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The Uncensored Guide to ‘Oumuamua, Aliens, and That Harvard Astronomer

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Re: The Uncensored Guide to ‘Oumuamua, Aliens, and That Harvard Astronomer

#81

Post by andrewflnr »

eightails wrote: post #5

How hard is it for people to just admit that we probably have inadequate evidence to reach a solid conclusion. This was the first object of its kind and we had very limited observations of it. From what I've read, none of the hypotheses regarding the measured acceleration (e.g. outgassing vs manufactured solar sail) can really be backed up in any substantial way. So it seems disengenuous to get into vitriolic argumen…

> How hard is it for people to just admit that we probably have inadequate evidence to reach a solid conclusion.

Evidence indicates: extremely hard. People are extremely uncomfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty. In a variety of circumstances, ranging from the storms another commenter mentioned to your favorite political issue, people will happily make stuff up and believe it rather than accept uncertainty. From a certain perspective it's hard to fault this instinct, since true certainty is almost never possible but we still have to make decisions in finite timeframes. If you're careful, you can probably catch yourself doing the same thing.

Re: The Uncensored Guide to ‘Oumuamua, Aliens, and That Harvard Astronomer

#82

Post by krok »

giantrobot wrote: post #46
sandworm101 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His battle is only partly about Oumuamua. That is just a vehicle for his arguments. The real issue is the bias against life detection experiments generally. Want to sample soil on mars and measure oxygen absorption? Great. We will put your sensor on the next rover. Want to pour nutrients on that soil and see if anything eats it? Go away you crazy person. Want to detect methane in an exoplanet atmosphere? Here is your…

Science money is very limited. Space science money more limited. Space science money to get components on rovers yet more limited. Telescope time is also limited. Mission time on remote probes is also limited. So you devise an experiment to measure oxygen absorption that uses a probe's existing mass spectrometer. Your experiment doesn't cut into the probe's mass budget so it basically is just a scheduling issue. If y…

I mean, you're just reciting the arguments that the science establishment generally recites.

We have spent tons of money on particle accelerators to no clear benefit, either to science or to society. If a similar amount of money had gone to SETI, many of the above objections would have been addressed and resolved, with the advantage that science is being done which the average person paying for it is likely to a) understand what is being asked and b) be interested in the answer.

Re: The Uncensored Guide to ‘Oumuamua, Aliens, and That Harvard Astronomer

#84

Post by krok »

Itinerant662 wrote: post #74

Contrary to the narratives you’ll find elsewhere, including in Loeb’s new book, Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Life Beyond Earth, this is not a possibility worth taking seriously as a scientist. A straightforward look at the evidence shows us why." -> "Loeb offers only loud, immodest speculation about aliens and diatribes about community groupthink. Coupled with inadequate data, which is the only data we have, h…

If something is impossible to prove wrong because of inadequate data isn't that a strong suggestion that further research would be a good idea??

Re: The Uncensored Guide to ‘Oumuamua, Aliens, and That Harvard Astronomer

#85

Post by shrimpx »

akuchling wrote: post #11
Zigurd wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was interviewed for the Kotke Ride Home podcast. He has a book coming out about Oumuamua. I will probably buy the book because Loeb is apparently brilliant. His evaluation of Oumuamua is very interesting. BUT the data about Oumuamua is really really tiny. The science of interstellar objects is nascent. Other than to say "If it is a natural object it is super-strange" I am not sure what else there is to say. In the…

The Washington Post has a review of the book: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/an-interstellar-accid... Two excerpts from the review: "While this exotic explanation of the object serves as the backbone of the book, Loeb’s broader argument grows out of his bewilderment with the blowback to his hypothesis; he regards it as an omen of imaginative decay and anti-alien bias in the scientific community. ... While it’…

His scientific perspective very much reminds me of early Einstein’s. Refreshingly idealistic and foolish.

Re: The Uncensored Guide to ‘Oumuamua, Aliens, and That Harvard Astronomer

#86

Post by sandworm101 »

giantrobot wrote: post #80
sandworm101 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> if you propose observations of CFCs because it's a snipe hunt wasting valuable and limited instrument time. That's what they said about hot jupiters. Exoplanets could have been detected decades earlier had there not been a consistent bias against the idea of large objects orbiting so near host stars, a bias based on a single data point (our solar system).

It's unlikely many types of exoplanets could have been detected "decades" earlier. Transit and Doppler detection methods require good seeing power and accurate intensity measurements. It takes large mirrors with good optics for good seeing power and sensitive electronics for the spectral/intensity measurements. Those two things weren't readily available until the past few decades...which surprise is when exoplanet di…

>> It's unlikely many types of exoplanets

Ya, but if people were allowed to look for hot jupiters in the 70s/80s they would have found the first exoplanet far sooner.

Re: The Uncensored Guide to ‘Oumuamua, Aliens, and That Harvard Astronomer

#87

Post by criddell »

annoyingnoob wrote: post #29

How do we jump to the conclusion of aliens with so little information? Why not God sent it?

Nobody has really jumped to that conclusion. I don't think the author of this article has represented Loeb's views or public statements entirely fairly.

Sean Carroll recently interviewed him and if you listen to that, I think you will come away with a very different idea of who Loeb is and what he is saying.

Re: The Uncensored Guide to ‘Oumuamua, Aliens, and That Harvard Astronomer

#89

Post by idlewords »

Sosh101 wrote: post #37
idlewords wrote: post #35

Whatever the thing is, it's clearly an interesting object and the only sane response is to build a big rocket to go chase it. But we don't have our shit together civilizationally and have to wait (and hope) that there's a next one. This is one reason that I'm such a big fan of robot probes vs. human space flight. If your space program is about flinging tiny cameras into the remotest reaches of the solar system, it's…

It was already moving away too quickly once discovered, even if we there had been some kind of craft ready.

No such thing as too quickly if you've got a motivated planet.

Re: The Uncensored Guide to ‘Oumuamua, Aliens, and That Harvard Astronomer

#90

Post by giantrobot »

krok wrote: post #82
giantrobot wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Science money is very limited. Space science money more limited. Space science money to get components on rovers yet more limited. Telescope time is also limited. Mission time on remote probes is also limited. So you devise an experiment to measure oxygen absorption that uses a probe's existing mass spectrometer. Your experiment doesn't cut into the probe's mass budget so it basically is just a scheduling issue. If y…

I mean, you're just reciting the arguments that the science establishment generally recites. We have spent tons of money on particle accelerators to no clear benefit, either to science or to society. If a similar amount of money had gone to SETI, many of the above objections would have been addressed and resolved, with the advantage that science is being done which the average person paying for it is likely to a) und…

I did pull my arguments out of the "Big Astronomy: Let's Keep Down The Little Guys" playbook. Come off it. The "science establishment" repeats things because there's compelling evidence and scientific rigor supporting those things. It's not some "Big Science" conspiracy.

Particle accelerators have exploratory experiments like hunting the Higgs boson with LHC but they run lots of other experiments as well. There's also lots of particle accelerators (of varying capability) around so if you devise an experiment needing one you likely have several options unless you literally need the LHC.

With large telescopes there's far fewer available and the sky is pretty big. Radio SETI is a long shot search and optical SETI even more so. It's not that they lack merit but getting funding for telescope time is a lot harder when the chance of any positive finding is very remote. A lot of SETI funding actually piggybacks on other research using the same telescopes.

The chances of SETI finding positive results isn't necessarily from a lack of things to find but from physical limitations. Our best radio telescopes could only detect Earth's more powerful radio emissions from a few light years away. Broadcasts like TV and radio wouldn't be detectable outside the solar system. The inverse square law is a stone cold bitch for interstellar communication. SETI's best hope of finding signals are ones intentional ones.

Even with billions of dollars SETI would have similar chances of detecting an ETI as without. It's a needle in a haystack search with warehouse sized haystacks. More money doesn't necessarily get it done much faster or better. There's a limited number of sites for large radio telescopes and they have limited fields of view and stars are only in that FOV for a limited time. More money might let you search the warehouse sized haystack a few times faster but it's still a vast search space.

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