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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

#131

Post by ineptech »

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 get the "from outside our solar system" part, and it seems believable that sensors designed for missile tracking would get enough telemetry info to establish that.

But the "tougher than iron" part? Based just on how much material was lost during atmospheric entry, as reported by sensors not really designed for that purpose? That's a tough pill to swallow. It would be really interesting to hear more about how much this asteroid differed from others measured by the same equipment.

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

#132

Post by aaaaaaaaaaab »

Kon-Peki wrote: post #17
themanmaran wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Using data from government censors primarily used for national security as part of our missile defense system If it got past the government censors it has to be super pure and clean. So not an alloy; it must be previously unimagined material!

Maybe it's the fabled wokium!

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

#133

Post by jaredhallen »

MichaelCollins wrote: post #13

I think I've seen this movie before; just don't let anybody touch the strange Sphere thing and you should be alright. Seriously though, this doesn't make much sense to me. Finding shipwrecks even when you know they exist and what general area they should be in is hard enough. This sort of search is a huge money sink, the ships, towed sonars, etc all cost a ton of money to operate.

Right. And magnets? How do we know it's ferrous?

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

#134

Post by motohagiography »

I feel like the smarter play would be pitching or investing in a startup to work on changing the economics of gravimetry, sonar and undersea robotics that would be required to identify technology signatures and find objects with extra-terrestrial origin to get talent working on one of the most important existential questions facing our species, and the reward is the mineral resources you find with the tech along the way.

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

#135

Post by dreamcompiler »

headelf wrote: post #62
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…

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

Steel (to cite just one example) is "tougher than iron" and still attracted to magnets (except for some types of stainless steel).

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

#136

Post by ajnin »

elcritch wrote: post #81
nine_k wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

And here I didn't even consider the chance that it was an elaborate ruse to grab a punch of rare-earth metals. Apparently my heavy diet of sci-fi and techno thrillers hasn't trained me well enough yet. ;)

These are not rare earths, rare earths are a family of chemically similar elements close together in the periodic table that are not actually that rare geologically. Platinum and iridium are just rare elements.

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

#138

Post by a9h74j »

wnkrshm wrote: post #103
LoveMortuus wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ferromagnetic matter is magnetic by nature. If you look at the periodic table you'll see that most of the elements are actually metals. Below Carbon there's a line which parts metals from semi metals and non metals. But with proper equipment you can detect non magnetic conductive materials. Not sure what's it called, but if you pass a magnet near eg. copper the magnetic force from the magnet will induce electricity o…

Paramagnetism. There is also Diamagnetism and Anti-Ferromagnetism.

Definitely. But of course a metal detector coil can also look at simple change of inductance, hence responding to conductivity even with magnetic mu = 0.

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

#140

Post by thisiswater »

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…

The hints of a persecution complex in the last paragraph -- implicitly comparing himself to Galileo and saying that Galileo would have been "canceled on social media", is a bit of a red flag. That being said, sure I hope they find and study this object, why not.
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