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A meteor or alien tech: Harvard professor plans UFO expedition

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

#181
post #169
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…

I love the way Avi says Hah-vahd.

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

#182
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

That's not what they're doing though. There literally going to drag a magnet across the sea floor and examine anything that sticks to it. Which will be largely iron, nickel, and cobalt. Were it to be alien tech, it probably won't have large amounts of those and won't stick to the magnet. At least it seems that way to me. Could you make a magnet that would create a strong enough attraction to pick up a piece of gold? I suspect not, or there would be a reality TV show with rednecks trawling the ocean in Alaska with magnets, searching for gold.

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

#183
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

Or just a chunk of titanium. It's only made in novas and supernovas so having an abnormal trajectory, and speed only supports the theory. A bunch of titanium slapped onto some rock and then later breaks off or something.

I wonder if titanium would largely burn in the atmosphere. Titanium fires are a thing in supersonic aviation.

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

#184
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, I didn't know it was the same guy. It's not clear, at least to me, how extreme his original claims even were, considering how fast things get distorted with sensationalist media these days. He does seem to be a quite serious scientist and not a crank.

I don't think it's an unreasonable hypothesis. At this point we know that the government has been cataloging evidence of advanced craft in the air and ocean that behave intelligently and are far beyond the capabilities of any major world power. A small portion of that evidence has been released to the public and officials with clearance (including elected officials) have stated that the evidence they've seen is signi…

> At this point we know that the government has been cataloging evidence of advanced craft in the air and ocean that behave intelligently and are far beyond the capabilities of any major world power.

We do not know this to be true. We know the government has told us these things have been cataloged and observed. We barely know anything outside of (dis?)information that’s been slowly drip fed through small congressional committees and a bizarrely eccentric cadre of former DIA agents who have spent the last five years cultivating a personality cult and a subculture weirdly reminiscent of Q-Anon.

“The government is lying” is certainly not an exotic explanation for an unexplained phenomenon reported by a group of intelligence officers from the military-industrial complex.

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

#185

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.

No post body was provided.

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

#186

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.

He deserves way more than that, but the issue isn't that he wants the field trip. The issue is that he's saying that it's to hunt for alien tech.

There are missions all the time to recover remains of meteoroids that didn't burn up. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/antarctic-meteorit...

But people don't exactly go running around saying that they're trying to find Thor's spaceship from that time O'Neill, Carter and Teal'c blew it up. (sorry huge Stargate fan) Even if he finds nothing, will the conspiratorial people believe that? Or, will they believe that The Powers That Be hid the Top Secret Alien Technology from the enterprising scientist?

He's adding fuel to the conspiratorial fire.

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

#187
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. ;)

I love how this would be the exact inverse of the Project Azorian.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glomar_Explorer

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

#188

"It's not a philosophical question whether we live in an environment where objects are flawed. Around that are representing extraterrestrial technologies." I can't make sense of these sentences. And the spelling mistakes are helping either. "Today [Galileo Galilei] would have been canceled on social media." For what exactly? And his this guy not seen the quality of social media commentary? The bar is loooow. Spectacu…

>For what exactly?

Saying unpopular things that society deemed harmful? Not necessarily defending the guy I didn't read everything he said, but that's what comes to mind

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