Astrophysicist Avi Loeb discusses UFOs, alien life and his controversial interstellar research

On Tuesday, August 29, Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb went to the press with a spectacular claim: His research team had combed the ocean floor for remnants of a meteorite that broke apart over the Pacific in 2014, uncovered spherules of molten droplets and determined that they had originated from outside our solar system. Loeb also said Oumuamua, another mysterious space object — and the first interstellar object ever detected, back in 2017 — could have been a form of alien technology, although others said it was merely a comet passing through the solar system. Loeb published a book about Oumuamua in 2021, and recently published another one titled "Interstellar: The Search for Extraterrestrial Life and Our Future in the Stars" about the Galileo Mission undertaken to recover the spherules from the ocean, the likelihood of alien life outside our solar system and the urgency in finding it. Loeb has garnered a reputation for being the "world's leading alien hunter," and while some of his colleagues are excited by his research, he's also become a point of strife within the scientific community. "I see it as a great boon to science if the public is able to see how an exciting scientific project like the expedition was evolving."