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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Man, Welcome back to Coast to Coast, George noriy with

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Speaker 2: Abby in love with us Abby. What took us so

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Speaker 2: long to discover three I.

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Speaker 3: Atlas, Well, it wasn't too long.

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Speaker 4: It was at a distance of five times the Earth

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Speaker 4: and separation, so it's basically up to our survey telescope

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Speaker 4: to find it. And that was a small telescope half

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Speaker 4: a meter in size, called the Atlas in Chile the

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Speaker 4: discovery because it was relatively bright, and then other observers

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Speaker 4: found the three Atlas in their images a few months

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Speaker 4: earlier actually, But we are basically limited by the fact

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Speaker 4: that the brightness of an object that reflects the sunlight

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Speaker 4: declines inversely with the distance to the fourth power.

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Speaker 3: So when the object is fir, it's extremely deep.

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Speaker 4: And now we have the Ruben Observatory in Chile that

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Speaker 4: started operations in June this year, and it should be

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Speaker 4: far more sensitive than the Atlas telescope, and we hope

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Speaker 4: to find a new interstellar object every few months with

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Speaker 4: the Rubin Observatory, so that will be in the southern sky.

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Speaker 4: It has a camera of three point two gigapixels, a

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Speaker 4: thousand times more pixels than your cell phone camera. And

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Speaker 4: also it covers the southern sky every four nights. We

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Speaker 4: need a similar twin telescope in the northern hemisphere so

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Speaker 4: that we can cover the entire sky. We don't have

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Speaker 4: it at the moment, but that's the best path forward

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Speaker 4: to basically identify interstellar objects by their high speed.

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Speaker 3: They are supposed to be moving.

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Speaker 4: Faster than the speed necessary to escape from the gravitational

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Speaker 4: pool of the Sun, so it's easy to find them

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Speaker 4: based on their speed. And in the case of three Atlas,

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Speaker 4: it was also coming from the direction of the center

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Speaker 4: of the Milky Way galaxy. That's the Sagittarius region in

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Speaker 4: the sky, and it's very crowded in stars, and that

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Speaker 4: was another reason why it wasn't identified earlier. But in principle,

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Speaker 4: you know, we can see such objects even to greater distance,

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Speaker 4: and of course there are many more of them that

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Speaker 4: we should spot as we go farther with bigger telescopes

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Speaker 4: like the Rubin Observatory.

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Speaker 2: With the universe is teeming with extraterrestrial intelligent life, and

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Speaker 2: I believe it is, it would not be unusual to

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Speaker 2: have some kind of space problem coming through the Solar system.

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Speaker 3: It.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, so first I should mention that Voyager our own spacecraft.

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Speaker 4: You know they're making currently there are the distance of

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Speaker 4: about one hundred times the Earth Sun separation, and it

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Speaker 4: will take about It will reach the outskirts of the

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Speaker 4: Oar cloud at one hundred thousand times they are Sun

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Speaker 4: separation in twenty eight thousand years, given its speech, so

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Speaker 4: it will take twenty eight thousand years, and by the

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Speaker 4: year thirty thousand CE it will leave the Solar System

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Speaker 4: at last.

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Speaker 3: You know where I define the Solar.

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Speaker 4: System as the region in space where we find objects

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Speaker 4: that are bound by gravity to the Sun. That's the

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Speaker 4: Solar System. So it will in the year thirty thousand

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Speaker 4: it will get there. By the way, three iatlets will

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Speaker 4: get there to the edge of the Solar System in

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Speaker 4: eight thousand years, so by the year ten thousand, just

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Speaker 4: to show you how much faster it is than Voyager,

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Speaker 4: but even Voyager with the nineteen seventies technology will reach

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Speaker 4: the opposite side of the milky galaxy in less than

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Speaker 4: a billion years. I did the calculation, and that means,

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Speaker 4: you know, since most stars are billions of years older

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Speaker 4: than the Sun, the Sun is a late comer. It

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Speaker 4: only formed in the last one third of cosmic history,

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Speaker 4: exactly one third. Because the age of the Sun is

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Speaker 4: four point six billionaires, the age of the universe is

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Speaker 4: thirteen point eight billionaires, three times larger. So the Sun

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Speaker 4: is a late comer. Most stars from billions of fears

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Speaker 4: before the Sun. And if a civilization like ours formed

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Speaker 4: around these other older stars, they had plenty of time.

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Speaker 4: You know, it takes less than a billionaires with the

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Speaker 4: nineteen seventies technologies of voyager to cross the Milky Way galaxy,

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Speaker 4: so that means they could have arrived at us. And

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Speaker 4: the only question is you know how much traffic there

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Speaker 4: is of technological objects, And we don't know that, And

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Speaker 4: I say the best way to find out is by

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Speaker 4: looking up, looking at the sky and figuring out how

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Speaker 4: many interested.

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Speaker 3: Objects are out there. And you know.

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Speaker 4: Whether among all the rocks that arrive from other planetary

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Speaker 4: systems there are some tennis balls that were thrown by neighbors.

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Speaker 2: Have you speculated on what you think three i at

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Speaker 2: lists might be.

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Speaker 3: Well, obviously you know it could. It could be a comet.

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Speaker 4: Just because it sheds gas and dust, although it has

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Speaker 4: all these anomalies that I mentioned, But in approaching a

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Speaker 4: blind date of interstellar proportions, you know, you don't know

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Speaker 4: what's on.

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Speaker 3: The other side.

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Speaker 4: And my advice to people who go on blind dates is,

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Speaker 4: instead of having an opinion very quickly, just just observe

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Speaker 4: the other side.

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Speaker 3: Don't rush into conclusions.

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Speaker 4: That's the best approach for blind dates, especially when dealing

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Speaker 4: with something that comes from from another star.

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Speaker 3: You know, we just who knows what it is.

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Speaker 4: And so I'm at this point just trying to analyze

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Speaker 4: the data and you know, figure out how unusual it is.

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Speaker 4: Could it be just a natural object or is there

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Speaker 4: a need for something else? And in general, you know,

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Speaker 4: I'm also the head of the Galileo project, where we

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Speaker 4: are looking at unidentified anormalous phenomena near Earth, and I

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Speaker 4: take the same approach. I don't want to guess what

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Speaker 4: we might see, what kind of anomal is Let's just

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Speaker 4: look for outliers, objects that are not familiar, you know,

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Speaker 4: that are not an airplane, satellite, drown, helicopter, or a bird.

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Speaker 3: You know, things that we know exist.

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Speaker 4: And if there is an outlier, something that behaves differently,

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Speaker 4: we just want to check it and learn about it.

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Speaker 4: And you know, the best way of doing science is

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Speaker 4: like a learning experience, being humble, not assuming we know

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Speaker 4: the answer in advance. This goes against the common practice

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Speaker 4: of science by my colleagues, which is to show that

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Speaker 4: they are experts, to show that they know the answers

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Speaker 4: before they have all the data. And so my fundamental point,

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Speaker 4: you know, this is basically the motto that I'm advocating,

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Speaker 4: is that the foundation of science is the humility to learn.

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Speaker 3: It's not the arrogance of expertise.

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Speaker 2: Why would this object have anomalies? Don't you think all

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Speaker 2: commets should act the same?

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Speaker 4: Yeah, they should, and in fact we did so. There

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Speaker 4: were three interstellar objects. The second one was definitely a

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Speaker 4: comet of the type that we're familiar with. It was

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Speaker 4: discovered by Gennadi Borisov, an amateur astronomer from Ukraine, and

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Speaker 4: so it's called Borisov and it did behave just like

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Speaker 4: a comet, nothing unusual about it. So we expect the

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Speaker 4: most interestellar objects to be like that, to be comets,

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Speaker 4: because the easiest way to dislodge an object from the

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Speaker 4: Solar System is for the objects that are far out

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Speaker 4: in the Solar System in the oor cloud these are

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Speaker 4: icy rocks. We see them as comets when they come

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Speaker 4: close to the Sun. Long period comets come from the

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Speaker 4: outskirts of the of the o cloud. That's how we

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Speaker 4: know it exists. And so these are icy rocks, and

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Speaker 4: it's easy to kick them out of the Solar system

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Speaker 4: because they're very loosely bound to the Sun. They move

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Speaker 4: at speeds that are, you know, about one hundred times

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Speaker 4: smaller than the speed of the of the Earth going

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Speaker 4: around the Sun, you know, So they are extremely slow

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Speaker 4: and very weakly bound to the Sun, and a passing

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Speaker 4: start can easily kick them out. And there are lots

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Speaker 4: of stars passing by. And so if you imagine a

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Speaker 4: population of the most abundant objects in the interstellar space

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Speaker 4: out there, and it would be objects that are kicked

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Speaker 4: out of Oort clouds around other stars, and they would

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Speaker 4: all be comets. You would expect them to behave like

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Speaker 4: the comets we find in our old cloud. However, both

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Speaker 4: the first interstell are object, you know, and three atlas

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Speaker 4: are different. They have anomalies and in particular, was definitely

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Speaker 4: not a comet of the type that we're familiar with,

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Speaker 4: because there was no gas or dust around it. Even

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Speaker 4: when we looked very deeply with the Spits of space telescope,

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Speaker 4: we couldn't find any trace of carbon based molecules. And

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Speaker 4: you might say, okay, so what do the experts say?

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Speaker 4: So the comet experts say it's a dark comet. Orm

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Speaker 4: is a dark comet, and by that they mean that

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Speaker 4: it's a comet. But you can't see the signatures of

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Speaker 4: a comet. In other words, there is a tale, but

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Speaker 4: you can't see it. And to me it reminds me

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Speaker 4: of I mean that is I'm not exaggerating here. That

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Speaker 4: is the mainstream view of and the way I feel

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Speaker 4: about it is like the kid in Hans Christian Andersen's

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Speaker 4: tale who said the emperor has no clothes. The adults

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Speaker 4: in the room are saying, no, no, no, the emperor has closed.

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Speaker 4: You just can't see it. So this object is a comet.

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Speaker 4: You just can't see it. It is dressed up in

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Speaker 4: the veil of dust, or not dust, but in a

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Speaker 4: veil of gas that you can't see that is transparent.

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Speaker 4: And this is the folklore of the of the mainstreamer

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Speaker 4: right now, about which I find ridiculous. How can you

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Speaker 4: argue that this is more reasonable than to say no,

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Speaker 4: it's not a comet. And the reason they suggest that

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Speaker 4: is because the object was pushed away from the sun

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Speaker 4: by some mysterious force.

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Speaker 3: And the way you get it for.

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Speaker 4: Comets is by the I'm shedding gas and dust and

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Speaker 4: that introduces the rocket effect. But we didn't see any

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Speaker 4: gas or dust around on Muhmha. I suggested that it's

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Speaker 4: just the sunlight that is pushing it, and for that

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Speaker 4: it needed to be very thin. And in fact, the

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Speaker 4: same telescope that discovered Mumua in twenty seventeen, three years later,

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Speaker 4: it found another object that was pushed by reflecting sunlight,

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Speaker 4: definitely pushed by that, and it was identified as twenty

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Speaker 4: twenty s O. That was the label they gave to

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Speaker 4: this object. And a few months later they measured the

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Speaker 4: spectrum of the object and found that it's made mostly

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Speaker 4: of stainless steel and it's actually a rocket booster that

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Speaker 4: was launched by NASA in nineteen sixty six. So it

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Speaker 4: was definitely technologically it exhibited the same behaviors of Muhamoa,

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Speaker 4: and that was my claim all along. But nobody, you know,

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Speaker 4: makes the connection.

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Speaker 2: Hobby, Will these objects come back into our solar system

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Speaker 2: or they gone.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, well they are gone in the sense that they

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Speaker 4: derive from outside. So they move at a speed that

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Speaker 4: is above the escape speed from the Solar System, and

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Speaker 4: so they pass through and then they go out.

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Speaker 3: And of course the only caveat to that is if

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Speaker 3: they have.

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Speaker 4: An engine, they could return, I mean, they can become bound.

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Speaker 4: But so far, you know, we haven't seen evidence for

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Speaker 4: an engine in any of them.

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Speaker 2: What would be the most compelling argument that would state

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Speaker 2: that this could be from an extraterrestrial source? Three Iye Atlas.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, well, if it does a very strange maneuver, for example,

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Speaker 4: near Jupiter, because you know, Jupiter could be the target

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Speaker 4: because it's the biggest planet in the Solar System, and

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Speaker 4: probably three Atlas started its journey billions of years ago,

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Speaker 4: so if it is technological, it would make sense for

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Speaker 4: it to pay attention to Jupiter, for the senders to

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Speaker 4: pay attention to Jupiter, because the Earth you know, was

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Speaker 4: not particularly interesting billions of years ago, you know, and

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Speaker 4: it was just a swamp, you know, with all kinds

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Speaker 4: of primitive forms of life, and we just came to

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Speaker 4: exist as a technological civilization, you know, just recently, and

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Speaker 4: technology is only one hundred years old here and the

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Speaker 4: modern technology that we use and the humanity as a

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Speaker 4: whole just emerged a few million years ago, which is

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Speaker 4: one percent of the age of the Earth, you know,

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Speaker 4: the most recent part of its history, and so whoever

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Speaker 4: comes to visit does not necessarily have us in mind.

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Speaker 4: You know, we might feel as if we arrived late

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Speaker 4: to the party, the cosmic party, and nobody wants to

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Speaker 4: dance with us because of that, nobody thought about us

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Speaker 4: in the first place. So if it does a maneuver

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Speaker 4: when it comes close to Jupiter on March sixteen, twenty

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Speaker 4: twenty six, you know, that would be an interesting thing

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Speaker 4: to watch for.

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Speaker 3: Or if it deploys some many.

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Speaker 4: Gadgets near Jupiter, that obviously something we can look for.

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Speaker 4: But other than that, I would argue if we find

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Speaker 4: out that the anti tailed jet, for example, is you know,

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Speaker 4: a technological origin coming from a thruster, because it's moving

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Speaker 4: much faster than we expect from the sublimation of pockets

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Speaker 4: of ice on the surface of a rock. That would

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Speaker 4: be a technological signature if we detect any signal coming

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Speaker 4: from it. You know, there were attempts to look at

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Speaker 4: it in the radio band, and then they put limits.

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Speaker 4: They looked at it on two particular or a few

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Speaker 4: particular dates and didn't see any transmission. But it may

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Speaker 4: not be radio transmission. Maybe something else that constitutes a signal.

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Speaker 4: That of course would be a technological signature. Also, if

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Speaker 4: we see artificial lights or heat that is emitted by

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Speaker 4: it beyond the amount of energy that it gets from

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Speaker 4: the sun, you know that that would indicate maybe an engine.

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Speaker 4: So I'm waiting to see a clear signature. We haven't

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Speaker 4: seen any as of now. We just have the anomalies,

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Speaker 4: the unusual facts about it that are not natural, you know,

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Speaker 4: for the comets we know about.

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Speaker 2: Could it be an object of spaceship that is just dead,

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Speaker 2: that has just died out.

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Speaker 3: Yes, it could be.

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Speaker 4: Another possibility one can imagine is that you can hitch

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Speaker 4: hike on an object that looks like a natural comet

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Speaker 4: or asteroid, and in the inside you can have you

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Speaker 4: can deploy some technological gadgets. You know, in principle, it

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Speaker 4: could be like a Trosian horse that nobody would suspect

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Speaker 4: as being a threat to humanity. By the way, in July,

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Speaker 4: just five months ago, I define a new scale that

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Speaker 4: is now called the lobe scale. For interstellar objects, where

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Speaker 4: a rank of zero means that it's a natural object

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Speaker 4: and a rank of ten means that it's definitely technological

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Speaker 4: and it could potentially be a threat to humanity. And

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Speaker 4: originally I ranked three atlases four, which is similar to

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Speaker 4: the rank I gave Ama, But of course I will

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Speaker 4: update that once we have all the data. It could

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Speaker 4: the rank could go down to maybe two if it

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Speaker 4: looks like it's you know, likely to be natural, or

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Speaker 4: may go up if it goes about about five. We

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Speaker 4: need to do something about it. And I think in general,

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Speaker 4: you know, this is something to contemplate for the future.

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Speaker 4: I wrote a white paper to the United Nations where

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Speaker 4: I recommended the establishing a body, committee or organization that

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Speaker 4: would monitor future interstellar objects decide what rank they have

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Speaker 4: on the lobe scale, so you know, if they have

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Speaker 4: the signatures of a potential risk, we need to do

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Speaker 4: something about it.

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