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Did The Galileo Project Just Find The Remains Of An Interstellar Craft?

maximus otter

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Readers may already be familiar with Harvard Physicist Avi Loeb. A few years ago, astronomers detected an object hurtling through the solar system which was dubbed Oumuamua. It was unusual because they determined that it had originated from outside our solar system, the first such confirmed interstellar traveler we’d seen. Dr. Loeb caused some waves in the scientific community when he said that his observations of Oumuamua suggested that it might not be a space rock, but instead, possibly a technological object of some kind, potentially from outside our solar system. We’ll never know for sure since it continued on and headed back out into deep space.

That gave Loeb an idea. He went back with some of his graduate students and began scanning all of NASA’s data regarding meteors that fall into the Earth’s atmosphere. After a long search, he found one with a speed and apparent composition that also appeared to have been interstellar in origin. He named it IM1 (Interstellar Metor 1). Even more fascinating, the NASA data was precise enough to determine that the object probably wasn’t your usual meteorite and was likely composed of something much denser and harder, potentially suggesting something technological. He was also able to plot right where it came down, just off the coast of Australia.

This month, his ship arrived at the site and began searching for debris by dragging large magnetic sleds across the sea bed. (It’s rather shallow there.) Well, yesterday they foundsomething. It’s still too soon to say for sure, but it doesn’t look or act like a space rock.

"...the expedition research team recovered shards of corroded iron. At first, we thought it may be common industrial iron associated with human-made ocean trash. But when Ryan Weed ran the sample of shards through the X-ray Fluorescence (XRF) analyzer, the most likely alloy it flagged is X5 steel with titanium, which is also known as shock-resisting steel."

Dr. Loeb wanted to be very clear that more testing is required. He describes the material as resembling what he calls “shock-resisting steel.” They are testing the material...

https://hotair.com/jazz-shaw/2023/0...-the-remains-of-an-interstellar-craft-n559344

maximus otter
 
... Or human origin space junk?
Though I really, really hope I live to witness a resolution ( of any kind) to The Fermi Paradox...statistically, I realise I’m not living at any unique period in history so it’s as unlikely as it’s likely... though hope springs eternal...
 
I suspect that, if we should find the remains of an interstellar craft, it will be made of something we barely recognise as material. Not steel. In fact, we may not even know what we are seeing, as it would likely be so different to anything we understand.

Steel, however shock resisting, implies a manufacturing process, blast furnaces etc. It's a bit labour-intensive for a race intending interstellar transport.
 
I suspect that, if we should find the remains of an interstellar craft, it will be made of something we barely recognise as material. Not steel. In fact, we may not even know what we are seeing, as it would likely be so different to anything we understand.

Steel, however shock resisting, implies a manufacturing process, blast furnaces etc. It's a bit labour-intensive for a race intending interstellar transport.
Dunno though, could be a von Neumann probe, designed to manufacture duplicates of themselves; and don't forget maufacture in space may involve free energy, minimal gravity etc. and like most things today built by robots.

However, as you say it may be built of something we don't recognise or don't recognise as part of an interstellar craft. My money is on the craft being organic or cyborg lifeforms, with or without passengers.

They could all be built of dark matter and use dark energy which would explain where everyone is and why we can't find them. :)
 
I'm going to go with the odds and say "No", they didn't find remains of an interstellar craft.
Avi Loeb is in love with his ideas and isn't being a good scientist right now. He's lost credibility and his professional reputation.
 
I think we should send Max down in a Micro-Sub to investigate the site.
 
I'm going to go with the odds and say "No", they didn't find remains of an interstellar craft.
Avi Loeb is in love with his ideas and isn't being a good scientist right now. He's lost credibility and his professional reputation.
I think you are right but I'd like you to be wrong.:)
 
How did Dr Loeb know it didn't originate on earth?

I believe the way it's done is to prove a speed and trajectory that implies the object not being gravitationally bound to the Sun. 'Oumuamua, for example, has a parabolic "orbit" that goes out to infinity.

In principle, the idea makes sense, and eventually someone is likely to recover extrasolar material that has fallen to Earth. It does seem a little overeager to anticipate that such material will be artificial.

Any putative samples should be tested thoroughly by a multidisciplinary team before any grand announcements are made.

Note: edited for grammar
 
Sounds to me, this has the makings of a “21st Century Roswell”....??
 
I wonder how much damage is done to the sea floor, dragging large magnetic sleds multiple times over the area. One hopes there’s nothing much there to destroy. Like coral.
 
Any technological debris found on the bottom of the sea is much more likely to come from terrestrial sources than extraterrestrial sources. The fact that a meteor has fallen nearby is probably only a coincidence.

On the other hand, Loeb seems to think that the Galaxy as a whole is chock full of technological debris, and that 'Oumuamua is just one example of this debris. Perhaps the Galaxy was recently* the location of a dense Kardashev type III civilisation which has now disintegrated, and we are finding the wreckage.

*Recently as in the last hundred million years or so.
 
I believe the way it's done is to prove a speed and trajectory that implies the object not being gravitationally bound to the Sun. 'Oumuamua, for example, has a parabolic "orbit" that goes out to infinity.

In principle, the idea makes sense, and eventually someone is likely to recover extrasolar material that has fallen to Earth. It does seem a little overeager to anticipate that such material will be artificial.

Any putative samples should be tested thoroughly by a multidisciplinary team before any grand announcements are made.

Note: edited for grammar
Boy is my face red. It turns out that ʻOumuamua has a hyperbolic orbit. Mea culpa. Same effect in the long run, though.

In any case, as others have pointed out, even once an approximate landing site has been computed from analysis of the trajectory, finding the fallen object may be quite challenging. Some people have gotten good at locating meteorites from trajectory data, provided they fall on suitably barren landscapes, but those rocks apparently display a certain characteristic appearance to the trained eye. Extrasolar material probably also would have a fusion crust after reentry, but may differ in unexpected ways.

I do hope someone strikes the jackpot though. The knowledge to be gained would be priceless!
 
I think the odds of finding a crashed object in the ocean, just from previous observations and calculations are pretty low. The added odds of it being an alien object, not looking good.
Though I could see this as being humanity's future, never actually meeting aliens but just finding random debris flying around. Like a bushman finding a cola bottle.
 
From Jason Colavito's eNews;etter • Vol. 23 • Issue 21 • November 19, 2023 •

This week, Avi Loeb threw a fit after some new research claimed that the microspherules he proclaimed to be likely evidence of an interstellar object or even an alien space probe were instead coal ash, industrial pollutants, debris from common solar system meteorites, or a combination of these. Loeb compared his critics, including (again) “bloggers,” to the totalitarian regime from Orwell’s 1984 and then jetted off to Garry Nolan’s SOL Foundation UFO conference to join other UFO “transparency” advocates in secret presentations that attendees were forbidden from photographing or describing, at least until SOL could package video recordings themselves and control the narrative—you know, transparency.
 
To be fair, there is a reasonable chance that we are occasionally visited by interstellar meteorites. Loeb may well have found evidence of one such meteorite. That would be interesting.

He may also be correct about the interstellar asteroid 'Omuamua, which could conceivably be a relic of an ancient extrasolar civilisation. Note that 'Omuamua is travelling too slowly to be a relic of a more recent civilisation, unless that civilisation is very long-lived. It would have taken this object 600,000 years to get to our star from the relatively nearby star Vega, assuming it came from there (which is unlikely).

But associating with idiots like Nolan is not a sensible thing for a Harvard professor to do.
 
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