My family woke up before sunrise today to attend the reenactment of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, which took place exactly 250 years ago.
These battles were the first major military campaign of the American Revolutionary War, fought on April 19, 1775, starting at 5:15 AM. They marked the outbreak of the armed conflict between the regulars — soldiers of the Kingdom of Great Britain, and militias from America’s Thirteen Colonies.
The first shots were fired just as the Sun was rising over Lexington, Massachusetts, in the backdrop that I witness daily on my morning jog. The Lexington militia were instructed by their leader, Captain John Parker: “Do not fire unless you get fired upon.” This is an important lesson for life: it may bring initial losses but it maintains moral superiority. The British regulars who outnumbered the Lexington rebels fired first, killed 8 militiamen and proceeded on to Concord, where they were ultimately turned around by many more Patriots. The American philosopher and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson describes the first shot fired by the Patriots at Concord’s North Bridge in his “Concord Hymn” as the “shot heard round the world”.
The Battle of Lexington, reenacted this morning, took place merely half a mile from my home, and so I take its historic lessons to heart. Battles are not restricted to military confrontations, but also extend to revolutions in science. Going back in history twice relative to the Battle of Lexington, Nicolaus Copernicus was born 551 years ago, and Galileo Galilei was born 461 years ago. They argued for cosmic humility based on scientific evidence that the Earth is not at the center of the Solar system. The followers of the Vatican were far more powerful initially, but by 1992 their assault turned around and the Vatican admitted that the Earth moves around the Sun. I reenact their battles through my search for artifacts of extraterrestrial civilizations near Earth in the framework of the Galileo Project. Today’s “regulars” who attack this research program outnumber the Project’s team members. But on May 1, 2025, I will take part in a public briefing at the U.S. Congress on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs) — signaling the revolutionary possibility that Earth may not be at the technological center of the Universe.
Below is a Q&A about this future scientific revolution from an interview that I had after the Lexington Battle reenactment this morning:
1. If humanity were to discover undeniable evidence of an extraterrestrial civilization, what do you believe would be the most profound impact: scientific, spiritual, or cultural?
The most profound impact will be spiritual, because the encounter is likely to be with beings that are more advanced than we are. The experience might be similar to the religious awe that was felt by Moses when he witnessed the burning bush as evidence for a superhuman entity. Of course, scientific and cultural impacts will follow later, given the massive blow to our presumed existential status in the Universe.
2. Do you think the cosmic silence is more a sign of our solitude — or of our ignorance?
Most likely, the silence is a result of our ignorance regarding the advanced technologies being used by alien civilizations. It may also reflect their lack of interest in us. We are not as impressive as we tend to think on the cosmic dating scene, as I argued on CBS and on GB News this week. We better approach our cosmic neighborhood with humility rather than with arrogance.
3. Could our current definitions of “life” and “intelligence” be too narrow to detect truly alien forms of existence?
Our current concepts of life and intelligence are based on our limited experience on Earth. There is much more real estate beyond Earth. As realtors often say, the values of properties are dictated by three factors: “location, location, and location.” The same must be true in interstellar space.
4. If we discovered that we were being observed by a superior intelligence, should we feel threatened — or comforted?
If they are far more advanced, then we do not pose a threat to them, in the same way that we ignore ants in the cracks of the pavement as we walk down the street.
5. Have you ever considered that the universe and its physical laws might be an artificial construction?
It is possible that the Big Bang was produced by quantum-gravity scientists in white lab coats.
6. What role do you believe intuition or “faith” plays in speculative science? Is imagination a valid tool for discovery?
Imagination is extremely important when exploring the unknown. Without it, we are trapped in prejudice.
7. In your view, is the ultimate purpose of science to understand the universe — or to transcend it?
The ultimate purpose of science is to understand the Universe. We are not capable of transcending it.
8. Could we be the first advanced civilization? If so, are we more burdened by the silence of the cosmos or by the weight of our own potential?
The possibility that we are alone is unlikely, given that the Milky-Way galaxy hosts billions of Earth-Sun analogs. We see many houses like our own on our cosmic street and it is likely that some of these houses hosted residents like us in the past. Most stars formed billions of years before the Sun, so there were likely things like us billions of years ago.
9. If you could send a single message to the stars, what would you write?
What happened before the Big Bang? Where is the nearest hub of intelligent civilizations?
10. In the end, what do you find more unsettling: that we are alone — or that we are not?
I would be troubled if we were alone because our geopolitics is disappointing from a cosmic perspective. We invest most of our resources in conflicts on the rock that we were born on. There is clearly room for improvement and it would be surprising if the Universe did not create something better. We are not the pinnacle of creation and we need to search for better role models in interstellar space than the terrestrial regulars.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Avi Loeb is the head of the Galileo Project, founding director of Harvard University’s — Black Hole Initiative, director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the former chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University (2011–2020). He is a former member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and a former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies. He is the bestselling author of “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” and a co-author of the textbook “Life in the Cosmos”, both published in 2021. The paperback edition of his new book, titled “Interstellar”, was published in August 2024.
