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Have Aliens Found Us? A Harvard Astronomer on the Mysterious Interstellar Object 'Oumuamua (newyorker.com)
On October 19, 2017, astronomers at the University of Hawaii spotted a strange object travelling through our solar system, which they later described as "a red and extremely elongated asteroid." It was the first interstellar object to be detected within our solar system; the scientists named it 'Oumuamua, the Hawaiian word for a scout or messenger. The following October, Avi Loeb, the chair of Harvard's astronomy department, co-wrote a paper (with a Harvard postdoctoral fellow, Shmuel Bialy) that examined 'Oumuamua's "peculiar acceleration" and suggested that the object "may be a fully operational probe sent intentionally to Earth's vicinity by an alien civilization." Loeb has long been interested in the search for extraterrestrial life, and he recently made further headlines by suggesting that we might communicate with the civilization that sent the probe.
Isaac Chotiner of The New Yorker has interviewed Loeb, who was frustrated that scientists saw 'Oumuamua too late in its journey to photograph the object. "My motivation for writing the paper is to alert the community to pay a lot more attention to the next visitor," he told Chotiner. An excerpt from the interview: The New Yorker: Your explanation of why 'Oumuamua might be an interstellar probe may be hard for laypeople to understand. Why might this be the case, beyond the fact that lots of things are possible?
Loeb: There is a Scientific American article I wrote where I summarized six strange facts about 'Oumuamua. The first one is that we didn't expect this object to exist in the first place. We see the solar system and we can calculate at what rate it ejected rocks during its history. And if we assume all planetary systems around other stars are doing the same thing, we can figure out what the population of interstellar objects should be. That calculation results in a lot of possibilities, but the range is much less than needed to explain the discovery of 'Oumuamua.
There is another peculiar fact about this object. When you look at all the stars in the vicinity of the sun, they move relative to the sun, the sun moves relative to them, but only one in five hundred stars in that frame is moving as slow as 'Oumuamua. You would expect that most rocks would move roughly at the speed of the star they came from. If this object came from another star, that star would have to be very special.
[...]The New Yorker: Hold on. "'Not where is the lack of evidence so that I can fit in any hypothesis that I like?' " [Bailer-Jones, of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, in Heidelberg, Germany, has identified four possible home stars for 'Oumuamua, and was asked to respond to Loeb's light-sail theory by NBC.]
Loeb: Well, it's exactly the approach that I took. I approached this with a scientific mind, like I approach any other problem in astronomy or science that I work on. The point is that we follow the evidence, and the evidence in this particular case is that there are six peculiar facts. And one of these facts is that it deviated from an orbit shaped by gravity while not showing any of the telltale signs of cometary outgassing activity. So we don't see the gas around it, we don't see the cometary tail. It has an extreme shape that we have never seen before in either asteroids or comets. We know that we couldn't detect any heat from it and that it's much more shiny, by a factor of ten, than a typical asteroid or comet. All of these are facts. I am following the facts.
Last year, I wrote a paper about cosmology where there was an unusual result, which showed that perhaps the gas in the universe was much colder than we expected. And so we postulated that maybe dark matter has some property that makes the gas cooler. And nobody cares, nobody is worried about it, no one says it is not science. Everyone says that is mainstream -- to consider dark matter, a substance we have never seen. That's completely fine. It doesn't bother anyone. But when you mention the possibility that there could be equipment out there that is coming from another civilization -- which, to my mind, is much less speculative, because we have already sent things into space -- then that is regarded as unscientific. But we didn't just invent this thing out of thin air. The reason we were driven to put in that sentence was because of the evidence, because of the facts. If someone else has a better explanation, they should write a paper about it rather than just saying what you said.
Isaac Chotiner of The New Yorker has interviewed Loeb, who was frustrated that scientists saw 'Oumuamua too late in its journey to photograph the object. "My motivation for writing the paper is to alert the community to pay a lot more attention to the next visitor," he told Chotiner. An excerpt from the interview: The New Yorker: Your explanation of why 'Oumuamua might be an interstellar probe may be hard for laypeople to understand. Why might this be the case, beyond the fact that lots of things are possible?
Loeb: There is a Scientific American article I wrote where I summarized six strange facts about 'Oumuamua. The first one is that we didn't expect this object to exist in the first place. We see the solar system and we can calculate at what rate it ejected rocks during its history. And if we assume all planetary systems around other stars are doing the same thing, we can figure out what the population of interstellar objects should be. That calculation results in a lot of possibilities, but the range is much less than needed to explain the discovery of 'Oumuamua.
There is another peculiar fact about this object. When you look at all the stars in the vicinity of the sun, they move relative to the sun, the sun moves relative to them, but only one in five hundred stars in that frame is moving as slow as 'Oumuamua. You would expect that most rocks would move roughly at the speed of the star they came from. If this object came from another star, that star would have to be very special.
[...]The New Yorker: Hold on. "'Not where is the lack of evidence so that I can fit in any hypothesis that I like?' " [Bailer-Jones, of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, in Heidelberg, Germany, has identified four possible home stars for 'Oumuamua, and was asked to respond to Loeb's light-sail theory by NBC.]
Loeb: Well, it's exactly the approach that I took. I approached this with a scientific mind, like I approach any other problem in astronomy or science that I work on. The point is that we follow the evidence, and the evidence in this particular case is that there are six peculiar facts. And one of these facts is that it deviated from an orbit shaped by gravity while not showing any of the telltale signs of cometary outgassing activity. So we don't see the gas around it, we don't see the cometary tail. It has an extreme shape that we have never seen before in either asteroids or comets. We know that we couldn't detect any heat from it and that it's much more shiny, by a factor of ten, than a typical asteroid or comet. All of these are facts. I am following the facts.
Last year, I wrote a paper about cosmology where there was an unusual result, which showed that perhaps the gas in the universe was much colder than we expected. And so we postulated that maybe dark matter has some property that makes the gas cooler. And nobody cares, nobody is worried about it, no one says it is not science. Everyone says that is mainstream -- to consider dark matter, a substance we have never seen. That's completely fine. It doesn't bother anyone. But when you mention the possibility that there could be equipment out there that is coming from another civilization -- which, to my mind, is much less speculative, because we have already sent things into space -- then that is regarded as unscientific. But we didn't just invent this thing out of thin air. The reason we were driven to put in that sentence was because of the evidence, because of the facts. If someone else has a better explanation, they should write a paper about it rather than just saying what you said.
How could it be an interstellar probe? The nearest star is over 4 light years away. Are they suggesting some civilization managed to build a probe that can travel at an appreciable percentage of the speed of light? Laws of physics suggests "no". You haven't "seen anything like it before" because we have barely "seen" anything.
Hacktivist group Anonymous posted this video on Youtube ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?... ) just 19 hours ago. Its about the mysterious, only partly-excavated Göbeklitepe ruins in Turkey. Anonymous claims that this site, like the Giza Pyramids, is perfectly aligned with certain star constellations, and that strange repeating radio signals from those stars - picked up by radio telescopes - appear to be aimed at the still not fully excavated structures at Göbeklitepe. Mysterious stuff indeed.
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
They investigated planet earth and couldn't find any intelligent life-forms, so continued on their mission.
He seems a bit salty that people don't want to just agree this was aliens.
I think it's a bit more complicated than that. I think he is upset that his hypothesis isn't being given any credence, even at the level of hypothesis. Which, I think, might be fair.
It is also entirely reasonable that the scientific community is extremely reluctant to be seen giving the hypothesis any real credence. Unfortunately, UFO and panspermia crackpots have poisoned that well.
-- Gaxx
To explain the world we have either 1) Science; 2) Solipsism; or 3) Magic. Choose your poison, or some combination of all three. According to my senses and IPU (Information Processing Unit, i.e. brain), hard science has a pretty good track record at explaining the mechanisms of observed phenomena.
One problem is that advocates can pervert the umbrella of science to peddle "advocacy science" or "junk science", where studies based on statistical analysis, improperly used, can yield spurious correlations to support a [social | legal | political | economic | scientific] position. Like the growing sugar revelations, which could be flat out lying for money.
Which I can not blame him for. The actual paper was not all that sensational, but it caught the press's attention and I think that has tainted the scientific community's view of it, which must be very frustrating.
Correlation does not logically confirm causation. Which is the basic argument for denying Man Made Global Warming theories.
Science requires the proper application of logic to the observed facts. Man Made Global Warming is but a theory, it's not a proven fact. Unfortunately we simply cannot cease emitting CO2 for a decade, observe the climate, start emitting again and observe the climate and prove the theory. However, at this point, what does it matter?
Seriously, about the best we can hope for is to prepare for what we THINK is coming here. There is zero chance we can stop emitting CO2 any time soon. Best we just start deciding to deal with the theoretical results of global warming. There is no way we can beat it, so we need to be ready to deal with it.
"There is a zero chance we can stop emitting CO2 any time soon."
Let it just be said that the only reason we can't is because of cowardly, disempowered, disempowering, unimaginative, hopeless statements like yours, and the inaction that that engenders.
Technologically, we are 90% there.
Economically, a rapidly increasing carbon fee and dividend is a simple and non-market-tampering measure that can greatly accelerate the transition in the most cost-effective way.
General intelligence / education wise, and political will wise. That's where we're completely f**ked, which is why statements like yours are actively and probably intentionally destructive to the needed energy transition.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?