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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

#171

Post by areoform »

30 years ago, Lobe was the first to suggest that we should look for exoplanet with the help of gravitational lensing. https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&h... He was also amongst the first to study the epoch of reionization that now forms one of the primary mission directives of the JWST. And those weren't his only firsts, he was also the amongst the first to study the formation of supermassive black holes in the early universe. https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&h...

He has had such an amazing career and has done such great work that it physically pains me to see him slide into Nobel disease this way. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_disease He has always been fascinated by the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, but he was such a reasoned person who proposed great techno signatures like looking for pollution as a means to detect industrial-age civilizations.

It’s like watching a giant stumble and hurt himself on purpose. And it gets worse when non-technical people come up to me and ask, “have you heard of Avi Loeb?” Instead of being a beacon for enlightenment, he has gone down the path of spreading conspiratorial ignorance. It is painful to watch such a great career fall this way.

And no, based on my conversations with my professional astronomer friends, no one inside the field takes him seriously anymore. They don’t laugh at him either, they just don’t take him seriously. It’s probably why he doesn’t seem to have a more prominent role with the JWST. Interesting projects don’t want to associate with him anymore. It’s sad.

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

#172

Post by gus_massa »

jboy55 wrote: post #169
giantg2 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it sort of funny that they think the asteroid might be some new material, or at least something tougher than iron, yet they are planning to use a magnet to pull up pieces? What happens if it's non-ferrous...

The fact they are bringing a magnet shows how confident they are its iron. My hypothetical scenario: "There's a chance its not iron but something new!" "What chance is that?" "Its inverse to the chance we told our funders, who gave us millions to collect it with a magnet, that it was iron." "So its pretty guaranteed its iron" "Yup". "Aren't your funders concerned you are saying it could be something different than ir…

It may be an iron alloy. Many of them are magnetic.

If it's an extra hard iron alloy it would be more interesting because they can analyze it and perhaps reproduce the composition and perhaps the heat process that created the meteorite.

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

#173

Post by giantg2 »

cplusplusfellow wrote: post #157
texasbigdata wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using a magnet seems like not a top 5 idea someone would have.

Say you find the asteroid on bottom of ocean. What sort of hoisting apparatus do you propose we use to bring it ashore?

Supposedly it's in pieces from the impact. Small samples would be fine to locate and collect via ROV with a metal detector on it to check below the silt.

If they want mass extraction after that, then potentially a form a dredging could be used (vacuum and filter could work to leave the sand and silt on the bottom).

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

#174

Post by eloff »

NaturalPhallacy wrote: post #160
dnadler wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that anything heavier than iron is made by supernovae, so the same could be said of the majority of elements.

Right, but titanium is stronger than steel, let alone iron. > When compared to steel in a strength-to-weight ratio, titanium is far superior, as it is as strong as steel but 45% lighter. In fact, titanium has the highest strength-to-weight ratio of all known metals. There's a reason cherry picked titanium. :)

Strength doesn't matter here as much as melting point. When they say tougher than Iron, I imagine they mean it ablated less in the atmosphere. I don't know what elements that might mean. Certainly not platinum group metals. Tungsten possibly. Carbon or diamond. Or alien tech.

Edit: "Based on the speed of the meteor and how much of the object burned upon entry, Loeb determined that it must be made of a material that is tougher than iron."

Yup.

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

#175

Post by anigbrowl »

cplusplusfellow wrote: post #157
texasbigdata wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using a magnet seems like not a top 5 idea someone would have.

Say you find the asteroid on bottom of ocean. What sort of hoisting apparatus do you propose we use to bring it ashore?

Inflatable ballasts

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

#176

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

sammalloy wrote: post #168
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #42

Maybe it's like that TV series, Debris ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debris_(TV_series)

I was open minded about "Debris", but only made it through the first episode and had to stop watching. It was really bad. Just terrible. However, if anyone out there likes this kind of science fiction, I must highly recommend the 2019 series "Project Blue Book" starring the superb Aidan Gillen (GoT fame) playing the character of J. Allen Hynek. Unfortunately, this amazing series was canceled after only two seasons, l…

Thanks. I'll check it out.

Debris has disappeared from the firmament. You can't find it anywhere.

They are syndicating Space: 1999, but not Debris.

Kinda tells you something, there...

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

#177

Post by anigbrowl »

areoform wrote: post #171

30 years ago, Lobe was the first to suggest that we should look for exoplanet with the help of gravitational lensing. https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&h... He was also amongst the first to study the epoch of reionization that now forms one of the primary mission directives of the JWST. And those weren't his only firsts, he was also the amongst the first to study the formation of supermassive…

Even if this thing in the ocean is just a lump of heavy metals ejected from some remote cataclysm, that would still be interesting in its own right. Is it really so terrible that he wants to go and look at an actual physical thing from space instead of finishing his career staring at computer screens? Give him a few million dollars and let him have his field trip.

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

#178

Post by NotYourLawyer »

ALittleLight wrote: post #115
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.

I would think that, if other people agree with his analysis and this does seem extra-solar, and we have a reasonable guess as to where it might have landed, a couple million would be a small price to check out an extra-solar object.

No post body was provided.

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

#179

Post by anigbrowl »

xqcgrek2 wrote: post #114
ctvo wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s his grift? Running off with 1.5 million USD? He probably makes half of that a year already, what a pay day.

Convincing gullible billionaires and foundations to support his vanity projects A list: the blackhole initiative, breakthrough starshot, the Galileo project, and now this

I'm strongly in favor of separating gullible billionaires from their wealth, this is one of the least mean ways to do it.

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

#180

Post by TechBro8615 »

caseyohara wrote: post #19
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…

Lede, not lead.

Maybe OP was making a pun about what could be buried in the ocean.
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