Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://panstarrs.stsci.edu/ The data is there. Have at it.
Perfect task for AI.
Given this comment, I'm not sure you know what "AI" or "perfect" mean.
Mystery of interstellar visitor 'Oumuamua gets trickier
111–120 of 236 posts
Re: Mystery of interstellar visitor 'Oumuamua gets trickier
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
First sign? The first was probably the irrigation canals spotted on mars. Then repeating radio signals. The face on mars. Tabby's star. Each had their day as the first sign . The first real detection won't be some slight variance that we debate for years but solid evidence. If Oumuamua was a triangle, that would be solid evidence. It isn't aliens until it is.
Well, even a 'giant triangle' may still not be enough... There is a giant hexagon on Saturn, after all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn%27s_hexagon
"It [the giant hexagon] rotates with a period of 10h 39m 24s, the same period as Saturn's radio emissions from its interior."
Interesting. Thanks for posting.
Re: Mystery of interstellar visitor 'Oumuamua gets trickier
#113My pet theory (which is not intended to be taken too seriously) is that it is indeed a discarded light sail, and that light sail in particular was used to transport a Von Neumann probe which detached at some point after the object entered our solar system but before we first observed it. This detachment, in addition to leaving the sail tumbling, would have changed its trajectory, meaning our estimation of which direc…
> it's too much of a coincidence that such a probe would first arrive so soon after we gained the ability to conceive of it. Perhaps they observed I Love Lucy and Gilligan and came by to complain about spectrum pollution.
I don't think so. Light sails are not fast. It would have taken the probe millions of years to get here.
Re: Mystery of interstellar visitor 'Oumuamua gets trickier
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, even a 'giant triangle' may still not be enough... There is a giant hexagon on Saturn, after all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn%27s_hexagon
Down in the explanations, a triangle: > Similar regular shapes were created in the laboratory when a circular tank of liquid was rotated at different speeds at its centre and periphery. The most common shape was six sided, but shapes with three to eight sides were also produced.
Natural processes can make lots of structures that look artificial. See Giant's Causeway: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant%27s_Causeway
Re: Mystery of interstellar visitor 'Oumuamua gets trickier
#115Read the last sentence of the article. Bias warps perception. This shouldn't even be posted here.
> This shouldn't even be posted here.
From the HN Guidelines:
"anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Also don't judge a book by its title. Until you've read the book then you can't comment on whether there's a bias in play.
Re: Mystery of interstellar visitor 'Oumuamua gets trickier
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the mission of the probe is exploration then it doesn’t need to consume all of the resources of a solar system. It just needs enough to make a few copies to reach the nearest handful of stars. If they are using light sails as propulsion they probably need barely anything. I don’t have a hard time believing that an advanced civilization would choose hiding as the default method of exploration. Anything from the dar…
While it's entirely possible they'd have a good reason to be stealthy, I don't think it's likely to be anything we've thought of. The Prime Directive is a mushy human emotional idea, not something that makes any logical sense for a space-faring civilization to follow. If there's any competition out there among space-faring civilizations, none of them are going to tie their hands behind their backs by refusing to touc…
I’m not sure that reasoning holds up. There’s no reason to believe that “mushy human emotional ideas” are not the norm. There’s no data to support that claim since humanity is the only example we have of intelligence. So for the sake of the argument I’m going to define alien intelligence as similar to human intelligence. I’d also inquire what the point of having a Von Neumann probe consume all of a system would be? It’s not practical to ship the resources anywhere at sub light speed. There’s a limit on the number of probes it would be rational to make in any one system even if you were going for high redundancy. Even use as a weapon would be foolish since there’s a good chance something could go wrong and you’d wind up killing your own systems. Maybe if you were paving the way for a colony but even then you’d only build what you needed to avoid having to constantly maintain the structures until they were useful. The only way I see an exploitive strategy working is if you have FTL travel and if you have that then Von Neumann probes are useless old technology since you would just send a fleet of ships with what you need to get started rather than trying to bootstrap from a single self replicating probe.
Re: Mystery of interstellar visitor 'Oumuamua gets trickier
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
First sign? The first was probably the irrigation canals spotted on mars. Then repeating radio signals. The face on mars. Tabby's star. Each had their day as the first sign . The first real detection won't be some slight variance that we debate for years but solid evidence. If Oumuamua was a triangle, that would be solid evidence. It isn't aliens until it is.
The face with a mountain with coincidental lighting. Everything else has very plausible natural explanations as well. You're hearing footsteps and hoping for zebras when it's probably horses.
Human neurology is optimized to see and recognize faces, so of course anything facelike will look like a face. Faces in clouds, faces in the uneven paint on drywall, the Man In The Moon.
Re: Mystery of interstellar visitor 'Oumuamua gets trickier
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If we put half the energy we use up arguing about Oumuamua into detecting more interstellar objects we would have the data to end this debate This HN comment was just the motivation I needed to get off my computer and rededicate myself to polishing eighteen 1.32m gold-plated beryllium hexagonal mirror segments.
What is used, and how long does doing that take?
Given a budget of, say, $9.66 Billion, I'd say it would take around 25 years.
Re: Mystery of interstellar visitor 'Oumuamua gets trickier
#119Re: Mystery of interstellar visitor 'Oumuamua gets trickier
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
Those are not the only two options. Besides, we still routinely fail to spot asteroids until they get close to Earth or pass by. There may be more dwarf planets like Pluto, or a major planet the size of Neptune (per Caltech researchers, so called Planet Nine or Planet X) in our own solar system and we can't easily find them. No need to intentionally hide from the primitive humans that are still struggling to locate l…
The existence of other planets doesn't seem to explain why they wouldn't colonize Earth. I would expect them to go everywhere.
What would the point of going everywhere be?