Avi Loeb

Maybe even they are parked in the outer solar system.

We can't see them.

You know, we cannot see an object smaller than the size of a football field within the Earth-Sun separation.

With our biggest telescopes, we can't...

We are looking, obviously, for objects under the lamppost, just like looking for the keys.

The lamppost is the Sun, and when you put an object too far from the lamppost, you can't see it.

Even if there was an object as big as Starship, our biggest rocket, we wouldn't be able to see it at a distance larger than the Earth-Sun separation.

I can imagine, you know, the solar system extends out to a hundred thousand times the Earth-Sun separation.

That's the edge of the Oort cloud.

And so just parking something at a thousand times the Earth-Sun separation, you know, even if you parked the biggest constructions that we've made in space, you know,

Our biggest telescopes will never be able to see those things.

And so there could be things parked in the solar system and every now and then they send a probe.

We just don't know.

I mean, that could be the answer to Enrico Fermi's question from 1950.

He asked, where is everybody?

Well, they might not be very far.

And he didn't build the telescope to search for them.

That's a mistake that a lot of lonely people make.

My wife, before she met me, she said, there is nobody out there for me.

It's pretty difficult for me to find a partner.