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Have Aliens Found Us? A Harvard Astronomer on the Mysterious Interstellar Object 'Oumuamua

llien

Member
On October 19, 2017, astronomers at the University of Hawaii spotted a strange object travelling through our solar system, which they later described as "a red and extremely elongated asteroid." It was the first interstellar object to be detected within our solar system; the scientists named it 'Oumuamua, the Hawaiian word for a scout or messenger. The following October, Avi Loeb, the chair of Harvard's astronomy department, co-wrote a paper (with a Harvard postdoctoral fellow, Shmuel Bialy) that examined 'Oumuamua's "peculiar acceleration" and suggested that the object "may be a fully operational probe sent intentionally to Earth's vicinity by an alien civilization." Loeb has long been interested in the search for extraterrestrial life, and he recently made further headlines by suggesting that we might communicate with the civilization that sent the probe.

Isaac Chotiner of The New Yorker has interviewed Loeb, who was frustrated that scientists saw 'Oumuamua too late in its journey to photograph the object. "My motivation for writing the paper is to alert the community to pay a lot more attention to the next visitor," he told Chotiner. An excerpt from the interview:The New Yorker: Your explanation of why 'Oumuamua might be an interstellar probe may be hard for laypeople to understand. Why might this be the case, beyond the fact that lots of things are possible?
Loeb: There is a Scientific American article I wrote where I summarized six strange facts about 'Oumuamua. The first one is that we didn't expect this object to exist in the first place. We see the solar system and we can calculate at what rate it ejected rocks during its history. And if we assume all planetary systems around other stars are doing the same thing, we can figure out what the population of interstellar objects should be. That calculation results in a lot of possibilities, but the range is much less than needed to explain the discovery of 'Oumuamua.
There is another peculiar fact about this object. When you look at all the stars in the vicinity of the sun, they move relative to the sun, the sun moves relative to them, but only one in five hundred stars in that frame is moving as slow as 'Oumuamua. You would expect that most rocks would move roughly at the speed of the star they came from. If this object came from another star, that star would have to be very special.

[...]The New Yorker: Hold on. "'Not where is the lack of evidence so that I can fit in any hypothesis that I like?' " [Bailer-Jones, of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, in Heidelberg, Germany, has identified four possible home stars for 'Oumuamua, and was asked to respond to Loeb's light-sail theory by NBC.]
Loeb: Well, it's exactly the approach that I took. I approached this with a scientific mind, like I approach any other problem in astronomy or science that I work on. The point is that we follow the evidence, and the evidence in this particular case is that there are six peculiar facts. And one of these facts is that it deviated from an orbit shaped by gravity while not showing any of the telltale signs of cometary outgassing activity. So we don't see the gas around it, we don't see the cometary tail. It has an extreme shape that we have never seen before in either asteroids or comets. We know that we couldn't detect any heat from it and that it's much more shiny, by a factor of ten, than a typical asteroid or comet. All of these are facts. I am following the facts.

Last year, I wrote a paper about cosmology where there was an unusual result, which showed that perhaps the gas in the universe was much colder than we expected. And so we postulated that maybe dark matter has some property that makes the gas cooler. And nobody cares, nobody is worried about it, no one says it is not science. Everyone says that is mainstream -- to consider dark matter, a substance we have never seen. That's completely fine. It doesn't bother anyone. But when you mention the possibility that there could be equipment out there that is coming from another civilization -- which, to my mind, is much less speculative, because we have already sent things into space -- then that is regarded as unscientific. But we didn't just invent this thing out of thin air. The reason we were driven to put in that sentence was because of the evidence, because of the facts. If someone else has a better explanation, they should write a paper about it rather than just saying what you said.


Slashdot
 
I think speculation is kind of moot since the object is outside the range of our telescopes now.

It's more fuel for the Believers, but I've been hearing alien conspiracies since I've been on the internet. Since we don't know much about Oort cloud objects or extra-solar objects, how can we draw conclusions about whether this is a peculiar or perfectly normal object? Oumuamua is the first time we've seen an object like this coming from outside the solar system, as all the press released keep pointing out. Okay, if it's the first time, then we lack any context to really compare it against. Which is more likely?

- A piece of space detritus wandering through our solar system, something that is probably quite common given the age and scale of the universe
- A spaceship or probe from another intelligent race.

Keep in mind: if this is a probe sent to our solar system in response to detecting signals from Earth, this probe would've been sent from somewhere within the nearest 50 light years (and that's a wide estimate. Probably more like 10 light years).
 
if it was from intelligent civilization. I'm guessing they would send more.

if traveling at the same speeds this one was recorded at, when can we expect another?
 

#Phonepunk#

Banned
It must be aliens is the “a wizard did it” for science

Maybe instead of aliens explaining away the holes in your crappy model maybe it’s the model that is the problem
 
Which is more likely?
- A piece of space detritus wandering through our solar system, something that is probably quite common given the age and scale of the universe
- A spaceship or probe from another intelligent race.

This. I'd love to see definitive proof for extraterrestrial life in my lifetime, but the fact that the object seems to be peculiar, is not proof that it was an alien probe.

If someone else has a better explanation, they should write a paper about it rather than just saying what you said.

It would probably be the shortest paper in the history of astronomy, consisting of merely two words: Occam's razor. Maybe it could be padded out a bit with a nice cover page, a footnote to Ockham and an index table.
 

iconmaster

Banned
This is the chair of Harvard's astronomy department, and this is how he reasons:

Let me give you a better example for the kind of argument you are making. The multiverse is a mainstream idea—that anything that can happen will happen an infinite number of times. And I think that is not scientific, because it cannot be tested. Whereas the next time we see an object like this one, we can contemplate taking a photograph. My motivation, in part, is to motivate the scientific community to collect more data on the next object rather than argue a priori that they know the answer. In the multiverse case, we have no way of testing it, and everyone is happy to say, “Ya!”

"Because this probably-unscientific idea is widely accepted, you should also accept my unscientific idea!"

Boy, I could "prove" a whole lot of stuff with that argument.
 
This is the chair of Harvard's astronomy department, and this is how he reasons:



"Because this probably-unscientific idea is widely accepted, you should also accept my unscientific idea!"

Boy, I could "prove" a whole lot of stuff with that argument.
That's... disappointing.

Harvard seems bent on pushing a narrative in spite of the counterarguments from the scientific community. Is it for the attention?

Last year, another scientific model released stating that humans may be the only intelligent civilization in the observable universe. The famous Drake Equation has long been referenced by Alien Believers because -- based on the variables -- it makes it seem as though it's essentially impossible for a multitude of intelligent races to not exist.

And because it's so unlikely for aliens to not exist, they pretty much exist, right? I mean, not pretty much. They exist. In fact, this proves that they exist because they send this Oumuamua probe our way. It's an unfalsifiable premise: it's "likely" aliens exist, therefore they do, and since it's "unlikely" this Oumuamua is only a rock based on how unusual it is, then it's unlikely to only be a rock. Therefore, aliens.

That same Drake Equation can be used to show how unlikely it is for life to exist, too. All you must do is tweak the variables another direction.

In the UFO/alien community, the "likelihood" of alien life is the sacred cow. It is never challenged, but it never goes beyond this undefined likelihood. It's plausible that alien life exists nearby, therefore it is probable, therefore it is true, therefore this unexplained phenomenon is aliens.

I come from the perspective of the rare earth hypothesis and a cold, uncaring, self-destructive universe.

Edit: for derps and typos.
 
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Thurible

Member
Obligatory:

9148130.jpg
 
Last year, another scientific model released stating that humans may be the only intelligent civilization in the observable universe. The famous Drake Equation has long been referenced by Alien Believers because -- based on the variables -- it makes it seem as though it's essentially impossible for a multitude of intelligent races to not exist.

Eh, this is a bit of a misrepresentation of the study, as it merely applies to our galaxy, the Milky Way:

“We found that even using the guesstimates in the literature (we took them and randomly combined the parameter estimates) one can have a situation where the mean number of civilizations in the galaxy might be fairly high – say a hundred – and yet the probability that we are alone in the galaxy is 30%! The reason is that there is a very skew distribution of likelihood. [...] In the end, the team’s conclusions do not mean that humanity is alone in the Universe, or that the odds of finding evidence of extra-terrestrial civilizations (both past and present) is unlikely. Instead, it simply means that we can say with greater confidence – based on what we know – that humanity is most likely the only intelligent species in the Milky Way Galaxy at present.

By no means does this state that humans are the only intelligent civilization "in the observable universe", as that would comprise at least 2 trillion galaxies. Considering the vastness of space, it is highly unlikely that we are the only intelligent civilization in the whole universe as even incredibly low chances for life to develop somewhere would approach near certitude on the astronomical scale.

I mean, if taking mere probability into account, the possibility that we are solipsistic Boltzmann Brains would be much higher than our current empirical assumptions about the universe:

 
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hariseldon

Unconfirmed Member
It's simple. There are so many planets around so many stars that somewhere there must be or have been civilisation other than on Earth. Whether they exist at the same time as us and within a practical range is another matter, and of course if they can get to us, we likely can't get to them, so we should shit our pants if that happens.

Note that it's looking increasingly likely that microbial life will be found in our own solar system so life being rare may be an inaccurate assumption, especially when you consider some of the places life exists on Earth.
 

cryptoadam

Banned
Even though Loeb is an academic, he seems very much in the I want to beleive catagory so I think there is probably a lot of bias in what he is putting out there.

Even if it is a probe who is to say it hasn't been floating in space for millions of years.

Saying there is other life out there is not unbelivable. But what you have to factor in is time and space and evolution.

Humans are a mere speck on our planets history, with our ability to understand the starts being less than a few thousand years old. Go back 1 million years ago and our planet is completly different. 60 million, 100 million 500 million, you get the point.

And then we have the fact that humans are the one unique evolution aspect in the earths history. No other living being evolved to human level inteligence over the 100's of millions of years, and different extinction events, and different earths enviorments/atmospheres.

So for Aliens to find us, we need them to be on a planet that can have live, that life to evolve into a species that has human like consciousness, and that all has to be happening in this tiny small window of time in which human civilization exsits on the earth. Our life time is a grain of sand in the age of the universe.

So sure some other planet could of evolved life like dinosaurs or arthepods or insects, but that could of been 100 million years ago or 100 million years in the future.
 
Eh, this is a bit of a misrepresentation of the study, as it merely applies to our galaxy, the Milky Way:



By no means does this state that humans are the only intelligent civilization "in the observable universe", as that would comprise at least 2 trillion galaxies. Considering the vastness of space, it is highly unlikely that we are the only intelligent civilization in the whole universe as even incredibly low chances for life to develop somewhere would approach near certitude on the astronomical scale.

I mean, if taking mere probability into account, the possibility that we are solipsistic Boltzmann Brains would be much higher than our current empirical assumptions about the universe:


I based it on the title of the article: New Model Predicts That We’re Probably the Only Advanced Civilization in the Observable Universe.

Is it relevant that we have 2 trillion galaxies? It's a big number, but it still falls under the same umbrella of "highly unlikely to be untrue due to high numbers and dice rolls, therefore true" fallacy.

We have no context or comparison to our own situation because we are the only known life in the universe. Not the only known intelligent life. The only known life. It seems plausible that since other planets have similar conditions to ours, other life would exist. However, the amount of information we still do not know about the formation and propagation of life is immense, glaringly so.

Assuming we are alone in the Milky Way, it is a coin flip to say whether that is common or rare. Maybe it's rare for there to only be one intelligent species per galaxy. Maybe it's rare for there to be any intelligent species at all. A trillion galaxies doesn't make a 0% chance into a 1% chance. We simply don't know. Heck, even within our solar system Earth is the only planet with known life on it, let alone an intelligent civilization. There's also the matter of time: while the universe is vast, it is also old. Under the assumption that an intelligent civilization might not even survive 100,000 years due to self-extermination, we could very well be a lone species living in one tiny snapshot of the universe's life, no other lifeforms having existed for a billion years, and none to pop up for another billion years after we are gone. The plausibility of that is incredibly high, using the very same formulae.

The rare earth hypothesis is hard for me overcome because it spends just as much time considering all the ways that life can be prevented or snuffed out -- an important piece of the overall investigation, I'd say -- instead of just focusing on the raw numbers and probabilities. Numbers-from-my-ass, but I'd say we learn 10 times more about the destructive forces of the universe than we do about its hospitality toward life. Tidally-locked planets. Quasars shredding the surface of every planet in its light-years-long path. Supernovas. Entire regions of galaxies that are too baked with radiation to sustain DNA-based lifeforms.
 
I based it on the title of the article: New Model Predicts That We’re Probably the Only Advanced Civilization in the Observable Universe.

Then the title of that article is demonstrably wrong.

Is it relevant that we have 2 trillion galaxies? It's a big number, but it still falls under the same umbrella of "highly unlikely to be untrue due to high numbers and dice rolls, therefore true" fallacy. [...] A trillion galaxies doesn't make a 0% chance into a 1% chance.

But the chance is not 0%, as evidenced by the study you linked:

...and yet the probability that we are alone in the galaxy is 30%!

Considering that there's still a 70% chance for life to develop in any given galaxy, I would say having a couple of trillion tries to throw the dice would be pretty significant and highly probable on a binomial distribution.
 
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Then the title of that article is demonstrably wrong.



But the chance is not 0%, as evidenced by the study you linked:



Considering that there's still a 70% chance for life to develop in any given galaxy, I would say having a couple of trillion tries to throw the dice would be pretty significant and highly probable on a binomial distribution.
The heart of my argument is that the estimates are functionally meaningless, since we must admit there are more unknown than known variables in the genesis of life.
 
It's simple. There are so many planets around so many stars that somewhere there must be or have been civilisation other than on Earth. Whether they exist at the same time as us and within a practical range is another matter, and of course if they can get to us, we likely can't get to them, so we should shit our pants if that happens.

Note that it's looking increasingly likely that microbial life will be found in our own solar system so life being rare may be an inaccurate assumption, especially when you consider some of the places life exists on Earth.

I hope we make contact. I’ll personally send the aliens a nice Gillette care package.
 

SKM1

Member
This is the chair of Harvard's astronomy department, and this is how he reasons:



"Because this probably-unscientific idea is widely accepted, you should also accept my unscientific idea!"

Boy, I could "prove" a whole lot of stuff with that argument.

He has an H-index of 99 which within astronomy/cosmology is very high. 36000 citations is also pretty good. His papers seem to be mostly in collaboration with one other academic (so that the citations don't seem to be inflated). I would say his academic standing is pretty solid.

What he is saying here is also not unreasonable. He seems to be frustrated that people were not paying enough attention in order to catch more data about the object. Astronomical events are not controllable so making the most of them is very important when they happen.

The "I want to believe" stuff is quite ridiculous, honestly. Science is not a rational machine that churns out knowledge. It is very important to insist and work on what you believe is true until you hit the jackpot or it's demonstrated to be going nowhere. That's how progress is made.

Moreover anyone who does science knows that anomalies are where the money's at.
 
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iconmaster

Banned
It is very important to insist and work on what you believe is true until you hit the jackpot or it's demonstrated to be going nowhere. That's how progress is made.

That's fair. And maybe provoking some thought is his only aim. But there are some evident leaps of logic in that interview.

Everyone says that is mainstream—to consider dark matter, a substance we have never seen. That’s completely fine. It doesn’t bother anyone.

But when you mention the possibility that there could be equipment out there that is coming from another civilization—which, to my mind, is much less speculative, because we have already sent things into space—then that is regarded as unscientific.

The relationship between "we have launched probes into space" and "therefore an alien civilization could have launched probes into space" is hard for me to draw without a bunch of other steps.

But I'd have loved to have more photos and such, sure.
 

SKM1

Member
That's fair. And maybe provoking some thought is his only aim. But there are some evident leaps of logic in that interview.



The relationship between "we have launched probes into space" and "therefore an alien civilization could have launched probes into space" is hard for me to draw without a bunch of other steps.

But I'd have loved to have more photos and such, sure.

He said less speculative than dark matter, which it is... It's all speculation. High energy physics (HEP) is currently stuck and dark matter is a placeholder for a bunch of phenomena we don't have any clue about. Many ideas in HEP have been mainstream without having a shred of evidence, such as supersymmetry and string theory. No wonder many physicists are frustrated, while their ideas, being no more outlandish, are outright rejected.

I'll just quote a bit from Carl Sagan's Wiki:

In 1947, the year that inaugurated the "flying saucer" craze, the young Sagan suspected the "discs" might be alien spaceships.[12]

Sagan's interest in UFO reports prompted him on August 3, 1952, to write a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson to ask how the United States would respond if flying saucers turned out to be extraterrestrial.[9]:51–52 He later had several conversations on the subject in 1964 with Jacques Vallée.[119] Though quite skeptical of any extraordinary answer to the UFO question, Sagan thought scientists should study the phenomenon, at least because there was widespread public interest in UFO reports.

Stuart Appelle notes that Sagan "wrote frequently on what he perceived as the logical and empirical fallacies regarding UFOs and the abduction experience. Sagan rejected an extraterrestrial explanation for the phenomenon but felt there were both empirical and pedagogical benefits for examining UFO reports and that the subject was, therefore, a legitimate topic of study."
 
I kind of doubt this being a probe from contemporaneous alien civilization. How would aliens detect humans when we have been producing EM signals for barely over a 100 years? Our detectable signature is limited to tiny, tiny portion of the galaxy, let alone the universe. Given that, a probe which appears to be utilizing solar wind and a gravitational slingshot would be worthless - even if it was "aimed" to reach us, it would take too long to return to be of any value, as given the acceleration methods it is using it would not have any kind of FTL capability.

If it is artificial it would more likely be a probe left behind by a prior Earth civilization put into a crazy orbit for a future civilization to find. It could even be from a civilization in one of the prior solar systems our sun is "descended" from (Sol is a 3rd generation star). You never hear those sorts of explanations brought up though - it's always either "science," or Zeta Reticulans with anal probes and a hankering for a bad fantasy writer's bum.

This is the chair of Harvard's astronomy department, and this is how he reasons:



"Because this probably-unscientific idea is widely accepted, you should also accept my unscientific idea!"

Boy, I could "prove" a whole lot of stuff with that argument.

I think you are conflating two different types of "accepts" - "accepting" as in accepting to be true, and "accepting" as in accepting a possibility. If you accept the existence of a multiverse, for example, then a lot of exotic options should be accepted, especially when they are possibilities rather than probabilities.
 

iconmaster

Banned
I think you are conflating two different types of "accepts" - "accepting" as in accepting to be true, and "accepting" as in accepting a possibility

Yes, I think that’s what Loeb was getting at. I would describe that position as “cute,” but I won’t argue with it.
 

Airola

Member
That's... disappointing.

Harvard seems bent on pushing a narrative in spite of the counterarguments from the scientific community. Is it for the attention?

Last year, another scientific model released stating that humans may be the only intelligent civilization in the observable universe. The famous Drake Equation has long been referenced by Alien Believers because -- based on the variables -- it makes it seem as though it's essentially impossible for a multitude of intelligent races to not exist.

And because it's so unlikely for aliens to not exist, they pretty much exist, right? I mean, not pretty much. They exist. In fact, this proves that they exist because they send this Oumuamua probe our way. It's an unfalsifiable premise: it's "likely" aliens exist, therefore they do, and since it's "unlikely" this Oumuamua is only a rock based on how unusual it is, then it's unlikely to only be a rock. Therefore, aliens.

That same Drake Equation can be used to show how unlikely it is for life to exist, too. All you must do is tweak the variables another direction.

In the UFO/alien community, the "likelihood" of alien life is the sacred cow. It is never challenged, but it never goes beyond this undefined likelihood. It's plausible that alien life exists nearby, therefore it is probable, therefore it is true, therefore this unexplained phenomenon is aliens.

I come from the perspective of the rare earth hypothesis and a cold, uncaring, self-destructive universe.

Edit: for derps and typos.

Well said!

If you tell someone this, then they'll go with "but it's really SELFISH to think we might be the only ones here", which really means nothing but is kinda trying to make people say "oh, gee, I don't want to be selfish, maybe we're not alone then."
 
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hariseldon

Unconfirmed Member
i like even numbers man

Consider the problem of 4 boobs: only 2 hands and well you can't fully utilise the remaining 2 boobs. 3 works. One for each hand and a third to suck. It's far more efficient use of boob.
 
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Consider the problem of 4 boobs: only 2 hands and well you can't fully utilise the remaining 2 boobs. 3 works. One for each hand and a third to suck. It's far more efficient use of boob.

youre right. quality over quantity(no pun intended), i should have never ov doubted you
 
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