Was Avi Loeb Led to His 'Alien Debris' Meteor by the Sound of a Truck? (jhu.edu) 53
Remember Avi Loeb, the Harvard professor who claims fragments of alien technology turned up in a high-speed meteor he retrieved from the waters off of Papua, New Guinea?
"Reanalysis of seismic data now suggests Loeb may have been looking for the meteor remnants in the wrong place," writes the Washington Post: The analysis, led by seismologist Benjamin Fernando of Johns Hopkins University, contends that sound waves purportedly from the meteor exploding in the atmosphere, and cited by Loeb as helping to locate the meteor's debris field, were most likely from a truck driving on a road near the seismometer.
"Interstellar signal linked to aliens was actually just a truck," reads the headline on an announcement from Johns Hopkins University. "The fireball location was actually very far away from where the oceanographic expedition went to retrieve these meteor fragments," Fernando says in the announcement. "Not only did they use the wrong signal, they were looking in the wrong place." Using data from stations in Australia and Palau designed to detect sound waves from nuclear testing, Fernando's team identified a more likely location for the meteor, more than 100 miles from the area initially investigated. They concluded the materials recovered from the ocean bottom were tiny, ordinary meteorites — or particles produced from other meteorites hitting Earth's surface mixed with terrestrial contamination.
"There are hundreds of signals that look just like this on that seismometer in Papua New Guinea in the days before and the days after," Fernando told the Washington Post.
But the newspaper adds that "Loeb, however, stands his ground." "The seismic data is completely irrelevant to the location of the meteor," Loeb told The Washington Post. He said his team based its search coordinates primarily on satellite data from the United States military. A three-year analysis by the United States Space Command supported the hypothesis that the meteor's extreme velocity indicated an origin outside our solar system, Loeb said...
[Fernando] said his team believes the purported velocity of the meteor is the result of a measurement error by a sensor. "We think the most likely case is it's a natural meteor from within our solar system," he said.
In any case, Loeb is not done with the search. When he gets sufficient funding, he told The Post, he's going back to the Pacific in search of larger pieces of whatever splashed into the sea.
"Reanalysis of seismic data now suggests Loeb may have been looking for the meteor remnants in the wrong place," writes the Washington Post: The analysis, led by seismologist Benjamin Fernando of Johns Hopkins University, contends that sound waves purportedly from the meteor exploding in the atmosphere, and cited by Loeb as helping to locate the meteor's debris field, were most likely from a truck driving on a road near the seismometer.
"Interstellar signal linked to aliens was actually just a truck," reads the headline on an announcement from Johns Hopkins University. "The fireball location was actually very far away from where the oceanographic expedition went to retrieve these meteor fragments," Fernando says in the announcement. "Not only did they use the wrong signal, they were looking in the wrong place." Using data from stations in Australia and Palau designed to detect sound waves from nuclear testing, Fernando's team identified a more likely location for the meteor, more than 100 miles from the area initially investigated. They concluded the materials recovered from the ocean bottom were tiny, ordinary meteorites — or particles produced from other meteorites hitting Earth's surface mixed with terrestrial contamination.
"There are hundreds of signals that look just like this on that seismometer in Papua New Guinea in the days before and the days after," Fernando told the Washington Post.
But the newspaper adds that "Loeb, however, stands his ground." "The seismic data is completely irrelevant to the location of the meteor," Loeb told The Washington Post. He said his team based its search coordinates primarily on satellite data from the United States military. A three-year analysis by the United States Space Command supported the hypothesis that the meteor's extreme velocity indicated an origin outside our solar system, Loeb said...
[Fernando] said his team believes the purported velocity of the meteor is the result of a measurement error by a sensor. "We think the most likely case is it's a natural meteor from within our solar system," he said.
In any case, Loeb is not done with the search. When he gets sufficient funding, he told The Post, he's going back to the Pacific in search of larger pieces of whatever splashed into the sea.
Don't give idiots a platform (Score:3)
Stop posting crap like this. ALIENS! Give me a break. In the immense universe is there other life? Undoubtably. Would it ever reach here? LOL, no.
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Harvard is so wacky that they have professors who believe in aliens.
And why not? Who's to say there isn't some other form of life out there? Avi, for all his peculiarities, is at least trying to provide some type of evidence for his belief. So long as he allows others to verify or refute his findings, he's at least following the scientific method.
Re: Don't give idiots a platform (Score:5, Insightful)
He is not. He's making unfalsifiable claims.
Oumouamoua: there were a grand total of a few dozen observations of it, and then it was gone. And most of those were on the way out after people realized what it was and started looking.
All in all, that's just about enough information to tell it was extra solar and that's it. Then comes along Prof Loeb and declares that in that dearth of information lies the hand of God, I mean Aliens, because aliens could fit the little data we have, so why not?
What's not said is that aliens could fit, but so could moon nazis, terrestrial pixies and bigfoot, and the mundane explanation: lump of dead rock.
And the shape? (Score:4, Interesting)
He is not. He's making unfalsifiable claims.
Oumouamoua: there were a grand total of a few dozen observations of it, and then it was gone. And most of those were on the way out after people realized what it was and started looking.
All in all, that's just about enough information to tell it was extra solar and that's it. Then comes along Prof Loeb and declares that in that dearth of information lies the hand of God, I mean Aliens, because aliens could fit the little data we have, so why not?
What's not said is that aliens could fit, but so could moon nazis, terrestrial pixies and bigfoot, and the mundane explanation: lump of dead rock.
The observations noted that Oumuamua was long and thin [nasa.gov], with its length about 6 times its diameter.
Like a pencil.
Just about every other asteroid we've seen has been a round-ish rock, or two roundish rocks sticking together.
Avi Loeb has *suggested* that the asteroid might be a probe from an extra-solar civilization. This comes from Bayesian deduction, where you try to guess the prior information based on the current information.
In other words, if a normal space rock is roundish then what is the explanation for this rock being *not* roundish?
There's no known natural explanation for the formation of a long thin rock in space. Maybe possibly it could be the result of an impact, but that's a highly unlikely scenario. This leaves open the possibility that the explanation is that the object is of non-natural formation.
He didn't publish a paper on Oumuamua, he's only suggesting that inspecting *this* asteroid might be more interesting than inspecting any of the myriad *other* asteroids in the solar system that we've found.
Lacking a natural explanation for the unusual shape, maybe we should go and have a closer look?
Why everyone has to insult and disparage Avi Loeb for making suggestions is beyond me. If you don't believe him then fine - ignore him and move on with your life.
Maybe refrain from judging him and let him manage his life in the way he sees fit.
Re: And the shape? (Score:2)
Light curve inversion is a very crude estimator of shape. Much more crude than direct imaging or occultation. It could have been a perfect Clarkian Obelisk, or it could have been an elongated rubble pile. Or two blobs in orbit of each other. For all the data we have on it, it could have been a perfect copy of my left nut.
Re:And the shape? (Score:5, Informative)
Just about every other asteroid we've seen has been a round-ish rock, or two roundish rocks sticking together.
you should talk to more asteroids:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Why everyone has to insult and disparage Avi Loeb for making suggestions is beyond me.
For a while now he's been making assertions (not suggestions) on the basis of extremely flaky and dubios evidence - hence the backlash against him. He seems to have thrown the scientific method out of the window.
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He is constantly disparaged, and rightly so, because he should know better ...
He is a Harvard professor and was a department chair for many years, yet, he jumps to extraordinary claims not supported by the data. Very unscientific ...
Check out what Dr. Angela Collier, w
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What's not said is that aliens could fit, but so could moon nazis, terrestrial pixies and bigfoot, and the mundane explanation: lump of dead rock.
Nope, and that's a pathetic argument. We know moon nazis don't exist (Earth nazis is another matter). Terrestrial pixies? Sure, show the evidence. Bigfoot? Again, show your evidence. Everything so far claimed to be Bigfoot has been shown to be something else, usually bears.
As for the a lump of dead rock, again, let others test. If it's a lump of dead rock, so
Re: Don't give idiots a platform (Score:1)
My entire point is that the amount if data is so small, *all* explanations fit it. Glomming onto every bit of ambiguity and claiming that it could fit your pet theory isn't science.
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Re: Don't give idiots a platform (Score:1)
Demonstrate that oumuamua was an alien light sail. Go for it. You can't prove it isnâ(TM)t one, so should he easy.
Re:Don't give idiots a platform (Score:4, Insightful)
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Indeed.
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Stereotypes often turn out wrong; many bar drunks may otherwise have lofty jobs, but like to get sloshed after work.
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Okay? And Newton believed in alchemy being possible. What is your point, exactly?
New Point (Score:2)
Okay? And Newton was right. [philosophersstone.info] What is your point, exactly?
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"Stop posting crap like this. ALIENS! Give me a break. In the immense universe is there other life? Undoubtedly. Would it ever reach here? LOL, no."
There is something about this reasoning that strikes me as interesting. While there is indeed a low probability of intelligent life interacting with any particular point in the universe that same probability applies to every point in the universe intelligent life will ever interact with. If everyone followed such reasoning then nobody would ever win the lottery
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Deal?
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Not quite. The Chinese would have no logical motive for putting teapot into such an orbit, that is a random possibility. There is a very obvious reason life we would recognize would explicitly seek to visit and investigate Earth.
For that matter Russell makes a similar logical error. He fails, when weighing the pro side of the possibility of a deity, to account for any manipulation of the base probabilities by such an entity. If such an entity exists and has the while and motivation to exert any level of inf
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I am motivated to invent a perpetuum mobile. Albeit, I can't.
Bertrand Russell's teapot (like invisible pink unicorns) is something you can't completely rule out, but at the same time is obviously not true. It's the God of the Gaps. In the same way, we can't rule out aliens completely, but they are "aliens of the gaps".
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"at the same time is obviously not true"
What is obvious about it? The obviousness is nothing but bias.
"(like invisible pink unicorns) is something you can't completely rule out"
Touche in pulling the invisible pink unicorn out. I've probably been using the invisible pink unicorn example for 10-15yrs. I'll reward you with a secret... the example is chosen as a bias test for the other party. The absence of an invisible pink unicorn is indeed obvious because something which is invisible has no color. In 15yrs n
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Color isn't the light but how we perceive the light and non-visible light radiation isn't labeled as pink in any case.
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Bah! If he had compelling proof, sure. Instead, he has a steaming pool of vomit and then he crows for attention. No thanks. Call me when the President is shaking Beepboop's tentacles on the White House lawn. Stop giving me grainy videos and long-winded explanations full of bullshit.
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Loeb isn't claiming that aliens reached here. The reporting on this whole thing has been a disaster. It's the journalists that are hung up on the aliens part. Loeb believes the meteor came from outside of our solar system, and wants to see if the metals within occur naturally, or if they're artificially made alloys that humans aren't making. If he finds metals that occur naturally, then it was just a meteor. If he finds metals that humans are currently making, then maybe what he obtained from the ocean floo
No. (Score:2)
It was a voice in his head, not the sound of a truck.
It flies like a truck (Score:2)
Yes! (Score:2)
Academic Crackpots (Score:3)
Great video on academic crackpots with a special focus on Avi Loeb
https://youtu.be/aY985qzn7oI?s... [youtu.be]
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Re: Academic Crackpots (Score:2)
I'm not sure what you're talking about, but its focus is physicists.
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Re: Academic Crackpots (Score:2)
I don't think you've encountered enough physicists.
Please ban Avi Loeb stories (Score:3)
NORAD Sensors (Score:2)
Some random academic suggests NORAD sensors aren't working right because he doesn't like data that would disprove his priors.
He's either a charlatan or we have a national defense problem!
Has anybody bothered to ask NORAD?
its all ball bearings these days (Score:2)
Ask Avi, alien ball bearings.
Proof of crashed alien spacecraft everywhere! (Score:2)
Sounds like Avi won't back down no matter what (Score:1)
Avi: "Okay, but it was an alien truck."
(Fake quote. Hmm, I wonder what alien truck-nuts look like?)