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While I appreciate why Avi Loeb would author an article like this (for those unfamiliar he posited that Oumuamua was of an intelligent alien origin and hence ga

by chunky1994 5y ago

While I appreciate why Avi Loeb would author an article like this (for those unfamiliar he posited that Oumuamua was of an intelligent alien origin and hence garnered some pushback), it seems a bit ungenerous in spirit to how science is done these days. He states that extraordinary claims do require extraordinary evidence so the thesis that skepticism is healthy is still embedded here, however I think he's unwilling to consider (or unconcerned about the idea) that the alien origin claim could very well be misinterpreted/lead credence to a lot of crackpot claims in the lay public which is the source of most of the pushback. While we do not currently have an explanation for Oumuamua and I cannot intelligently speak on which of the four possibilities mentioned in the article is more likely, communicating science to the lay public is often better done once a theory has been absorbed into the general underpinnings of the larger scientific body of evidence at hand rather than when it is at the precipice to avoid inadvertently misleading people.

gameswithgo 5y ago
I heard him talk to, I think Joe Rogan, about Oumuamua, and he presented the case that the unexplained acceleration could not be outgassing because no tail was observed. He also said it was weird that the velocity of the object was effectively stationary compared to the average velocity of this area of the galaxy, as if it was a kind of lighthouse/beacon. This seemed pretty compelling to me. Eventually after digging deeper on both these topics I learned that it is absolutely possible to have outgassing that doesn't leave a tail, that could cause the observed acceleration. And that something being stationary relative to the other objects in this area of the galaxy is not at all unusual. This kind of made me feel he was either being disingenuous or was just too emotionally invested in it being aliens to think clearly. Sure, it could still be aliens, nonetheless, so could every rock and spot we see in the sky, though.

gameswithgo 5y ago

I heard him talk to, I think Joe Rogan, about Oumuamua, and he presented the case that the unexplained acceleration could not be outgassing because no tail was observed. He also said it was weird that the velocity of the object was effectively stationary compared to the average velocity of this area of the galaxy, as if it was a kind of lighthouse/beacon. This seemed pretty compelling to me. Eventually after digging deeper on both these topics I learned that it is absolutely possible to have outgassing that doesn't leave a tail, that could cause the observed acceleration. And that something being stationary relative to the other objects in this area of the galaxy is not at all unusual. This kind of made me feel he was either being disingenuous or was just too emotionally invested in it being aliens to think clearly. Sure, it could still be aliens, nonetheless, so could every rock and spot we see in the sky, though.