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Is the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS alien technology? [pdf]
https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/comets/3i-atlas/ https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/comets/3i-atlas/
- cyberlimerence 1y agoDoes Loeb plan to apply this thesis to every interstellar object ?
- moi2388 1y agoNot just interstellar ones, also any rock you might find on the ocean floor..
- SideburnsOfDoom 1y agoThe three known interstellar object to pass through the solar system were 1I/ʻOumuamua, 2I/Borisov and now 3I/ATLAS. Did he give Borisov this treatment? It seems not, so then the answer is "no, only about two thirds of them".
- TheOtherHobbes 1y agoEven so, the probability that Loeb will hint that 4I/whatever could be a probe approaches certainty.
- s1artibartfast 1y agoSeems like it, why not. The paper says it is provided as a guide for future interstellar object.
- Mistletoe 1y agoI hope this gets some discussion here. A fascinating paper to think about.
- RajT88 1y agoFun to think about, but think about this: as soon as we have the tech to start catching sight of these things, we start seeing them yearly. While that does not automatically suggest that they are not technological, they are not likely to be hostile.* We've likely lived through tens of thousands of them passing through. *Unless you subscribe to the "they are among us" viewpoint. That crazy well has no bottom.
- Teever 1y agoIt really isn't. One of the authors (Abraham Loeb) is well known for writing salami-sliced papers that have tenuous and non-testable premises. You should be skeptical of anything he writes after watching this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY985qzn7oI&t=1440s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY985qzn7oI&t=1440s
- SideburnsOfDoom 1y agoYes, this. Here's Loeb 2 years ago on Oumuamua - was it Aliens? https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/astronomer-avi-loeb-says-aliens-have-visited-and-hes-not-kidding1/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/astronomer-avi-lo... https://earthsky.org/space/oumuamua-a-comet-avi-loeb-responds/ https://earthsky.org/space/oumuamua-a-comet-avi-loeb-respond... Here's Loeb on space dust - was it Aliens? https://www.livescience.com/space/extraterrestrial-life/alien-spherules-dredged-from-the-pacific-are-probably-just-industrial-pollution-new-studies-suggest https://www.livescience.com/space/extraterrestrial-life/alie... He's doing what he usually does. It's fun to think about, but not to be taken too seriously or regarded as anything unique.
- Mistletoe 1y agoWhat is a salami-sliced paper?
- Teever 1y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salami_slicing_tactics#Salami_slicing_in_scientific_publishing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salami_slicing_tactics#Salami_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Least_publishable_unit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Least_publishable_unit
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago“If this is the case, then two possibilities follow: first that its intentions are entirely benign and second they are malign.” There is a third: undecided. “At the heart of this, is a question any self-respecting scientist will have had to address at some point in their career: ‘is an outlier of a sample a consequence of expected random fluctuation, or is there ultimately a sound reason for its observed discrepancy?’ A sensible answer to this hinges largely on the size of the sample in question, and it should be noted that for interstellar objects we have a sample size of only 3, therefore rendering an attempt to draw inferences from what is observed rather problematic.” Not only the heart of the question, but of the paper. Still fun, though!
- aiaikzkdbx 1y ago> If this is the case, then two possibilities follow: first that its intentions are entirely benign and second they are malign Even framing this objects actions using human concepts (benign, malign) is very short sighted. It’s possible any alien life experiences complexities were fundamentally unable to comprehend (there’s some good sci fi short stories that explore this).
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> It’s possible any alien life experiences complexities were fundamentally unable to comprehend Possible. But I’d argue unlikely. We can’t make many assumptions about alien life, generally. We can about a technological civilisation that sends out interstellar probes.
- tialaramex 1y agoA sufficiently advanced technology might make the construction of probes trivial, so that it has no great significance to its creators - the "Roadside picnic" situation. Our unfathomable advanced technology is their disposable object. "Why did you send us this probe?" would be like asking America to account for a discarded Coke can. "I dunno, probably somebody was thirsty? What the fuck are you asking us for?" Aliens are completely unknowable, that's the thing most fiction trips up on. We don't understand what the hell is going on with other humans. They're like us but different, their motivations sometimes are mysterious or maybe they don't have motivations at all? It's confusing, and those aren't even a different species let alone aliens.
- criddell 1y ago> We show that 3I/ATLAS approaches surprisingly close to Venus, Mars and Jupiter, with a probability of ≲ 0.005%. What probability are they talking about?
- pbmonster 1y agoIf you take a random trajectory through our solar system, your chance to pass this close to three planets is < 0.005%.
- datadrivenangel 1y agoSpecifically a random angle. "The likelihood for such a perfect alignment of the orbital angular momentum vector around the Sun for Earth and 3I/ATLAS is π(5◦/57◦)2/(4π) = 2×10−3." Sloppy sloppy work.
- pbmonster 1y agoI also misread that. The 0.005% is in relation to this: > In the following analysis we assume that 3I/ATLAS is on its current orbit but vary the time-of-entry into the Solar System (or equivalently the time of perihelion), assuming 3I/ATLAS could have come at any time into the Solar System, and happened to do so such that it came within the observed closest approaches of Venus, Mars and Jupiter. The probability of this is 0.005 So exact same trajectory, but analyzed over a long period of time. If it came any earlier or later, it would almost never get this close to exactly those three planets.
- TheOtherHobbes 1y agoThe aliens are going to be so annoyed when they realise they missed the interesting one.
- MarkusQ 1y agoNo matter how tempting the straight line, I will not make the joke.
- camillomiller 1y agoThey read Rendez-vous with Rama one time too much.
- fourseventy 1y agoI just picked up the book this week so it was curious timing to see this post!
- rookderby 1y agoI'm in favor of spending more resources on research projects like building a probe to intercept one of these interstellar objects. It would be worth the investment to go and see, and it looks like the Vera Rubin will give us several targets.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> It would be worth the investment to go and see Why? I’d rather we continue surveying from a distance while sending probes to places we know will be interesting, like Titan and Europa.
- f6v 1y agoWell, we probably have resources for both (as The Humanity).
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> we probably have resources for both In the long run, yes. Possibly even in the medium term. In the short term, no--we're limited by our technological capability.
- Muromec 1y agoIf it is a probe, its waiting to be intercepted and contacted, because this is how sentient space-worthy species find about each other.
- EagnaIonat 1y agoIf anything ends in a question mark, the answer is likely "no". This was much more interesting: https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/comets/3i-atlas https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/comets/3i-atlas
- digitalsushi 1y agoIf news articles end with a question mark. A little refinement upon your claim
- card_zero 1y agoInevitably this makes people write headlines like "Is Betteridge's Law Valid?" https://hekint.org/2024/06/03/is-betteridges-law-valid/ https://hekint.org/2024/06/03/is-betteridges-law-valid/
- antonvs 1y agoYes. It’s the exception that proves the rule.
- surprisetalk 1y agoYou might enjoy this: [0] https://taylor.town/is-betteridges-law https://taylor.town/is-betteridges-law
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- dang 1y agoI put that link in the top text for added context. Thanks!
- MalbertKerman 1y agoNo (Betteridge, 2009).
- mattlondon 1y agoLoeb. That sounds familiar - is this the same Loeb who was hunting for molten alien rocket fragments on the sea floor? What happened to that?
- taylorius 1y agoIf I recall, he found a few small bits of metal and declared victory.
- lawlessone 1y agoI get the impression he's doing real science but using outrageous ideas to gain funding. The tiny metal spheres stuff was interesting even though it's not aliens.
- taylorius 1y agoYes, perhaps that's right. Seems pretty dishonest to me though. He's a "serious Harvard scientist", so people listen when he tells us that some rock they've spotted may be an alien spaceship. Even though there is surely zero evidence for such an assertion. What the hell is he doing?
- moi2388 1y agoThe very same. And also the same guy who claimed ʻOumuamua is likely to be an alien spacecraft. I don’t know what Harvard is doing lately, but perhaps they ought not to talk about astronomy anymore if this nonsense is all they can contribute to the discussion.
- throwawaymaths 1y agoi do think loeb is nonsensical but is there any a priori reason to think that academia should not speculate about extraterrestrial intelligence in general?
- Zigurd 1y ago
- datadrivenangel 1y agoPer betteridge's law: no.
- largbae 1y agoBased on their approach graphs, if it is an intercept probe it seems like the target is Mars.
- mattlondon 1y agoOff-by-one :)
- WithinReason 1y agoThe data of the aliens was outdated by a few billion years
- carpo 1y agoUnless that's where they want to put their base of operations.
- Mizza 1y agoRelated to this is Loeb's proposal to nudge the Juno spacecraft, currently orbiting Jupiter and soon facing EOL, into the path of 3I/Atlas to try to scan it and snap some pictures. I doubt it has enough fuel left, but I hope they're looking into it. https://avi-loeb.medium.com/how-close-can-the-juno-spacecraft-get-to-the-interstellar-object-3i-atlas-66996354d3ff https://avi-loeb.medium.com/how-close-can-the-juno-spacecraf...
- mattlondon 1y agoEven if they have no fuel/not enough fuel, can they at least point it in the right direction? Better than nowt?
- ben_w 1y agoIf the probe doesn't have enough fuel to leave Jupiter's orbit, we get a better view of it from here with our much bigger optics. Sure, the closest approach of 3I/Atlas to Jupiter is 53.56±0.45 Gm, the closest approach of 3I/Atlas to Earth is 268.98±0.3 Gm — but we have more and better sensors down here. For photographs in particular, Juno's JunoCam is spectacularly bad, because "it was put on board primarily for public science and outreach, to increase public engagement, with all images available on NASA's website" — while it can be used for actual science, at the orbital apsis (8.1 Gm) it has a worse resolution, when looking at Jupiter, than Hubble gets of Jupiter from LEO (a distance of ~600 Gm for https://esahubble.org/images/heic0910q/ https://esahubble.org/images/heic0910q/).
- Zigurd 1y agoBy now, Avi Loeb's recommendations should count against whatever he's recommending.
- SirChud 1y agoSpoken like a true zealot. Not aligning with scientific consensus doesn't make your suggestions worthless.
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- jpcompartir 1y agoMost reasoned take is directly from the paper itself: "We strongly emphasize that this paper is largely a pedagogical exercise, with interesting discoveries and strange serendipities, worthy of a record in the scientific literature. By far the most likely outcome will be that 3I/ATLAS is a completely natural interstellar object, probably a comet, and the authors await the astronomical data to support this likely origin."
- King-Aaron 1y agoIt makes me sad that so many people are seemingly so aggressive against Loeb and his takes on this stuff. Whether things might be aliens or not, people get so upset whenever it's even mentioned as a thought experiment. We should be able to have a bit of fun here and there.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- actinium226 1y agoI think if it was framed more as fiction it would get a better read. The title and the abstract suggest they take this possibility seriously, which is ridiculous.
- nprateem 1y agoThe fact you think aliens are ridiculous in an infinite universe is more ridiculous.
- nkrisc 1y agoSeems equally ridiculous to expect we’d ever actually see aliens in a spatially and temporally infinite universe.
- actinium226 1y agoIt's not that I find aliens ridiculous, I find it ridiculous to attribute 3I/ATLAS to aliens and I find it especially ridiculous that it's coming from Harvard. They have billions of dollars in endowment and this is what they waste their time on? Maybe the administration was right to pick a fight with them.
- blisstonia 1y agoOh cool, a .PDF I can squint at.
- metalman 1y ago3l/Atlas itself is unlikely to be alien technology, but it is from way outside our solar system and deserves to be examined as closely as possible with every resourse availible, and at this point planning for ways to investigate interstellar objects more closely needs to be figured out......say, blast it with ultra high lasers and see what boils off!
- xoxxala 1y agoScott Manley just posted a video: "Interstellar Comet 3/I Atlas - Probably Isn't An Alien Spaceship" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MafmhXwPgmo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MafmhXwPgmo (It has more to do with why we can't send a probe to investigate 3/I Atlas...)
- thrance 1y agoMore importantly, do we need to reach for aliens everytime something slightly out of the ordinary happens in the night sky? (No, we do not).
- j_timberlake 1y agoHow is pretentiousness more important?
- motza 1y agoMaybe we are getting close to AGI then
- smlacy 1y agoYes, but how did they know that before arriving?
- m3kw9 1y agoIt’s the universe governing body that any species require AGI to enter into the “circle”. You don’t get AGI, you are not advanced enough to join the group
- sebastiennight 1y agoBased on current estimated trajectory, Jupiter is getting AGI before us though.
- m3kw9 1y agoHow?
- krapp 1y agoOr - and I know this isn't a new idea by any means - perhaps AGI is the circle. Perhaps the only life that persists long enough and is robust enough to spread amongst the stars is what we would consider AI or machine intelligence, and flesh and blood beings like ourselves are only considered a necessary precursor to the real thing.
- motohagiography 1y agothe idea of malign intent ignores the physical economic factors that are true everywhere in the universe. The amount of energy it takes to get here from the next closest place, and the necessary probability that there is at least one other planet with every element we have, in much higher quantities, and closer to them, precludes any motive to wipe us out. given the effort involved and the alternatives, the only possible reason to contact us is benevolent. also, if there is a single other civilization within range of contacting us, statistically and necessarily, there are also millions, if not billions of others to choose from. No, there is no malign intent. Even considering it reveals some very mid reasoning. We are very likely emerging up the evolutionary scale to become the stupidest intelligent thing in the universe, but only just over the line of what passes for intelligence among space faring civilizations. The only concievable risk is from ourselves.
- blacksmith_tb 1y agoI agree that all makes benign much more likely - the Dark Forest arguments mostly come down to "if aliens are as bad as humans (especially as bad as we were hundreds or thousands of years ago), we're doomed". That seems extremely unlikely, we're far from advanced enough to send a probe to another solar system, by the time we are, I'd like to think we'll be even less likely to want to exterminate or enslave anyone...
- psunavy03 1y agoI don't see why people keep conflating "advanced" technological civilizations with civilizations that happen to be "advanced" within the bounds of that particular person's individual moral worldview. These are not the same things and "advancing" on one axis does not require "advancing" on the other axis, even taking into account the fact that beyond a certain point, one person's moral viewpoints are not necessarily universalizable in the Kantian sense.
- blacksmith_tb 1y agoPresumably because that's been our experience with human societies? You might protest Germany in the 1930s was "modern" technologically but still "barbaric" morally - but I think that overlooks the way all the European powers were behaving in Africa and Asia, barbarism wasn't so uncommon as all that. And it's less common now, even as we've made more technical advancements? I don't think we develop on all axes in lockstep, but there's still a general trend, and I'd be pretty surprised to find aliens advanced enough to come visit who didn't already have plenty of resources, so why bother messing with us?
- xqcgrek2 1y agoIt's Avi Loeb. He's considered a crackpot now.
- elzbardico 1y agoJesus, I fucking hope so.
- throwmeaway222 1y agoI think it's a natural object. I think it's much more likely that space aliens have FTL. Unless it's the klingons.
- asdff 1y agoImagine you are an FTL space alien in search of other FTL civilizations. Would you parade your FTL tech around? Allow others to study your capabilities? I'd probably send something that could plausibly be identified as a rock. If there are other FTL civilizations out there, I'd like to know everything about them before they know anything about me.
- Eduard 1y agois it reasonable to assume an FTL civilization to be so dumb to mistake a spacescraft for a rock?
- ebcode 1y agoI don’t know if ours is an FTL civ or not, but I do think a large number of us are mistaking our own spaceship[0] for a rock. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaceship_Earth https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaceship_Earth
- asdff 1y agoWe have aircraft today that other nationstates are "so dumb" to assume is maybe a flying ping pong ball based on radar signature, not a delta wing full of thousands of pounds of bombs.
- mr_toad 1y ago> Imagine you are an FTL space alien in search of other FTL civilizations. Would you parade your FTL tech around? The first thing you discover when you invent FTL is that you’re the last civilisation to invent FTL.
- anigbrowl 1y agoGiven the difficulty of intercepting it, what are our best options (if any) for getting a decent picture of it? Obviously any data ata ll will be interesting, but I mean something better than a couple of pixels that require a degree in astrophysics to properly appreciate.
- 827a 1y agoNot possible. The least-baddest option I've seen proposed is the Juno probe around Jupiter, but it doesn't have the fuel onboard to achieve the needed velocity, and apparently also had some engine trouble during a previous burn that convinced the team to abort it.
- neom 1y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnpCdi_evE4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnpCdi_evE4 this is kinda cool, ish.
- anigbrowl 1y agoIndeed so.
- ConanRus 1y ago[dead]
- GMoromisato 1y agoI would bet a large sum that 3I is a natural object, but if it's artificial, I would bet that it's malign. When it comes to alien civilizations, the probability is that they are millions of years more advanced than us.[1] Millions of years is enough for natural genetic change to have an impact, and we already know what that impact will be: individuals that have more offsprings will spread through the population and displace individuals with fewer offsprings.[2] But if you're a technological species, the only limit to having more offsprings is competition with other members of your species.[3] In effect, over a million-year time-scale, you get into an arms-race to harness as much power/energy as possible to prevent others from killing you and to kill others who are using resources you need.[4] So if any alien civilization deliberately decides to visit Earth, you can be pretty sure that their intentions are hostile. Maybe, if they are hydrogen-breathers who evolved on gas giants, they will leave Earth for last. But if they are carbon-based, oxygen breathers, they will squash us like bugs. ------------ [1]: Imagine that, over the 10 billion-year history of the galaxy, 100 civilizations appear. What's the chance that a randomly chosen civilization (say, the closest one to us) is less than 1 million years old? Using a Poisson distribution, the chance is 0.01%: a 1 in 10,000 chance. [2]: This is just a restatement of Darwin's theory. Note that Darwin's theory holds even for intelligent/technological people. E.g., imagine some civilization decides that 2.1 kids is the limit because that yields a stable society. That civilization will be destroyed by one that has no such limit, because the latter civilization will have a need for more resources and will have the power to take it. After millions of years, only expanding civilizations will be left because they will have destroyed all the others. [3]: Non-technological species are limited by their environment. Ants cannot colonize the ocean or the moon. But technological humans can. Our only limit is physics and other humans. [4]: As long as there is more than 1 civilization, there will be competition because, over millions of years, the galaxy is a zero-sum arena. If one civilization expands to a star system, then the other one cannot. [And, as I said earlier, if one expands but one doesn't, the expanding one will take over.] The only possible benign scenario is if there are very few civilizations who don't compete with each other. But in that scenario, they wouldn't be sending probes to our solar system.
- Eduard 1y agoA United Federation of Planets would condemn such exploitative barbaric interaction.
- beefnugs 1y agoDamn this has everything: universally interesting, wild speculation shoehorned into real science, misunderstanding that all things happening in interstellar scale are unlikely, casually dropping cool big rare terms for space shit (but why would optimum mission be a head on collision? and not getting something flying its near trajectory at near speed?) If i didn't know so much about how broken the world is already, this is like life path defining stuff Clearly the best mission would be to shoot something to something it into mars so we can check it out someday. Then after that success, be inspired to fill the whole outer solar system with somethings, capable of redirecting everything into mars for later catching or eventually murdering all musk's future offspring
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- j_timberlake 1y agoSounds like aliens might crash the holidays. Traffic would be brutal.
- _DeadFred_ 1y agoMy entire childhood I was excited for this. But adult me knows that somehow it will only result in higher taxes and higher inflation.
- JohnCClarke 1y agoIf any alien civilizations believe the "Dark Forest" hypothesis, then they will definitely disguise their probes as asteriods and comets. At least, I would.
- mellosouls 1y agoEarlier discussions here with 100+ comments about Loeb-based ET mischief include: "A Harvard Astronomer on the Interstellar Object ‘Oumuamua" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18923591 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18923591 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21948804 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21948804 the above on the same 2019 article, but others can be found etc
- pfdietz 1y agoThe Fermi Argument says it's not going to be aliens. In a universe where the aliens can cause random interstellar objects to have a high probability of being alien devices, the aliens have already colonized everything. That clearly hasn't happened (as our own evolution would have been aborted and the universe would be one big urban area.)
- DonnyV 1y agoI wouldn't be surprised if Avi Loeb was just being used by the US Military to come up with an excuse to militarize space. I mean he's ego driven and loves inserting himself into situations to boost himself.
- krapp 1y agoThe American military industrial complex doesn't need Avi Loeb and his stories about aliens to justify militarizing space. The existence of China alone justifies it to the war hawks.
- poulpy123 1y agoAlways the same guy milking the same bait
- Perenti 1y agoI should point out that one of the authors believes Star Trek to be the epitome of Science Fiction.
- Nibiru5 1y agoI believe this to be the Anunnaki returning... https://x.com/JinxedHorizon/status/1954520189371838483 https://x.com/JinxedHorizon/status/1954520189371838483 People with fear will deny the existence of something that they do not comprehend so that they do not have to mentally deal with it in any way