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Loeb. That sounds familiar - is this the same Loeb who was hunting for molten alien rocket fragments on the sea floor? What happened to that?
by mattlondon 1y ago
Loeb. 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 agoYes. Most people don't understand either physical and chronological distance enough to understand that contact with an alien civilization, if it exists or ever did exist, is vanishingly unlikely to happen because of time, physical changes to solar systems, distance, the endurance of civilizations, the speed of light, etc. Loeb is pandering to the UFO-susceptible.
- throwawaymaths 1y agowhat do you think of this? https://www.researchgate.net/publication/394040040_Aligned_multiple-transient_events_in_the_First_Palomar_Sky_Survey https://www.researchgate.net/publication/394040040_Aligned_m...
- Zigurd 1y agoI don't think too highly of this, from the abstract: Notably, the candidate coincides in time with the Washington D.C. 1952 UFO flyover, and another (a candidate) falls within a day of the peak of the 1954 UFO wave
- throwawaymaths 1y agowow. ok. didn't even look at the data. the crazy thing is that you are so biased against these researchers that you have even shut out the possibility that these (and the DC UFOs) are extremely high formation flying USAF vehicles (for example).
- 0xDEAFBEAD 1y ago"Endurance of civilizations" is the key parameter here. The universe is almost 14 billion years old. Colonizing the Milky Way only takes 1 million years if you can travel 10% of the speed of light. So time and distance aren't significant obstacles for a highly enduring civilization. Given our massive uncertainty about the endurance/motives/etc. of super-advanced starfaring civiliations, I don't think it's justified to say that alien interlopers are "vanishingly unlikely".
- jojobas 1y agoThat's academic freedom for you.