Avi Loeb
Abraham "Avi" Loeb (Hebrew: אברהם (אבי) לייב; born February 26, 1962) is an Israeli-American theoretical physicist who works on astrophysics and cosmology. Loeb is the Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science at Harvard University, where since 2007 he has been Director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Center for Astrophysics.[1][2][3][4][5][6] He chaired the Department of Astronomy from 2011 to 2020, and founded the Black Hole Initiative in 2016.
Avi Loeb
Loeb is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Physical Society, and the International Academy of Astronautics. In 2015, he was appointed as the science theory director for the Breakthrough Initiatives of the Breakthrough Prize Foundation.
Loeb has published popular science books including Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth (2021) and Interstellar: The Search for Extraterrestrial Life and Our Future in the Stars (2023).
In 2018, he suggested that alien space craft may be in the Solar System, using ʻOumuamua as an example.[7] In 2023, he claimed to have recovered material from an interstellar meteor that could be evidence of an alien starship,[8] which some experts criticized as hasty and sensational,[9][10] and for which other experts found more Earth-related explanations instead, demonstrating that the seismic signal attributed by Loeb to the alleged interstellar space craft was actually caused by ordinary truck traffic.[11]
Media appearances[edit]
In 2006, Loeb was featured in a Time magazine cover story on the first stars, and in a Scientific American article on the Dark Ages of the universe. In 2008, he was featured in a Smithsonian magazine cover story on black holes, and in two Astronomy magazine cover stories, one on the collision between the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy and the second on the future state of our universe. In 2009, Loeb reviewed in a Scientific American article a new technique for imaging black hole silhouettes. Loeb received considerable media attention[79] after proposing in 2011 (with E.L. Turner) a new technique for detecting artificially-illuminated objects in the Solar System and beyond,[80] and showing in 2012 (with I. Ginsburg) that planets may transit hypervelocity stars or get kicked to a fraction of the speed of light near the black hole at the center of the Milky Way.[81]
He has been profiled a number of times, including in Science magazine,[82] Discover,[83] and The New York Times.[84] He has been interviewed by Astronomy magazine,[85] by Lex Fridman,[86] Joe Rogan,[87] and Mick West,[88] and by the H3 Podcast.[89] On August 24, 2023, The New York Times published an article about Loeb and his search for signs of extraterrestrial life.[63]
Loeb also regularly writes opinion essays on science and policy.[90][91]
Loeb has received many honors, including:[5]