A Harvard professor says an alien visited in 2017 — and more are coming

originally posted by: neoholographic
I will admit, I haven't looked deeply into Oumuamua as a lot of other people but what I've read from the Professor makes sense.

Avi Loeb, the chair of Harvard’s Department of Astronomy, believes he’s already found some of that garbage.

In his upcoming book, “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), out Jan. 26, the professor lays out a compelling case for why an object that recently wandered into our solar system was not just another rock but actually a piece of alien technology.

nypost.com...

Here's some of the points he makes:

A number of unusual properties about the object helped Loeb make this conclusion.

First were ‘Oumuamua’s dimensions.

Astronomers looked at the way the object reflected sunlight. Its brightness varied tenfold every eight hours, suggesting that was the amount of time it took for it to complete a full rotation.

Scientists concluded the object was at least five to ten times longer than it was wide — sort of like the shape of a cigar.

No naturally occurring space body we’ve ever seen has looked like it — or even close.

“This would make ‘Oumuamua’s geometry more extreme by at least a few times in aspect ratio — or its width to its height — than the most extreme asteroids or comets that we have ever seen,” Loeb writes in his book.

What’s more, ‘Oumuamua was unusually bright. It was at least “ten times more reflective than typical solar system [stony] asteroids or comets,” the author writes.

He likens its surface to that of shiny metal.

But the anomaly that really pushed Loeb toward his E.T. hypothesis was the way ‘Oumuamua moved.

“The excess push away from the sun — that was the thing that broke the camel’s back,” he said.

Using physics, scientists can calculate the exact path an object should take and what speed it should travel due to the gravitational force exerted by the sun. The sun’s pull will speed up an object massively as it gets closer, then kick it out the other side, only for the object to slow considerably as it gets farther away.

But ‘Oumuamua didn’t follow this calculated trajectory. The object, in fact, accelerated “slightly, but to a highly statistically significant extent,” Loeb writes, as it moved away from the sun.

In other words, it was clearly being pushed by a force besides the sun’s gravity alone.

nypost.com...

He thinks the object looks more like a sail than some of the usual artist renditions.

I think this is a conversation that's needed. Personally, I believe there's more than enough evidence to support the existence of extraterrestrial and extradimensional beings and their visitation to our planet.

We're in a place where pseudoskeptics accept any explanation without weighing the evidence. These things should be put on a prability scale which includes the extraterrestrial/dimensional explanation. You just can't throw out any natural explanation and then shut off critical thinking.

If you look at the evidence, there's clearly things that say Oumuamua wasn't a comet. If you noticed, they blasted ou an artist rendition of it that was everywhere.

Of course this was designed to make it look like a floating rock. So most people stopped asking questions once they saw the artist rendition.

I can list a ton of evidence and I will throughout the thread where there's no plausible natural explanation. What happens is, the pseudoskeptic starts with the priori that extraterrestials existence or their visitation is implausible so any natural explanation is said to be enough evidence to refute an extraterrestrial explanation. This is just blind belief not science.

Second photo looks like something I dropped in the toilet this morning.

Not sure about the aliens though, need to dig into this more.

S&F

originally posted by: gortex
a reply to: chunder

Could ice account for both the reflectivity and any increase in speed ?

Observations seem to discount that theory.

Yeah, but it should be pointed out that "Not currently having an explanation for what it was and how it behaved" is not the same as "so it must have been artificial." And I know you personally didn't say it "must" be artificial because of that, but some are.

As many people on here point out all the time, science is always learning new things about the natural universe and constantly needs to adjust their old ideas. It could be that fact that our scientific understanding of asteroids, comets, and comet-asteroid hybrids (which this could be) is not yet adequate enough to understand the natural movements of this thing.

Sure, it's within the realm of possibility that it is alien, but just because we don't understand it does not necessarily make it alien.

Home One?



Lets hope they dont have any ISDs on their trail...

a reply to: Soylent Green Is People

Sure, it's within the realm of possibility that it is alien, but just because we don't understand it does not necessarily make it alien.

I agree but we shouldn't discount the possibility it could have been Alien just because ...Aliens !

The probability is that it was a natural object but its quirks at least give us something interesting to ponder.

I don't know man, sure sounds to me like this thing might have been a real life Rama. Too bad we missed our chance, but hopefully more will blow through our system in the coming years.

Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke

originally posted by: Subsonic
I don't know man, sure sounds to me like this thing might have been a real life Rama. Too bad we missed our chance, but hopefully more will blow through our system in the coming years.

Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke

I just looked up the book Rendezvous with Rama and it sounds like a great read, and even potentially and good movie to make! Thank you for sharing that! Some of the similarities are kind of interesting to Oumuamua too (size/shape/them thinking it was just an odd shaped asteroid). Wish we had had a ship like Endeavor to go check it out like they did in the book though. Of course this is ATS so it's fun think that maybe we did have the capability, and someone did check it out, clandestinely.

originally posted by: neoholographic

Of course this was designed to make it look like a floating rock.

Hmmmm, IMO, it looks like a giant turd!.. no offense.. LoL!


NW.

a reply to: alldaylong

Might’ve been on auto pilot carrying freight, or passengers in stasis and simply used our sun to charge its battery until the next star it passes along its route.

a reply to: fusionfilm

Second photo looks like something I dropped in the toilet this morning. 

It isn't a photo though, it's an artist's rendition.

It could have looked like battlestar galactica for all we know.

a reply to: gortex

I am rather annoyed of this new variation of "god of the gaps". Whenever something new previously unknown is discovered in space you always have a bunch of people and even some scientists jumping to the alien explanation "as a possibility". It's intellectually lazy. Why does it behave the way it does? Because ALIENS!

a reply to: moebius

Yet discounting it without consideration is surely also 'intellectually lazy' is it not?

Now I'm not saying that aliens were/are responsible for this object, I'd hazard a guess and say that there's probably some natural explanation, but with the lack of evidence either way it can't be disregarded can it?

originally posted by: moebius
a reply to: gortex

I am rather annoyed of this new variation of "god of the gaps". Whenever something new previously unknown is discovered in space you always have a bunch of people and even some scientists jumping to the alien explanation "as a possibility". It's intellectually lazy. Why does it behave the way it does? Because ALIENS!

Because it is a possibility.

wrong thread

originally posted by: numberjuggler
Anyone who says the odds are "a quadrillion to one" is making stuff up.

Not only does matey have a book to sell, he is also planning to launch ultra fast light driven crafts to Alpha Centauri using exactly the design he claims this craft has:
www.cfa.harvard.edu...

And "Breakthrough Starshot" is the same initiative as "Breakthrough Listen" which just happened to receive a message from Alpha Centauri the other day:
www.forbes.com...

The odds on that happening are......Astronomical

Like I said earlier, all this was well known when Loeb was appointed into PCAST.

Anyone interested can check who the members of the council are. Interesting group of people.

a reply to: moebius

Speculation about interesting mysteries is par for the course in Astronomy , nobody can say it wasn't Aliens just as nobody can say it was so while the possibility exists we're free to speculate.

Personally I think it's a good thing there are scientists like Avi Loeb who can publicly think outside the box.

originally posted by: moebius
a reply to: gortex

I am rather annoyed of this new variation of "god of the gaps". Whenever something new previously unknown is discovered in space you always have a bunch of people and even some scientists jumping to the alien explanation "as a possibility". It's intellectually lazy. Why does it behave the way it does? Because ALIENS!

Freedom of thought is a privilege we should all be able to enjoy...professional intellectual or not.

a reply to: neoholographic

Ever since I heard about Oumuamua in 2017, I keep on thinking about "Rendez-vous with Rama" (fantastic read by the way).

a reply to: Subsonic

you beat me to it!

Finished his book a couple days ago, and while the arguments are interesting not much is actually devoted to analyzing the information. I sure as hell want it to be an alien object, and the odds of it being a natural object of pure hydrogen count for an alien craft, but unfortunately there is nothing more than reflective properties and an acceleration that had no apparent gassing, that's about all the evidence we have either way.

The book was half memoir and half arguments for people to expand their thinking because if we 'stay safe' and don't think there are aliens out there, and don't make it a serious science, then we will never put enough resources into finding them. So at the end of the day it's about 10% analyzation of the object, 40% memoir, and 50% argument to make searching for ETs a legit (respected) science.

originally posted by: SleeperHasAwakened

originally posted by: alldaylong
a reply to: neoholographic

I am not that clued up on these things, but if it was a " probe " would it not have been sending transmissions back to it's home planet ?

Would those transmissions not have been detected on Earth ?

That's a good question.

What if the "probe" was communicating using some technology that was utterly indecipherable/unrecognizable to Earth. Using some form of quantum entanglement to permit FTL data transmission is something that is raised in a lot of sci-fi novels, and some (more fringe IMO) corners of science, but there are doubts about the feasibility of this. However, for the sake of argument, if this were viable and in use, we'd simply have no way to recognize it, being an entirely different paradigm than radio transmissions.

I think many in the field of astronomy, based on the reading I've done in news stories, are /highly/ skeptical of this man's claims, and feel he is deliberately hyping his theory of the object as an alien probe for publicity, and to get his name out in the media. Based on that, I have taken this notion of it being some type of alien craft, with a grain of salt.

I am very skeptical but remain open (even hopeful) to the idea that this could be something other than a stray asteroid with a strange pattern of movement; the odds of it being so are very low IMHO.

You might be interested in this
astroengineer.wordpress.com...

A search of this very site might pull up some interesting stuff

www.abovetopsecret.com...