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Posted Nov 8, 2018
"Only a fraction of interstellar objects could be technological debris of extraterrestrial civilizations. But we should examine everything that enters the solar system from interstellar space in order to infer the true nature of'Uumuamua or other objects from its mysterious population. '
Avi Loeb, chair of the Harvard Astronomy Department, and science professor Frank B. Baird responded by email to our question about the media frenzy that followed his article on Oumuamua, as well as additional comments below. .
Avi Loeb's answer follows:
I was very surprised at the media reaction to our newspaper. We did not have a press release. The document was submitted for publication ten days ago and published simultaneously on arXiv online. It has been reviewed and accepted for publication in record time of only a few days. I have received positive feedback from distinguished astronomers, such as the Royal Astronomer in the UK, Lord Martin Rees. I am happy to see the excitement generated by the document, but it has not been written for this purpose. We have just followed the usual practice of scientific research.
I prefer not to attribute probabilities to the nature of Oumuamua. Just be practical and collect more data about herself or other members of her population. The interpretation of existing and future data is my plan for the future.
Attached you will find a PDF file with general notes, as well as additional comments below. [View PDF file of article “Harvard Researchers Suggest Interstellar Object Might have been from Alien Civilization”]
It is exciting to live in a time when we have scientific technology to look for evidence of extraterrestrial civilizations. The evidence concerning Oumuamua is inconclusive but interesting. I will be really excited once we have conclusive evidence.
`Oumuamua departs from a trajectory dictated solely by the gravity of the Sun. This could have been the result of a cometary degassing, but there is no evidence of a cometary tail around that. In addition, the comets change the period of their rotation and no such change has been detected for 'Oumuamua. Excessive acceleration of 'Oumuamua' has been detected several times, excluding an impulsive kick due to a breaking of the object. The only other explanation that comes to my mind is the extra force on 'Oumuamua by the sunlight. For it to be effective, `Oumuamua must be less than one millimeter thick, like a sail. This led us to think that it could be a light sail produced by an extraterrestrial civilization.
I welcome the other proposals, but I can not think of another explanation of the particular acceleration of 'Oumuamua.
The response to my article with my postdoctoral fellow, Shmuel Bialy, has been truly remarkable. We submitted it for publication only a week ago. It was accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters only three working days later. The attention was created by blogs on Centauri Dreams and Universe Today. But now, Twitter is buzzing about it all the time.
In the future, we should look for other interstellar objects in the sky. Such a search would be like my favorite activity with my daughters when we were vacationing on a beach, namely looking at shells swept away by the ocean. All shells are not identical, and similarly, only a fraction of interstellar objects could be a technological debris of extraterrestrial civilizations. But we should examine everything that enters the solar system from interstellar space in order to deduce the true nature of 'Oumuamua' or other objects from its mysterious population.
Here is his answer:
It is true that the Harvard document suggesting that this object could be conceived, rather than simply the ten millionth rock of the Sun, has certainly aroused great interest from the public. But keep in mind that the idea of extraterrestrial society has always been interesting to the public. Personally, I think it's because we're determined to be curious about potential competitors or – if you're in the spirit of kidnapping – friends. We all love the idea of extraterrestrials, and not only because they often play on television and in movies (in fact, they get these roles because we are interested in aliens, not the other way around .)
This is true as long as I am attentive: any claim of extraterrestrial activity arouses interest. Much of this is a little unscientific – the UFO phenomenon, for example, relies heavily on ambiguous testimonials or photographic evidence, but never fails to make the news. A third of the population seems to think that we are actually visited by extraterrestrial tourists. This has been true for decades and I think the story of Oumuamua is somewhat similar. We wish to believe that Homo sapiens is interesting and important enough to guarantee the arrival of visitors from another world. Obviously, it's a bit egocentric (I wonder if dinosaurs have reported that aliens came to Earth to remove them!). Although anthropocentrism is a bit amusing, it is quite understandable. As a self-proclaimed "crown of creation", humans would naturally want to think that the rest of the cosmos wants to know more about us – that we are always, in a way, at the center of the cosmos. universe, despite Copernicus. & # 39; Best efforts. It is obviously much less interesting to suggest that Umuamua may be just an insensitive and random piece of ice.
Avi Loeb went to the Harvard Observatory
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