Dec 7, 2023 12:04 AM
https://avi-loeb.medium.com/we-are-proba...2772d3c6c2
EXCERPTS: My day was dedicated to a filming crew that traveled from Japan to interview me for a science documentary about Fermi’s Paradox. As they entered my home with an expensive camera that was used to film “Top Gun”, the producer asked: “What do you think about Fermi’s question?”
I explained that the framing of Fermi’s question is arrogant, akin to a person who stays at home and wonders “Where is everybody?”, without investing effort in the search for partners. The search for extraterrestrials should be an unapologetic component of mainstream research in physics and astronomy.
We would have never discovered the Higgs boson or gravitational waves without investing billions of dollars in the searches for them. Given the vastness of space and time in the cosmos, why would we presume that the answer to the most consequential question in science: “Are we not alone?”, will fall into our lap without effort?
Let me be explicit: the existence of extraterrestrials is not an extraordinary claim. It is as ordinary as our own existence. Given that, it is the duty of scientists to invest resources in finding the answer.
[...] Investing resources in the search of extraterrestrials is worthwhile since it offers great benefits, akin to learning from a smarter student in our class of intelligent civilizations. Our current geopolitics suggests that we have a lot to learn on how to survive for a cosmologically significant time.
To learn our lesson, we better look up for extraterrestrials rather than look down on each other. We should foster childlike curiosity and resist childlike bullying... (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPTS: My day was dedicated to a filming crew that traveled from Japan to interview me for a science documentary about Fermi’s Paradox. As they entered my home with an expensive camera that was used to film “Top Gun”, the producer asked: “What do you think about Fermi’s question?”
I explained that the framing of Fermi’s question is arrogant, akin to a person who stays at home and wonders “Where is everybody?”, without investing effort in the search for partners. The search for extraterrestrials should be an unapologetic component of mainstream research in physics and astronomy.
We would have never discovered the Higgs boson or gravitational waves without investing billions of dollars in the searches for them. Given the vastness of space and time in the cosmos, why would we presume that the answer to the most consequential question in science: “Are we not alone?”, will fall into our lap without effort?
Let me be explicit: the existence of extraterrestrials is not an extraordinary claim. It is as ordinary as our own existence. Given that, it is the duty of scientists to invest resources in finding the answer.
[...] Investing resources in the search of extraterrestrials is worthwhile since it offers great benefits, akin to learning from a smarter student in our class of intelligent civilizations. Our current geopolitics suggests that we have a lot to learn on how to survive for a cosmologically significant time.
To learn our lesson, we better look up for extraterrestrials rather than look down on each other. We should foster childlike curiosity and resist childlike bullying... (MORE - missing details)
