Harvard astrophysicist and astronomer Avi Loeb on the search for alien life, his critics, jealousy-driven science, and comparing him to Galileo
- Avi Loeb, a Harvard astrophysicist and astronomer, who is sometimes criticised for his glib style and presentation, talks about the search for aliens
- His research project, named after the astronomer Galileo, was set up to use scientific methods to locate and analyse unidentified objects
Avi Loeb leans in, grabs my hand and says: “Be as critical as you like.”
What, after all, was one more critic?
He resembles a caricature of a scientist, his body wiry and short in a plaid tailored suit, holding an expression that suggests both the severely etched Oppenheimer and the anxious, chain-smoking lawyer Martin Short played years ago on Saturday Night Live.
Certainly that’s the image many of his peers seem to hold of Loeb: one part austerity meets one part sketchy. He is a theoretical astrophysicist. He teaches astronomy at Harvard University and chaired the department for nine years. He is also the director of the Institute for Theory and Computation, the founding director of Harvard’s Black Hole Initiative and former chair of the US National Academies’ Board on Physics and Astronomy.
For decades, he’s been known as a prolific voice on dark matter, black holes, the formation of stars.
“Avi is doing incredibly important work as one of our most important figures in the contemporary search for extraterrestrial intelligence,” says Garrett Graff, a long-time journalist on national security and Pulitzer Prize finalist, whose latest book is UFO: The Inside Story of the US Government’s Search for Alien Life Here – and Out There.