Live data from Hacker News

A meteor or alien tech: Harvard professor plans UFO expedition

nbcboston.com

71–80 of 204 posts

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

#71
post #22

Can the title be revised to something like "Harvard Professor on Quest for Possible Alien Tech that Crashed in the Pacific Ocean"? Current phrasing makes it seem like the professor crashed into the ocean.

I also thought that the professor crashed into the pacific because he was on a quest for alien tech.

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

#72
post #44

Reconstructing what the article appears to be saying: 1. a catalog of government sensor data on meteorite strikes was discovered 2. based on the data, those strikes that could have originate outside of the solar system were gathered 3. one hit in particular appears to be harder than iron based on its speed and loss Then: > Despite the government releasing limited data due to national security concerns - he had discov…

https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2019arXiv190407224S/abstra... The payload: " Based on the CNEOS catalog of bolide events, we identify the ∼0.45m meteor detected at 2014-01-08 17:05:34 UTC as originating from an unbound hyperbolic orbit with 99.999\% confidence. The U.S. Department of Defense has since verified that "the velocity estimate reported to NASA is sufficiently accurate to indicate an interstellar trajecto…

hmm, that is a very little meteor. Good luck to the guy would be awesome if he found it but thats going to be tough.

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

#73

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?

This is more like a remote, uncontacted tribe "discovering" other civilizations via trash that washes up on their shore. Given enough scale, this wouldn't be an unlikely event. Who knows, maybe the universe is littered with bits and pieces of ancient Dyson spheres.

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

#74
post #62
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…

If it's tougher than iron, why are they planning to use a magnet to retrieve it?

Tougher doesn't make it less magnetic.

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

#76
post #40

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.

Meh, good luck to him, he is not hurting anyone and he seems to genuinely be a smart guy that believes what he says. Its ok to be eccentric.

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

#78

Seems to have nothing to do with aliens and the article is in such broken English it’s almost incomprehensible.

The “article” is a transcript of sections of the video. Removing the culture war bit about Galileo being cancelled, we have:

“It’s not a philosophical question whether we live in an environment where objects are floating around that are representing extraterrestrial technologies. We just need to use our telescopes and find out. […] Once I realized that we found an object from a technological origin that was produced elsewhere, I would not seek approval from anyone else. I don’t need likes on twitter. I just want to know what it is.”

He doesn’t seem to be saying “it’s aliens”, but rather “If it’s aliens, I want to know — it’s not a matter of faith, if we find evidence of it, it’ll be true”. His use of “Once I realized” is confusing, but I believe he’s speaking in the hypothetical that aliens are confirmed.

There is, of course, a massive leap from “an object from outside the solar system hit Earth and was very strong” to “because this object was very strong it might have been made by aliens”. I also don’t see any reason why the fragments they’re looking for should be magnetic.

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

#79
post #62
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…

If it's tougher than iron, why are they planning to use a magnet to retrieve it?

This seems a reasonable question to me, not having read the article. IIRC from grade school days, only a few metallic elements are magnetic. Iron, nickel, cobalt, and some rare earth metals. That was a long time ago and doubtless oversimplified, but please do enlighten me why it would be expected to be magnetic?

It seems like they must still be assuming it's largely made of Iron.

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

#80
post #62
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…

If it's tougher than iron, why are they planning to use a magnet to retrieve it?

I am not sure toughness has anything to do with ferromagnetic properties. But it seems like a bad idea anyways considering that very few materials are naturally ferromagnetic.
Post reply on HN