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A meteor or alien tech: Harvard professor plans UFO expedition

nbcboston.com

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Re: A meteor or alien tech: Harvard professor plans UFO expedition

#51

Post by jackmott42 »

wrnr wrote: post #40
jackmott42 wrote: post #8

This is Avi's second questionable alien obsession/quest. Not sure if it is something mental, grift, or perfectly rational impulse to check out incredibly unlikely but incredibly amazing possibilities.

He is a kwak, instead of actual science he shills these ideas on podcasts because the general public is interested in it or something like that. Whenever I meet someone from Harvard I think of this guy and automatically think less of them. Maybe that is wrong of me but then the Harvard alumni ought to have called him out on his BS.

I tentatively agree with that take, but am trying to be charitable. The reason I tend to think this is right is that his podcast arguments for why umamua? was probably alien tech were either disingenuous or displayed incredible ignorance. i.e.: pretending that nobody had any explanation for how it accelerated without any visible tail.

Re: A meteor or alien tech: Harvard professor plans UFO expedition

#52

Post by EddySchauHai »

subjectsigma wrote: post #33

This guy's name has come up before in HN. His stuff seemed well-written but the conclusions he came to were a little outlandish. What is the likelihood that this guy just wants to study a cool asteroids and is using aliens as an excuse? EDIT: I know this is not HN kosher and I don't normally do this, but why am I being down voted? This is one of the most inoffensive comments I've ever posted. Not angry, just complete…

If AI Ethics can get as much funding as it does to philosophy departments, let this guy study cool asteroids in case it's sent by aliens!

Re: A meteor or alien tech: Harvard professor plans UFO expedition

#53

Post by AlbertCory »

themanmaran wrote: post #6
pavel_lishin wrote: post #4

> "We’re planning to board the ship and build a sled and a magnet attached to it that will scoop the ocean floor. And we will go back and forth, like mowing the lawns across the region, 10 kilometers in size and collect with the magnets, all the fragments that are attracted to it, and then brush them off and study their composition in the laboratory." Wouldn't this only work for iron fragments of a meteor? If the the…

It's possible that it's an iron alloy. Which can be stronger than iron, and also magnetic. But in regards to feasibility of such a project, I feel that 10km range is a major understatement. Think of the effort it took to find fragments of Malaysia Flight 370, even with a pretty narrow path. And that search was the most expensive search operation in history at $155MM [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Air…

This gave me a moment of panic: did I miss some big story?

But no: I already knew about the pieces of debris.

Re: A meteor or alien tech: Harvard professor plans UFO expedition

#54

Post by highwaylights »

adamzochowski wrote: post #28
caseyohara wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lede, not lead.

The world says "leading news story" and therefore "burying the lead". Lede is an american thing. Parent could have been a british or canadian neighbour with their british colourful spelling.

Props for your correct spelling of colour.

Re: A meteor or alien tech: Harvard professor plans UFO expedition

#55

Post by sethjr5rtfgh »

highwaylights wrote: post #54
adamzochowski wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world says "leading news story" and therefore "burying the lead". Lede is an american thing. Parent could have been a british or canadian neighbour with their british colourful spelling.

Props for your correct spelling of colour.

No post body was provided.

Re: A meteor or alien tech: Harvard professor plans UFO expedition

#56

Post by KMnO4 »

NotYourLawyer wrote: post #16

The title is a little silly. It’s from outside our solar system, but there’s zero evidence suggesting it’s technological or made by aliens. It’s just a meteor that was going really fast, and it was made of something that was sturdy enough not to break up too much.

Alien doesn’t mean “alien life form”. It means “not from here”.

Re: A meteor or alien tech: Harvard professor plans UFO expedition

#57

Post by protastus »

supernova87a wrote: post #21

I will just say that in the astronomy faculty community, although Avi Loeb is the head of the Harvard astro department, his "research" has garnered him questionable and often head-shaking disapproval and a decrease in respect from colleagues. Some, bordering on many, think that he's just out to grab headlines and has become a bad joke at this point (past examples: solar system interlopers as "UFOs", etc). Maybe Avi s…

I think Avi Loeb is legitimately excited about this topic. He's also aware that the public is tremendously excited and inspired about the possibility of UFOs, alien flybys of the solar system, etc.

I think he's achieved professional recognition, paid his dues playing the game of academia (very successfully), and is now pursuing things that he finds most exciting. The man has co-authored a thousand papers, literally, so I doubt he'd get much marginal excitement from hypothetical paper #1001, i.e., another instance of fitting a curve through noisy data to build support for an obscure model that very few researchers care about.

He has also pointed out that it's an invitation to ridicule in academic circles to talk openly about UFOs. He doesn't care though (why would he?), and that for sure is triggering folks who take themselves very seriously.

Re: A meteor or alien tech: Harvard professor plans UFO expedition

#58

Post by nine_k »

015a wrote: post #11

To not bury the lead: His team studied data the government made available from military missile tracking systems, which conveniently also false-positives on asteroids. There was one in 2014 which slammed into the Pacific Ocean at a speed at least twice that of the speed stars around us move relative to the sun, which makes it likely to be extra-solar. Based on that speed & how much burned upon entry, they concluded i…

I can imagine their disappointment if all they recover would be a few tons of platinum, iridium and such. /s

Re: A meteor or alien tech: Harvard professor plans UFO expedition

#59

Post by tiborsaas »

rgrieselhuber wrote: post #27

If aliens are advanced enough to come all the way here and hide pretty well, how are they not advanced enough to not crash all the time?

Maybe they are suffering from floating point math too and rounding errors added up :D
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