Mystery of interstellar visitor 'Oumuamua gets trickier • Hacker News Board

Re: Mystery of interstellar visitor 'Oumuamua gets trickier

#131

Post by walleeee » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 7:52 PM UTC

rendall wrote: post #28

bluedays wrote: post #2

This is pretty cool. I am constantly looking at current events and thinking to myself "what if aliens were watching this?". I feel like it sorta puts things in perspective for me. Seeing that this might be a possibility is sorta thrilling.

"what if aliens were watching this?" There is an archetype of the Mysterious Stranger, an innocent, naive observer of our culture, who finds us incomprehensible because we are Just Terrible. We make war, pollute, enslave, etc, while this archetype is pure. Examples: K-Pax, Powder, Dostoyevski's The Idiot, Crocodile Dundee all have elements of this archetype The thing is, the only reason this archetype has any meaning…

> There is no Mysterious Stranger.

... besides ourselves. It's not that we don't relate to anyone or anything this way; its that the relation is reflexive.

Re: Mystery of interstellar visitor 'Oumuamua gets trickier

#132

Post by rendall » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 8:02 PM UTC

walleeee wrote: post #131

rendall wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"what if aliens were watching this?" There is an archetype of the Mysterious Stranger, an innocent, naive observer of our culture, who finds us incomprehensible because we are Just Terrible. We make war, pollute, enslave, etc, while this archetype is pure. Examples: K-Pax, Powder, Dostoyevski's The Idiot, Crocodile Dundee all have elements of this archetype The thing is, the only reason this archetype has any meaning…

> There is no Mysterious Stranger. ... besides ourselves. It's not that we don't relate to anyone or anything this way; its that the relation is reflexive.

Yes! Exactly.

Re: Mystery of interstellar visitor 'Oumuamua gets trickier

#133

Post by Florin_Andrei » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 8:03 PM UTC

kentonv wrote: post #47

My 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

We've gained the ability to conceive of complex stuff only some thousands of years ago. Everything is "too soon" on that scale.

Re: Mystery of interstellar visitor 'Oumuamua gets trickier

#134

Post by ithkuil » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 8:17 PM UTC

kentonv wrote: post #128

throwaway316943 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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? I…

Once a civilization is capable of building Von Neumann probes, it would be silly for them not to do so. They are basically free, since they are self-replicating. Of course a civilization is going to want to control and harness as many resources as it possibly can. We may not be able to imagine what they'd want to build out of whole star systems, but I absolutely don't believe that civilization will ever run out of th…

Andromeda has 3-4 more stars than the milky way; we already lost, should we flee instead?

Re: Mystery of interstellar visitor 'Oumuamua gets trickier

#135

Post by rbanffy » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 8:18 PM UTC

aetherson wrote: post #97

rbanffy wrote: post #87

Can't we build a probe that can reach it? What's the fastest we can launch a ton of equipment in Oumuamua's direction?

No, it's long gone.

It's currently traveling at about half the speed of New Horizons, but on a highly inclined plane. The delta-v from Earth seems to be around 60 km/s.

Re: Mystery of interstellar visitor 'Oumuamua gets trickier

#136

Post by nafey » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 8:20 PM UTC

kentonv wrote: post #106

throwaway316943 wrote: post #68

Earlier 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…

What you are missing is that technological advancement can accelerate exponentially. Couple this fact nothing can move faster than light. This means if you don't stamp out alien life as soon as you encounter it then the next time you come back they might already have achieved technological parity with you. And they might not be as forgiving as you are. This means you have to hide and you have to exterminate any alien life that knowns about your existence. I do think if oumuamua was an alien probe then we should be gravely concerned.

Re: Mystery of interstellar visitor 'Oumuamua gets trickier

#137

Post by gus_massa » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 8:23 PM UTC

teh_klev wrote: post #115

IAmGraydon wrote: post #44

Read 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.

The same guy has published the idea of the solar sail in a paper (or preprint?). Solar sails are his research topic.

The calculations that a solar sail can survive an interstellar travel are probably ok.

The evidence that the solar sail is the most likely explanation is very weak.

Re: Mystery of interstellar visitor 'Oumuamua gets trickier

#138

Post by tgflynn » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 8:34 PM UTC

kentonv wrote: post #55

jameshart wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which forces the logical conclusion that this isn't the first such probe, obviously.

That could only be true if they are intentionally hiding from us, rather than replicating and harvesting the solar system as fast as they can. But personally I have a hard time believing that hyper-intelligent devices would care about avoiding detection by lowly biological organisms like us.

Speculating about the motives of a species that may or may not be biologically similar to us and which, even if they are similar, may well be millions of years more advanced than us is very hazardous. I think these kinds of speculations lead many people to hold all sorts of strongly held but unfounded beliefs about what ET's may or may not do here.

Maybe after another million years of development a species' main motivation would be simple curiosity, in other words they are basically scientists. Scientists may want to avoid interfering with a species they are studying and therefore remain hidden. But then the same scientists conducting a different experiment may want to selectively perturb the specimen's environment to probe their psychological reactions and degree of intellectual development.

Re: Mystery of interstellar visitor 'Oumuamua gets trickier

#139

Post by formerly_proven » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 8:51 PM UTC

tgflynn wrote: post #138

kentonv wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That could only be true if they are intentionally hiding from us, rather than replicating and harvesting the solar system as fast as they can. But personally I have a hard time believing that hyper-intelligent devices would care about avoiding detection by lowly biological organisms like us.

Speculating about the motives of a species that may or may not be biologically similar to us and which, even if they are similar, may well be millions of years more advanced than us is very hazardous. I think these kinds of speculations lead many people to hold all sorts of strongly held but unfounded beliefs about what ET's may or may not do here. Maybe after another million years of development a species' main moti…

https://arxiv.org/abs/1302.0606 MAD with Aliens? Interstellar deterrence and its implications

Re: Mystery of interstellar visitor 'Oumuamua gets trickier

#140

Post by kentonv » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 8:58 PM UTC

ithkuil wrote: post #134

kentonv wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once a civilization is capable of building Von Neumann probes, it would be silly for them not to do so. They are basically free, since they are self-replicating. Of course a civilization is going to want to control and harness as many resources as it possibly can. We may not be able to imagine what they'd want to build out of whole star systems, but I absolutely don't believe that civilization will ever run out of th…

Andromeda has 3-4 more stars than the milky way; we already lost, should we flee instead?

The odds favor Andromeda, yes. But depending on just how rare intelligent life is, there is some possibility that we have a lucky head start.

As for fleeing: The whole concept of "fleeing" assumes a civilization composed of discrete beings that are expensive to reproduce but can be feasibly transported. The idea of Von Neumann probes is based on a different assumption. The probe itself is very small, maybe only a few pounds, but is designed to expand using the resources at its destination. There probably aren't discrete beings -- computers can freely exchange "memories" over networks which makes them effectively all one big hive mind. The hive mind directly controls everything it builds. Eventually the entire star system -- perhaps the entire galaxy or universe -- becomes effectively one giant intelligent being as all available resources are assimilated.

This civilization would certainly send probes to neighboring galaxies if it has the ability to, but it makes no sense to think about transporting the "inhabitants" (if you can even call them that) of one star system to another en masse.