A probing scientific dialogue on mysterious skyborne visitors—and how we interpret them
In recent years, astronomers have confirmed the passage of interstellar objects through our solar system—enigmatic visitors from afar. While some, like comet Borisov, fit with known behavior, objects such as ‘Oumuamua and the meteor IM1 have raised more questions than answers: they showed unexplained acceleration, odd shapes, and material behavior unlike anything we’ve clearly identified in our solar system.
Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb, the Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science, leads the Galileo Project, an initiative using AI-enhanced observatories to document and retrieve fragments of unidentified aerial phenomena. In 2023, his team retrieved over 800 metallic spherules from the ocean floor that he describes as chemically unusual—though not all scientists agree with that interpretation.
Are these spherules potential clues to technology of non-natural origin—or do they reflect unrecognized processes in astrophysics or geochemistry? This conversation will confront the data, dissect the interpretations, and engage with the broader scientific debate in an open, analytical format.
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Avi Loeb is a leading figure in modern astrophysics, known as much for his groundbreaking research as for his willingness to challenge scientific orthodoxy. Born in Israel in 1962, Loeb is the Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science at Harvard University and has served as Director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics since 2007. He chaired Harvard’s Department of Astronomy from 2011 to 2020 and is the founding director of the university’s Black Hole Initiative—the first interdisciplinary center worldwide dedicated to the study of black holes.
A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Physical Society, and the International Academy of Astronautics, Loeb also serves as the science theory director for the Breakthrough Initiatives, a set of interstellar exploration programs funded by the Breakthrough Prize Foundation.
His research spans cosmology, black holes, the first stars, and—most controversially—the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. In 2018, he proposed that the interstellar object ‘Oumuamua, which briefly passed through our solar system, may have been an artificial probe from another civilization. In 2023, he led an expedition that retrieved metallic spherules from the Pacific Ocean, which he believes may be fragments from an interstellar meteor.
Loeb is the author of several books, including Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth (2021) and Interstellar: The Search for Extraterrestrial Life and Our Future in the Stars (2023). Both explore the possibility that we are not alone—and what that might mean for science and society.
