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Post by swamprat on Mar 19, 2019 14:38:33 GMT
'Space's Deepest Secrets' Probes Mystery of 'Oumuamua Tonight
By Kasandra Brabaw / March 19, 2019 / Science & Astronomy
The Science Channel series "Space's Deepest Secrets" returns tonight (March 19) at 10 p.m. EDT with a look at a mysterious interstellar visitor.
In 2017, scientists spotted a gigantic rocky object, about the size and shape of a skyscraper, hurtling through our solar system. And they soon discovered that this terrific space rock didn't originate within the eight-planet system we call home. Instead, it comes from another solar system. The scientists, who saw the rock through the University of Hawaii's Pan-STARRS1 telescope, called it 'Oumuamua, which means "a messenger from afar arriving first."
"Space's Deepest Secrets" is back this evening with a deep dive into 'Oumuamua. While 'Oumuamua has been briefly classified as both an asteroid and a comet, according to NASA, the show promises to "investigate the mystery of an ancient asteroid" and detail the high-energy race to discover as much as we can about this mysterious rock before it leaves our solar system.
NASA observations suggest that the rocky object (the organization uses "object" since there isn't enough evidence to define it as either an asteroid or a comet) wandered through the Milky Way for hundreds of millions of years before encountering our solar system. In January 2019, it moved beyond Saturn's orbit.
Since 'Oumuamua was a complete unknown when it was discovered in 2017 — the first true alien object, according to one of the astronomers in a new promo for "Space's Deepest Secrets" — scientists are eager to learn more and "unlock its secrets." The show promises to answer: "How did 'Oumuamua get here? Does it pose a threat to the Earth? Could it even be an alien spaceship?"
To address one question: NASA's space telescopes have tracked 'Oumuamua traveling about 85,700 mph (23.8 miles per second, or 38.3 km/s) relative to the sun. At that speed, the episode states, it could destroy whole cities if it were to hit Earth (which it luckily seems like it won't do in our lifetime, given that it's heading out of our solar system). As to whether it's really a spaceship in disguise, you'll have to tune in to see.
But the origin and purpose of a skyscraperesque rock is only the start of the mysteries "Space's Deepest Secrets" will unravel this season. Coming up, according to a statement from the Science Channel, the show plans to tackle the awesome power of mega storms on Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune; the existence of enormous black holes that can rip planets and stars apart; and "evidence of an ancient solar system that could rewrite the story of our cosmic roots."
Watch video: www.space.com/spaces-deepest-secrets-oumuamua-video.html
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Post by swamprat on Aug 20, 2020 2:48:34 GMT
Interstellar visitor 'Oumuamua could still be alien technology, new study hints
By Rafi Letzter - Staff Writer 10 hours ago
Aliens? Or a chunk of solid hydrogen? Which idea makes less sense?
'Oumuamua — a mysterious, interstellar object that crashed through our solar system two years ago — might in fact be alien technology. That’s because an alternative, non-alien explanation might be fatally flawed, as a new study argues.
But most scientists think the idea that we spotted alien technology in our solar system is a long shot.
In 2018, our solar system ran into an object lost in interstellar space. The object, dubbed 'Oumuamua, seemed to be long and thin — cigar-shaped — and tumbling end over end. Then, close observations showed it was accelerating, as if something were pushing on it. Scientists still aren't sure why.
One explanation? The object was propelled by an alien machine, such as a lightsail — a wide, millimeter-thin machine that accelerates as it's pushed by solar radiation. The main proponent of this argument was Avi Loeb, a Harvard University astrophysicist.
Most scientists, however, think 'Oumuamua's wonky acceleration was likely due to a natural phenomenon. In June, a research team proposed that solid hydrogen was blasting invisibly off the interstellar object's surface and causing it to speed up.
Now, in a new paper published Monday (Aug. 17) in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, Loeb and Thiem Hoang, an astrophysicist at the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute, argue that the hydrogen hypothesis couldn't work in the real world — which would mean that there is still hope that our neck of space was once visited by advanced aliens — and that we actually spotted their presence at the time.
Here's the problem with 'Oumuamua: It moved like a comet, but didn't have the classic coma, or tail, of a comet, said astrophysicist Darryl Seligman, an author of the solid hydrogen hypothesis, who is starting a postdoctoral fellowship in astrophysics at the University of Chicago.
'Oumuamua was the first object ever seen flying into our solar system and back out again. That's opposed to most solar system objects that turn circles around the sun, never leaving the celestial neighborhood. Its journey and the fact that it was accelerating suggested 'Oumuamua, which is estimated to be about 1,300 to 2,600 feet (400 to 800 meters) long, was a comet. And yet, "there was no 'coma' or outgassing detected coming from the object," Seligman said. Normally, comets come from regions more distant from the sun than asteroids, and ice on their surface turns straight into gas as they approach the sun, leaving behind a trail of gas, or what we see as a beautiful comet tail, Seligman said.
That outgassing changes how the comet moves through space, he said. It's a bit like a very slow rocket engine: The sun strikes the comet, the warmest part of the comet bursts with gas, and that gas flowing away from the comet sends it tumbling faster and faster away from the sun.
In a paper published June 9 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, Seligman and Yale astrophysicist Gregory Laughlin proposed that the object was a comet made up partly or entirely of molecular hydrogen — lightweight molecules composed of two hydrogen atoms (H2).
H2 gas freezes into a puffy, low-density solid only when it's very cold — minus 434.45 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 259.14 degrees Celsius, or just 14.01 degrees above absolute zero) in Earth's atmosphere. Researchers had already proposed the existence of "hydrogen icebergs" out in the very cold reaches of space, Laughlin and Seligman wrote in the study. And outgassing hydrogen wouldn't be visible from Earth — meaning it wouldn't leave behind a visible comet tail.
The numbers worked out neatly; while a few other substances (like solid neon) could potentially explain the coma-free acceleration, hydrogen was the best match for the data.
But in their new paper, Hoang and Loeb respond to this idea and argue that the hydrogen iceberg explanation has a basic problem: Comets form when icy grains of dust bump into each other in space and form clumps, and then those clumps attract more dust and other clumps. And comets are like snowmen: they survive only as long as they don't melt.
The stickiness that helps form comets is similar to the stickiness of ice cubes coming straight out of a cold freezer. Leave an ice cube on the counter for a minute or two, let its surface warm up a bit, and it won't feel sticky anymore. A thin film of liquid water on its surface makes it slippery.
Hoang and Loeb argued that even starlight in the coldest parts of space would warm up small chunks of solid hydrogen before they could clump together and form a comet of 'Oumuamua's large scale. And more importantly, the trek from the nearest "giant molecular cloud" — a dusty, gassy region of space where hydrogen icebergs are thought to form — is far too long. A hydrogen iceberg travelling hundreds of millions of years through interstellar space would have fallen apart, cooked by starlight.
Seligman said that Loeb's analysis was correct that no hydrogen comet would survive such a long trip."Hydrogen icebergs don't live that long in the galaxy.," he said. "And you definitely don't have time to get all the way from [the nearest] giant molecular cloud."
The theory only works if 'Oumuamua is just 40 million years old, he said. Over that time frame, outgassing could have molded the comet's oblong shape without destroying it entirely.
He pointed to a paper published in April in The Astronomical Journal, which proposed a number of nearby origin points for 'Oumuamua.
The paper's authors didn't nail down the comet's home entirely, which would be impossible, they said. 'Oumuamua was hardly moving when it arrived in our sun's gravity well, which makes tracking the comet through space tricky. But the researchers looked at what else passed through the Milky Way neighborhood that our sun is now passing through in recent cosmic history. They landed on two groups of young stars, the Carina and Columba moving groups, said Tim Hallatt, a graduate student and astrophysicist at McGill University in Montreal, and lead author of the paper published in April.
They all formed around 30 million to 45 million years ago in a cloud of gas that then dispersed. That small, dissipated cloud of molecular gas, with just a few young stars, is one where hydrogen icebergs might form, Hallatt said
"There are many processes that can eject 'Oumuamua-type objects from young stars in moving groups — like gravitational nudges between stars in the group, planet formation, or as Seligman and Laughlin 2020 argue, the molecular clouds that create the stars in the first place," Hallatt told Live Science.
All three papers fit neatly together if you assume 'Oumuamua was a hydrogen iceberg that originated in Carina or Columba, Hallatt added.
"Seligman & Laughlin's idea could work here because H2 objects should have a short lifetime in the galaxy (as Loeb correctly concludes), and an origin in Carina or Columba would make it young enough to survive its journey," he said.
Loeb, however, disagrees.
"Shortening the distance that that H2 iceberg needs to travel does not solve the problems we outline in our paper, because the H2 iceberg would have formed when its parent planetary system formed, billions of years ago,” and in those eons, the iceberg would have evaporated, he told Live Science in an email.
Loeb also said that hydrogen icebergs are expected to come from giant molecular clouds, not parts of space like Carina or Columba. And he reiterated that no hydrogen iceberg could survive the trek from the nearest giant molecular cloud.
Asked if there is a clear leading candidate explanation for 'Oumuamua's acceleration, Loeb referred Live Science to a not-yet-released book he authored called "Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth," due for publication in January.
www.livescience.com/oumuamua-interstellar-hydrogen-or-aliens.html
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Post by swamprat on Jan 3, 2021 23:57:07 GMT
Loeb's book is being published.A Harvard professor has claimed in his new book that alien debris passed near Earth in 2017. It has attracted both skepticism and intrigue.
Kevin Shalvey, Jan. 3, 2021
 This artist's impression shows the first-known interstellar object to visit the solar system, "Oumuamua," which was discovered on October 19, 2017, by the Pan-STARRS1 telescope in Hawaii. European Southern Observatory/M. Kornmesser/Handout via Reuters
• Scientists in 2017 detected the first sign of intelligent life outside Earth, according to a new book by Avi Loeb, a Harvard University professor.
• The "rocky, cigar-shaped object with a somewhat reddish hue," was called "1I/2017 U1 'Oumuamua" by NASA.
• "There was only one conceivable explanation: the object was a piece of advanced technology created by a distant alien civilization," according to publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
An extraterrestrial object skimmed through space close to Earth in 2017, wrote a Harvard University astronomer, Avi Loeb, in a book to be published this month.
It was the first sign of intelligent life outside Earth, according to Loeb.
Scientists at a Hawaiian observatory saw "an object soaring through our inner solar system, moving so quickly that it could only have been from another star," according to the marketing summary for the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt book, "Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth."
The object wasn't a natural occurrence, but a bit of space junk ejected by another galaxy, according to Loeb, a professor of science with a doctorate in physics.
"There was only one conceivable explanation: the object was a piece of advanced technology created by a distant alien civilization," according to HMH.
 Physicist Avi Loeb, on the right, on stage with physicist Stephen Hawking and others. Lucas Jackson/Reuters
In a review, Publishers Weekly called the book a "contentious manifesto."
But Loeb wasn't alone in his excitement about the object, which was called "1I/2017 U1 'Oumuamua" by Nasa.
"The first confirmed object from another star to visit our solar system, this interstellar interloper appears to be a rocky, cigar-shaped object with a somewhat reddish hue," NASA said in its description of the object.
"For decades we've theorized that such interstellar objects are out there, and now – for the first time – we have direct evidence they exist," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, when it was originally discovered.
He added: "This history-making discovery is opening a new window to study formation of solar systems beyond our own."
In the book-jacket blurb, Anne Wojcicki, CEO and cofounder of 23andMe, wrote that Loeb's new book "convinces you that scientific curiosity is key to our future success."
"An exciting and eloquent case that we might have seen a sign of intelligent life near Earth – and that we should search further," she wrote.
Fellow Harvard professor Eric Maskin, a Nobel laureate in Economics, added: "Is the hypothesis right? Who knows. But let's try to find out!"
www.businessinsider.com/alien-object-close-to-earth-in-2017-says-harvard-professor-2021-1
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Post by swamprat on Jan 6, 2021 23:28:15 GMT
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Post by swamprat on Jan 18, 2021 18:25:03 GMT
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Post by swamprat on Jan 27, 2021 22:55:15 GMT
To my surprise, Avi Loeb's book, Extraterrestrial, arrived today from Amazon. Turns out my son bought it for me!
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Post by swamprat on Feb 9, 2021 3:03:18 GMT
DeVoid
‘A traveler from an antique land’
By Billy Cox Monday, Feb 8, 2021 10:56 AM
OK, wait. Let me see if I’ve got this straight:
In 2015, Silicon Valley Israeli-Russian billionaire Yuri Milner has mortality on his mind. And legacy. He will drop $100 million on SETI in long-shot hopes of confirming the one non-random radio signal that will change everything. But, being in his late 50s, Milner figures he probably won’t be around for whatever success that mission might encounter.
So he’s got this other idea, too. He calls it the Starshot Initiative.
Milner wants to design a spacecraft capable of reaching Earth’s closest star system, Alpha Centauri, within 20 years or so. There’s an Earth-sized planet parked in a Goldilocks zone outside red dwarf star Proxima Centauri. (And, in an unforeseen development in 2019, Proxima Centauri would grow more alluring when astronomers at the Parkes Observatory in Australia detected still-unexplained radio signals emanating from the vicinity; analysis remains ongoing.)
Anyway: Among those Milner engages is Avi Loeb, who chairs the Harvard astronomy department. So Loeb & crew start looking at a package, camera and transmitter included, that could travel at one-fifth the speed of light.
It’s called a lightsail and, in theory, it could make that 4.2 light-year voyage within Milner’s projected lifetime. The concept isn’t new – it’s been around since the early 17th century. The Planetary Society began testing the basic theory with cubesats during the double aughts, and this year, NASA will deploy lightsail technology on a lunar mission.
In October 2015, the Loeb team goes public with its Proxima Centauri version, in the Astrophysical Journal. Loeb’s model will be propelled on the front end by surgically targeted lasers, then employ solar radiation to hit cruising speed. Its proportions will be radical – a razor-thin mirror flared wide to absorb solar fuel, but calibrated to utilize no more than 1/100,000th of the available light, lest the platform get incinerated in transit.
So that’s the lightsail. Got it. I think. But then this?
In 2017, two years after the Astrophysical Journal piece, suddenly, unannounced, unanticipated, boom, just like that, the real thing, an operational lightsail, comes hauling ass from the direction of Vega, twinkling in the constellation Lyra? At 58,900 mph? Detected by Hawaii’s Pan-STARRS telescope, and closing to within 20 million miles of Earth?
Like, what the hell? Does whatever’s Out There subscribe to Astrophysical Journal? Was this a letter to the editor? “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”?
OK. We don’t know for sure if what astronomers now call ‘Oumuamua is a lightsail or not. After 11 days of collecting observational data on the interstellar visitor, nobody knows what it was, or is. But we’re hearing all about it now, again, because Loeb is ubiquitous in promoting his account of the investigation with his new book Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth. If you’ve been paying attention, you’re already familiar with the case Loeb makes for ‘Oumuamua’s artificiality.
There are a number of reasons you should read this book, not the least of which is its accessibility. A student of philosophers such as Sartre and Camus, Loeb is all about broader context. And when it comes to challenging orthodoxy, the man is so unsparing, there were moments along the way that made me want to stand up and cheer. In assailing the sorts of institutional “wisdom” that choke the life out of young academicians looking to break the mold of consensus reality, the author is ferocious.
Loeb dials up “The Great Filter” theory posed in 1988 by economist Robin Hanson, who suggested that a civilization capable of signaling its existence to interstellar space might also have reached “the moment when its technological maturity becomes sufficient for its own destruction, whether through climate change or nuclear, biological, or chemical wars.” In other words, whoever dispatched ‘Oumuamua might no longer even exist. The existential crises confronting planet Earth demand the urgent redirection of research priorities into SETI studies, Loeb argues. And not the zero-sum version of SETI monopolized and cheered by radioastronomers.
Loeb’s unlikely role as a heretic at the top of the Harvard food chain means his peers are obliged to listen. But only because of the Ivy League pedigree. Here’s the way Ed Kaplan of The Planetary Society introduced him in a podcast last month:
“What … Avi Loeb has proposed is, on the face of it, like the sort of thing that is found in the dark corners of the net and that we would never consider on Planetary Radio.”
Oh, you mean like child porn? Thanks for protecting us all these years, Ed. Nice work. De Void also got a kick out of watching Seth Shostak trying to maintain the unruffled avuncular smile during his own podcast interview in January. Especially when Loeb challenged him to do his job by disentangling SETI from the stump post of radiowaves. “Arrogance, that sense of privilege,” Loeb charged, “is what drives the backlash that SETI faces.”
Given Loeb’s spirited defense of his argument that ‘Oumuamua could be an ET probe from a dead civilization, the most peculiar element of his book is the total omission of UFO, UAP, or any other acronym related to apparent hyper-exotic technologies recorded in our own atmosphere. If you were coming into the story cold, you’d never know that, just two months after the ‘Oumuamua flyby, the NY Times broke the F-18/Tic Tac news and triggered a debate that’s been churning ever since. Loeb briefly alludes to the phenomenon only when pressed in interviews, but he rarely lingers.
Queried by De Void on this conspicuous oversight, Loeb went minimalist. “My focus was on ‘Oumuamua,” he replied in an email, “and the publisher asked that I will keep the discussion focused on that object.”
The publisher. Hm. Alrighty, then.
Avi Loeb’s avoidance of the UFO controversy should in no way negate the significance of his work in Extraterrestrial. It was and remains a fearless, inspiring and trailblazing stroke. Especially for academia. Even if, someday, ‘Oumuamua turns out to have been just an unusual chunk of cosmic debris, Loeb’s appeal to new thinking is essential to our pursuit of the baffling anomalies unfolding 20 million miles closer to Earth. He is an ally who must step up.
So: Here’s to the next book. And high expectations.
devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/author/cox/
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Post by swamprat on Feb 21, 2021 1:42:51 GMT
Troy Reimink: In 'Extraterrestrial,' Harvard astronomer considers alien life with an open mind
Published by Allison Batdorff, The Record-Eagle, Traverse City, Mich.
Fri, February 19, 2021
Feb. 19—The Hawaiian word "'Oumuamua" loosely translates to "scout." It was applied half-jokingly in 2017 to the first known interstellar object ever observed in our solar system, a rocky, asteroid-like visitor that originated outside the sun's gravitational pull and flew past Earth on its journey from ... well, nobody knows.
Unfortunately, we didn't get a great look at it. At the time of its detection, 'Oumuamua already was speeding away from the sun, from which point it could provide only limited data.
But what astronomers did see was strange: 'Oumuamua, which was roughly the size of a football field and shaped like either a cigar or pancake, was accelerating as it left the solar system. This does happen with comets, which release gases as they're heated by the sun, producing visible tails and bursts of speed, a phenomenon called "outgassing."
'Oumuamua, however, produced neither a tail nor any indication of outgassing, which means it accelerated for some other reason. But, four years later, there still is no scientific consensus about why.
The Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb attracted international attention when he proposed a sensational explanation: What if 'Oumuamua was created by intelligent extraterrestrials and sent in our direction intentionally? What if it was a probe or a buoy or, to interpret its nickname literally, a scout from another world?
Loeb's proposition generated a media frenzy.
Here was a highly credentialed researcher making a compelling argument that we'd witnessed evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence, suggesting 'Oumuamua's acceleration could be explained by artificial technology such as a lightsail, and that several other features appeared too bizarre to have occurred naturally.
In his new book, "Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth," Loeb expands his 'Oumuamua hypothesis and reluctantly emerges as the new public face of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), a position that has attracted widespread criticism and ridicule from others in the scientific community.
What begins as an act of intellectual self-defense widens into an elegant argument for scientific open-mindedness. "Extraterrestrial" denounces what he describes as scientific groupthink that stifles extraordinary discoveries, and indeed, nothing would be more extraordinary than confirmation of alien life.
But many scientists involved with SETI, he explains, participate in secret for fear of damage to their careers or reputations, while more esoteric concepts such as parallel universes and string theory are widely accepted despite being essentially unprovable.
As Loeb explains, SETI enjoyed broad public interest in the 1960s and '70s as radio telescopes around the world began scanning the heavens for signals from other worlds. Since being drastically defunding in the 1990s, SETI has moved to the fringes, inspiring as much science fiction and conspiracy-theorizing as credible science.
But while that's happened, our understanding of the universe has deepened in ways that only justify renewed public interest and investment. In the last three decades, astronomers have found thousands of planets outside our solar system, and now suggest potentially habitable worlds in our galaxy alone could number in the billions.
Such discoveries continue to recalibrate the relationship between the two concepts underlying SETI: There is the Drake equation, which estimates the probability of intelligent life based on the number of sun-like stars and Earth-like planets known to exist.
Then there is the Fermi Paradox, which attempts to reconcile the likely abundance of extraterrestrial life with the lack of observable evidence for it.
Loeb suggests adding a third concept to this list: 'Oumuamua's Wager, a variation on the famous Pascal's Wager, which suggests the upsides of believing in God outweigh the downsides, even if he doesn't really exist.
Assuming 'Oumuamua came from an alien civilization, Loeb argues, will enrich humanity and leave us better prepared for true extraterrestrial contact, even if we're wrong this time.
The "if" or "when" of that scenario is unknowable, of course, because we have no way of calculating how common life is in the universe until we find it somewhere else.
The reason to keep searching the cosmos, in wonder and humility, is that we already know it has happened at least once.
Troy Reimink is a west Michigan writer
news.yahoo.com/troy-reimink-extraterrestrial-harvard-astronomer-193300668.html
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Post by swamprat on Feb 21, 2021 1:44:53 GMT
Even as we look for echoes of Martian life, is someone else looking for us?
Kevin McDermott, Feb. 20, 2021
Just when it feels like we can’t bear the smallness of our earthbound politics any longer, two recent events invite us to look skyward. NASA last week landed a probe on Mars — essentially a high-tech dune buggy with a detachable helicopter — to conduct humanity’s most extensive search yet for echoes of extraterrestrial life there. Meanwhile, a new book by a Harvard astrophysicist suggests we recently glimpsed a different probe, sent by a civilization from another star, as it passed through our solar system.
Admit it: This is more interesting than the latest partisan spitball fight in Washington.
NASA on Thursday afternoon gently set down the six-wheeled rover, Perseverance, within a Martian crater where water once flowed, finishing an almost seven-month, 300 million-mile journey to a target area about the size of downtown St. Louis. The most sophisticated probe ever sent to Mars, it will search for signs of past microbial life. That this remarkable news was overshadowed in the media all week by grubby congressional intrigue is a testament to just how routine planetary exploration has become to us.
The U.S. and other nations have been flinging ships and probes and rovers around the solar system for more than half a century now, circling planets, leaving footprints on the moon and tire tracks on Mars, plunging probes to their meticulously scheduled doom in the hellscape atmospheres of Jupiter and Saturn. Venus’ searing surface is littered today with the melted husks of almost a dozen probes landed there by the former Soviet Union starting in the 1960s. Decades after the U.S. essentially got bored with walking on the moon, China returned with a rover in 2019 to provide humanity’s first ground-level look at the lunar dark side.
The European Space Agency in 2005 set a probe on Saturn’s moon Titan. Last year, NASA briefly landed a probe on an asteroid. Mars may soon need traffic lights: Almost 50 missions there have been undertaken since the 1960s, by nine different governments or alliances, including the E.U., Japan and India. Right now, the U.S., China and United Arab Emirates all have active probes on or orbiting the red planet.
We’ve strewn space junk all over the solar system — and outside of it, having sent several human-made objects into interstellar space over the years. So is it inconceivable that, in the vastness of the cosmos, some other civilization once sent a probe this way, to be fleetingly glimpsed through a telescope in Hawaii three years ago?
That question — and the bigger one: Are we alone? — is the launchpad for astrophysicist Avi Loeb’s new book, “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth.” Part thesis, part autobiography, part searing indictment of scientific rigor mortis, it’s a great read, whatever your thoughts on E.T.
The background: For a few days in October 2017, astronomers tracked a cigar-shaped, football-field-sized … something … that tumbled around the sun and then headed back out to the void beyond Pluto. Its unusual trajectory indicated it came from outside our solar system, the first known interstellar object that humans have seen here.
That alone made it big scientific news, but there was more. As the object (dubbed ‘Oumuamua, Hawaiian for “Scout”) moved away from the sun, it accelerated in a way that couldn’t be explained by gravitational forces alone. Comets do that as the sun vaporizes their ice, pushing them like a thruster, but ’Oumuamua didn’t display the classic comet’s vapor tail. It was a mystery.
Most scientists say it was an interstellar comet, while explaining its un-comet-like behavior with various natural theories — all of which, Loeb argues, are more problematic and unlikely than his: “I submit that the simplest explanation for these peculiarities,” he writes, “is that the object was created by an intelligent civilization not of this Earth.” He posits that ’Oumuamua is an artificially constructed solar “sail” that was being pushed by the sun’s radiation.
It’s important to note here that Loeb isn’t some pointy-ear-wearing UFO gadfly, but was the longest-serving chair of Harvard’s Department of Astronomy and still teaches there. His scientific colleagues mostly reject his thesis, some of them ridiculing it fiercely. Loeb, in his book, ridicules them back. “To explain ‘Oumuamua’s trajectory and retain the assumption that it was a comet,” he writes, “scientists have strained to the breaking point their theories about its physical size and composition.” This is how astrophysicists trash-talk each other.
I’m not by any stretch sold on Loeb’s theory, and I know the cratered ground I’m treading by saying that. One of the strongest pushbacks I’ve ever gotten from readers was in response to a column I wrote two years ago expressing my skepticism about extraterrestrials — not doubting they exist, but questioning how, logistically, they could possibly visit us. The UFO crowd all but threatened to throw me out of an airlock.
But with billions of Earth-like planets in our galaxy alone, it’s almost a mathematical certainty that other life is out there, and perhaps not just the microscopic kind that NASA is seeking on Mars. Loeb vividly expresses his frustration that the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is nonetheless considered exotic among most astronomers — this as they obsess over navel-gazing theories about multiple universes and other groupthink that’s unlikely to ever matter to real people in the real world. Sounds kind of like our politics.
www.stltoday.com/opinion/columnists/kevin-mcdermott/mcdermott-even-as-we-look-for-echoes-of-martian-life-is-someone-else-looking-for/article_73e11232-ad9f-5f52-9185-7ba6ab93d59b.html
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Post by aliensun on Mar 1, 2021 4:21:00 GMT
Science blinds and binds itself by its own flawed reasoning and then passes their opinions on to us as Truths to believe. I recall two within memory that were preached: First, Life and especially human life is a solitary event in the universe,and the universe is ours to do with as we see fit. Second, water, so Sagan wrote, is the elixir of life in the universe but rare. Well, guess what, the different UFOs we see proves that the cosmos is alive with various beings that have invented unique ways to transport themselves. And third, travel beyond the SOL is impossible, Einstein and many others say so. Many times Sagan said on national television, having adjusted to a more modern view, "Yes other intelligent lifeforms probably exist out there on distant stars, but they can't get here."
The first two points are now seen as scientific myths meaning we accept that other life forms are probably out there because we know know that water seems to be rather apparent at various place in our own system and in deep space. The old hold out of Einstein's contention that nothing can go SOL+ is also banished by one simple understanding. That physics is not absolute if it can be made to not be so. Birds figured out that problem with a physical solution. Locked to the ground, they developed wings to defy gravity. The swift ET's we witness simply--evidently universally in the galaxy--developed what we can call "fields" that surround their machines to render mass/gravity/inertia to zero. That way they can flip across the galaxy on light beams of power.
So with Mumumoa,it comes in at a high velocity not to close too to the sun and darts away, exiting the system with it speed and angular momentum. Hot stuff, huh? Remember the first Moon shot where they sling-shot themselves around the Moon with the perfect amount of velocity and angular momentum to return exactly to Earth? If that minor trick of Mumumoa was worth so many words of discussion, why don't we stand, mouth agape, at the wonder antics of every long-period comet that has graced our sun. They come in with enormous velocities also shaving close to the sun and then, always, more magically than Mumumoa or NASA with a perfect balance of velocity and angular momument, return back the way they came. The motion is technically called an "orbit," but which is in its true perspective is more like a cosmically long railroad track of virtually straight lines coming from their point of origin and returning exact to the same point. Do they really go out to a supposed outer belt of trillions of rather inert comets, or do they turn on the null-mass power plant once clear of the inner planets and zip back to their home stars? I call them cometships.
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Post by swamprat on Mar 7, 2021 23:52:49 GMT
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Post by swamprat on Mar 8, 2021 1:57:17 GMT
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