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Post by swamprat on Oct 26, 2017 9:12:45 GMT -6
Kool!
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Post by auntym on Nov 23, 2017 12:57:07 GMT -6
mysteriousuniverse.org/2017/11/some-speculations-that-interstellar-asteroid-was-a-spaceship/ ‘Oumuamua, Some Speculations that Interstellar Asteroid was a Spaceshipby Paul Seaburn / mysteriousuniverse.org/author/paulseaburn/ November 23, 2017 The point of light in the middle is ‘Oumuamua “I will never say this lightly, but we are, swear to God, actually discussing with some seriousness right now what are the odds that this was actually a spaceship. Which I 100% assure you has never happened before in my memory with seriousness.” Well, that didn’t take long. Shortly after the announcement that the interstellar object, now named ‘Oumuamua, which visited our solar system last month was oddly cylindrical in shape, speculation arose on reddit and other places that it could have actually been a spaceship, possibly one traveling for millions of years and not necessarily occupied anymore. The above comment was from a reddit commentator Andromeda321 who was identified as an astronomer and it stimulated many interesting and well-thought-out comments on the possibility, as well as more than a few expressing incredulity. Also on reddit, Eyusmaximus brings up the possibility that “An interstellar ship could maybe possibly be using an Alcubierre drive” (a theoretical faster-than-light idea using negative mass) and others speculated that its shape resembles a booster drive discarded after usage. Over at Science Fiction & Fantasy Stack Exchange, someone compared the shape and spinning of ‘Oumuamua to that of Rama, the spaceship in Arthur C. Clarke’s sci-fi novel, Rendezvous with Rama, which was 50 km long by 16 km wide (31 by 10 miles – much bigger that the 400 meter long ‘Oumuamua) which had a 0.25 rpm spin to provide artificial gravity. On Twitter at #Oumuamua, AndersonatAberdeen (@andersaberdeen) said “#Oumuamua rather reminds me of the probe from Star Trek IV The Voyage Home.” That’s the whale probe, which had a similar shape. An interesting comment by A.C. Charania (@ac_charania) refers to a paper he wrote in 2008 called “Dyson Asteroid Shells: Hollow Worlds from the Outside-In” which proposes creating “a human asteroid habitat” by “enclosing a small body such as an asteroid (potentially focused on rubble pile compositions) in a rigid or semi-rigid shell” he calls a “Dyson Asteroid Shell.” His drawings suggest a cylindrical shape might be better for space travel. Did some alien civilization beat him to it? Is this more plausible than Tabby’s star and the Dyson sphere? Unfortunately, our measly Earth rockets couldn’t catch up to ‘Oumuamua to do a landing, intercept or visual inspection. In fact, the main ‘visual’ we have of it so far is an artist’s rendition which makes it look like a long pointed rock. A conspiracy theorist might wonder if it was intentionally drawn that way to hide its real identity from the public. Will we ever know if ‘Oumuamua was a spaceship? Probably not. Our best bet, now that we know these oddly-shaped intergalactic asteroids exist, is to watch for more and get better pictures instead of relying on drawings. And, while ‘weird space rock’ is still leading in the polls, it’s always nice to have an opportunity to bring up Arthur C. Clarke and his fascinating and prescient novels. While we wait, what do YOU think ‘Oumuamua is? mysteriousuniverse.org/2017/11/some-speculations-that-interstellar-asteroid-was-a-spaceship/
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Post by auntym on Nov 23, 2017 13:12:13 GMT -6
i say.......‘Oumuamua is a spaceship...
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Post by auntym on Nov 25, 2017 15:46:36 GMT -6
hmmmm.... its interesting how it makes a left hand turn in our galaxy... New Details about Interstellar Visitor on This Week @nasa – November 24, 2017NASA Published on Nov 24, 2017 New data reveal that the interstellar asteroid that recently zipped through our solar system is rocky, cigar-shaped, and has a somewhat reddish hue. It’s the first confirmed object from another star observed in our solar system, and was discovered Oct. 19 by the University of Hawaii’s Pan-STARRS1 telescope team, funded by NASA’s Near-Earth Object Observations Program. The telescope team named it ‘Oumuamua (oh MOO-uh MOO-uh) – Hawaiian for “a messenger from afar arriving first.” The unusually-shaped asteroid, which is up to a quarter mile long and perhaps 10 times as long as it is wide, may provide new clues into how other solar systems formed. Also, Advanced Weather Satellite Launched, James Webb Space Telescope Completes Final Cryogenic Testing, Recurring Martian Streaks: Flowing Sand, Not Water? and Happy Thanksgiving, from Space! This video is available for download from NASA's Image and Video Library: images.nasa.gov/details-NHQ_2...
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Post by auntym on Dec 11, 2017 13:19:38 GMT -6
mysteriousuniverse.org/2017/12/astronomers-focus-search-for-aliens-on-interstellar-mystery-object/ ‘Oumuamua Astronomers Focus Search for Aliens on Interstellar Mystery Objectby Brett Tingley / mysteriousuniverse.org/author/bbtingley/December 12, 2017 There’s no telling what ‘Oumuamua could be. Earlier this year, our solar system got a visitor the likes of which it has never seen. Astronomers first spotted the object on October 18th using the PanSTARRS 1 telescope in Maui. At first, the visitor appeared to be a the first known comet to originate from outside our solar system, but further observations revealed it to be much stranger. Nevertheless, it was clear that the speeding visitor came from interstellar space, so the object was given the name ‘Oumuamua from the Hawaiian meaning “a messenger from afar arriving first.” Further analysis by the European Southern Observatory found the object to be perhaps not quite a comet, not quite an asteroid, and cigar-shaped. Based on the light bouncing off of it (or lack thereof), astronomers estimate the object to be among the darkest objects ever observed in space, absorbing 96% of the light that touches its surface. Given the strange nature of the object, it wasn’t long before speculation ran wild that we might have just encountered our first extraterrestrial spacecraft. Avi Loeb, the chair of Harvard’s astronomy department, writes “the more I study this object, the more unusual it appears, making me wonder whether it might be an artificially made probe which was sent by an alien civilization.” In particular, scientists are struck by the long cylindrical shape of the object; ‘Oumuamua is estimated to be between 100 and 400 meters long with much smaller diameter. Such cylinder shapes are perfect for aerospace applications – just look at our own space shuttles and rockets – but are seldom seen in naturally occurring space objects like comets or asteroids which tend to be more spheroid. With so much weirdness surrounding ‘Oumuamua, the Breakthrough Listen initiative has decided the object could be its best bet for discovering proof of an alien intelligence. Breakthrough Listen hails itself as “the largest ever scientific research program aimed at finding evidence of civilizations beyond Earth” and shares facilities and researchers with SETI. In a press release issued this morning, Breakthrough Listen announced that even if the possibility of ‘Oumuamua being an alien ‘artifact’ is low, it’s worth checking out: Researchers working on long-distance space transportation have previously suggested that a cigar or needle shape is the most likely architecture for an interstellar spacecraft, since this would minimize friction and damage from interstellar gas and dust. While a natural origin is more likely, there is currently no consensus on what that origin might have been, and Breakthrough Listen is well positioned to explore the possibility that ‘Oumuamua could be an artifact. Even if the chances that ‘Oumuamua could be an alien craft are tiny, any possibility greater than 0% is exciting. Could this be it? Are we finally be close to getting a glimpse of a civilization far more advanced than our own? I sure hope so. If this festering dung heap of a civilization is the best the Universe has got, maybe it’s best that we’re all alone out here. Breakthrough Listen’s observations of ‘Oumuamua begin tomorrow at the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia. Fingers crossed. mysteriousuniverse.org/2017/12/astronomers-focus-search-for-aliens-on-interstellar-mystery-object/
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Post by swamprat on Dec 11, 2017 13:53:19 GMT -6
Alien Probe or Galactic Driftwood? SETI Tunes In to 'OumuamuaIt’s a long shot, but scientists are about to listen very closely for radio signals from our solar system’s first known interstellar visitor
By Lee Billings December 11, 2017
Ever since its discovery in mid-October as it passed by Earth already outbound from our solar system, the mysterious object dubbed ‘Oumuamua (Hawaiian for “first messenger”) has left scientists utterly perplexed. Zooming down almost perpendicularly inside Mercury’s orbit at tens of thousands of kilometers per hour—too fast for our star’s gravity to catch—‘Oumuamua appeared to have been dropped in on our solar system from some great interstellar height, picking up even more speed on a slingshot-like loop around the sun before soaring away for parts unknown. It is now already halfway to Jupiter, too far for a rendezvous mission and rapidly fading from the view of Earth’s most powerful telescopes.
Astronomers scrambling to glimpse the fading object have revealed additional oddities. ‘Oumuamua was never seen to sprout a comet-like tail after getting close to the sun, hinting it is not a relatively fresh bit of icy flotsam from the outskirts of a nearby star system. This plus its deep red coloration—which mirrors that of some cosmic-ray-bombarded objects in our solar system—suggested that ‘Oumuamua could be an asteroid from another star. Yet those same observations also indicate ‘Oumuamua might be shaped rather like a needle, up to 800 meters long and only 80 wide, spinning every seven hours and 20 minutes. That would mean it is like no asteroid ever seen before, instead resembling the collision-minimizing form favored in many designs for notional interstellar probes. What’s more, it is twirling at a rate that could tear a loosely-bound rubble pile apart. Whatever ‘Oumuamua is, it appears to be quite solid—likely composed of rock, or even metal—seemingly tailor-made to weather long journeys between stars. So far there are few if any wholly satisfactory explanations as to how such an extremely elongated solid object could naturally form, let alone endure the forces of a natural high-speed ejection from a star system—a process thought to involve a wrenching encounter with a giant planet.
These bizarre characteristics have raised eyebrows among professional practitioners of SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, who use large radio telescopes to listen for interstellar radio transmissions from other cosmic civilizations. If ‘Oumuamua is in fact artificial, the reasoning goes, it might be transmitting or at least leaking radio waves.
So far limited observations of ‘Oumuamua, using facilities such as the SETI Institute’s Allen Telescope Array, have turned up nothing. But this Wednesday at 3 p.m. Eastern time, the Breakthrough Listen project will aim the West Virgina-based 100-meter Green Bank Telescope at ‘Oumuamua for 10 hours of observations in a wide range of radio frequencies, scanning the object across its entire rotation in search of any signals. Breakthrough Listen is part of billionaire Yuri Milner’s Breakthrough Initiatives program, a collection of lavishly-funded efforts aiming to uncover evidence of life elsewhere in the universe. Other projects include Breakthrough Starshot, which intends to develop and launch interstellar probes, as well as Breakthrough Watch, which would use large telescopes to study exoplanets for signs of life.
“With our equipment at Green Bank, we can detect a signal the strength of a mobile phone coming out of this object,” Milner says. “We don’t want to be sensational in any way, and we are very realistic about the chances this is artificial, but because this is a unique situation we think mankind can afford 10 hours of observing time using the best equipment on the planet to check a low-probability hypothesis.” Besides being simply a search for signs of aliens, Breakthrough Listen’s efforts could also narrow down the possibilities for ‘Oumuamua’s composition by looking for signs of water vapor sublimating from any sun-warmed ice lurking beneath the object’s red, desiccated surface.
Avi Loeb, an astrophysicist and Breakthrough advisor at Harvard University who helped persuade Milner to pursue the observations, is similarly pessimistic about prospects for uncovering aliens. There are, he says, arguments against its artificial origins. For one thing, its estimated spin rate seems too low to create useful amounts of “artificial gravity” for anything onboard. Furthermore, ‘Oumuamua shows no sign of moving due to rocketry or other technology, instead following an orbit shaped by the gravitational force of the sun. Its speed relative to the solar system (about 20 kilometers per second) also seems rather slow for any interstellar probe, which presumably would cruise at higher speeds for faster trips between stars. But that pace aligns perfectly with those of typical nearby stars—suggesting ‘Oumuamua might be merely a piece of galactic “driftwood” washed up by celestial currents.
Then again, Loeb says, “perhaps the aliens have a mothership that travels fast and releases baby spacecraft that freely fall into planetary system on a reconnaissance mission. In such a case, we might be able to intercept a communication signal between the different spacecraft.”
Several years ago Loeb and two colleagues performed a speculative calculation estimating the interstellar abundance of ‘Oumuamua-sized space rocks based on the density of stars in the Milky Way and the vagaries of planet formation. That calculation, Loeb says, suggests the number of such space rocks is at least a hundred thousand times too low to account for ‘Oumuamua’s detection. Simply put, objects like ‘Oumuamua should be far too rare for our current telescopes to have any reasonable chance of spotting one. Newer studies gauging the odds find that for ‘Oumuamua’s detection to not be an astronomically unlikely fluke, there must be a sizeable population of such objects continuously passing through our solar system. This in turn suggests that more-capable future observatories, such as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, will find many more when they begin operations in the 2020s.
“Typically in astronomy we don’t see things that are rare—if we see one, that means there’s a lot more out there,” says Breakthrough Listen’s lead scientist Andrew Siemion, who is also director of the Berkeley SETI Research Center. “So, while this is most likely a natural object, if we don’t eventually see any more, that would indeed be very strange and would increase interest from a SETI perspective.”
Either way, Siemion says, “‘Oumuamua’s presence within our solar system affords Breakthrough Listen an opportunity to reach unprecedented sensitivities to possible artificial transmitters and demonstrate our ability to track nearby, fast-moving objects. Whether this object turns out to be artificial or natural, it’s a great target.
And if, against all odds, the Green Bank Telescope detects signals from this mysterious interstellar interloper—what happens then? Breakthrough Listen’s leaders assure us they would keep no secrets. First, the team at Green Bank would immediately re-observe ‘Oumuamua to confirm the signal. Next, they would reach out to astronomers around the world who could target the object with other radio telescopes. “We quite literally have a little Rolodex just for that,” Siemion says. “And at that moment this would become public. There’s no way to keep something like this a secret, because it requires us calling everyone we can. We tend not to ‘cry wolf’ about these things.”
Lee Billings is an associate editor for Scientific American. He covers space and physics. Credit: Nick Higgins
www.scientificamerican.com/article/alien-probe-or-galactic-driftwood-seti-tunes-in-to-oumuamua/
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Post by auntym on Dec 11, 2017 14:17:24 GMT -6
breakthroughinitiatives.org/news/14 Fraser CainVerified account @fcain
Breakthrough Listen is going to scan Oumuamua, you know, just to be sure it's just an asteroid and not a spaceship. - Breakthrough Listen to Observe Interstellar Object ‘OumuamuaSan Francisco – December 11, 2017 – Breakthrough Listen, the global astronomical program searching for evidence of civilizations beyond Earth, announced that it is currently focusing its observational efforts on ‘Oumuamua, the mysterious interloper recently spotted moving rapidly through the solar system. ‘Oumuamua was discovered by the Pan-STARRS project at the University of Hawaii in October 2017, passing Earth at about 85 times the distance to the Moon – a stone’s throw, in astronomical terms. It is the first object discovered in the solar system that appears to originate from another star system. Its high speed – 196,000 mph at its peak – suggests it is not gravitationally bound to the Sun, but will continue its voyage back into interstellar space. It has a highly unusual structure for an asteroid – an elongated cigar shape, hundreds of meters in length but with width and height perhaps only one tenth as long. Researchers working on long-distance space transportation have previously suggested that a cigar or needle shape is the most likely architecture for an interstellar spacecraft, since this would minimize friction and damage from interstellar gas and dust. While a natural origin is more likely, there is currently no consensus on what that origin might have been, and Breakthrough Listen is well positioned to explore the possibility that ‘Oumuamua could be an artifact. Listen’s observation campaign will begin on Wednesday, December 13 at 3:00 pm ET. Using the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope, it will continue to observe ‘Oumuamua across four radio bands, from 1 to 12 GHz. Its first phase of observations will last a total of 10 hours, divided into four “epochs” based on the object’s period of rotation. ‘Oumuamua is now about 2 astronomical units (AU) away, or twice the distance between Earth and the Sun. This is closer by a factor of 50-70 than the most distant human artifact, the Voyager I spacecraft. At this distance, it would take under a minute for the Green Bank instrument to detect an omnidirectional transmitter with the power of a cellphone. “‘Oumuamua’s presence within our solar system affords Breakthrough Listen an opportunity to reach unprecedented sensitivities to possible artificial transmitters and demonstrate our ability to track nearby, fast-moving objects,” said Listen’s Andrew Siemion, Director of Berkeley SETI Research Center. “Whether this object turns out to be artificial or natural, it’s a great target for Listen.” Even if no signal or other evidence of extraterrestrial technology is heard, Listen observations will cover portions of the radio spectrum in which the object has not yet been observed, and could provide important information about the possibility of water/ice, or the chemistry of a coma (gaseous envelope), neither of which have yet been identified. Listen has already proved its value for traditional, non-SETI astronomy: in August 2017 it detected several dozen repeating fast radio bursts (FRBs) from a distant dwarf galaxy – for details see www.astronomerstelegram.org/?read=10675. Breakthrough Listen is a scientific program in search for evidence of technological life in the Universe. It aims to survey one million nearby stars, the entire galactic plane and 100 nearby galaxies at a wide range of radio and optical bands. The Breakthrough Initiatives are a suite of scientific and technological programs exploring the Universe, seeking scientific evidence of life beyond Earth, and encouraging public debate from a planetary perspective. Contacts For media inquiries: media@breakthroughprize.org breakthroughinitiatives.org/news/14
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Post by skywalker on Dec 16, 2017 21:24:47 GMT -6
If it's an asteroid it won't have a tail or break up like comets do. It's just a big rock...maybe an iron/nickel rock like a meteorite. I wonder why the sun's gravity didn't capture it?
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Post by auntym on Jan 6, 2018 14:02:10 GMT -6
this video is fun...stephen colbert puts neil degrasse tyson on the spot... Neil DeGrasse Tyson: Is This Thing A Spaceship?The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
Published on Jan 6, 2018
Astrophysicist and 'Astrophysics for People in a Hurry' author Neil deGrasse Tyson explains the science behind the first observed interstellar object to visit our universe (which Stephen knows is full of aliens).
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Post by auntym on Feb 13, 2018 14:42:43 GMT -6
mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/02/new-research-shows-interstellar-asteroid-had-a-violent-past/ New Research Shows Interstellar Asteroid Oumuamua Had a Violent Pastby Paul Seaburn / mysteriousuniverse.org/author/paulseaburn/February 13, 2018 For an object that wasn’t discovered until it was already on its way back to wherever it came from, Oumuamua has certainly garnered a lot of publicity. First, of course, it was determined that the cigar-shaped thing was the first known interstellar object to pass through our Solar System. Arguments about what kind of object it is were seemingly settled when astronomers determined it was an asteroid, not a comet, but a strange asteroid with an icy center. That hasn’t pacified the small but vocal group that still believes it’s an abandoned space ship/robotic craft from another civilization. It also didn’t explain why Oumuamua was tumbling nor why it had such an odd surface. Since it blew by, a team of researchers at Queen’s University Belfast have been studying Oumuamua and think they’ve solved at least some of its mysteries. Led by Dr. Wes Fraser, they analyzed light reflected from the cuts and angles on its surface and, like investigators at the scene of a hit-and-run auto accident, were able to determine that Oumuamua also collided with something and that impact severely damaged its surface and disrupted its rotation as it shoved the planetesimal out of its own solar system and on a path to ours. “While we don’t know the cause of the tumbling, we predict that it was most likely sent tumbling by an impact with another planetesimal in its system, before it was ejected into interstellar space.”Their research, published in the journal Nature Astronomy, shows that Oumuamua is spinning “chaotically,” a condition generally caused by a violent impact. Their model indicates this could have occurred billions of years ago and it may take billions more before the shaking and tumbling stops and Oumuamua returns to looking like a tight Nick Foles spiral pass (sorry Tom Brady). Like the mix of scratched paint, paint from the other car, bare metal and rust that you see after a car accident, the collision may also explain the mysterious variety of colors – from dark red to “dirty snow” — on Oumuamua. “Most of the surface reflects neutrally but one of its long faces has a large red region. This argues for broad compositional variations, which is unusual for such a small body.” Knowing all of this will help astronomers in their quest to find more small, dark, chaotic objects with violent pasts like Oumuamua. This is starting to sound like a soap opera, a murder mystery and a sci-fi thriller rolled into one. Are we SURE Oumuamua isn’t a spaceship? mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/02/new-research-shows-interstellar-asteroid-had-a-violent-past/
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Post by swamprat on Jun 27, 2018 13:35:43 GMT -6
"Nothing of interest in this star system. FULL SPEED AHEAD!"
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Post by auntym on Jun 28, 2018 14:02:15 GMT -6
mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/06/oumuamuas-true-identity-has-finally-been-determined/Oumuamua’s True Identity Has Finally Been Determinedby Paul Seaburn / mysteriousuniverse.org/author/paulseaburn/June 29, 2018 It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s an asteroid! It’s a weird spaceship from another galaxy! It’s a comet! It’s … Oumuamua! The interstellar visitor didn’t stay long but it has captivated the hearts and minds and computer models of astronomers and space scientists worldwide who want to know what it is. Researchers watching the trailing end of the cigar-shaped visitor as it left the solar system noticed that it was accelerating. While it could have just been trying to get away from the all of the chaos it saw on Earth, the real reason seemed to be that gas coming off of the back end was pushing it to a slightly higher speed … a trait that is commonly seen on … sorry, it’s too late to place your bets … comets! “After ruling out solar-radiation pressure, drag- and friction-like forces, interaction with solar wind for a highly magnetized object, and geometric effects originating from ‘Oumuamua potentially being composed of several spatially separated bodies or having a pronounced offset between its photocentre and centre of mass, we find comet-like outgassing to be a physically viable explanation, provided that ‘Oumuamua has thermal properties similar to comets.” A team led by Marco Micheli, a European Space Agency astronomer, released their study this week in the journal Nature. The acceleration of Oumuamua was actually expected since it would be affected by the gravitational pulls of the Moon and outer planets, but the speed at which it was moving could not be attributed to gravity alone. “It’s an unusual comet, and that’s pretty exciting.” Karen Meech, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu and a team member, explained to Hawaii’s KHON that the unusual lack of dust and ice on Oumuamua meant it didn’t have a tail and that initially led observers to think it was a rocky asteroid rather than an icy comet. In addition, Meech says astronomers were looking for evidence of cyanide, which gives comets a blue hue. They didn’t see it, which means that Oumuamua is still a comet but one with a different chemical composition that those passing thought the solar system before. If you’re looking for a career exploring the stars and you’re too tall or too scared to be an astronaut, Meech recommends astronomy as the job of the future. “This is the first time we’ve ever seen anything like this. Astronomers have been predicting this for decades, so it was very exciting to see the first one come through. I think the Pan-STARRS in particular is going to start to see a lot more of these with the second telescope now starting its survey, so it’s an exciting time to be an astronomer.” Exciting, yes … unless you’re the astronomer who spots the deadly asteroid or comet heading straight for Earth. mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/06/oumuamuas-true-identity-has-finally-been-determined/
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Post by auntym on Jun 28, 2018 14:14:41 GMT -6
i don't buy this... ... i still say its alien...
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Post by auntym on Oct 31, 2018 13:37:36 GMT -6
www.universetoday.com/140391/could-oumuamua-be-an-extra-terrestrial-solar-sail/Posted on October 31, 2018 Could Oumuamua Be an Extra-Terrestrial Solar Sail?by Matt Williams / www.universetoday.com/author/mwill/On October 19th, 2017, the Paannamic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System-1 (Pan-STARRS-1) in Hawaii announced the first-ever detection of an interstellar asteroid, named 1I/2017 U1 (aka. ‘Oumuamua). In the months that followed, multiple follow-up observations were conducted that allowed astronomers to get a better idea of its size and shape, while also revealing that it had the characteristics of both a comet and an asteroid. Interestingly enough, there has also been some speculation that based on its shape, ‘Oumuamua might actually be an interstellar spacecraft (Breakthrough Listen even monitored it for signs of radio signals!). A new study by a pair of astronomers from the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) has taken it a step further, suggesting that ‘Oumuamua may actually be a light sail of extra-terrestrial origin. The study – “Could Solar Radiation Pressure Explain ‘Oumuamua’s Peculiar Acceleration?”, which recently appeared online – was conducted by Schmuel Bialy and Prof. Abraham Loeb. Whereas Bialy is a postdoctoral researcher at the CfA’s Institute for Theory and Computation (ITC), Prof. Loeb is the director of the ITC, the Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science at Harvard University, and the head chair of the Breakthrough Starshot Advisory Committee. Artist’s impression of the first interstellar asteroid/comet, “Oumuamua”. This unique object was discovered on 19 October 2017 by the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope in Hawaii. Credit: ESO/M. KornmesserTo recap, ‘Oumuamua was first spotted by the Pan-STARRS-1 survey 40 days after it made its closest pass to the Sun (on September 9th, 2017). At this point, it was about 0.25 AU from the Sun (one-quarter the distance between Earth and the Sun), and already on its way out of the Solar System. In that time, astronomers noted that it appeared to have a high density (indicative of a rocky and metallic composition) and that it was spinning rapidly. While it did not show any signs of outgassing as it passed close to our Sun (which would have indicated that it was a comet), a research team was able to obtain spectra that indicated that ‘Oumuamua was more icy than previously thought. Then, as it began to leave the Solar System, the Hubble Space Telescope snapped some final images of ‘Oumuamua that revealed some unexpected behavior. After examining the images, another international research team discovered that ‘Oumuamua had increased in velocity, rather than slowing down as expected. The most likely explanation, they claimed, was that ‘Oumuamua was venting material from its surface due to solar heating (aka. outgassing). The release of this material, which is consistent with how a comet behaves, would give ‘Oumuamua the steady push it needed to achieve this boost in velocity. To this, Dialy and Loeb offer a counter-explanation. If ‘Oumuamua were in fact a comet, why then did it not experience outgassing when it was closest to our Sun? In addition, they cite other research that showed that if outgassing were responsible for the acceleration, it would have also caused a rapid evolution in ‘Oumuamua’s spin (which was not observed). Basically, Dialy and Loeb consider the possibility that ‘Oumuamua could in fact be a light sail, a form of spacecraft that relies on radiation pressure to generate propulsion – similar to what Breakthrough Starshot is working on. Similar to what is planned for Starshot, this light sail may been sent from another civilization to study our Solar System and look for signs of life. As Prof. Loeb explained to Universe Today via email: “We explain the excess acceleration of `Oumuamua away from the Sun as the result of the force that the Sunlight exerts on its surface. For this force to explain measured excess acceleration, the object needs to be extremely thin, of order a fraction of a millimeter in thickness but tens of meters in size. This makes the object lightweight for its surface area and allows it to act as a light-sail. Its origin could be either natural (in the interstellar medium or proto-planetary disks) or artificial (as a probe sent for a reconnaissance mission into the inner region of the Solar System).”Based on this, Dialy and Loeb went about calculating the likely shape, thickness, and mass-to-area ratio that such an artificial object would have. They also attempted to determine whether this object would be able to survive in interstellar space, and whether or not it would be able to withstand the tensile stresses caused by rotation and tidal forces. What they found was that a sail that was only a fraction of a millimeter thick (0.3-0.9 mm) would be sufficient for a sheet of solid material to survive the journey through the entire galaxy – though this depends greatly on ‘Oumuamuam’s mass density (which is not well-contrained). Thick or thin, this sail would be able to withstand collisions with dust-grains and gas that permeate the interstellar medium, as well as centrifugal and tidal forces. As for what an extra-terrestrial light sail would be doing in our Solar System, Dialy and Loeb offer some possible explanations for that. First, they suggest that the probe may actually be a defunct sail floating under the influence of gravity and stellar radiation, similar to debris from ship wrecks floating in the ocean. This would help explain why Breakthrough Listen found no evidence of radio transmissions. Loeb further illustrated this idea in a recent article he penned for Scientific American, where he suggested that ‘Oumuamua could be the first known case of an artificial relic which floated into our Solar System from interstellar space. What’s more, he notes that lightsails with similar dimensions have been designed and constructed by humans, including the Japanese-designed IKAROS project and the Starshot Initiative with which he is involved. “This opportunity establishes a potential foundation for a new frontier of space archaeology, namely the study of relics from past civilizations in space,” Loeb wrote. “Finding evidence for space junk of artificial origin would provide an affirmative answer to the age-old question ‘Are we alone?’. This would have a dramatic impact on our culture and add a new cosmic perspective to the significance of human activity.”On the other hand, as Loeb told Universe Today, ‘Oumuamua could be an active piece of alien technology that came to explore our Solar System, the same way we hope to explore Alpha Centauri using Starshot and similar technologies: “The alternative is to imagine that `Oumuamua was on a reconnaissance mission. The reason I contemplate the reconnaissance possibility is that the assumption that `Oumumua followed a random orbit requires the production of ~10^{15} such objects per star in our galaxy. This abundance is up to a hundred million times more than expected from the Solar System, based on a calculation that we did back in 2009. A surprisingly high overabundance, unless `Oumuamua is a targeted probe on a reconnaissance mission and not a member of a random population of objects.” CONTINUE READING: www.universetoday.com/140391/could-oumuamua-be-an-extra-terrestrial-solar-sail/
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Post by auntym on Nov 3, 2018 14:02:21 GMT -6
www.spirit-zone.com/?p=1041
Harvard astrophysicists think a mysterious interstellar object could have been built by aliensby admin / www.spirit-zone.com/?author=1November 3, 2018 Scientists and stargazers alike were transfixed last year when ‘Oumuamua, the first object known to come from outside our solar system, passed close by our sun. Astrophysicists had long believed it was possible for such objects to exist, but none had ever been observed before. But something strange happened. As ‘Oumuanua passed by the sun, it accelerated — speeding up in a way that we wouldn’t expect if it were simply being driven by the force of gravity. A new paper from Harvard astrophysicists Shmuel Bialy and Abraham Loeb offers a startling hypothesis: It could have been an alien artifact, an actual piece of technology from an interstellar civilization. This isn’t just baseless speculation, either. The authors of the paper started with a simple idea: What if pressure from the sun’s radiation caused the unexpected acceleration ‘Oumunanua exhibited? Seems reasonable enough. But for the sun’s radiation to cause the acceleration that scientists observed, ‘Oumunanua would have to be a very strange shape. Paul Gilster, a blogger on peer-reviewed astronomy research, explained: We can work out constraints on the object’s area through its observed magnitude. The paper proceeds to show that a thin sheet roughly 0.3 mm thick and some 20 meters in radius will allow the non-gravitational acceleration computed in the Micheli paper. He added: Thus, considering the object as a thin surface, we could imagine a conical or hollow cylindrical shape. “You can easily envision that by rotating a curved piece of paper and looking at its net surface area from different viewing angles,” Loeb told me. So let’s back up a moment. We are asking what properties ‘Oumuamua would have to have if its non-gravitational acceleration is the result of solar radiation pressure. We do not know that solar radiation is the culprit, but if it is, the object would need to be a thin sheet with a width in the range of 0.3 mm. This scenario explains the acceleration but forces the question of what kind of object could have these characteristics. A major problem is that, as mentioned above, there are too many degrees of freedom in our observations to nail down what ‘Oumuamua looks like. We did not have observations sensitive enough to produce a resolved image. The researchers acknowledge that such an object could be the result of a natural process. However, they present another intriguing hypothesis. They say the object could be a “lightsail floating in interstellar space as debris from an advanced technological equipment.” Humans have already constructed such objects of similar dimensions, they note, and such vessels “might be abundantly used for transportation of cargos between planets (Guillochon & Loeb 2015) or between stars.”
In other words, it could be “Similar to debris from ship wrecks floating in the ocean.”There’s another even more exciting possibility. The authors believe it would be highly unlikely for a random piece of space debris from an alien society to simply find its way into our solar system by chance unless the galaxy were completely littered with this junk. It’s not impossible, but they argue that previous calculations they’ve conducted suggest it’s more likely that, if ‘Oumuamua came from an alien civilization, it was sent on purpose. Under this hypothesis, “‘Oumuamua is a targeted probe on a reconnaissance mission and not a member of a random population of objects,” they write. There is, of course, plenty of reason for skepticism. For one thing, there are plausible alternative explanations for ‘Oumuamua’s acceleration other than solar radiation pressure. As Davide Farnocchia at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory hypothesized: This additional subtle force on ‘Oumuamua likely is caused by jets of gaseous material expelled from its surface. This same kind of outgassing affects the motion of many comets in our solar system. However, this view was not entirely satisfying, either. As it passed through our solar system, ‘Oumauamua did not display any sign of having a comet-like tail, which would likely accompany an object accelerating because of gaseous jets. Frustratingly, it seems most likely we’ll never get a definitive answer about what ‘Oumuamua was. It has left our solar system, and it’s too distant to observe now. Even while it was nearby, our imaging technology could only capture hazy pictures of the object. So we’re still mostly in the dark. But if we could confirm that an alien object had visited our solar system, we’d finally have an answer to physicist Enrico Fermi‘s famed paradox. He asked: Given the assumption that humans were unlikely to be a unique occurrence in the universe, and given that eons have passed since life became possible in the universe, why haven’t we encountered any sign of alien life? Perhaps we already have — we just didn’t realize it at the time. www.spirit-zone.com/?p=1041
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Post by auntym on Nov 5, 2018 17:13:16 GMT -6
www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/scientists-say-mysterious-oumuamua-object-could-be-alien-spacecraft-ncna931381?cid=sm_npd_nn_fb_ma
Scientists say mysterious 'Oumuamua' object could be an alien spacecraftHarvard researchers raise the possibility that it may be "a fully operational probe sent intentionally to Earth vicinity by an alien civilization."Nov. 5, 2018 By David Freeman / Artist's impression of Oumuamua.M. Kornmesser / ESO via AFP - Getty Images
Maybe it's an alien spacecraft.Scientists have been puzzling over Oumuamua ever since the mysterious space object was observed tumbling past the sun in late 2017. Given its high speed and its unusual trajectory, the reddish, stadium-sized whatever-it-is had clearly come from outside our solar system. But its flattened, elongated shape and the way it accelerated on its way through the solar system set it apart from conventional asteroids and comets. Now a pair of Harvard researchers are raising the possibility that Oumuamua is an alien spacecraft. As they say in a paper to be published Nov. 12 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, the object "may be a fully operational probe sent intentionally to Earth vicinity by an alien civilization." The researchers aren't claiming outright that aliens sent Oumuamua. But after a careful mathematical analysis of the way the interstellar object sped up as it shot past the sun, they say Oumuamua could be a spacecraft pushed through space by light falling on its surface — or, as they put it in the paper, a "lightsail of artificial origin." Who would have sent such a spacecraft our way — and why? "It is impossible to guess the purpose behind Oumuamua without more data," Avi Loeb, chairman of Harvard's astronomy department and a co-author of the paper, told NBC News MACH in an email. If Oumuamua is a lightsail, he added, one possibility is that it was floating in interstellar space when our solar system ran into it, "like a ship bumping into a buoy on the surface of the ocean." Earthlings have launched simple solar-powered lightsails of our own, and Loeb is an adviser to Breakthrough Starshot, an initiative that plans to send a fleet of tiny laser-powered lightsail craft to the nearest star system. But the technology is in its infancy — at least here on Earth. Loeb and his collaborator, Shmuel Bialy, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, acknowledge that the alien spacecraft scenario is an "exotic" one. And perhaps not surprisingly, other space scientists have strong doubts about it. "It's certainly ingenious to show that an object the size of Oumuamua might be sent by aliens to another star system with nothing but a solar sail for power," Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, said in an email. "But one should not blindly accept this clever hypothesis when there is also a mundane (and a priori more likely) explanation for Oumuamua — namely that it's a comet or asteroid from afar." Coryn Bailer-Jones, an astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany, voiced similar objections. "In science," he said in an email, "we must ask ourselves, "Where is the evidence?, not "Where is the lack of evidence so that I can fit in any hypothesis that I like?" Bailer-Jones, who earlier this year led a group of scientists who identified four dwarf stars as likely origin points for Oumuamua, raised questions in particular about the object's tumbling motion. "Why send a spacecraft which is doing this?" he said. "If it were a spacecraft, this tumbling would make it impossible to keep any instruments pointed at the Earth. Of course, one could now say it was an accident, or the aliens did this to deceive us. One can always come up with increasingly implausible suggestions that have no evidence in order to maintain an idea." But Loeb called the conjecture "purely scientific and evidence-based," adding, "I follow the maxim of Sherlock Holmes: When you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." The truth may be hard to establish, as Oumuamua has left the solar system and is no longer visible even with telescopes. In any case, Loeb said, the fact that we've observed one interstellar object like Oumuama suggests that others may be out there — and astronomers should begin a search for them. "A survey for lightsails as technosignatures [of extraterrestrial civilizations] in the solar system is warranted," he said, "irrespective of whether Oumuamua is one of them." www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/scientists-say-mysterious-oumuamua-object-could-be-alien-spacecraft-ncna931381?cid=sm_npd_nn_fb_ma
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Post by jcurio on Nov 5, 2018 17:57:15 GMT -6
Oh moo a moo a, did a funny turn. That’s all I know. 😲
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Post by jcurio on Nov 6, 2018 7:07:05 GMT -6
The three spacecraft are SOHO, STEREO-A, and STEREO-B (the latter both part of the STEREO mission), and the way they work is quite ingenious. We know that gravity pulls objects together in proportion to their masses and relative distance. It is also easy to imagine that two massive objects will both pull on a very light object with some gravity. We can therefore expect there to be a point in space (moving along with the Earth as it orbits the Sun), where the pull from the Earth balances out the pull from the Sun. Because the Earth is about 333,000 times lighter than the Sun, this point is much closer to the former than it is to the latter. This point, 1,500,000 km away from the Earth (1/10th of the distance to the Sun) is where the SOHO spacecraft is positioned. We call it the first Lagrangian point (L1 for short) after Joseph-Louis Lagrange, the prolific 18th century mathematician and astronomer who discovered it and other points like it.
************** (From article) 🙂😊
Thanks Cliff! Fascinating!!
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Post by auntym on Nov 15, 2018 15:39:11 GMT -6
www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7280November 14, 2018 NASA Learns More About Interstellar Visitor 'OumuamuaScientists have concluded that vents on the surface of 'Oumuamua must have emitted jets of gases, giving the object a slight boost in speed, which researchers detected by measuring the position of the object as it passed by Earth in 2017. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech In November 2017, scientists pointed NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope toward the object known as 'Oumuamua - the first known interstellar object to visit our solar system. The infrared Spitzer was one of many telescopes pointed at 'Oumuamua in the weeks after its discovery that October. 'Oumuamua was too faint for Spitzer to detect when it looked more than two months after the object's closest aproach to Earth in early September. However, the "non-detection" puts a new limit on how large the strange object can be. The results are reported in a new study published today in the Astronomical Journal and coauthored by scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The new size limit is consistent with the findings of a research paper published earlier this year, which suggested that outgassing was responsible for the slight changes in 'Oumuamua's speed and direction as it was tracked last year: The authors of that paper conclude the expelled gas acted like a small thruster gently pushing the object. That determination was dependent on 'Oumuamua being relatively smaller than typical solar system comets. (The conclusion that 'Oumuamua experienced outgassing suggested that it was composed of frozen gases, similar to a comet.) "'Oumuamua has been full of surprises from day one, so we were eager to see what Spitzer might show," said David Trilling, lead author on the new study and a professor of astronomy at Northern Arizona University. "The fact that 'Oumuamua was too small for Spitzer to detect is actually a very valuable result." 'Oumuamua was first detected by the University of Hawaii's Pan-STARRS 1 telescope on Haleakala, Hawaii (the object's name is a Hawaiian word meaning "visitor from afar arriving first"), in October 2017 while the telescope was surveying for near-Earth asteroids. Subsequent detailed observations conducted by multiple ground-based telescopes and NASA's Hubble Space Telescope detected the sunlight reflected off 'Oumuamua's surface. Large variations in the object's brightness suggested that 'Oumuamua is highly elongated and probably less than half a mile (2,600 feet, or 800 meters) in its longest dimension. But Spitzer tracks asteroids and comets using the infrared energy, or heat, that they radiate, which can provide more specific information about an object's size than optical observations of reflected sunlight alone would. The fact that 'Oumuamua was too faint for Spitzer to detect sets a limit on the object's total surface area. However, since the non-detection can't be used to infer shape, the size limits are presented as what 'Oumuamua's diameter would be if it were spherical. Using three separate models that make slightly different assumptions about the object's composition, Spitzer's non-detection limited 'Oumuamua's "spherical diameter" to 1,440 feet (440 meters), 460 feet (140 meters) or perhaps as little as 320 feet (100 meters). The wide range of results stems from the assumptions about 'Oumuamua's composition, which influences how visible (or faint) it would appear to Spitzer were it a particular size. Small but ReflectiveThe new study also suggests that 'Oumuamua may be up to 10 times more reflective than the comets that reside in our solar system - a surprising result, according to the paper's authors. Because infrared light is largely heat radiation produced by "warm" objects, it can be used to determine the temperature of a comet or asteroid; in turn, this can be used to determine the reflectivity of the object's surface - what scientists call albedo. Just as a dark T-shirt in sunlight heats up more quickly than a light one, an object with low reflectivity retains more heat than an object with high reflectivity. So a lower temperature means a higher albedo. A comet's albedo can change throughout its lifetime. When it passes close to the Sun, a comet's ice warms and turns directly into a gas, sweeping dust and dirt off the comet's surface and revealing more reflective ice. 'Oumuamua had been traveling through interstellar space for millions of years, far from any star that could refresh its surface. But it may have had its surface refreshed through such "outgassing" when it made an extremely close approach to our Sun, a little more than five weeks before it was discovered. In addition to sweeping away dust and dirt, some of the released gas may have covered the surface of 'Oumuamua with a reflective coat of ice and snow - a phenomenon that's also been observed in comets in our solar system. 'Oumuamua is on its way out of our solar system - almost as far from the Sun as Saturn's orbit - and is well beyond the reach of any existing telescopes. "Usually, if we get a measurement from a comet that's kind of weird, we go back and measure it again until we understand what we're seeing," said Davide Farnocchia, of the Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at JPL and a coauthor on both papers. "But this one is gone forever; we probably know as much about it as we're ever going to know." JPL manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at Caltech in Pasadena, California. Spacecraft operations are based at Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company in Littleton, Colorado. Data are archived at the Infrared Science Archive housed at IPAC at Caltech. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. For more information about Spitzer, visit: www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/spitzer/main/index.htmlwww.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7280
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Post by auntym on Nov 26, 2018 13:36:24 GMT -6
Animation of `Oumuamua passing through the Solar System (annotated)
European Southern Observatory (ESO)
Published on Jun 29, 2018
This animation (annotated) shows the path of the interstellar asteroid 1I/2017 (`Oumuamua) through the Solar System. Observations with ESO's Very Large Telescope and others have shown that this unique object is dark, reddish in colour and highly elongated.
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Post by swamprat on Dec 25, 2018 18:19:07 GMT -6
How the Oumuamua mystery shook up the search for space aliensThe interstellar visitor made it respectable to talk about alien spaceships.
By Corey S. Powell Dec. 25, 2018 / 6:00 AM EST
Last year, an enigmatic object named Oumuamua startled astronomers when it came streaking past the sun, giving humanity its first close-up look at an object from beyond our solar system. This year, the interstellar visitor did something even more remarkable: It made it respectable to talk about alien spaceships.
The turning point came in November, when Avi Loeb, the head of the astronomy department at Harvard University, co-wrote a paper saying that Oumuamua is so unusual that scientists should consider the possibility that it’s not a far-out comet or asteroid, as his colleagues assumed, but rather an artificial structure.
In other words, maybe it’s an interstellar craft built by extraterrestrials.
Some of Loeb’s colleagues were intrigued. Others were disconcerted. But suddenly mainstream scientists were talking about how to tell if Oumuamua is a natural object or — as Loeb raised as a possibility in his paper — an alien spacecraft designed to capture the force of sunlight (a so-called lightsail).
Loeb is well aware that most scientists recoil from anything that sounds like UFO craziness, but he believes an overabundance of skepticism has cut them off from out-of-the box ideas. “The point of doing science is not to have a prejudice,” he says. “A prejudice is based on the experience of the past, but if you want to allow yourself to make discoveries, then the future will not be the same as the past.”
Jason Wright, a Penn State astronomer who recently launched a graduate program in SETI (the search for extraterrestrial intelligence), shares Loeb’s desire for open discussion — and offers an upbeat assessment of the field’s growing respectability. “There’s a real culture change. SETI is becoming a serious scientific discipline,” he says.
Strange Visitor From the Stars It was clear from the start that Oumuamua (pronounced oh-MOO-uh-MOO-uh) would shake up astronomy’s status quo. Shortly after its discovery, scientists realized that the object’s unusual trajectory meant it had to have come from outside the solar system — and that it could have been traveling for millions of years. They quickly dubbed the mysterious object Oumuamua, a Hawaiian word meaning “messenger from the past.”
There were more surprises. Oumuamua was too far away for astronomers to observe its shape directly, but they could tell by the extreme way its brightness shifted as it tumbled through space that it wasn’t like any space rock they had ever seen.
“It’s very elongated, with an axis ratio of at least 7 to 1,” astronomer Karen Meech of the University of Hawaii said in an email. In other words, it’s at least seven times as long as it is wide — shaped like a cigar, perhaps. Or, as Loeb proposes in his paper, maybe a flattened disk.
Source: Patrick Treuthardt, Ph.D. The relative size of 'Oumuamua, the first extra-solar asteroid discovered. Original images: M. Kornmesser/ESO, Daniel Schwen
Astronomers’ models predict that most of the small bodies wandering in interstellar space are comets. But when Meech and others examined it, Oumuamua showed no sign of the expected comet-like tail. It’s also quite small, on the order of 1,000 feet long, and it seems to be much more reflective than the comets we know.
Intrigued by its oddities, several groups of SETI researchers listened for possible radio transmissions from Oumuamua — and heard nothing.
An Invisible Push The biggest puzzle about Oumuamua was the way it moved. As it zoomed away from the sun, it sped up slightly, as if given an invisible push. “It doesn’t take much to provide the little acceleration we see,” says Michele Bannister, a comet expert at Queens University Belfast, “but the effect is definitely there.”
Comets often accelerate that way when gases boil off their surface under heat from the sun. But observations by the Spitzer Space Telescope showed no such material coming off of Oumuamua.
At this point, Loeb thought it was time to consider a more radical interpretation and, with a post-doctoral student, Shmuel Bialy, wrote the provocative paper. In it, the scientists consider the possibility that Oumuamua lacks a tail because it isn’t a comet at all, and that the acceleration was caused not by boiling gases but by the pressure of sunlight against a very wide, thin lightweight structure.
“The Spitzer data are consistent with a sail about 20 meters [60 feet] across,” Loeb says. He and Bialy suggest that such an object could be technological debris or even “a fully operational probe.”
Stirring the SETI Pot Loeb anticipated a harsh reaction to his paper, and his expectation was soon fulfilled. Twitter buzzed with snide comments. “A new paper, which claims Oumuamua is an alien probe, is full of poop,” one skeptic tweeted. “The Loeb paper says WHAT IF ALIEN LIGHT SAILS? Occam says no,” tweeted another in a reference to Occam’s Razor (a philosophical principle that when there are two competing explanations for an occurrence, the simpler one is usually better).
One researcher, who asked to remain anonymous, disparaged the Bialy and Loeb paper as “irresponsible,” and said it was “just out to grab attention.”
Loeb shrugs off the reflexive dismissals, but partly embraces that last critique, saying his lofty academic position actually obligates him to be a pot-stirrer: “I can say these things other people can’t because I have tenure at Harvard. The whole idea of getting tenure is to allow you to be free in your mind. I used the opportunity of Oumuamua to make a statement.”
In his view, searching for evidence of alien artifacts is no more outrageous than physicists exploring higher dimensions or astronomers invoking dark matter to explain the motions of galaxies. Or, more to the point, no more outrageous than searching for microbes on Mars.
“All I’m doing is following the standard scientific process, looking for explanations,” Loeb says.
What’s different is that the stakes are so high. Finding evidence of an extraterrestrial civilization would be far more profound than finding extraterrestrial microbes. It would tell us that humans aren’t the only intelligent species around.
A Universe of Questions Wright believes the excitement over Oumuamua, combined with the other recent developments in the field, is breathing new life into SETI research.
“There’s a popular misperception that it’s just people listening for radio signals and coming up with one null result after another,” he says of SETI. He counters that there are actually a tremendous number of ways to search for alien life once scientists broaden their horizons.
Wright raises the possibility that a now-defunct alien civilization left behind artifacts on the moon, where they could have survived even if deposited there billions of years ago. His colleague Paul Davies at Arizona State University has enlisted students to comb through archival images of the lunar surface to see if they can find evidence of any alien “technosignatures.”
Wright has participated in studies of Tabby’s Star, whose intermittent dimming had some scientists wondering if it was encased within a vast artificial structure built by aliens. While the latest results show that’s not the case, Wright is undeterred. Almost all such searches are destined for failure, he says, and all it takes is one success to change the world.
With that in mind, he advocates digging through existing astronomical data to look for other stars whose peculiar behavior could indicate the presence of alien construction projects. “There are many rich datasets sitting out there to look through,” he says.
This is exactly the sort of unfettered curiosity that Loeb says he wanted to spark with his Oumuamua hypothesis. “Why have a prejudice? Why argue that it must be natural? What do we gain, other than putting blinders on our eyes?” he asks. “We should examine each and every interstellar object entering the solar system to check if it’s natural or not. Even if most of the time it’s natural, every now and then we might be surprised.”
And what a surprise that would be.
www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/how-oumuamua-mystery-shook-search-space-aliens-ncna950991
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Post by auntym on Jan 17, 2019 16:40:49 GMT -6
mysteriousuniverse.org/2019/01/harvard-astronomer-defends-claim-that-oumuamua-could-be-alien-craft/ Harvard Astronomer Defends Claim that ‘Oumuamua Could Be Alien Craftby Brett Tingley / mysteriousuniverse.org/author/bbtingley/January 17, 2019 The discovery of ‘Oumuamua continues to prove itself one of the most fascinating and mysterious astronomy stories of our time. It all began in October 2017 when astronomers using the Pan-STARRS telescope in Hawaii spotted a strange object passing through our Solar System at a high velocity. The object defied classification and still does, and its origin remains unknown. What is known is that it originated from somewhere outside of our Solar System, making it the first known interstellar object to visit our neck of the cosmic woods. The path ‘Oumuamua took through the Solar System. Almost immediately after its discovery, ‘Oumuamua’s odd behavior and characteristics caused many to speculate that it could be an alien craft or probe sent to explore our Solar System. That speculation grew stronger in November 2018 when astronomers Shmuel Bialy and Avi Loeb of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics published a study arguing that ‘Oumuamua’s anomalous acceleration and direction could mean the object isn’t a comet or asteroid, but instead an artificial craft or probe propelled by a “light-sail,” meaning it uses the ‘winds’ of solar radiation to propel it through space. Of course, those claims attracted controversy, criticism, and outright jeers in some cases. How could two of the most respected astrophysicists in the country claim any possibility that an anomalous object in space could be artificial? How dare they! Don’t they know that science is supposed to suppress the imagination as opposed to ignite it? In response to the controversy, one of the paper’s authors sat down for an interview with Israeli news outlet Haaretz to discuss ‘Oumuamua and the resistance to acknowledge any possibility that ‘Oumuamua could be from an extraterrestrial civilization. I don’t care what people say. It doesn’t matter to me. I say what I think, and if the broad public takes an interest in what I say, that’s a welcome result as far as I’m concerned, but an indirect result. Science isn’t like politics: It is not based on popularity polls. That’s what professor Avi Loeb, chair of Harvard’s astronomy department, sat down with Oded Carmeli at Haaretz to share his perspective on the ‘Oumuamua controversy. According to Loeb, he only went public with claims that ‘Oumuamua just might be artificial after lengthy discussions with colleagues. “Scientists of senior status said themselves that this object was peculiar but were apprehensive about making their thoughts public,” Loeb says. “it could be that I’m committing image suicide, if this turns out to be incorrect. On the other hand, if it turns out to be correct, it’s one of the greatest discoveries in human history.” ‘Oumuamua (dot in center) as seen by the Pan-STARRS telescope. Loeb adds that as a scientist with tenure, he doesn’t understand why so many other stodgy academics in ivory towers are afraid to take risks and imagine possibilities which may at first seem outlandish: If you’re not ready to find exceptional things, you won’t discover them. Of course, every argument needs to be based on evidence, but if the evidence points to an anomaly, we need to talk about an anomaly. Who cares if this anomaly appeared or did not appear in science-fiction books? The whole interview is worth a read for anyone interested in astronomy or the search for alien life. In it, Loeb lays out his entire argument for why we must be open to the possibility that ‘Oumuamua is a spacecraft or probe. It’s important to note that Loeb never comes out saying definitively that ‘Oumuamua is an alien craft, only that we must be open to the possibility that it could be based on the available evidence. Still, science has a long history of persecuting those who go against the paradigm or challenge popular opinions. Will Loeb be remembered in the future as a rebellious hero like Galileo, or a crank suffering from wishful thinking? mysteriousuniverse.org/2019/01/harvard-astronomer-defends-claim-that-oumuamua-could-be-alien-craft/
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Post by swamprat on Mar 19, 2019 8:28:18 GMT -6
'Space's Deepest Secrets' Probes Mystery of 'Oumuamua TonightBy Kasandra Brabaw / March 19, 2019 / Science & Astronomy
The Science Channel series "Space's Deepest Secrets" returns tonight (March 19) at 10 p.m. EDT with a look at a mysterious interstellar visitor.
In 2017, scientists spotted a gigantic rocky object, about the size and shape of a skyscraper, hurtling through our solar system. And they soon discovered that this terrific space rock didn't originate within the eight-planet system we call home. Instead, it comes from another solar system. The scientists, who saw the rock through the University of Hawaii's Pan-STARRS1 telescope, called it 'Oumuamua, which means "a messenger from afar arriving first."
"Space's Deepest Secrets" is back this evening with a deep dive into 'Oumuamua. While 'Oumuamua has been briefly classified as both an asteroid and a comet, according to NASA, the show promises to "investigate the mystery of an ancient asteroid" and detail the high-energy race to discover as much as we can about this mysterious rock before it leaves our solar system.
NASA observations suggest that the rocky object (the organization uses "object" since there isn't enough evidence to define it as either an asteroid or a comet) wandered through the Milky Way for hundreds of millions of years before encountering our solar system. In January 2019, it moved beyond Saturn's orbit.
Since 'Oumuamua was a complete unknown when it was discovered in 2017 — the first true alien object, according to one of the astronomers in a new promo for "Space's Deepest Secrets" — scientists are eager to learn more and "unlock its secrets." The show promises to answer: "How did 'Oumuamua get here? Does it pose a threat to the Earth? Could it even be an alien spaceship?"
To address one question: NASA's space telescopes have tracked 'Oumuamua traveling about 85,700 mph (23.8 miles per second, or 38.3 km/s) relative to the sun. At that speed, the episode states, it could destroy whole cities if it were to hit Earth (which it luckily seems like it won't do in our lifetime, given that it's heading out of our solar system). As to whether it's really a spaceship in disguise, you'll have to tune in to see.
But the origin and purpose of a skyscraperesque rock is only the start of the mysteries "Space's Deepest Secrets" will unravel this season. Coming up, according to a statement from the Science Channel, the show plans to tackle the awesome power of mega storms on Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune; the existence of enormous black holes that can rip planets and stars apart; and "evidence of an ancient solar system that could rewrite the story of our cosmic roots."
Watch video: www.space.com/spaces-deepest-secrets-oumuamua-video.html
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Post by swamprat on Jan 3, 2021 18:36:20 GMT -6
Professor Loeb's book is about to be published.A Harvard professor has claimed in his new book that alien debris passed near Earth in 2017. It has attracted both skepticism and intrigue.Kevin Shalvey, Jan. 3, 2021
This artist's impression shows the first-known interstellar object to visit the solar system, "Oumuamua," which was discovered on October 19, 2017, by the Pan-STARRS1 telescope in Hawaii. European Southern Observatory/M. Kornmesser/Handout via Reuters
• Scientists in 2017 detected the first sign of intelligent life outside Earth, according to a new book by Avi Loeb, a Harvard University professor. • The "rocky, cigar-shaped object with a somewhat reddish hue," was called "1I/2017 U1 'Oumuamua" by NASA.
• "There was only one conceivable explanation: the object was a piece of advanced technology created by a distant alien civilization," according to publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
An extraterrestrial object skimmed through space close to Earth in 2017, wrote a Harvard University astronomer, Avi Loeb, in a book to be published this month.
It was the first sign of intelligent life outside Earth, according to Loeb.
Scientists at a Hawaiian observatory saw "an object soaring through our inner solar system, moving so quickly that it could only have been from another star," according to the marketing summary for the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt book, "Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth."
The object wasn't a natural occurrence, but a bit of space junk ejected by another galaxy, according to Loeb, a professor of science with a doctorate in physics. "There was only one conceivable explanation: the object was a piece of advanced technology created by a distant alien civilization," according to HMH.
Physicist Avi Loeb, on the right, on stage with physicist Stephen Hawking and others. Lucas Jackson/Reuters In a review, Publishers Weekly called the book a "contentious manifesto."
But Loeb wasn't alone in his excitement about the object, which was called "1I/2017 U1 'Oumuamua" by Nasa.
"The first confirmed object from another star to visit our solar system, this interstellar interloper appears to be a rocky, cigar-shaped object with a somewhat reddish hue," NASA said in its description of the object. "For decades we've theorized that such interstellar objects are out there, and now – for the first time – we have direct evidence they exist," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, when it was originally discovered.
He added: "This history-making discovery is opening a new window to study formation of solar systems beyond our own." In the book-jacket blurb, Anne Wojcicki, CEO and cofounder of 23andMe, wrote that Loeb's new book "convinces you that scientific curiosity is key to our future success."
"An exciting and eloquent case that we might have seen a sign of intelligent life near Earth – and that we should search further," she wrote.
Fellow Harvard professor Eric Maskin, a Nobel laureate in Economics, added: "Is the hypothesis right? Who knows. But let's try to find out!"
www.businessinsider.com/alien-object-close-to-earth-in-2017-says-harvard-professor-2021-1
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Post by swamprat on Jan 6, 2021 17:31:55 GMT -6
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Post by swamprat on Jan 18, 2021 12:33:00 GMT -6
Avi Loeb interview by Lex Fridman
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Post by auntym on Jan 27, 2021 15:46:48 GMT -6
thedebrief.org/oumuamua-proves-science-doesnt-want-to-find-aliens/‘OUMUAMUA PROVES SCIENCE DOESN’T WANT TO FIND ALIENSby TIM MCMILLAN·FEATURESSCIENCESPACE JANUARY 27, 2021 Seen from Earth, the apparent trajectory of ‘Oumuamua, with its origin in Lyra, temporarily moving south of the ecliptic between 2 September and 22 October 2017 before moving northward again towards its destination in Pegasus. (Image Credit: Tom Ruen, using trajectory data from JPL Horizons. Source: Wikicommons) Are we alone in the universe? Gazing into the vast expanse of the stars, humanity has pondered this question for as long as we’ve known it was outer space and not the heavens themselves that comprised the celestial sphere. Theologians, philosophers, and scientists alike have nearly unanimously concluded: “No!” Applying their respective tradecrafts — religious doctrine, logical deduction, and mathematical inference — mankind’s most influential disciplines have offered compelling evidence in support of the existential conclusion that others are out there somewhere. In the unfathomable vastness of space, many among our brightest and wisest minds believe it is simply inconceivable that Earth is the only place where life has flourished over the nearly 14 billion years since the birth of the universe. Despite Herculean efforts in multiple disciplines, however, the belief that life must exist outside of the “pale blue dot” we call home has remained just a belief — albeit an informed one. A plausible theory based on abductive reasoning, but positively unverifiable. Yet one distinguished astrophysicist says the answer to this age-old question may already have passed us by and, surprisingly, no one seems to care. Since the fall of 2017, Dr. Abraham “Avi” Loeb, the longest serving chair of Harvard’s Department of Astronomy and author of Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth, has found himself in the interesting position of facing not only the difficult question of whether we are alone in the universe, but the even trickier and more unsettling question that follows: “Do we even want to know?” ‘OUMUAMUA – A TINY SPECK FROM THE BEYOND On October 19, 2017, University of Hawaii astronomer Robert Weryk found himself confronted by a mystery as he examined data collected by the Pan-STARRS1 telescope, high atop the volcanic summit of Haleakalā on the tropical island of Maui. Built thanks to funding from the U.S. Air Force, Pan-STARRS — a pair of telescopes comprising the Paannamic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System — possesses some of the highest-definition cameras in the world. Continuously surveying a full three-quarters of the sky for moving or variable objects, the telescope array’s primary job is to detect near-Earth objects that could potentially pose impact risks to the planet. Hardly impressive to the layman’s eye, the particular anomaly spotted by Pan-STARRS that fall of 2017 resembled little more than a tiny, faint speck against a background of blurry Braille. Dr. Weryk went to work. Going back through days of data collected by Pan-STARRS, the object’s trajectory as it whizzed through the solar system perplexed him. “When I attempted to fit an orbital trajectory, I noticed it wouldn’t fit well even though there was nothing odd about it in the image data,” Dr. Weryk told me in an email. Though Dr. Weryk is credited with being the first person to notice the unusual object, it was Italian astronomer Marco Micheli who closed the gap on the mystery. “I contacted a colleague of mine (Marco Micheli) at ESA [the European Space Agency], and with some additional data he had collected, it became clear that the orbit could fit if it was hyperbolic,” said Weryk. “My reaction at that time was more of an ‘Aha! That would explain it!’” After examining two weeks of previous observations, the astronomical community declared in November 2017 with near-absolute certainty that the object was traveling at hyperbolic excess velocity — meaning Dr. Weryk’s tiny dot represented our first-ever detection of a visiting object, originating from outside our solar system. “I thought of my undergraduate thesis, which was to look for interstellar meteoroids using a meteor radar system in Canada. I didn’t find anything conclusive in that work,” Dr. Weryk told me, offering a moment of lighthearted nostalgia. “Eventually I sent a note to my former advisor about it — so [it was] a bit of ‘closure’ 13 years later.” Detection of the interstellar visitor to our solar system raised many new questions and spurred fresh scientific debate. Topping the list of challenges: What exactly was this cosmic interloper? “I thought of my undergraduate thesis, which was to look for interstellar meteoroids using a meteor radar system in Canada. I didn’t find anything conclusive in that work,” Dr. Weryk told me, offering a moment of lighthearted nostalgia. “Eventually I sent a note to my former advisor about it — so [it was] a bit of ‘closure’ 13 years later.” Detection of the interstellar visitor to our solar system raised many new questions and spurred fresh scientific debate. Topping the list of challenges: What exactly was this cosmic interloper? CONTINUE READING: thedebrief.org/oumuamua-proves-science-doesnt-want-to-find-aliens/
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Post by swamprat on Jan 27, 2021 16:51:31 GMT -6
To my surprise, Avi Loeb's book, Extraterrestrial, arrived today from Amazon. Turns out my son bought it for me!
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Post by swamprat on Feb 20, 2021 19:57:17 GMT -6
Troy Reimink: In 'Extraterrestrial,' Harvard astronomer considers alien life with an open mindPublished by Allison Batdorff, The Record-Eagle, Traverse City, Mich. Fri, February 19, 2021
Feb. 19—The Hawaiian word "'Oumuamua" loosely translates to "scout." It was applied half-jokingly in 2017 to the first known interstellar object ever observed in our solar system, a rocky, asteroid-like visitor that originated outside the sun's gravitational pull and flew past Earth on its journey from ... well, nobody knows.
Unfortunately, we didn't get a great look at it. At the time of its detection, 'Oumuamua already was speeding away from the sun, from which point it could provide only limited data.
But what astronomers did see was strange: 'Oumuamua, which was roughly the size of a football field and shaped like either a cigar or pancake, was accelerating as it left the solar system. This does happen with comets, which release gases as they're heated by the sun, producing visible tails and bursts of speed, a phenomenon called "outgassing."
'Oumuamua, however, produced neither a tail nor any indication of outgassing, which means it accelerated for some other reason. But, four years later, there still is no scientific consensus about why.
The Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb attracted international attention when he proposed a sensational explanation: What if 'Oumuamua was created by intelligent extraterrestrials and sent in our direction intentionally? What if it was a probe or a buoy or, to interpret its nickname literally, a scout from another world?
Loeb's proposition generated a media frenzy.
Here was a highly credentialed researcher making a compelling argument that we'd witnessed evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence, suggesting 'Oumuamua's acceleration could be explained by artificial technology such as a lightsail, and that several other features appeared too bizarre to have occurred naturally.
In his new book, "Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth," Loeb expands his 'Oumuamua hypothesis and reluctantly emerges as the new public face of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), a position that has attracted widespread criticism and ridicule from others in the scientific community.
What begins as an act of intellectual self-defense widens into an elegant argument for scientific open-mindedness. "Extraterrestrial" denounces what he describes as scientific groupthink that stifles extraordinary discoveries, and indeed, nothing would be more extraordinary than confirmation of alien life.
But many scientists involved with SETI, he explains, participate in secret for fear of damage to their careers or reputations, while more esoteric concepts such as parallel universes and string theory are widely accepted despite being essentially unprovable.
As Loeb explains, SETI enjoyed broad public interest in the 1960s and '70s as radio telescopes around the world began scanning the heavens for signals from other worlds. Since being drastically defunding in the 1990s, SETI has moved to the fringes, inspiring as much science fiction and conspiracy-theorizing as credible science.
But while that's happened, our understanding of the universe has deepened in ways that only justify renewed public interest and investment. In the last three decades, astronomers have found thousands of planets outside our solar system, and now suggest potentially habitable worlds in our galaxy alone could number in the billions.
Such discoveries continue to recalibrate the relationship between the two concepts underlying SETI: There is the Drake equation, which estimates the probability of intelligent life based on the number of sun-like stars and Earth-like planets known to exist.
Then there is the Fermi Paradox, which attempts to reconcile the likely abundance of extraterrestrial life with the lack of observable evidence for it.
Loeb suggests adding a third concept to this list: 'Oumuamua's Wager, a variation on the famous Pascal's Wager, which suggests the upsides of believing in God outweigh the downsides, even if he doesn't really exist.
Assuming 'Oumuamua came from an alien civilization, Loeb argues, will enrich humanity and leave us better prepared for true extraterrestrial contact, even if we're wrong this time.
The "if" or "when" of that scenario is unknowable, of course, because we have no way of calculating how common life is in the universe until we find it somewhere else.
The reason to keep searching the cosmos, in wonder and humility, is that we already know it has happened at least once.
Troy Reimink is a west Michigan writer
news.yahoo.com/troy-reimink-extraterrestrial-harvard-astronomer-193300668.html
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Post by swamprat on Feb 20, 2021 19:59:48 GMT -6
Even as we look for echoes of Martian life, is someone else looking for us?Kevin McDermott, Feb. 20, 2021
Just when it feels like we can’t bear the smallness of our earthbound politics any longer, two recent events invite us to look skyward. NASA last week landed a probe on Mars — essentially a high-tech dune buggy with a detachable helicopter — to conduct humanity’s most extensive search yet for echoes of extraterrestrial life there. Meanwhile, a new book by a Harvard astrophysicist suggests we recently glimpsed a different probe, sent by a civilization from another star, as it passed through our solar system.
Admit it: This is more interesting than the latest partisan spitball fight in Washington.
NASA on Thursday afternoon gently set down the six-wheeled rover, Perseverance, within a Martian crater where water once flowed, finishing an almost seven-month, 300 million-mile journey to a target area about the size of downtown St. Louis. The most sophisticated probe ever sent to Mars, it will search for signs of past microbial life. That this remarkable news was overshadowed in the media all week by grubby congressional intrigue is a testament to just how routine planetary exploration has become to us.
The U.S. and other nations have been flinging ships and probes and rovers around the solar system for more than half a century now, circling planets, leaving footprints on the moon and tire tracks on Mars, plunging probes to their meticulously scheduled doom in the hellscape atmospheres of Jupiter and Saturn. Venus’ searing surface is littered today with the melted husks of almost a dozen probes landed there by the former Soviet Union starting in the 1960s. Decades after the U.S. essentially got bored with walking on the moon, China returned with a rover in 2019 to provide humanity’s first ground-level look at the lunar dark side.
The European Space Agency in 2005 set a probe on Saturn’s moon Titan. Last year, NASA briefly landed a probe on an asteroid. Mars may soon need traffic lights: Almost 50 missions there have been undertaken since the 1960s, by nine different governments or alliances, including the E.U., Japan and India. Right now, the U.S., China and United Arab Emirates all have active probes on or orbiting the red planet.
We’ve strewn space junk all over the solar system — and outside of it, having sent several human-made objects into interstellar space over the years. So is it inconceivable that, in the vastness of the cosmos, some other civilization once sent a probe this way, to be fleetingly glimpsed through a telescope in Hawaii three years ago?
That question — and the bigger one: Are we alone? — is the launchpad for astrophysicist Avi Loeb’s new book, “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth.” Part thesis, part autobiography, part searing indictment of scientific rigor mortis, it’s a great read, whatever your thoughts on E.T.
The background: For a few days in October 2017, astronomers tracked a cigar-shaped, football-field-sized … something … that tumbled around the sun and then headed back out to the void beyond Pluto. Its unusual trajectory indicated it came from outside our solar system, the first known interstellar object that humans have seen here.
That alone made it big scientific news, but there was more. As the object (dubbed ‘Oumuamua, Hawaiian for “Scout”) moved away from the sun, it accelerated in a way that couldn’t be explained by gravitational forces alone. Comets do that as the sun vaporizes their ice, pushing them like a thruster, but ’Oumuamua didn’t display the classic comet’s vapor tail. It was a mystery.
Most scientists say it was an interstellar comet, while explaining its un-comet-like behavior with various natural theories — all of which, Loeb argues, are more problematic and unlikely than his: “I submit that the simplest explanation for these peculiarities,” he writes, “is that the object was created by an intelligent civilization not of this Earth.” He posits that ’Oumuamua is an artificially constructed solar “sail” that was being pushed by the sun’s radiation.
It’s important to note here that Loeb isn’t some pointy-ear-wearing UFO gadfly, but was the longest-serving chair of Harvard’s Department of Astronomy and still teaches there. His scientific colleagues mostly reject his thesis, some of them ridiculing it fiercely. Loeb, in his book, ridicules them back. “To explain ‘Oumuamua’s trajectory and retain the assumption that it was a comet,” he writes, “scientists have strained to the breaking point their theories about its physical size and composition.” This is how astrophysicists trash-talk each other.
I’m not by any stretch sold on Loeb’s theory, and I know the cratered ground I’m treading by saying that. One of the strongest pushbacks I’ve ever gotten from readers was in response to a column I wrote two years ago expressing my skepticism about extraterrestrials — not doubting they exist, but questioning how, logistically, they could possibly visit us. The UFO crowd all but threatened to throw me out of an airlock.
But with billions of Earth-like planets in our galaxy alone, it’s almost a mathematical certainty that other life is out there, and perhaps not just the microscopic kind that NASA is seeking on Mars. Loeb vividly expresses his frustration that the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is nonetheless considered exotic among most astronomers — this as they obsess over navel-gazing theories about multiple universes and other groupthink that’s unlikely to ever matter to real people in the real world. Sounds kind of like our politics.
www.stltoday.com/opinion/columnists/kevin-mcdermott/mcdermott-even-as-we-look-for-echoes-of-martian-life-is-someone-else-looking-for/article_73e11232-ad9f-5f52-9185-7ba6ab93d59b.html
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