According to Harvard professor Avi Loeb, the discovery of an extraterrestrial civilization that is potentially billions of years old will cause people to come together and work together.
Loeb estimates that the Milky Way galaxy has tens of billions of planets and that hundreds of billions more similar galaxies may be found across the visible universe. He thinks that if we all take the time to notice our neighbors, it will serve as a wake-up call that unites us. He also proposed that many “dead” civilizations may exist across the cosmos and that scientists should look for proof of their existence.
Loeb claims to have discovered possible proof of an extraterrestrial civilization at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, where he uncovered material with “material strength” that was “tougher than most rocks” and was traveling faster than 95% of stars near the sun. Unlike naturally occurring meteorites or other forms of space matter, this material may have been purposely created by another species in the galaxy.
A number of experts have openly disagreed with Loeb, arguing that the available data do not support his views.
Loeb is the leader of the Galileo Project, an initiative that intends to move the hunt for the technical signs of Extraterrestrial technological Civilizations (ETCs) from the realm of speculative, uncorroborated folklore into the realm of rigorous, peer-reviewed science. According to him, looking for extraterrestrial life starts in “our backyard,” where one may look for a “tennis ball that a neighbor hurled.”
The primary distinction between religion and science that Loeb described is that “evidence acquired by instruments leads science.” He urged the global community to publicly disseminate scientific information to “all people,” defining “science knowledge” as information about the cosmos, our neighbors, and the cosmos.
To illustrate his point, Loeb recalls the case of Galileo Galilei, the astronomer and physicist imprisoned for advocating a heliocentric view of the world. He thinks that bias has no place in the scientific method and that the search for a higher intellect may not always be visible here on Earth.
He feels science should be guided by evidence, not by bias.
