Q&A About Aliens in Seoul, South Korea

Professor Avi Loeb delivered a public lecture at Kyung-Hee University in Seoul, South Korea on September 21, 2026. (Image credit: Loeb Photo Archive)Today I delivered an hour-long public lecture at Kyung-Hee University in Seoul, South Korea, on the day before the Miwon Peace Prize will be awarded there to “The Bulletin of Atomic Physicists.” Following my lecture I engaged in a fascinating questions and answers (Q&A) session with the moderator and the audience. Below is the transcript from that exchange. For the full video of the lecture and the subsequent Q&A, click here.***Q: Thank you, Professor Loeb. Your lecture was very inspiring in many ways. And it has given us a lot to think about. So here we are to explore some of these questions further, and also talk about what all of this could mean for humanity.Let me begin with one very direct question. It feels very real now after hearing your lecture and everything about extraterrestrial intelligence. How likely do you think technological artifacts from extraterrestrial civilizations are with us right now?A: As a scientist, I respond to evidence, and I would love to find such evidence. Before that, I’m completely agnostic. There is the very famous Drake equation that quantifies the chance of receiving a radio signal from another civilization. That’s similar to waiting for a phone call. You may have residents on your street, but nobody is calling you. Partly because radio communication might be an old technology. And if there is a post-human future to humanity where AI will shape our future, it’s not clear that AI would be engaged in radio communication. It doesn’t need that. Communication is an ambition of a biological entity like a human, but it may not be the goal of an AI-based civilization.Searching for alien artifacts is actually a very different approach. It doesn’t follow the Drake equation, because the most important unknown in the Drake equation is the duration of the phase where a technological civilization