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Discovery of spherules of likely extrasolar composition in the Pacific Ocean [pdf]

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Re: Discovery of spherules of likely extrasolar composition in the Pacific Ocean [pdf]

#181

Post by fsloth »

troyvit wrote: post #162
fsloth wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"He merely said that those potential beings might not be aliens but might be resident of earth and maybe on other dimensions." All of which are as credible options as angles, faeries and gods. Just calling your hypothetical entity "coming from other dimension" is not any more credible than calling them "magical". The claims are completely similar as notions of mythological creatures of the past. But now a cultural di…

If you take that all the sightings and videos of UAPs have a grain of truth to them, I would say that calling an entity coming from "another dimension" is no weirder than saying an entity came from outside our solar system given how difficult it is to get to our solar system from anywhere else. So either * they are all hoaxes that many otherwise sensible people are staking their reputations on (your baseless insinuat…

I don’t think Clarke meant that any observation we cannot explain immediately should be labelled as evidence of magic-like technology. Humans are super-fallible and even mundane things are damn hard to figure out what they are. Most of the world is a big puzzle!

Saying ”entity came from another dimension” has absolutely no meaning. There is no such thing as ”another dimension” where entities could pop in and out of like from Narnia.

The concept is a popular trope in science fiction and fantasy to create a feeling of ”otherness” and ”suspense”.

The fact a person offers this as a theory for sighting of ”something unknown” implies the person is not very sophisticated. And yes, this makes them an unreliable witness concerning any technical matter.

If the sightings provide evidence of something we don’t know of at large this idiotic witness just made discussing the topic even harder - labeling himself as unreliable any forthcoming witness would need to work doubly hard to make themselves credible.

I love science fiction and fantasy. But their value comes from nurturing our curiosity and imagination. But a good story is not good science - it’s just a good story and confusing fantasy with fact speaks of scientific illiteracy more of than conspiracy to hide UFO:s.

Re: Discovery of spherules of likely extrasolar composition in the Pacific Ocean [pdf]

#182

Post by z7 »

maxbond wrote: post #35
tptacek wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is Loeb's reputation among astrophysicists? He's written "over 800 scientific papers". Is that... a good thing in his field?

Here's a video essay from an astrophysicist about Avi Loeb (though she's transitioned to the private sector, I believe software engineering but I may be mistaken): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY985qzn7oI [1 hour] The video predates the spherecule stuff and focuses on his assertion 'Oumuamua was "most likely" debris from an extraterrestrial spacecraft. Tl;Dw: he doesn't seem to have a good reputation within the SE…

>Dr. Collie's personal opinion is that many of these papers are insubstantial; he often publishes a couple paragraphs proposing a thought experiment or cool idea, more blog posts than research.

Then I wonder how he got 55542 citations? Why are scientists citing blog posts?

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=CvQxOmwAAAAJ

Re: Discovery of spherules of likely extrasolar composition in the Pacific Ocean [pdf]

#183

Post by Zetice »

anigbrowl wrote: post #178
Zetice wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From this very paper: > Another possibility is that this unfamiliar abundance pattern may reflect an extraterrestrial technological origin. Gotta love unsubstantiated paradigm-destroying claims thrown in casually at the tail end of papers...

You don't have to substantiate possibilities. My takeaway was that the meteorite was asserted to be extrasolar, might be the result of some cosmic explosion, might be something else.

You absolutely have to substantiate possibilities; otherwise we could just list off anything that comes to mind endlessly. There must be a reason why this possibility is worth mentioning but not all of the other unsubstantiated ones.

Re: Discovery of spherules of likely extrasolar composition in the Pacific Ocean [pdf]

#184

Post by eesmith »

webnrrd2k wrote: post #172
eesmith wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where's the control? If you go elsewhere in the Indian Ocean, are you likely to find a similar pattern? From my reading, they went to one area, did two tracks outside that area, and compared the results. Is that enough statistics? Are there runs inside of the area which are similar to runs outside the area? If you did the same search pattern elsewhere, what are the odds of finding something similar? Even if this were…

Im totally unqualified to judge the science going on in this paper, but a quick summary of the control: "The spherules, significantly concentrated along the expected meteor path, were retrieved from seafloor depths ranging between..." "with control areas north and south of that path."

Yes, those were the two paths outside the area I mentioned. They called those controls, but I listed issues with that assumption.

What are the odds that picking any region of the Indian Ocean would result in a similar pattern? Are the two so-called "control" runs outside the area enough to establish good sampling statistics?

Also, how well does the sampling replicate? The have cases where they have multiple sled runs over the same space ("we assigned the average spherule density to that pixel") so they can easily report the variability for that point. I don't see any such report.

If there's high variability, then what they are reporting as pixels 0.005 degrees on a side could be a blurred effect of point sampling. They assumed it would be uniformly distributed, but that doesn't make it so.

Re: Discovery of spherules of likely extrasolar composition in the Pacific Ocean [pdf]

#185

Post by tptacek »

z7 wrote: post #182
maxbond wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a video essay from an astrophysicist about Avi Loeb (though she's transitioned to the private sector, I believe software engineering but I may be mistaken): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY985qzn7oI [1 hour] The video predates the spherecule stuff and focuses on his assertion 'Oumuamua was "most likely" debris from an extraterrestrial spacecraft. Tl;Dw: he doesn't seem to have a good reputation within the SE…

>Dr. Collie's personal opinion is that many of these papers are insubstantial; he often publishes a couple paragraphs proposing a thought experiment or cool idea, more blog posts than research. Then I wonder how he got 55542 citations? Why are scientists citing blog posts? https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=CvQxOmwAAAAJ

(1) Nobody seems to dispute that Loeb has in the past done important work.

(2) Very little of his recent work seems highly cited.

(3) He has a team of grad students working on their own projects (from a video posted on this thread, amusingly, he cites an anecdote about his grad students expressing concern about the volume of superficial publishing he'd been doing and the implications on their own careers).

(4) Some of his publishing seems strategic, an effort to do the minimum possible work, assisted by his status to get things published, so that he can claim a place in the cite record for ideas that other scientists do the real work on (the video again has some examples).

(5) Is 50,000+ citations that many? I have to scroll through at least 5 pages of astronomy/astrophysics professors to get down to that count on Scholar, and Loeb is late-career, high-status.

Re: Discovery of spherules of likely extrasolar composition in the Pacific Ocean [pdf]

#186

Post by tptacek »

Jerrrry wrote: post #91
maxbond wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not a virtue to be very loud about your research when you don't have the receipts to back it up. Material science just had a huge to-do about this with LK-99. People who are serious about finding extraterrestrial life don't make so much noise as Loeb - because there's not much to tell. But the progress is actually tremendous. With the JWST we've been able to identify a chemical reaction in the atmosphere of a p…

>that we are, right now, gathering the data that will result in the first detection of extraterrestrial life I agree; although bio-signatures may be the most currently poignant way of predicating the existence of life, there is almost always a suspicion of doubt - since its impossible to prove a negative - that some signatures may actually be of natural origin. Techno-signatures, however, colossally mute that chance;…

OK, but you get that there are multiple whole fields of academic study on these topics, right? Loeb didn't conceive of any of this stuff; the field for the most part doesn't really need our ideas or intuition on where they should be looking (unless you want to put the work in to contribute to the field yourself).

Re: Discovery of spherules of likely extrasolar composition in the Pacific Ocean [pdf]

#187

Post by tptacek »

uptie wrote: post #146
tptacek wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some things to keep in mind about these UFO hearings: 1. The reports are all second- and third- hand. To my knowledge, no DoD employee has testified to anybody in Congress that they personally witnessed extraterrestrial technology or "biologics". 2. The exception here is a "Jonathan Grey", who hasn't testified before Congress, or, for that matter, been identified; he's one of David Grusch's sources, under a pseudonym…

There are interesting stories about a device allowing the user - the Vatican - to peer back through time. Called the Chronovisor. Curious times.

Yes, exactly, excellent example. Imagine someone earnestly arguing that the Vatican possessed a Chronovisor, and had used it to watch the crucifixion of Jesus, or the speeches of Cicero on the Senate floor. How seriously would you take that person's disclosures about Pentagon programs they heard about secondhand? That's the situation you're in with David Grusch.

Re: Discovery of spherules of likely extrasolar composition in the Pacific Ocean [pdf]

#188

Post by anigbrowl »

Zetice wrote: post #183
anigbrowl wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to substantiate possibilities. My takeaway was that the meteorite was asserted to be extrasolar, might be the result of some cosmic explosion, might be something else.

You absolutely have to substantiate possibilities; otherwise we could just list off anything that comes to mind endlessly. There must be a reason why this possibility is worth mentioning but not all of the other unsubstantiated ones.

No. Artificial alloys exist; we know because we make them all the time. Since we don't know what natural process might yield this particular material (yet) there's always the possibility that it's artificial. You're demanding the proof before the investigation.

Re: Discovery of spherules of likely extrasolar composition in the Pacific Ocean [pdf]

#189

Post by maxbond »

anigbrowl wrote: post #188
Zetice wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You absolutely have to substantiate possibilities; otherwise we could just list off anything that comes to mind endlessly. There must be a reason why this possibility is worth mentioning but not all of the other unsubstantiated ones.

No. Artificial alloys exist; we know because we make them all the time. Since we don't know what natural process might yield this particular material (yet) there's always the possibility that it's artificial. You're demanding the proof before the investigation.

Consider that "possibility" as it's used here is really a synonym for "hypothesis".

Do you really think it's unreasonable to criticize a research paper for presenting an unsubstantiated hypothesis? Do you think including snippets like this serves more to advance scientific understanding, or Loeb's profile in the media and podcast circuit?

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