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'Oumuamua: Interstellar Object: Rendezvous With Rama?

GingerTabby said:
That explains the incident involving the lawyer in Texas. :cat:
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Louis Wain was in telepathic contact with the alien space cats, but people thought he was just another insane artist:
Louis_Wain_-_Katzen3.jpg

Now the space cats are here and in our very houses!
 
It doesn't seem unlikely to me that our first proof of an alien civilisation would be debris from their activities drifting into the Solar System, perhaps after tens of thousands of years or more of floating through the cosmos. We'll probably never know in the case of Oumuamua. But the basis for it being a really odd asteroid or comet seems, at best, a conservative opinion with no more rationality attached to it than that it's the product of alien technology.
 
PeteByrdie said:
It doesn't seem unlikely to me that our first proof of an alien civilisation would be debris from their activities drifting into the Solar System, perhaps after tens of thousands of years or more of floating through the cosmos. We'll probably never know in the case of Oumuamua. But the basis for it being a really odd asteroid or comet seems, at best, a conservative opinion with no more rationality attached to it than that it's the product of alien technology.
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That's part of his issue, we have limited ourselves with the SETI model of seeking life when it's apparent that this is going to be a very narrow beam of torchlight looking into the darkness.

TBH He states SETI was hampered by ridicule from the beginning and that affected funding. Like most things in life, it's about money and people in privileged positions saying where the money gets spent.
 
MorningAngel said:
Interstellar object may have been alien probe, Harvard paper argues, but experts are skeptical
https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/06/health/oumuamua-alien-probe-harvard-intl/index.html

A professor was speaking on Steph’s Packed Lunch today.


Seen 'Steph's Packed Lunch'? Watch it here on All 4:

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/stephs-packed-lunch?cntsrc=social_share_ios_stephs_packed_lunch

Also I thought this object was called something else am I having a Mandela moment?
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C/2017 U1

why do I need to watch a C4 light entertainment show?
 
How did we get so lucky, then, as to see it?

It’s because of the sheer number of them. There may be, according to some estimates, as many as ~1025 objects like this — interstellar interlopers — that are flying through our galaxy. Every so often, given the incredible number of these objects out there, they’ll pass through our Solar System, up to a few times per year. If we have the right tools, scanning the sky often enough, comprehensively enough, pollution-free enough, and to faint enough magnitudes, we’ll get to observe them. Many speculated that ‘Oumuamua would be a one-off; as astronomer Gregory Laughlin quipped, “this was the time of ‘Oumuamua’s life.” But just two years later, we found a second interstellar interloper: the very comet-like object, Borisov.

As you can see, there’s a rich scientific tapestry that the astronomical community is weaving about these new classes of objects. We expect the interstellar medium to be filled with remnants and ejecta from the hundreds of billions of solar systems throughout the Milky Way, and owing to the recent advances in our technology, we’ve finally started to detect them. We only have two such objects so far, but the coming years — assuming that mega-constellations of satellites don’t ruin our view — should help us better understand and classify these objects.

The Uncensored Guide To ‘Oumuamua, Aliens, And That Harvard Astronomer (forbes.com)
 
Newly published research results claim 'Oumuamua wasn't an asteroid, comet or alien probe. Its observed characteristics are more consistent with its being a shard of nitrogen ice knocked off an exoplanet, probably due to a collision or impact event.
Origins of Mysterious Interstellar Visitor 'Oumuamua May Finally Be Explained

The origin and identity of a massive space object that careened past Earth in 2017 have remained a mystery ever since. ...

... A few researchers, including Harvard University astronomer Avi Loeb, posited the object was an alien spacecraft. Others suggested it was an asteroid, or perhaps an interstellar comet.

Now, a pair of papers published in an American Geophysical Union journal offers another theory: that 'Oumuamua was shrapnel from a tiny planet in a different Solar System.

"We've probably resolved the mystery of what 'Oumuamua is, and we can reasonably identify it as a chunk of an 'exo-Pluto,' a Pluto-like planet in another Solar System," Steven Desch, an astrophysicist at Arizona State University and a co-author of the new study, said in a press release. ...

Desch and his coauthors think that half a billion years ago, a space object struck 'Oumuamua's parent planet. That sent 'Oumuamua careening towards our Solar System. ...

Because 'Oumuamua's makeup is unknown, the researchers calculated what kinds of ice would sublimate (change from solid to gas) at a rate that could account for 'Oumuamua's rocket effect. They concluded that the object is likely made of nitrogen ice, like the surface of Pluto and Neptune's moon Triton. ...
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FULL STORY: https://www.sciencealert.com/new-study-suggests-oumuamua-was-a-chuck-of-exoplanet
 
Here are the bibliographic details and links for accessing the two papers regarding the nitrogen ice hypothesis. Both full papers are accessible at the links below.

1I/‘Oumuamua as an N2 ice fragment of an exo‐Pluto surface: I. Size and Compositional Constraints
Alan P. Jackson Steven J. Desch
First published: 16 March 2021
https://doi.org/10.1029/2020JE006706

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2020JE006706

1I/‘Oumuamua as an N2 ice fragment of an exo‐pluto surface II: Generation of N2 ice fragments and the origin of ‘Oumuamua
S. J Desch A. P Jackson
First published: 16 March 2021
https://doi.org/10.1029/2020JE006807

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2020JE006807
 
I gave up reading Avi Loeb's book, supposedly about 'Oumuamua... The guy has an ego the size of a planet, and the book is basically a rather dull autobiography. He feels the need to constantly boast about how humble he is.
 
I attended a virtual lecture by Loeb a week ago. I asked him a question; if this is a typical configuration for an interstellar object, how many might we expect to see in the vicinity of the Solar System? Loeb answered that we should see quadrillions of them. Perhaps these are defunct solar sails sent out by a long-vanished civilisation.
 
eburacum said:
I attended a virtual lecture by Loeb a week ago. I asked him a question; if this is a typical configuration for an interstellar object, how many might we expect to see in the vicinity of the Solar System? Loeb answered that we should see quadrillions of them. Perhaps these are defunct solar sails sent out by a long-vanished civilisation.
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I saw that question asked of other astronomers who also came back with very large estimates, with the reason none had been detected before being down to both their size making them difficult to detect and us generally not looking for objects of this size outside the plane of the solar system.

Quadrillions seems an awfully high number of solar sails to be in our vicinity though, even given long timescales for their hypothetical creators. Since Loeb believes it may be artificial, perhaps he is including both artificial and natural sources?

We wont really get a decent idea until we have a larger sample size, are there interstellar objects other than this and Borisov?
 
SimonBurchell said:
I gave up reading Avi Loeb's book, supposedly about 'Oumuamua... The guy has an ego the size of a planet, and the book is basically a rather dull autobiography. He feels the need to constantly boast about how humble he is.
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Very humble of him.
 
"I'm a very 'umble person"

Uriah Heep
 
Loeb want's to prepare for war with the Aliens.

Over the past few months, Extraterrestrial author Avi Loeb has tied himself more and more to the UFO community as he builds his brand as the astronomer most willing to entertain the possibility that aliens are visiting Earth.

He appeared on the TMZ UFO special to speculate about military UFO videos as evidence of alien contact. He is headlining the Contact in the Desert conference of ancient astronaut, UFO, and paranormal charlatans, and he said in a podcast last month that he is in talks with wealth patrons about heading a team to investigate UFOs.

However, in his latest Scientific American column, Loeb is pulling away from the kumbaya intergalactic philosophical mind meld he imagined in his bestselling book. In Extraterrestrial, Loeb speculated that space aliens would have an advanced moral philosophy because of their longer period of development and that at least some aliens would subscribe to the tenets of 1950s existentialism, particularly the absurdity of life. It seems, though, that Loeb is changing his tune.

Now he suggests that we cannot expect aliens to behave morally. The existentialist aliens from Extraterrestrial have been replaced with a hostile power that requires a military response. Indeed, Loeb is embracing the recent U.S. government UFO report, arguing that scientists like him are obliged to study the objects discussed in the report to determine if they are hostile probes from an alien system—and how convenient that he’s currently trying to secure funding for such a task, and even volunteered to lead a Pentagon team, too. ...

https://jasoncolavito.substack.com/p/defending-earth-against-ufos?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=cta
 
ramonmercado said:
Loeb want's to prepare for war with the Aliens.

Over the past few months, Extraterrestrial author Avi Loeb has tied himself more and more to the UFO community as he builds his brand as the astronomer most willing to entertain the possibility that aliens are visiting Earth.

He appeared on the TMZ UFO special to speculate about military UFO videos as evidence of alien contact. He is headlining the Contact in the Desert conference of ancient astronaut, UFO, and paranormal charlatans, and he said in a podcast last month that he is in talks with wealth patrons about heading a team to investigate UFOs.

However, in his latest Scientific American column, Loeb is pulling away from the kumbaya intergalactic philosophical mind meld he imagined in his bestselling book. In Extraterrestrial, Loeb speculated that space aliens would have an advanced moral philosophy because of their longer period of development and that at least some aliens would subscribe to the tenets of 1950s existentialism, particularly the absurdity of life. It seems, though, that Loeb is changing his tune.

Now he suggests that we cannot expect aliens to behave morally. The existentialist aliens from Extraterrestrial have been replaced with a hostile power that requires a military response. Indeed, Loeb is embracing the recent U.S. government UFO report, arguing that scientists like him are obliged to study the objects discussed in the report to determine if they are hostile probes from an alien system—and how convenient that he’s currently trying to secure funding for such a task, and even volunteered to lead a Pentagon team, too. ...

https://jasoncolavito.substack.com/p/defending-earth-against-ufos?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=cta
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War with the aliens. That would last for all of 5 minutes.
 
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