Professor Loeb was on Joe Rogan a couple of years ago.
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Oh dear - he did the Galileo thing.
The object that turned Loeb from a respected scientist into a guest on the Joe Rogan Show was Oumuamua. The object showed unusual accelleration as it moved out of the Solar System and Loeb seems to have become obsessed by it.
Ironically, a paper has just been published explaining the strange movement. While Loeb was doing the rounds of talk shows speculating about Oumuamua being an alien probe, other scientists were doing the hard yards and solvinvg the mystery.
Scientists Solve the Mystery Behind the Oumuamua 'Alien Spacecraft' CometBy Jeffrey Kluger
March 22, 2023 2:15 PM EDT
...Oumuamua, like most comets, is rich in water. Before the comet entered the solar system, the extreme cold of deep space would cause the water to freeze into ice in what is known as an amorphous state. Rather than the solid, crystalline structure of ordinary ice, amorphous ice is porous, dotted by pockets. Exposure to deep space would have a second effect on the ice too—with cosmic radiation causing some of the H2 in the H2O molecules to break away. That H2 would collect in the pores of the amorphous ice, like fuel in tiny fuel tanks. When Oumuamua entered the inner solar system, it warmed up just enough for the ice to convert to its crystalline state, essentially closing the pockets and forcing the H2 out of the comet, providing the propulsive push that explained the acceleration.
“When the water matrix has enough energy, it rearranges to a more stable and more compact configuration,” says Bergner. “In the process, you lose those pores and the hydrogen can escape through the surface.”
So question answered, problem solved and, alas, no alien spacecraft in the mix. Bergner, Seligman, and other astronomers will be looking for similar small and dark comets when the National Science Foundation’s Vera C. Rubin Observatory goes into operation in Chile’s Atacama desert in 2025, with a specific charge to spend part of its observation time looking for hydrogen outgassing from comets. Before 2017, astronomers did not even know that a species of comet like Oumuamua existed. Now, thanks to the Rubin Observatory and the astronomers who will make use of it, we’ll learn more about their behavior, composition, population, and more.
“The main takeaway is that Oumuamua is consistent with being a standard interstellar comet that experienced heavy processing [in space],” said Bergner in a statement that accompanied the release of the paper. If one Oumuamua exists, many more should be found.
https://time.com/6265071/oumuamua-spacecraft-comet-mystery/ Another irony is that Loeb quotes Sherlock Holmes. Holmes is a great
fictional detective but his creator Conan Doyle was taken in by "The Cottingley Fairies." They were the creation of two girls from Yorkshire and the images they created were laughable.
This is one of the pictures that Conan Doyle was convinced was real. It's an example of starting from a conclusion (Conan Doyle was a spritualist) and a) looking for evidence to support it and b) accepting any 'evidence' uncritically and refusing alternative explanations. It's about as convincing evidence of fairies as any evidence I've seen alien visitation.
The US Government changed the acronym from UFO to UAP because they wanted to remove the assumption that reports and observations of things in the sky referred to 'objects' and downgraded the definition to 'phenomena'.
That of course made no difference to the believers who still get excited by vague UAP blurs in the sky the same way they did with UFO blurs.
Has a new shaky video or blurry smudge been released?
The alternative viewMick West is a debunker of UFO sightings and provides coherent observations and analysis of sightings. He has written abouit conspiracy theories and the great UFO cover up is one of the most common conspiracy theories.
https://bigthink.com/the-present/conspiracy-theories-2653392476/There's nothing wrong with speculating about alien life and interstellar space travel. I'm a massive Science Fiction fan but for me it's about thought experiments or allegory. A great example is 'Roadside Picnic' by the Strugatsky brothers that imagines the aftermath of an alien visitation. The aliens don't waste any time studying or contacting humans who are just another creature on the planet - they just stop off for a bit then move on, leaving behind the equivalent of the rubbish from a roadside picnic (hence the title). It's a far more interesting idea than the human-centric (or US-centric) bollocks that most UFO/UAP fanatics are into.
The reality is that interstellar travel, let alone intergalactic travel, is easy on Star Trek but a massive tecnological and logistical problem in reality.
Then there's the immense timescale of the Universe. Even assuming the problem of intergalactic travel could be solved, what are the chances of another homonid, technological civilisation developing space travel in the same tight time-window that humanity has become technologically active? The first human powered flight was in 1903 - 120 years ago. Marconi established the first radio company in 1897. Transistors - 1947. The only trips to another non-Earth body 1969 - 1972 (total 18 people). But amazingly, the first big 'UFO' story (Roswell) coincides with the great leaps forward in human technology in the aftermath of WW2.
Hand-waving explanations of 'tic-tacs' and 'gimbals' that rely on 'advanced' alien technology are basically just belief in magic and fairies.
In case anyone's wondering, I don't think we are being, or have ever been visited by aliens.
