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What is Oumuamua?

Jack Hays

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Is this a crank professor or the most important event in human history?

Harvard’s top astronomer says an alien ship may be among us. He doesn’t care what his colleagues say.




Ever since Avi Loeb’s controversial paper about the object, dubbed ‘Oumuamua, he has become a spokesman for the possibilities of extraterrestrial life.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Before he started the whole alien spaceship thing last year, the chairman of Harvard University's astronomy department was known for public lectures on modesty. Personal modesty, which Avi Loeb said he learned growing up on a farm. And what Loeb calls "cosmic modesty" — the idea that it's arrogant to assume we are alone in the universe, or even a particularly special species. . . .
Loeb stands beside his desk on the first morning of spring courses in a creaseless suit, stapling syllabi for his afternoon class. He points visitors to this and that on the wall. He mentions that four TV crews were in this office on the day in the fall when his spaceship theory went viral, and now five film companies are interested in making a movie about his life. . . .

 
Is this a crank professor or the most important event in human history?

Harvard’s top astronomer says an alien ship may be among us. He doesn’t care what his colleagues say.




Ever since Avi Loeb’s controversial paper about the object, dubbed ‘Oumuamua, he has become a spokesman for the possibilities of extraterrestrial life.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Before he started the whole alien spaceship thing last year, the chairman of Harvard University's astronomy department was known for public lectures on modesty. Personal modesty, which Avi Loeb said he learned growing up on a farm. And what Loeb calls "cosmic modesty" — the idea that it's arrogant to assume we are alone in the universe, or even a particularly special species. . . .
Loeb stands beside his desk on the first morning of spring courses in a creaseless suit, stapling syllabi for his afternoon class. He points visitors to this and that on the wall. He mentions that four TV crews were in this office on the day in the fall when his spaceship theory went viral, and now five film companies are interested in making a movie about his life. . . .


He has a theory. Question is can we get something out there close enough to look at the object in detail.
 
Is this a crank professor or the most important event in human history?

Harvard’s top astronomer says an alien ship may be among us. He doesn’t care what his colleagues say.




Ever since Avi Loeb’s controversial paper about the object, dubbed ‘Oumuamua, he has become a spokesman for the possibilities of extraterrestrial life.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Before he started the whole alien spaceship thing last year, the chairman of Harvard University's astronomy department was known for public lectures on modesty. Personal modesty, which Avi Loeb said he learned growing up on a farm. And what Loeb calls "cosmic modesty" — the idea that it's arrogant to assume we are alone in the universe, or even a particularly special species. . . .
Loeb stands beside his desk on the first morning of spring courses in a creaseless suit, stapling syllabi for his afternoon class. He points visitors to this and that on the wall. He mentions that four TV crews were in this office on the day in the fall when his spaceship theory went viral, and now five film companies are interested in making a movie about his life. . . .


Frankly, I’m not real surprised you can’t tell an important event in human history from a crank academic.
 
Frankly, I’m not real surprised you can’t tell an important event in human history from a crank academic.

Try to leave your ill-humor out of this. I personally think he may be onto something.
 
It's reasonable to assume we aren't the only living beings in the universe. It's also reasonable to believe that any life more intelligent than we are would not have any particular interest in contacting us.
 
What is Oumuamua?

it's one of the verses of this song.



as for spaceships, i tend to doubt that we've ever been visited. the distances are just too impossibly vast unless we live in a simulated universe and there's some sort of cheat code.
 
as for spaceships, i tend to doubt that we've ever been visited. the distances are just too impossibly vast unless we live in a simulated universe and there's some sort of cheat code.

Or, unless the 'cheat code' is a larger physics that provides a short cut.
 
Is this a crank professor or the most important event in human history?

Harvard’s top astronomer says an alien ship may be among us. He doesn’t care what his colleagues say.




Ever since Avi Loeb’s controversial paper about the object, dubbed ‘Oumuamua, he has become a spokesman for the possibilities of extraterrestrial life.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Before he started the whole alien spaceship thing last year, the chairman of Harvard University's astronomy department was known for public lectures on modesty. Personal modesty, which Avi Loeb said he learned growing up on a farm. And what Loeb calls "cosmic modesty" — the idea that it's arrogant to assume we are alone in the universe, or even a particularly special species. . . .
Loeb stands beside his desk on the first morning of spring courses in a creaseless suit, stapling syllabi for his afternoon class. He points visitors to this and that on the wall. He mentions that four TV crews were in this office on the day in the fall when his spaceship theory went viral, and now five film companies are interested in making a movie about his life. . . .


Maybe it was here to colonize and when it detected the rapidly rising average global temperature it booked it for greener pastures.
 
Or, unless the 'cheat code' is a larger physics that provides a short cut.

that's not impossible. however, i am very skeptical that we have ever been visited by aliens piloting disco ships.
 
that's not impossible. however, i am very skeptical that we have ever been visited by aliens piloting disco ships.

Looks like the professor thinks it's debris or wreckage.

. . . “Considering an artificial origin, one possibility is that ‘Oumuamua” — pronounced Oh-mooah-mooah — “is a lightsail, floating in interstellar space as a debris from an advanced technological equipment,” Loeb wrote with his colleague Shmuel Bialy in Astrophysical Journal Letters in November — thrilling E.T. enthusiasts and upsetting the fragile orbits of space academia. . . .
Most scientists besides Loeb assume ‘Oumuamua is some sort of rock, be it an asteroid ejected from some star in meltdown hundreds of millions of years ago, or an icy comet wandering the interstellar void. But it’s moving too fast for an inert rock,Loeb points out — zooming away from the sun as if something is pushing it from behind. And if it’s a comet spewing jets of steam, the limited observations astronomers made of it showed no sign.
Loeb argues that ‘Oumuamua’s behavior means it can’t be, as is commonly imagined, a clump of rock shaped like a long potato, but rather an object that’s very long and no more than 1 millimeter thick, perhaps like a kilometer-long obloid pancake — or a ship sail — so light and thin that sunlight is pushing it out of our solar system.
And while he’s not saying it’s definitely aliens, he is saying he can’t think of anything other than aliens that fits the data. And he’s saying that all over international news. . . .
 
Looks like the professor thinks it's debris or wreckage.

. . . “Considering an artificial origin, one possibility is that ‘Oumuamua” — pronounced Oh-mooah-mooah — “is a lightsail, floating in interstellar space as a debris from an advanced technological equipment,” Loeb wrote with his colleague Shmuel Bialy in Astrophysical Journal Letters in November — thrilling E.T. enthusiasts and upsetting the fragile orbits of space academia. . . .
Most scientists besides Loeb assume ‘Oumuamua is some sort of rock, be it an asteroid ejected from some star in meltdown hundreds of millions of years ago, or an icy comet wandering the interstellar void. But it’s moving too fast for an inert rock,Loeb points out — zooming away from the sun as if something is pushing it from behind. And if it’s a comet spewing jets of steam, the limited observations astronomers made of it showed no sign.
Loeb argues that ‘Oumuamua’s behavior means it can’t be, as is commonly imagined, a clump of rock shaped like a long potato, but rather an object that’s very long and no more than 1 millimeter thick, perhaps like a kilometer-long obloid pancake — or a ship sail — so light and thin that sunlight is pushing it out of our solar system.
And while he’s not saying it’s definitely aliens, he is saying he can’t think of anything other than aliens that fits the data. And he’s saying that all over international news. . . .

well, if he says so. however, i doubt that it's space aliens.
 
well, if he says so. however, i doubt that it's space aliens.

The debris hypothesis would address a serious issue. While the Drake equation suggests other life in our galaxy is likely, the time scale of the universe greatly increases the odds against two civilizations maturing simultaneously. Debris, however, might last long enough to adjust those odds.
 
that's not impossible. however, i am very skeptical that we have ever been visited by aliens piloting disco ships.

I do not disagree with the latter.

But our position is:

- We know we don't have the whole picture. We cannot explain, for example, the singularity of a black hole. Quantum mechanics and standard field directly and irrevocably clash on what must happen. That's just one point. So we have definite evidence we don't have the whole picture. Plus, Quantum theory predicts the tiniest wormholes lasting for absurdly small durations of time, but which still connect different points in space-time, in reailty. So a way to cheat exists. But, we do not know if it is possible or not to capture (or generate) and stabalize such a thing. I suspect we'll both be so much dust and dirt when we obtain our first few clues. We have quantum entanglement that could lead to so many more curious applications than mere computers. But mainly, we know there is so very much we don't know; and

- Even if we cannot identify anything we do not know in some future eon, if we exist still, we cannot possibly know whether or not there is more. All we can know that is if there is not more, we do not know it. To know that we know everything would necessarily require a perspective beyond what is knowable in measurable reality, and such a perspective could only be enjoyed by a biblical God.


So we must search, until the end of time. Or, far more likely, our self-destruction.
 
The debris hypothesis would address a serious issue. While the Drake equation suggests other life in our galaxy is likely, the time scale of the universe greatly increases the odds against two civilizations maturing simultaneously. Debris, however, might last long enough to adjust those odds.

i'd be at least a little surprised if we were the only intelligent life in the universe. however, i think the likelihood that they have visited us is about as likely as ancient man visiting Alpha Centauri in canoes. the vastness of the universe approaches horrifying if you think about it enough.
 
I do not disagree with the latter.

But our position is:

- We know we don't have the whole picture. We cannot explain, for example, the singularity of a black hole. Quantum mechanics and standard field directly and irrevocably clash on what must happen. That's just one point. So we have definite evidence we don't have the whole picture. Plus, Quantum theory predicts the tiniest wormholes lasting for absurdly small durations of time, but which still connect different points in space-time, in reailty. So a way to cheat exists. But, we do not know if it is possible or not to capture (or generate) and stabalize such a thing. I suspect we'll both be so much dust and dirt when we obtain our first few clues. We have quantum entanglement that could lead to so many more curious applications than mere computers. But mainly, we know there is so very much we don't know; and

- Even if we cannot identify anything we do not know in some future eon, if we exist still, we cannot possibly know whether or not there is more. All we can know that is if there is not more, we do not know it. To know that we know everything would necessarily require a perspective beyond what is knowable in measurable reality, and such a perspective could only be enjoyed by a biblical God.


So we must search, until the end of time. Or, far more likely, our self-destruction.

i'm all for putting down the stupid guns / tossing out the imaginary border wars and studying the universe instead. aliens might not be coming, but a big ass rock certainly is. also, our species and whatever it evolves into has the same maximum shelf life as this planet as things currently stand.
 
i'm all for putting down the stupid guns / tossing out the imaginary border wars and studying the universe instead. aliens might not be coming, but a big ass rock certainly is. also, our species and whatever it evolves into has the same maximum shelf life as this planet as things currently stand.

Make me a philosopher king and a good 200 billion/year gets immediately ripped out of defense and into NASA, NIH, and similar. More to follow.

Do that, and all the social safety programs get ripped out (except for the disabled) and replaced by a far more efficient and fair direct basic income guarantee. Taxes go up so we pay for what we spend. And scientific research will be one of the most important expenditures, on all fronts.




But no. This will not happen, whether by my hand or someone else's. For we are fools, asses, and swine....on average. The only alien species that would tolerate our bull would have to be lucky idiots themselves. Or, maybe, zookeepers that got particularly bored at home.
 
Make me a philosopher king and a good 200 billion/year gets immediately ripped out of defense and into NASA, NIH, and similar. More to follow.

Do that, and all the social safety programs get ripped out (except for the disabled) and replaced by a far more efficient and fair direct basic income guarantee. Taxes go up so we pay for what we spend. And scientific research will be one of the most important expenditures, on all fronts.




But no. This will not happen, whether by my hand or someone else's. For we are fools, asses, and swine....on average. The only alien species that would tolerate our bull would have to be lucky idiots themselves. Or, maybe, zookeepers that got particularly bored at home.

i'm somewhat convinced of the theory that if they do come, they aren't coming to have a nice this and that and to study a species at the cusp of advanced technological innovation / interstellar travel. i'm also fairly convinced of the theory that they aren't coming. the speed of light seems fairly non-negotiable, and

paleblue_custom-b200d49e728a183a8622779513762ba435508898-s800-c85.jpg

0604-hubble-telescope-most-colorful-universe-evolution.jpg

dn14098-1_600.jpg

most places are just too far away.
 
i'd be at least a little surprised if we were the only intelligent life in the universe. however, i think the likelihood that they have visited us is about as likely as ancient man visiting Alpha Centauri in canoes. the vastness of the universe approaches horrifying if you think about it enough.

The oceans were horrifying once too. "There be dragons." Sooner or later we'll figure it out.
 
the speed of light seems fairly non-negotiable,

Ah, but that's why quantum mechanic's promise of actual wormholes is so promising. Maybe it is wrong according to a greater physics. Maybe they cannot be stabilized and expanded such that a ship could pass through. But if they exist, it means it is absolutely possible to fold space-time, such that a single particle starts in one place in time and space, and ends up anywhere in the universe in a different space and in the future or past. Instantaneously.

There is a little hope.


However, as far as aliens go, I'd be much happier they kept their distance for a million years or so. We are not worthy, at this point, and would most likely be either annihilated by a contagion or exterminated/enslaved. Our best hope would be that they fly by thinking "seriously? Let's give this one a pass. Don't even want to probe a single anus...."
 
The oceans were horrifying once too. "There be dragons." Sooner or later we'll figure it out.

the distances involved in ocean travel and interstellar travel are vastly different.
 
the distances involved in ocean travel and interstellar travel are vastly different.

I am aware of that. Our technology is also vastly different, and will likely in the future go beyond anything we can imagine.
 
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