March 16, 2026—The other day, I happened to hear part of an NPR interview with Avi Loeb, who is a professor of science at the Harvard Center for Astrophysics and author of Extraterrestrial: the First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth, among many other works. He’s a smart guy. I’m going to have to read his book.
The book has to do with an interstellar object named Oumuamua. The controversy over this object is whether it is a natural object or the product of some alien intelligent mind. The reason the controversy arose is that Oumuamua was found to have accelerated in a direction that was unexplained by what we know about asteroids and comets and such. Prof. Loeb thinks that we should not rule out the alien intelligence hypothesis. Other scientists have disagreed.
I would not be surprised if there are other intelligent life forms out in the universe, but I think they would be kinda rare. But rare means here and there. So, given the vastness of the universe, they are bound to be pretty far away.
Oumuamua was discovered because its speed is significantly greater than the speed required to escape the gravitational field of our sun—around 196,000 MPH. That’s about six time the fastest object humans have put into space (Voyager 1 at 38,000 MPH and Voyager 2 at 34,000 MPH).
But 196,000 MPH is roughly 1/3600th of the speed of light. The nearest star to Earth (other than the Sun) is Proxima Centauri, which is 4.24 light years away. An object traveling the speed of Oumuamua would take around 24,000 years to get from here to there.
My questions about extraterrestrials always come down to economics. Would it be economically worth it for some far away space aliens to travel 24,000 years (or probably a lot more) to get here? Maybe 24,000 years is nothing to them. Or maybe it’s an eternity. Oumuamua came from the direction of the star Vega. If it came from there, we’re now talking six times the trip or 144,000 years.
Time is money.
* * *
I’m not going to settle this question.
What’s interesting to me, though, is the human tendency to treat inanimate objects (or objects of unknown nature) as aware and intelligent. We do this, ironically, without even thinking.
I do this when I try to hang a coat on a hook that already has many coats on it. The first time, my coat falls off. But I try again and—notably—I add a command to it. I say, “stay!” as if the coat has volition of its own.
So, it’s not surprising that time after time, awesome phenomena in the sky have inspired thoughts that the “something” out there may be alive. Prof. Loeb will be happy to know that I’m not ruling that possibility out as a hypothesis. But I think it is more likely that he is projecting our own ideas about intelligence on an odd piece of rock that is vrooming through our skies. We once “saw” canals on the surface of Mars. We don’t see them anymore, now that we’ve sent probes to take a look.
It’s the same thing with so-called Artificial Intelligence (AI). These computer algorithms are certainly very impressive, but one has to question whether they are intelligent in the way we are . . . or even in the way dogs or crows or bees or octopi are intelligent.
And then there are the gods. Are we reading something into nature that is really just a projection of our own inclination to see intelligence wherever we look?
* * *
What do you think? Scroll down to comment
Like what you read? Share with your friends.
If you are new to EightOh9, check out the site and let me know what you think.
Eightoh9 