Renowned astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson continues to dismiss the hypothesis of a Harvard University professor that a massive interstellar object careening toward the sun was sent by alien civilization.

As he spoke in Erie Oct. 29, the same night the 3I/Atlas comet, the third interstellar object ever discovered in our solar system, was expected to come the closest to the sun, Tyson put the odds of it being sent by another life form as low on the list of likely scenarios.

Tyson was referring to the theory of Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb, who recently put the odds of the object being alien technology sent to observe our solar system between 30% and 40%. Tyson referred to Loeb as his “alien-adjacent colleague” and railed against the news media and others for obsessing over the possibility.

But Tyson, like NASA, said the object poses no threat to the planet.

“We have good data on our own comets and asteroids and moons and planets,” he said. “You come from somewhere else, I’m going to expect that we don’t know everything about it. That’s what science is for. And so there’ll be some new things that require us to simply scratch our head. But you want to say aliens are coming? OK, it’s clickbait. Nobody else is saying that about this object but Avi Loeb and his group.

“I get frantic emails from people and texts, ‘Neil, are the aliens going to land? Are they coming? Are they on board 3I/Atlas?’ And they’re all because of this alien-adjacent colleague that I have,” he continued. “So I’d love me to meet some aliens, but I would put that just lower on the likelihood list that he and all the press and all the clickbait and all the public that is following this object.”

Speaking to an audience of 4,000 people at the Bayfront Convention Center, Tyson not only rejected Loeb’s latest theory, he also poked fun at alien conspiracies that have long captured the imagination of the American public.

Tyson, the director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, drove home his point by comparing the sharp images captured by the James Webb Space Telescope of the Eagle Nebula, 7,000 light years away from Earth, to the grainy amateur video of supposed unidentified flying objects.

“So you’re telling me that your best evidence for aliens is a fuzzy monochromatic Tic Tac on a screen from a Navy pilot?” he said. “That’s your best evidence in our own atmosphere?

“I know, we just have to zoom in on it, don’t we? Yeah, let’s just zoom in. Oh, wait a minute, what’s that there? Oh, there, yeah,” he said as he zoomed in on one such video of a UFO to reveal a photoshopped image of an alien, drawing laughter from the packed room. “We’ve had congressional hearings on this and they come in front and they pinky swear in front of everybody that they’re telling you the truth.”

Later he showed video of 22 Starlink satellites perfectly aligned as they moved across the night sky, seemingly disappearing at one point. The video prompted speculation that these dots could be UFOs. Instead, they were satellites falling out of view as they crossed the shadow of Earth in space that is cast by the sun at night.

“So these are either Elon’s Starlink satellites or they’re aliens realizing we’re looking at them and they put on their cloaking device,” Tyson joked.

Tyson spoke in Erie as part of the Global Summit XVII speaker series, a conference put on every fall by the Jefferson Educational Society regional think tank. Former President Barack Obama was the first speaker at this year’s summit.

Tyson’s lecture, titled “This Just In: Latest Discoveries in the Universe,” covered ground from the shifting of the magnetic north pole as it moves toward Siberia to the latest space race, now pitting the U.S. against China.

The animated and comedic Tyson poked fun at the absurdity of the growing antiscience movement, denounced the Trump administration’s cuts to research and development funding, especially at the university level, but also to NASA and NOAA, and lamented anti-immigrant sentiment that’s led to mass deportations.

Comedy and the cosmos

Tyson told older audience members to consult someone half their age if they were unfamiliar with QR codes or the icons for social media platforms. He told the 30-somethings to ask someone twice their age what a compass is. And he asked 12-year-olds to ask their parents about the phrase “stick it where the sun don’t shine” when discussing NASA’s mission to explore an always-sunless crater on the south pole of the moon.

He even compared the satellite debris that’s collected in Earth’s orbit to “peeing in our own bathtub,” to which he added: “Eight-year-olds know what I’m talking about.”

Tyson also revealed the tweet that he never sent to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio earlier this year when Tyson criticized the U.S. government for being “reactive” rather than proactive in its space explorations. Rubio on X called Tyson “a shill for China.”

“He’s right,” Tyson said about how he would have responded Rubio. “Black men from the Bronx make excellent Chinese spies.”

The only match to Tyson’s outsized wit was his ability to seamlessly pivot between awe-inspiring, thought-provoking, poignant and philosophical observations about the universe, geopolitics, American democracy and even the meaning of life.

He noted that a colleague who lost government funding received a call from France offering lab space to continue their research. This poaching, Tyson said, will likely continue, but at a loss to the U.S., not necessarily space exploration in general.

On immigration, he said half of his graduating class in astrophysics was foreign-born, that German immigrants launched the nation’s space program and a third of our country’s Nobel laureates in science were born outside the U.S.

“The rest of the world will continue to value science,” he said, “and cherry-pick us. Then we’ll shrink in our influence in our economy, in our security, because science feeds all of those sectors. And then we’ll look over the fence and say, ‘Hey guys, what are you doing over there? Will you invite us to the table?’ No, they’re going to play the song and we’re going to have to dance to it.”

Discussing what he called “bad asteroids,” he referred to NASA’s Osiris REx mission to the asteroid Bennu. He noted that in 2023 Osiris REx sent back a cannister that contained asteroid dust. Found in that dust were organic molecules.

“Asteroids took out the dinosaurs and we think of them as life-ending events,” he said. “But in fact, they may have brought the original ingredients for life to Earth long ago. The takers away of life and the bringers of life.”

Tyson fielded more than a half-dozen questions from the audience after going over his scheduled time. The final speaker was 16-year-old McDowell High School student Dominic Riazzi, who praised Tyson for coming to Erie and, with the help of his father Jamie, presented him with 350-million-year-old geological formation from nearby Panama Rocks, New York.

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