2 HN users recommended this interview2 months2021–2023score 2.5
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
HN recommends it as a good, non-sensational presentation of Loeb's actual argument, usually linked in Oumuamua threads.
Lex Fridman interviews Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb about the interstellar object Oumuamua, aliens and black holes. Loeb lays out his argument that it may be an artifact rather than debris.
“There's a good interview with Avi Loeb on the Lex Fridman podcast about this very topic.” (HN, 2021)
There's a good interview with Avi Loeb on the Lex Fridman podcast about this very topic. His actual argument is fairly compelling and doesn't really sound sensational at all, IMO. [this video]
Loeb's actual argument is compelling and not sensational
He has an interview with Lex Fridman here: [this video] I haven't listened to the whole thing, but he seems to think that aliens visiting our solar system is likely enough that it makes sense to look for. He falls short of the confident certainty I usually expect from cranks though, he's talking about investigating possibilities. I think he's eccentric, but I wouldn't call him a crank.
For context, this is a paper by Avi Loeb [1,2], the "Oumuamua is an interstellar spaceship" researcher. In this paper, Avi explores a possible interstellar origin meteorite. He used data from US air defence senors that had tracked a highly unusual atmospheric entry nearly a decade ago. This object was theorized as a possible extrasolar trajectory meteorite when it had entered the earth's atmosphere. [3,4] Avi recently chartered a research expedition in an attempt to dredge up samples of this meteorite from the sea floor. [1] [link] [2] [this video] [3] [link] [4] [link]
Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.
Plays via YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed
5 Hacker News comments
From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.
Citations, criticism and jokes