planet and then outside of it as well? So let me first explain what gravitational lensing is. Actually, the first real test of Einstein's theory of gravity was the deflection of light by the sun. The sun, actually, the force of gravity of the sun can deflect light. And that was detected and, you know, agreed with the prediction of the theory, which is a factor of two of what Newtonian gravity would have predicted.

So then Einstein, around 1940, wrote a paper saying, In principle, a star can act as a gravitational lens. If you have a source behind it, it can focus the light from the background source if it lines up with a star and magnify the amount of light that you see, just like a magnifying glass. Except it's using the force of gravity to focus the light rays. And that prediction, but Einstein commented, well, that would never be detected because the chance of that. happening is small and, you know, but it, for example, in the Milky Way galaxy to observe gravitational lens by a star, you know, the chance, you need to monitor millions of stars, okay? And it turns out that about two decades ago, you know, that was demonstrated, actually three decades ago, that was

demonstrated to be possible. And we monitored, astronomers monitored millions of stars and were able to the effect, the effect of gravitational lensing every now and then. And it was used to figure out if the dark matter is made of compact objects, because then they would lens without you seeing anything. The object is dark. But very tight limits were put on the dark matter being, you know, the mass range of around the mass of the sun based on this experiment. We saw some lensing events, but at a much lower,

abundance, then you would expect if the dark matter was made of objects like primordial black hole of the mass of the sun. Okay, so at any event, we also see gravitational lensing by bigger systems, not just an individual star. We see galaxies lensing the light from a background source, bright source. And we see also clusters of galaxies. They produce beautiful arcs. And there was this recent report where it so happened that the very bright star early on in the universe,

you know, when the universe was just a billion years old, happened to lie behind the so-called caustic, where you get very large magnification by a cluster of galaxies. And the amount of light that we received from it was amplified so much that we could detect a single star, which is quite remarkable. We can also detect a single star when it explodes in the form of a gamma-ray burst. That is also observed. Now, you have to understand the chance of gravitational lensing is small. You need to be lucky.

And so you can't really use it, you know, to figure out, you know, the nature of things that are not very abundant. You know, you need a lot of them before one of them will be lanced. So I don't see a simple way of using gravitational lens just because the probability of having a source behind the lens is so small for the search for technological signatures, but maybe there will be. It's much easier to look directly for technological signatures. So aside from filing, doing extraterrestrial archaeology,

looking for objects in space that I was talking about before, you can look for city lights on the, night side of a planet, you can look for industrial pollution. There are lots of inters, there are lots of technosignatures that you can imagine searching for on other planets without gravitational lensing. But who knows, maybe one day there will be a detection of a signal that was magnified by gravitational lensing that originated from a technological civilization. Nice.

Interesting. Yeah. Well, I mean, while we're on Technosignature, Avi, I'm going to move to a couple listener questions here because I know our time is running a little short. But N8 on Twitter asks, if we do discover the existence of an event's extraterrestrial civilization, what comes next after that discovery? What's like the next step after we find it? I would imagine a ton of peer review would be involved. But yeah, in your opinion, say Galileo does reach its goal and its mission, what comes next after that? Okay, so it's really an important question because if we find an object that is functional,

let's imagine the category of a functional object that has maybe artificial intelligence, trying to seek some information near Earth. Of course, that's very different from finding space trash. Okay. So if we find something like that, the question is what to do about it. It's just like finding a visitor in your backyard. Now, when people thought about protocols for response, they thought about detecting a radio signal from a star that is, you know, thousands of light years away. And you have plenty of time to decide how to respond to that. But if you have a visitor in your backyard, you need to decide immediately what to do. do. And we don't have a protocol for that. And the question is, who represents Earth? Who represents humanity? We don't have an organization that does it. And frankly, even if we established an organization that represents humanity, I would worry about some people outside of the organization that will decide to engage with the object on their own. I don't think we will have full control over

everyone. So that could pose a risk to everyone, depending on the capabilities of that. And object that we find and of course the blueprint of that object. What is it trying to accomplish? I actually had a conversation with Henry Kissinger a few months ago about this. He's 98 years old and I asked him based on your real policy, how would you approach an object that came from a culture that you know nothing about based on your experience. And he said, you know, based on my experience with China and Russia, the first thing to do is try and figure out what the goals of the other side are and what is it trying to accomplish and then respond accordingly. So I think this is the wise thing to do to collect as much information as possible about what information this object is seeking.

and then think about, you know, what would be our best response to that and figure out what the intent is. Of course, we can always be fooled because, you know, this equipment might represent technologies that are much more advanced than what we possess. And then we will never be able to reverse engineer and figure out what the object is doing. and sort of like a cave dweller going to New York City and seeing all the gadgets, you know, that may become a mythical story for the cave dwellers, but it will not allow them to reverse engineer what they found in New York City on a short time scale.

And so we might be at all with the magic that such equipment is exhibiting because our knowledge of physics is incomplete. We know that we have some holes in our understanding, understanding. You know, for example, imagine that dark matter is being used. That's rocket fuel. You know, we would never see it. If, you know, that's the most abundant substance in the universe. Why not use it for rocket fuel if you know what it is? If you know how to engineer it, that would look strange to us. We would see propulsion without anything coming out of the exhaust. This is just one example. Of course, you can think about using the vacuum. We know that the universe is accelerating. We don't know what the dark energy is. So there are lots of holes in our understanding that in principle, an advanced scientific civilization might be able to use once they acquire the knowledge. And it would be difficult for us to understand that. But that is a very challenging issue of how to deal with an object.

Now, of course, if it's space trash, the situation is much simpler. And then maybe the gap would not be as big. my fundamental point is that a very advanced scientific civilization is a good approximation to what religious texts call this God because they might be able to produce synthetic life in the laboratory, they might be able to even produce baby universes in the laboratory if they understand how to unify quantum mechanics and gravity. So I think we have a lot of room to learn from a gap in technology and it offers also a business opportunity for people to import those technologies to Earth.

That's why I think wealthy individuals should put some money into this search because it offers opportunities to leap forward in a way that would take us a lot of time to do ourselves. Right. Get that cosmic coin, right? Get these people invest in that space trash. Yeah, yeah, that space trash. but no, that's such a good point. I know Christopher Plain said, what did you say? Black matter as Rocket Fuel. That's why I love Avi. Yeah, it's so, like, think. Just think if we had this like

endless amount of, oh, God, it blows my mind. Chrissy, I've got a few listener questions and comments here in the Star Chat, but is there anything else you want to ask Avi before I run through those with them quickly? For sure. I just wanted to chat a little bit about the Harvard telescope that you're building right now or who will be currently building. Can you talk a little bit about that and what it will look like and when they'll start using it? Yeah, so we plan to start the assembly in a month. We ordered all the components and it will basically include a set of eight infrared cameras that monitor the entire sky at all times. The system takes a video of the sky in the infrared. We also have a visible light camera that has a fish eye lens that looks at the entire sky at all times.

And we have radio sensors and also an audio sensor that at the same time records everything in the sky. And that data will be processed by software that will use artificial intelligence, machine learning, to identify the type of objects we see. And there are two categories of objects that we can think of. One is natural objects like a bird, lightning in the atmosphere, meteor, or human-made objects like drones, airplanes, satellites. Now, we will, of course, try to see if any object we see can belong to one of these two categories. And if there is anything else that behaves in ways that we cannot explain, that would be, of course, the most exciting. but it's a fishing expedition.

You see, and I should say the meteor expedition that I mentioned before is an actual fishing expedition. We will go into the ocean and fish for the fragments from the meteors. It gives a whole new meaning to the term fishing expedition. But in this case, we use telescopes as our fishing net and try to see which objects are in the sky. Now, once the telescope system on the... the roof of the Harvard College Observatory will work. And by the way, the reason we chose it is simply because it's local and we can make sure the instrumentation works. I mean, the sky is very often cloudy. There was never a major discovery made from the Harvard College Observatory,

no observational astronomy. So we will, once it works the system, we will move it to a location that allows us to learn more about those unidentified aerial phenomena. And we will, will build copies of it. And the number of copies we build will depend on how much money we have. So we can build a few of those with the money we have right now, $2 million. But my hope is we will get eventually we should get to $100 million because that will give us access to hundreds of such systems. And then we cover enough of the sky to get to the bottom of the nature of those unidentified aerial phenomena and a hundred million dollars is not a lot of money it's just one percent of the cost of the large hadron collider it's an amount that is often allocated to medium-sized science

projects and it's an amount that a private donor of sufficient wealth can easily provide so i very much hope that we will inspire such a donor i hope so too yeah i think we all do Guys, Ryan here. The Summer in the Sky's podcast is a labor of love every week. And with that comes many different costs to keep the show running. That's where our Patreon campaign comes in. You give what you think the show is worth. There's different rewards available all the time, including shoutouts on the show, early editions of main episodes, bonus episodes and content, and very soon monthly patron hangouts, where we sit back and chat all things UFOs. So I hope. you'll consider becoming a Patreon subscriber today.

To learn more and to join, visit patreon.com slash somewhere skies. Thank you for your support and keep looking up. Well, Luis is our moderator today and he's going to be putting up some of our starred questions and answers here. But while he's doing that, Avi, this is a good one. Jesper on Facebook actually asks, and I'll get to that one in just a minute, Louise. With Galileo, will we be able, as the podcast, public to like watch as these things happen. Will there be like some sort of app or like notification that like people in the public can be like, oh, they're monitoring an object now.

Like we can go live stream and see what they're looking at. Or would that hinder the actual research being done? Like anything planned like that? Well, we are worried about false alarms. So we don't want to create false alarms. And the way it's done in science is that we need to go through our data, we'll process it through the software first, and then make sure that it's not an artifact of the instrumentation and that we understand what we are seeing. And then we would report in an open way to the public. So eventually we'll release the data, make it open, but there may be some weeks in between the time that we acquired the data and the time to release it, just not to create false alarms

of confusion and misinterpretation. And I don't think you have to worry too much about it because such a project was not done, a scientific project of this magnitude. And, you know, it's the first time we do it. We have to learn and make sure that we understand what we're seeing. And a few months of a delay is not really a big deal

in this context. You know, we, if we find the answer a few within a year, that would be amazing. You know, so just waiting a little bit to make sure the data is reliable and that we understand it is worthwhile so that we don't create, you know, false alarms and then people stop paying attention after a while. Yeah, you don't want it to affect any credibility. And that makes 100% sense.

Totally. You know, in a field full of hype, you know, we have to be careful. We constantly have to be careful. not put our expectations too high. Yeah. The other thing to keep in mind is, you know, we have the government reporting about military data. And, you know, a camera in the cockpit of a fighter jet is not something you can be certain

about in terms of having full control over it. So we want to have full control over our instruments, and that means also understanding them. And that makes the project scientific. rather than anecdotal, you know. So in a way, I mean, we pay a price for trying to be more rigorous, trying to be more reliable. The price is that we just have to wait some weeks before we release the data to make sure that we understand where it's coming from. But that delay is really negligible compared to the amount of time we waited so far since the first government reports came out.

Very good point. Yes, hurry up and wait. Welcome to Uphology and the government. But, Luis, go ahead and throw some of those up, man, for Avi before we get him out of here. He's got another interview as well. He's a busy man. Ryan, please ask Dr. Lope if he has seen the data or knows about it collected by UAPX team. They're coming out with a documentary in the next few weeks about some interesting data. I was able to advance screen this documentary, and I was pretty intrigued by what they captured, both on video and, you know, with the data they collected.

But yes, will you be working with any other independent organizations or even government? I know a lot of people have questions and concerns about that as well with Galileo. How will they play any role in this, any other organizations, whether governmental or independent? Well, I think the trailer, they produced a documentary about this expedition they had last summer. and the trailer talks about them seeing unusual things near Catalina Island. And of course, that's the site where the Navy also reported interesting things happening. And we still have to see the actual data. The trailer is, of course, just an advertisement for the documentary,

and it's not scientific in any way. So I very much look forward to seeing, I mean, they must be writing some article about it. or articles. And I look forward to seeing the data itself. And of course, the Galileo Project will be glad to examine the data and study it. But at the moment, I had no access to it. And there are some members of the Galileo Project affiliates that are part of the UAPX team.

And they told me that they have some interesting results, but I don't know the nature of them. And of course, it's all about the quality of the data, you see. You can have interesting results. The question is how much uncertainty there is. I mean, you can argue that you're seeing a wormhole and it might be a flock of birds. So the question is really how high quality is the data and how conclusive it is. That's the fundamental question.

Not whether the data indicates weird things, but whether the weird things can be analyzed it's a high enough fidelity to demonstrate that they are not natural things. Yeah, and I think they are releasing. I was there for that expedition for just a section of it off Catalina Island myself, but I wasn't there for the other parts of wormhole and everything else they speak to. But from what I've heard, I believe that they are releasing the data after so that it can be reviewed, which they should because everyone, if you're going to say those statements, you really need to have other people looking at it in the scientific community.

Right, and science is about reproducibility of results. And if they found something that they would claim is beyond a reasonable doubt, then the Galileo project should be able to find it as well. It should be there or in other locations. So eventually we'll get to the bottom of it. And it doesn't really matter who gets the data first. And it's really about figuring out the reality that we live in. What is our cosmic neighborhood?

do we have neighbors? Are they smarter than we are? Who finds it is less important? Which window we are looking through is less important? Fundamental question is, are we alone or is there someone out there? And of course, sitting on the sofa and claiming, nobody is knocking on my door is not the right approach. You have to look through your windows. And I'm very glad that UAPX has some data,

but the Galileo project will obviously try to get more data of the best quality we can assemble. Love it. Yeah. I mean, hey, the Earth is a big house. There's plenty of windows to look out of, right? So I love that. The sky is not classified. That's the other thing. I mean, looking for the government to declassified data is like waiting for Godot, this play by the time. It's so true.

I mean, I'm not going to report. I mean, rather than age as you wait for someone else to do something, is to do it yourself. No, wait. Yep. As a theater buff, Avi, you just hit me in the heartstrings, man. Bring it up waiting for Godot. I love it. Here's one last question for you, Avi.

I know you've got to get going. Grant asks, does the proximity of Omuamua to Earth after its perihelian support the ET hypothesis? No, I mean, the trajectory, the orbit of Oumuua was shaped mainly by the sun's gravity. The additional force that was acting on it was at a very low level, less than a percent of the sun's gravity. So, the Omoa was in the part of the trajectory that we could monitor, it was moving mainly as a result of the gravitational force of the sun, mainly. But there was this additional force, and we interpreted it to mean that it's pushed by reflecting sunlight. and in September 2020, there was another object that exhibited the similar quality, pushed by reflecting sunlight, no cometary tail,

and it ended up being a rocket booster from 1966 that NASA launched. And the fact that the same telescope in Hawaii, Pan Stars, discovered both of them and concluded the second one was indeed artificial because we made it, to me illustrates that we can tell the difference between a rock and a very third, thin object. And this second object was not actually designed to be a light sail, to be propelled by reflecting sunlight. It was just

thin. Okay. So it may well be that Omuomu was just thin for a completely different reason. And the question is what was the reason and what was the nature of it? But to gain understanding, we need more data on another object like Omuamua. So sort of like

dating, going on a date and liking the person you went out with, but then the person is out the door, you can find them. And then you're just trying to date the next to Muamua, which is what we plan to do in the coming years. Wonderful. Sounds like my early, good analogy. New York City. Yeah. This has been incredible, man. Again, I don't want to, you have another interview coming up in a few minutes, let you go. But last question before we leave you. here. Is there anything you can tease with us with any upcoming data from Galileo or, you know,

timely endeavors you're going to be doing or conferences you'll be speaking at? Anything you can share with us with what comes next for you? Oh, lots of things. Every day brings new things. I should say, I'm surprised every day. I had 2,500 interviews over the past year, but that was the list of my surprises. I meet quite unusual people that I've never met before and it brings up new opportunities. And, you know, this meteor, for example, opens the door for an expedition. I think that would be very exciting, you know, just figuring out what this meteor that came from outside the solar system was made of and checking whether it was a rock or something else. You know, that I would find that very exciting and in principle it can be done relatively soon.

And with the Galileo project, the rest, you know, building these telescope systems, you know, we are still in the early phase. So I have to wait at least a few months before I can start getting excited by the data. Because that's, you know, we need to keep our eyes on the ball, not on the audience. That's what I've been telling the Galileo project members all along. It doesn't really matter what the audience is saying. don't look at the audience, just keep your eyes on the ball. We need to get this ball, you know, through the hoop.

And, you know, and for that, we need to build the telescope systems and then catch whatever fish come through our fishing net, you know, in this case. Also in the case of the meteor, you know. And I'm very hopeful that within a year or two, we'll know much more than we know now. So just stay tuned. and keep monitoring what's happening. Every few days or a week, I write a commentary about the new developments.

And then, you know, fundamentally, I don't want to look at any classified data because that would limit my ability to speak freely. So you can rest assured that what you see is what you get with me. That's wonderful. I couldn't think of a better way to end it. I also didn't think we would talk about fishing, dating, or basketball in this conversation. So, Avi, thank you.

Thank you for, again, reinvigorating so many of the scientific-minded people out there on this topic of UAP and beyond the topic of UAP. Thank you for your time, what you're doing. And, of course, where can we find everything you're up to if people want to reach out? On my professional website at Harvard University, there are two websites, one of them, has my image on the top right and under it, you will see a lot of videos from recent appearances, but also the opinion essays that I write every few days. You can click on that.

There is a listing of all of them, and you can pretty much stay up to date. And, of course, my book extraterrestrial appeared a year ago. I'm now working on a follow-up. So stay tuned for that in a year or so. Lots of things are happening. It's really exciting. It's awesome.

I love it. You heard it here first, guys, another book coming from Avi Lovie. Thank you so much for joining us again on Somewhere in the Skies. We're going to let you go here and bring in Luis, and we thank him for all his help. But please have a great afternoon. Good luck with the rest of your interviews and keep up the amazing work. Good to see you, Avi. Thanks for hosting me.

Thank you. Wow. So good. Who doesn't love Avi Lowe? And, you know, as professionals, Chrissy and I, we over-prepure for every interview. Always. I had 50 more questions from Patreon members, listeners in the chat here. And I do apologize, guys.

Again, it's hard. Like, we have such limited time. But I think he really covered a lot. And it just, oh, God, especially like today's world. Like, it just made me so hopeful of everything that he's doing. Luis, get your butt in here. kidding. Look at

Look at everyone Rodical son has returned Hey guys What's up man? How are you? Not much My girlfriend is doing an interview of a new employee

in the background So you probably can hear her talking So I My questions will My answers will be as short as possible But yeah It was a great interview you guys It was awesome

Thank you for your help Again It was like again It's so hard doing these things when you're a one or two man woman show. So, no, we appreciate your time, man. Is there anything you wanted to add about

what he brought up tonight? Anything we didn't get to that you hope we can in the future? And yeah, yeah, let's start with that. I would say I'm interested to see how much money he's raised so far and how long he thinks it'll take to get to that $100 million mark.

Or if there's anything that he thinks might propel that investor to actually pull the trigger and spend that money. So I'm interested in that aspect of it. And then the other thing I wanted to just touch base because Brett did pay $10. But the way this question was framed was a little rude. So that's why we didn't ask the question. But if I had to take a guess, and it's a decent question, but just to read this to him feels like we're accusing him of something.

That's the problem with text. Brett. We know you didn't mean it. Yeah. But yeah, let's clarify on this. Avi is going to be speaking at an event. I know there's not much we can share about it. This is a very tight-lipped group that is putting this together.

And they're doing that for a reason. Like there's a lot of things that have to be vetted and sourced and organized. But this disclosure symposium, I know this is something the debrief is involved with. Again, I don't know how much they can share.

Chrissy, if there is anything you can share, fine. If not, we understand. But there will be videos, apparently, that Avi's going to be looking at. That's all I know as a professor. Oh, the UFO community. You know, I think people just stay tuned for the disclosure conference. And I also just think that, you know, Avi's there for a reason as a speaker to talk about UFOs on an overall basis as well, not just on specifics. So I say, you know, people take tune. And I know there's a lot of people that have conversations of what it will be and not. but I think everyone just has to wait. And the debrief will be there and we're covering. So that is, we are a media sponsor and we will be covering the event as well. So I think just stay tuned. It's not too far away. Well, I can I also, I was just to quickly add, like, Havi doesn't know what's going on at that symposium.

He's just been asked to speak there. He doesn't produce the symposium. He doesn't pick the speakers. He doesn't know probably about this video that they're releasing at this thing. So I would just say, take that. in mind as well. Yeah. And I think, yeah, that's, in any speakers that are there, you know, being prevy to anything is really difficult because things get leaked all the time, right? So I think it's just waiting and spending the time and know that, you know, nothing illegal illicit is going on.

So for sure, we would, the debrief wouldn't be attached to that as a news outlet. So rest assured on that. But, you know, we will be covering. So if you go to the debrief.org, you'll be able to see all the articles and, and live coverage when it comes to live stream. there, along with myself doing interviews. So, yeah, so we'll be there covering. And Avi will be there as well. So I'm really looking forward to meeting him in real life, which would be great. Digital is wonderful.

Real life is better. Yeah. I know. Totally different ballgame. I know. That's how I felt when I first met Peter Robbins. I was like, oh, my God, you're crazy. I love the comment.

Avi is hot. I saw that pop up so much and I like giggle to myself. We have to. Avi and I talked a little. off air about him going to all these big events schmoozing with, you know, rich people trying to give money. And she's like, you be careful out there. You're a wanted man. And I think some of our audience would have to agree. I mean, there's nothing sexier than a intelligent mind, in my opinion. And I'm sure a lot of you out there, unless you're all very surface level people. Yeah, yeah, nothing

than sexier than a brain. Yeah, 100%. I'm just looking at the start thing. Not as funny as this comment, though. Oh, no. Is it normal to have it? What? God.

Who are these viewers? I hope we don't get flagged for that. That's your problem. You're not going to flag for that. Sometimes comments are allowed to be kept to yourself. Damn it. Luis. You've failed. No, I'm just kidding. No, you did an incredible job, man. Well, I want to ask you, on a more timely note, you obviously, you've been on vacation over at UCR. Well, well deserved.

The work you guys produce is incredible. I'm honored to be a viewer and sometimes guest. And yeah, you guys needed it. And I think it's great that you're going to take a break, come back with a new format. You've already teased some of the stuff you guys are going to be doing, so I can't wait. But there has been some breaking news by our friend John Greenwald and a lot of stuff going on while you've been on vacation. So, of course, the professional and passionate person you are, you said, coming out of the cave and I'm doing a show. So can you tell us a little about this impromptu show we can expect? Well, I did see the release by John Greenwald, and I was like, oh, I want to talk about that.

But it's too early, man. I literally just started my vacation. I'm like, no. I said I was going to take a break, taking a break. But I also did say that if something big happened, we'd come back and do yousha. And then we got Tim McMillan's article yesterday, which I thought was incredible. It has big implications. And I'm curious to know what's going to be FOIA.

out of it. So I think this story is not has had its final nail in the coffin. I think there's going to be a lot of other stuff that maybe we're going to learn about this situation. But it's just... Can you, if you don't mind, man, can you give us a little bit about what this story is for anyone who's not aware?

This was, you know, something that Elizondo's been preaching about for a long time now, about people that messed with him when he left the Pentagon, when he left DOD and everything. and lo and behold, as usual, a lot of things Elizondo say says eventually comes true. And we're finding out the hard way and the disturbing way that something he did say is pretty much true. So yeah, would you mind giving us a little tease about what you guys would be talking about? So basically, yeah, so Tim did a two-year investigation into this story. And this is part of the IG complaint that Lou Elizando put in.

But a gentleman by the name of Gary Reed, who is the head of counterintelligence, at the Department of Defense. The big story here is that he bungled the, and that's putting it mildly, he really messed up the evacuation from Afghanistan and the coordination of that. I mean, royally, there's people that have died and have been put in very terrible situations.

The videos were just so, yeah, no, insane. Like, but, but, and that had a direct connection to his incompetent. competence on that. So that to me is the biggest part of this story. And then there's also sexual misconduct allegations from the same person, this gentleman, Gary Reed, or yeah, Gary Reed. Not to be mistaken for Harry Reid. That's the last thing we need. But two first different names. So that was sort of the next thing that was very disturbing about the article, that there were multiple women that have considered his advancements on them pretty gross and grotesque. But they have the fear of, well, if I report it, then I don't get promoted.

And the people, there was one victim, if we want to call her that, I'm not sure. But she apparently was into it and she got promoted. And she sort of reaped the rewards of playing ball with this power-hungry, you know, high level executive within the Department of Defense. So that's second thing. The third thing is the UFO aspect of it, which is this is the lynchpin. This was the guy who was basically holding a grudge against Louis Lazzondo. This is the guy that wasn't passing along the information like he should have.

This is the guy that is reporting directly to Susan Goff and telling her that he had nothing to do with the program. And I'm curious to know if he had anything to do with deleting his emails. That's something I want to talk to Tim about. And there's a lot of other things that Tim couldn't put in this article. So we're going to try and get as, you know, as much as we can from him in the next hour or for the hour that we have them. And yeah, so that's the synopsis. That's sort of the, you know, and the thing that you said, like, you know, we've gotten a lot of heat in the last, in the last month from our Lou Elizondo interview, but I've consistently said that when it comes to the congressional and logistics aspect

of this conversation, he's been right every time. He's predicted so many things and things that were just not listening to him when he talks about them. And this was one of them. This was like he hinted, we asked him, like, could this information really be held up by something as simple as an office grudge as somebody not liking somebody it's could it be that and if so how absurd is that and how do we rectify things like that because if it's happening at this level to someone with the pedigree and the resume of a lou elizondo

who else is stuff like this happening to and how do we rectify those things um i would say it's a Maybe deeper than that. I would, there's probably, that's probably I imagine part of it. And there's probably so much going on for sure that's going to come to the surface. But, you know, I was talking to Tim about this too. And just in general, getting let go of the DOD and from anywhere and being ousted is really hard. Like, I think that's what people have to remember too. Like this, that doesn't happen very much.

So for sure, there's something going on. And I know Tim's been working on the story for a very long time. So I'm happy that he's going to be talking about a little more. in depth. But for sure, though, there's legs to this. It's not done yet. Yeah. And, you know, I think it's appropriate that we say grudge. Maybe we are looking

at Project Grudge Part 2. Now we hear that like, you know, before this dude left, this is all rumor mill, welcome to UFO Twitter, but that everything he did with Elizondo and everything that we

want from these new Pentagon groups that are going to looking into UAP, everything, literally everything is being funneled to who else, but Susan Goff. And we know she was tight with this dude. And we know that they're pretty much admitting that anything coming out of the Pentagon with UAP is going to be classified, anything. So it's sobering to think that way. Well, here's the thing, though, is that the guy, the guy who essentially,

was going to be overseeing the A-O-I-M-S-G was Gary Reid. He's gone. Good point. And this is the, this is the thing. I think, I think this is the reason why Christopher Mellon and Lou Elizondo a few months back were like, yo, this office, no, like, we want a separate independent office because they knew it was going to go under Gary Reed supervision. And with him at the head of it, they knew it would probably be smacked up against the, wall. And so that's a very good reason as to why they were raising alarm bells. And it makes

sense now in retrospect. But yeah, I mean, that's important. I didn't even think about that. They're playing the long game. Yeah. Yeah. The strategy might change. We'll see that through Susan Goff too and how she starts coming out when footage comes forward in new statements. That's going to change when you have intelligence. You know, obviously your your boss and you're in cahoots with somebody and you're that close, we're see who's going to, how her statements will evolve now. I'm very curious because she's been pretty quiet

after her last statements that came out and people rip them apart. It's not, and to be honest, as a peer person, it's not easy. It's not an easy job. I never had anything but a pleasurable experience

dealing with Susan Goff when it comes to. Right. And I also think that, right, for sure. And it's not the easiest job. And remember, she is the one that has to say this. This is not her decision too, right?

She is the mouthpiece, and I mean that in the most nice way, lack of words in that, where she's expressing this and disseminating this information too. So I'm not defending her. I don't know her personally in any form, but it's not the easiest job. But I believe that her statements need to evolve. And if she actually believes and understands what's going on and wants to have a little bit more transparency, then she needs to start showing that. And that's through statements and how you speak to the media and everybody else in this community.

So we'll see. But it also shows a little bit that she's not really paying attention to this as much as we think she is because she's relying on what's being told to her. And because Gary Reid told her that she had nothing to do with any of these programs, she then put out a statement as that spokesperson saying he had nothing to do with this program. And then he had to go to Senator Harry read and have him write a letter literally on his deathbed to straighten up what was going on. So Susan Goff has a little bit of mud. How much power does she have, though? Yeah. How much power does she have, though?

That's the question. I know. I don't know. We don't know. We don't know. They're reporting to her, though. You know, they're the ones reporting to her and she's the one making these statements. But if she is formulating it.

And I think that's part of it. It's different than being a forefront in the face of something, rather than having people as a group formulating what. what's going to go forward in the public. It's not one person doing this. And as I know as a PR person, it's multiple people working on statements together. And this has to be passed around. You have to confirm things. She just can't. And if she is, I would be shocked. But most of the time, even in a corporate section, you have to be able to have everything approved before it goes forward. And I would imagine in a topic like this, she's not the one writing all of it. I would imagine that there's other

ghost writers too. So again, not defending her, but knowing, knowing PR and knowing how it works internally. There's way more players and will, again, like, this story's not done yet. Well, and there's going to be way more. Oh, sorry. I was going to say Yeah, yeah, yeah, go ahead. You go. Oh, we had our first trip up of the show.

I'm so, I'm happy. It happened between the three of us. I haven't talked to you. No, you. Yes, and. Yes, and. I'm not good at improv, Louise. You know, this is not. I was just going to say this new group or groups, we're not talking anymore of like,

you know, just Alizondo, like the one man team over at ATIP or whatnot. Like we're talking about an actually fully formed group that's going to be involved in this. So you're right, Chrissy. Like there are going to be different opinions and voices involved. You know,

I really hope everything Jilla Brand brought forward is going to remain in play with all this. We still don't really know. like is it going to be two separate groups? Are they going to emerge? What's it going to be? Who's going to like, you know, be the rebellious one to be like, uh-uh, uh-uh. No, we owe this to the public. We don't know.

Like, it's uncertain of what any of this is going to be. And as the public, we just kind of have to wait to see what that next report is. Like, will it be the classified version that Greenwald released of like 50 million redactions? Or will something like the big phone home three, again, like, hammer these people and get more congressional people to be like, enough. Enough of like the corrupt nature of everything and like just be transparent with the public. Again, we know national security is of an issue. We understand that.

But you can't say that 100% of what you're going to be looking into is classified. That's ridiculous. Yeah, and I don't think we're asking for them to divulge national security. That's the thing we're asking. Especially right now. Exactly. Yeah. You know, it's an unfortunate time that like the UAP thing is so big when like we're dealing with highly sensitive national security, you know, whether in Europe or here.

And that always frustrates me that it seems like the UAP topic just starts to catch like, you know, major waves when other really big things overshadow it. So yeah, I don't think we'll go through EBS and flows. I think it's natural to go through EFFFLOS. And like personally, I feel that the Ukraine stuff should shadow it right now. I'm okay with that. Oh, absolutely. Right. Right.

And there's still information that can come forward and we can still talk about it and report about it. But yeah, like what's going on around the world right now, you know, UFOs can take a little bit of a backseat. But it obviously, it's not going to be, we're not going to stop asking questions. You know, I understand that major media is going to focus on something that is obviously happening to us on our own planet. So it makes sense. But it doesn't mean that, yeah, people that are having YouTube shows and people that are, reporting about this just don't stop because there's always going to be conversations, you know, and that hopefully will come this way.

Yeah. Right. Chrissy. And you made me think of something. And I will let you guys go after I ask you this, unless there's anything else you want to cover. And I have to ask this because it's been in my mind for a while. And I haven't really, like, talked about it with anyone. All of this.

All of it. Ever since the New York Times, ever since Elizondo left, ever since we're hearing, it's not China. It's not Russia. it's not US tech. We've learned ever since the public first learned about the crisis in Ukraine, that we knew this was coming. Ukraine knew this was coming.

They have been talking about it for a long time, that this is going to happen, you know, and Biden said it is in his speech. Like, we were aware. We had a lot of intelligence about this, and a lot of went into it preparing, blah, blah, blah. If you're thinking they were aware of this, maybe one or two years, three years ahead of time that something like this was inevitably going to happen, lo and behold,

it's the same time that all of this UAP stuff starts coming out. And we start hearing it's not Russia, it's not China, it's not the U.S. tech. Again, is this all somehow connected? I don't want to go into that big tinfoil hat area, but it does make me wonder. Why did people come out and say this highly advanced technology is not one of the major players in this war going on right now. And it's not the other superpower that is pretty darn close to that other superpower. And then we're over here saying it ain't us when in reality, maybe some of it is us. And this is our way. of being like, we got our eyes on you. Again, I know I'm blabbing

and I know like there may be nothing to this, but it does make me wonder. It really, really does. Yeah, I still, I am not opposed to it being internal tech. Like, I'm not. Misinformation campaign's been, campaigns have been going on for years. So I think it's still a plausible.

It's still plausible. We just won't find out till later if it is. I would say for Russia, again, I am not a defense reporter. This is where great question to ask Tim at the debrief about this. There you go. Luis. There's one for me. Yeah. But I would say that from what I know and what I've been following Tim and following all of this with him, you know, just alongside him while he's reporting and just reading it, I don't think it's Russian. You know, they would be using it by now. No, exactly. So we

would know that they would be using that tech, if anything, to fight this war. So we don't think it's Russia. China, yeah, for sure. You know, it's still a major possibility. Like, their drone supremacy and everything else with them is unbelievable. And where they're going and what they're building So that's an eye there too. But yeah, it can be internal. And I would never hold it against the state. Well, I'd say hold it against them, but I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't the states doing it.

And yeah, I think we have to be mindful of all of it. Because why can't it be internal tech? Why some of it might be foreign adversaries at one point in time, maybe not right now or and be UFOs. I've been saying this for the longest time. I'm like, too. I'm like, yeah, I've been saying the beginning. I'm like, why not?

I'm like, we have to be open-minded. It's not black and white or one or the other. Yeah, exactly. And we might find out more. So, you know, here's hoping. And then we just keep reporting. Yeah, I agree. I'll never put anything past the possibility of human ingenuity.

So that's for sure. But just real quick, going back. I mean, the timing of it, Ryan, I think it's just gross coincidence. You know, stuff. happens around the world all the time. Major things happen around the world all the time. If it wasn't going to be Afghanistan, it would be,

you know, just what happened in New York City over the weekend or, you know, anything. I mean, when we had, you know, the last big phone home, two weeks a week and a half before the Afghani refugee crisis happened. So it was like, well, why are you guys being so insensitive?

Hey, when is a good time to talk about this? Like, there's always going to be stuff. There's always going to be stuff. always going to be stuff going on if you're but try to be aware and try to be sensitive to it is the best thing you can do but there's you can't predict world events so um well i think the best thing yeah i think the best thing you can do is yeah is even acknowledge that like what you're doing is saying like this is happening around the world and then also so people have a little bit of an update what's going on in other countries like gosh there's so many other countries outside of the

Ukraine right now that are in horrible conditions. And like dealing with civil wars, internal wars, you know, still battling with. Yeah, exactly. So it's not. Domestically speaking, there's a ton of people in pain, like real world pain. So this conversation is always going to be a convenient. Yeah. So I think acknowledging what's happening currently in current events on our own planet and what's

happening makes sense and then moving into the topic that is UFOs. Because the average person that might be watching the show is consumed with UFOs, which makes sense, but they might miss that topic that's happening in the world. So I think that there's a place for both of it. And I don't think it's insensitive, depending if you acknowledge it. If you disacknowledge it, then yeah, I can, I can see that. But, you know, again, there's always going to be something happening. And there's always a conversation right now around UFOs. So. Well, real quick, I wanted to get back to two things, just Susan Goff related.

I would have liked to see a correction out of her office from a PR perspective, making a correction on what you said about Lou Elizondo and apologizing for that, I think would have been appropriate. Probably won't see that. Especially one thing to do. But that's not very good PR. Well, it's not, but you know what? Military, like, looking at like defense PR and anything in the DOD is very different than

how you would do average PR, like for our side with consumer brands or, you know, corporate companies. They are different tactics. I don't think that they should be all the time. I'm very much for transparency. to when you can, but you won't see a state, you won't see her apologize because then it just means they're guilty, you know, it always, right. So it leads to that. But if anything, what they'll do is, you know, maybe change their strategy going forward and hopefully do better. But you won't see

a redaction. If they do, then I'll be very surprised and I'll eat my words. You're great at protecting your data, but lots of places could still expose you to identity theft. I thought it was safe. If that happens, LifeLock gives you a U.S.-based restoration agent who will stick by your side from start to finish. Phone calls, filing documentation, preparing insurance claims, your agent handles it all. In fact, we're so confident restoration is guaranteed. Pour your money back. Isn't it nice to have someone like that on your side?

Save up to 40% your first year at lifelock.com slash Spotify. Terms apply. What I was going to say is, you know, it would be a great PR move. And this is something that Christopher Mellon hinted at in one. one of his blogs is giving Lou Elizondo his old job back. Yes, he did. At the A-O-I-M-S-G and the DoD being that the head of counterintelligence just got fired. And Lou's old job was counterintelligence.

Do not be shocked if Lou ends up stepping into that role. Oh, my gosh. It would be, I imagine. Like the same week as book comes out. just clicked in my head like, oh my God, this could be, they probably saw this coming a couple of months in advance. They knew this was what the investigation was about. And that article, I think, is a lobby to be like, hey, this guy would be perfect for the job. He could do your counterintelligence.

I think he'd be, like, if Louis Luzondo was in charge of the Afghan evacuation, I think he, I don't know. We don't know, but I feel like he'd do a better job than what Gary Reid did. And that was the reason he got fired. I know for sure Lou Elizando is not going to go around sexually harassing people at the Department of Defense. I mean, and Gary Reid would have been in charge of the AIMSG, which he is essentially a beefed up, upgraded version of AIT. It's a perfect fit. And the other question is what else happened? This is just from what Tim knows.

like what else is going on? Like, again, I think this, like, what else is going to come forward? What did it make it into that article? What did it? Yeah. And what is part two? Come on, well, hey, I hope we're going to learn in a couple hours over on UCR.

Listen, guys, I've taken up so much of your time. We go live in 20 minutes. Oh my God. Get out of here. Let's go. We're hanging up. Go get ready for UCR. Everyone.

Go hop over to UCR channel for the first video you will see over there. It's so good to see the. notifications pop up again. I'm not going to lie. Made my day. Made my day. But I have to go to work now. So I'll have to watch the archive. But of course, tell us where we can find UCR, Louise. And Chrissy, please let us know where you can find your stuff as well. Luis, go ahead, my man. Yeah, you just type unidentified celebrity review and you'll find it on YouTube. We're almost a 10,000 subscribers or a couple of way, a handful away. So yeah, if you haven't subscribed, go over and subscribe. We're going to be talking to Tim McMillan today.

We come back officially with our weekly shows on the 28th of this month. So in almost two weeks. So yeah, we're stoked, man. We're excited. That's exciting. Thanks, brother. All right. Get out of here.

Go get ready. Thank you for your invaluable help and assistance. And we'll talk soon. Bye, Louise. Have fun. Later. Chrissy, let us know what's coming up, where we can find your stuff. And yeah, now I can, I've been saying it to a little bit on Twitter.

I'm interviewing Sarah Seeger from MIT about exoplanets. So I'm yeah, I'm super. I'm so excited. She's also Canadian. So like Canadian women right here. I know. I think I was collecting them. Yes, I know.

You're starting a trade. I'm starting Canadian collection of people that love science and UFOs. And I will be, I have been talking to Randall Nickerson. So from that's doing the aerial school. So we will have something hopefully. on that too, and then I will too at the debrief. So take a look at that, the aerial phenomenon movie that's going to be coming out at some point. We don't have a release date.

I know. So I'm excited for that. So just, yeah, just stay tuned. Stay tuned here. Stay tuned at the debrief.org and head over to our YouTube channel and you can see some, some great interviews that will come out there shortly. So. Perfect.

Thank you. Thank you, Chrissy. As always, for all of your help for putting this together. I'll let you go. I'm going to talk shop for a little. bit and we will talk soon. Okay, sounds good. Bye, guys. Awesome. Bye. Bye. Awesome. And then there was one. Guys, thank you. Thank you for joining us today. That was incredible. Avi, just, I could listen to him for 10 more hours. And we will on future

episodes. So before I let all of you go, thank you. Thank you for watching. Thank you for the super chats for all the amazing questions. I do apologize if we didn't get to them all. That's why Avi will come back. He always does. He's incredible with his time. But of course, little talk shop. I'm going to put some links below for some events I'm going to be speaking at in the very near future in August and September, one in Missouri and one in Michigan. So check those links below. I'm going to edit them in right after this. If you're not subscribed to the channel, please do that and click the notification button as well. Share the channel. We are slowly treading behind the UCR, getting up to that 10K subscription.

So thank you. Thank you to everyone who has made this show possible. Thank you to our guest, Avi Loeb, to Luis, to Chrissy, to all of you for being here. We're on Twitter at SummerSkies, Instagram, at SummerSkies Pod.

There is a Somewhere in the Sky's Discord channel now, so you can head over there. Link should be below as well. And other than that, guys, thank you. Thank you for everything. The podcast is every week. You can find it wherever you get your shows. And we've got some awesome

awesome stuff coming up in the very near future. So I'm going to say good afternoon, good night, good morning to everyone around the world. Thank you for joining us again on Somewhere in the Skies and we will talk soon. Have a great night and keep looking at. Somewhere in the Skies is produced by Third Kind Productions in association with the Entertainment One podcast network.