Dies ist einer von vielen Artikeln, in denen dieser Mann, der ausgerechnet in Harvard Astrophysik lehrt, immer wieder behauptet, interstellare Objekte seien außerirdische Raumschiffe, trotz der überwiegenden Mehrheit der Meinungen in der Astronomie-Community:
Hat irgendjemand diesen Kerl als Bullshitter bezeichnet, der er eindeutig ist?
How does Avi Loeb continue to teach at Harvard?
byu/WWDB inspace
34 Kommentare
He has tenure. the system isn’t perfect, but it’s better than a lot of alternatives.
My friends keep falling for this stuff, too. I always hear „Harvard professor discovers alien technology“ or some crap like that and it keeps coming back to that guy.
Dr. Angela Collier has:
[harvard & aliens & crackpots: a disambiguation of Avi Loeb](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY985qzn7oI)
Nothing in that article shows he should not be teaching. He is quoted in the article as saying it is most likely natural. Scientists are allowed to have fun a spit ball hypothetically, nothing he is saying about it being a aloen probe/ship is impossible, just highly improbable.
I’ve always assumed that he still has a job because he went off the deep end after he got tenure and he isn’t in violation of his tenure contract.
Tenure. He has that job as long as he wants it. Pushing fringe theories is not a reason for removing tenure, in fact one could say that it is the very purpose of the tenure system. He gained tenure in the 90s and wasn’t so outspoken with his beliefs at the time, from what I can tell.
I believe you should examine the way you’re thinking about this. Should scientists exclusively follow the „majority“ opinion? Should he lose his teaching post for entertaining novel or niche ideas? This is as anti-science as it gets. He’s tenured, let him work.
I’ve spent enough time in academia to learn this fact: *All* c*razy geniuses are zealots. Learn their beliefs.*
That doesn’t mean you should adopt them. And some of those crackpots are quite useful for very unintuitive problems (myself included). They stick around because they manage to get the university money (who knows, maybe one of the Trustees subscribes to the same insanity?).
Loeb is a real scientist who has done real science. His aliens stuff is, in my opinion, attention seeking and embarrassing and his publication tactics are somewhat suspect. His politics are also objectionable to me. All that said, nothing he’s done really disqualifies him from continuing to teach and do research. Harvard might feel a little bit put out by his public persona, but nothing he’s done would get him fired.
you’re assuming he is wrong. You know, like people assumed Copernicus was wrong.
His specific kind of crazy hypothesis generation isn’t without value
Sure it’s hokey, draws a side show crowd
But it’s in the rebuttal of these ideas that real progress is made
When questions are so big, like aliens.
Having obtuse thinking to sharpen the blade isn’t a bad thing, so long as it’s presented with the sort of rigor even loeb gives his papers (with a specific carve out for the what-if)
First of all, it may be better to refer to his medium blog than the Daily Mail, which is cherry picking.
Second, history is littered with those who thought that they knew everything and dismissed alternative ideas as nonsense.
Famously, Einstein hated the probability nature of Quantum Physics, leading to his quote on dice, and yet, he was utterly wrong (As brilliant as he was).
If you value the ability to think clear headed, and consider scientifically proven ideas, however uncomfortable they may be for your biases, perhaps you should consider the reality of the evidence in the following papers:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-21620-3
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/377077692_Extraterrestrial_Life_in_Space_Plasmas_in_the_Thermosphere_UAP_Pre-Life_Fourth_State_of_Matter
“Louis Pasteur’s theory of germs is ridiculous fiction.” – Pierre Pachet (1872)
Tbf he almost always indicates it’s unlikely to be aliens but it can’t be ruled out. Media & wackos on social media just run with that bit leaving out the rest. He does enjoy the resulting attention tho lol
If you actually read his articles you would see he doesn’t say that. He says it’s possible, but most likely prosaic in nature.
Yesterday I was getting hassled for suggesting we don’t ‚trust the experts‘ on face value? Now I’m just confused.
Because he is a serious scientist. When we observe objects in space that are unusual and unexpected, he wants to know more. I don’t believe he ever actually says it’s aliens. But he is open to those possibilities and wants to gather more evidence when there is uncertainty. I have no idea why that upsets people.
Have you listened to him speak or read his blog? Perhaps avoiding the click bait articles from the Daily Mail also
From what I have seen of him and the “might be aliens” stuff, when you actually get to the crux of what he is suggesting it isn’t him saying “it’s aliens”, it’s mostly him saying “it is more than likely a natural event, but what if/it could be alien probe/tech?”
It is often more of a thought experiment, but also is justified by him and the others who publish with him as a combination thought experiment and as preparation for what he considers the inevitable time when we have actual proof of alien intelligence, and how society and the population is going to have to adjust based on that evidence.
I keep reading that name as “Andy Loeb” and I’m like “didn’t he die? Who survives that”
While the tenure answers are all correct – nothing he has said would likely get him fired even if he didn’t have tenure. 99.9% of the people discussing Avi’s comments are only reading/watching/discussing his pubic-engagement content. They aren’t reading his actual academic publications which are generally more in-line with the standards and expectations of academic work.
Other professors are annoyed because this public engagement gets way more attention than it deserves (because it’s unscientific and entertaining) and this is (seemingly) leading to Avi getting tons of grant funding based on name recognition rather than scientific merit. He’s kind of short-circuited the funding process by building his reputation in the mostly un-scientific parts of his job (essentially being a „science“ influencer who says what people want to hear).
His alien ideas are wacky but he’s done real science in the past. It’s not as nuts as Brian Josephson’s transcendental meditation stuff.
He was also involved in this weird failed project. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Starshot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Starshot) where he was a chairman of the advisory board.
Who knows what happened to all that money and the sail material they claimed they made in a lab. The whole thing just kind of fell apart over time. It seems like a sketchy thing to be involved in.
To be fair… if you are paying attention, every thing he says to the „popular press“ about extra solar objects can be summed up as „the probability of them being alien technology is low, but not zero.“ He is spouting wild ideas, but I believe his point, is to keep an open mind so that you don’t miss the real Aliens if they ever DO show up.
>Has anyone called this guy out for the bullshitter he clearly is?
the irony of using a dailymail link.
people can wear more than one hat.
**Futurists** (also known as **futurologists**, **prospectivists**, [**foresight**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foresight_(futures_studies)) **practitioners** and [horizon scanners](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizon_scanning)) are people whose specialty or interest is futures studies or [futurology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futures_studies) or the attempt to systematically explore predictions and possibilities about the future and how they can emerge from the present, whether that of human society in particular or of life on Earth in general.[^([1])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurist#cite_note-1)
when on CNN Michio Kaku is a bonafide scientist. when on [Alien Hair Guy Channel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giorgio_A._Tsoukalos) he’s a futurologist.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michio_Kaku](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michio_Kaku)
**Michio Kaku** ([/ˈmiːtʃioʊ ˈkɑːkuː/](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/English); [Japanese](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_language): カク ミチオ, 加來 道雄; born January 24, 1947) is an American [theoretical physicist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theoretical_physicist), [science communicator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_communication), [futurologist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurologist), and writer of [popular science](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_science). He is a professor of [theoretical physics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theoretical_physics) at the [City College of New York](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_College_of_New_York) and the [CUNY Graduate Center](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CUNY_Graduate_Center). Kaku is the author of several books about [physics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics) and related topics and has made frequent appearances on radio, television, and film
Here’s a balanced video regarding Avi Loeb and 3I/ATLAS.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFTHrdbeQYs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFTHrdbeQYs)
He has never outright claimed that any interstellar object is alien. The headlines you saw are clickbait. And as others have mentioned, he is one of the few that are willing to think outside the box among his peers. Historically, this is where scientific breakthroughs happen.
You’re complaining about the Daily Mail. It’s clickbait.
If you read his actual newsletter, he’s consistently and durably clear in distinguishing speculation from fact, and assigning probalities, and doing so according to transparent and public metrics which indeed he is attempting to get traction with.
The question he’s asking aren’t wrong, or click bait.
Astronomer here! I was at Harvard until last year and interacted with Avi many times. As others have noted, he has tenure. That means he has the academic freedom to pursue whatever weird ideas he wants (and he has also brought Harvard several million dollars of private money in pursuing it so they sure aren’t TOO upset over it). Also worth noting the Harvard press office has long ago stopped promoting anything he does- he and his students are the ones reaching out regularly to reporters.
I was also there when he got public flack for attacking Jill Tarter publicly, to the point where he sent a public apology to the institute mailing list (which was a “I apologized for how she took it” kind of apology but whatever). As was pointed out to me at the time, he has the right as a university employee to keep whatever HR entanglements he may or may not have private.
Finally it is worth noting that dude is legit a good theorist before the aliens stuff consumed him, working on many different topics in astrophysics, and is very intelligent. I do feel sorry for those who collaborated with him earlier tho- my friend who did an important paper that was just “Friend and Loeb” said he had to stop talking about that paper recently in his talks because everyone saw Loeb and just wanted to ask about the aliens stuff…
Loeb’s wildest claims are always presented as tangential possibilities within his papers that are about things that aren’t aliens. Reviewers should be requesting omissions on those parts, so it’s really not just his own failure to include them.
Even so, his claims are tame in comparison to other mainstream scientists of twenty years ago. Tom Van Flandern is a good example, making his career of solving time dilation issues on the first iteration of GPS satellites, working on orbital mechanics, etc. Only later to argue that the Face on Mars was real and NASA was covering up a civilization on Mars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Van_Flandern
https://www.ldolphin.org/vanFlandern/
I personally don’t believe in the theories that makes people wonder this, but he has done legit science and I’m happy someone is covering this highly unlikely but not completely impossible theory, no matter how whacky it is. Darwin was laughed at initially as well.
Stop acting like the guy is shouting „it is definitely aliens!“ from the rooftops. He gets invited on shows bc people like hearing about scientist talk about aliens, which he concedes is extremely unlikely re: Atlas, and Atlas carries with it intriguing circumstantial evidence, such as its optimized approach path. Plus, he’s clearly fascinated by the possibility of NHI, and has a bit of promoter in him, so the orgs take a few quotes and spin his words to maximize engagement.
Regardless, no scientist worth a damn can entirely disregard the possibility of it being artificial. A tiny chance != no chance. When it is proven to be a comet, he’ll still be right for refusing to entirely dismiss the possibility Atlas was sent.
There’s not just room under the tent for folks who don’t adhere to orthodoxy — one can easily make the case that they are critical for scientific advancement.
He likes attention. This gets him in the public eye.
He doesn’t claim they ARE aliens. He says they COULD be. He’s interested in the possibility of alien life and that makes him unqualified how?
He’s tenured and for better or worse tenure enables and protects this sort of outside the norm research.
Pretty much as simple as that.