Harvard Astronomer Argues That Aliens Visited Us in 2017

[Peter1469]

Update:

HARVARD PROFESSOR SAYS ALIEN SPACECRAFT MAY HAVE DROPPED SENSORS

AND THE INTERSTELLAR VISITOR 'OUMUAMUA MIGHT BE TUNING IN.

An ancient alien civilization may have seeded the Earth with sensors providing a readout on what it’s like within our solar system’s habitable zone, Harvard University astronomer Avi Loeb suggests, and new unexplained aerial phenomena (UAP) sightings might be a sign of extraterrestrials following up.

Specifically, he says the interstellar object ‘Oumuamua might have been a spacecraft sent to tune into their signals, Loeb wrote in a new Scientific American op-ed. It’s an unusual explanation linking two separate topics — ‘Oumuamua’s trajectory and recent UAP sightings — but at the very least it’s interesting to consider all the possibilities of advanced life beyond Earth. And even if you find the idea a little too out there, Loeb suggested more researchers ought to start recording the sky so they can get to the bottom of things themselves.



Here We Go

Loeb, who has a tendency to write about purely-theoretical extraterrestrial hypotheses with extreme confidence, deduced that the upcoming intelligence report on UAPs wouldn’t have a chance of reaching the public if the bizarre sightings represented terrestrial security threats like drones from Russia or China. Therefore, he argued, the sightings that we’ve heard about are either natural phenomena or otherworldly vehicles.


What if, Loeb then mused, the UAPs have some connection to ‘Oumuamua, an interstellar object that entered our solar system in 2017 that he repeatedly suggested might have been sent by aliens?

[Peter1469]

Update

Will we ever know the true nature of 'Oumuamua, the first interstellar visitor?

Astronomers monitored 'Oumuamua with a variety of ground- and space-based observatories for about 11 days. That’s it: 11 days. Those observations are all the information we'll ever have about this mysterious visitor; 'Oumuamua is already too distant and too dim to be seen with even our most powerful instruments, and no rocket could ever hope to catch up with it.

It's gone, forever.

Known unknowns

'Oumuamua is perhaps the strangest object we have ever seen inside the solar system. No other known asteroid or comet has a shape that extreme (although, to be fair, our catalog of objects 100 meters or larger isn't exactly complete). 'Oumuamua has a dusty red color, which is similar to the hues of other deep-solar system objects. But it didn't act like a comet, the most common small object at those distances from the sun.


The interstellar visitor entered the solar system with a velocity very close to the local standard of rest, which is the average velocity of stars in our neighborhood. However, most of those stars have individual velocities much higher than that. So why should 'Oumuamua have something very close to the average number? It remains a mystery.


Lastly, on its way out of the solar system, 'Oumuamua gave astronomers one more giant mystery: It appeared to be accelerating, moving away from the sun at a slightly faster pace with every passing day. This wouldn't be the weirdest thing for comets, which can have abnormal acceleration profiles due to outgassing of materials. But observations of 'Oumuamua revealed no such activity.

[Peter1469]

Update:

Why One Harvard Astronomer Believes This Asteroid Is an Alien Ship

Shiny, reddish in color, oblong, somewhere between 300 and 3,000 feet in length and moving at an eye-watering 16 miles a second, the object zoomed into our system and past the sun. When Canadian astronomer Robert Weryk first noticed the thing in a telescope survey in October 2017, it was already on its way out of our system.


Astronomers were baffled by this object, which they named “`Oumuamua.” That’s Hawaiian for “scout.” No one knew for sure what `Omuamua is—or isn’t.


Just one leading scientist was willing to say what others may only have been thinking. `Oumumua’s speed, course and shape were possible signs it’s an alien craft, according to Avi Loeb, a Harvard physicist. “The possibility of an artificial origin for `Oumuamua must be considered,” Loeb wrote in a hallmark 2021 study.




The oblong-shaped ’Oumuamua was first discovered in 2017. dottedhippo via Getty© Provided by The Daily Beast


***

As the mystery surrounding `Oumuamua deepens and more scientists get involved, there are at least two things everyone agrees on. For one, we don’t have enough data to say for sure what `Oumuamua is. Also, we should be ready—with more telescopes, better mathematical models and maybe even special space probes—the next time something like `Oumuamua streaks across the solar system.


Hopefully then we can say for sure whether the object has a sail, thus making it (almost certainly) an alien craft. “With [the] help of a huge amount of highly accurate observation data in the future,” Shangfei and his colleagues wrote, “we will be able to identify the lightsail.”

[LWW]

Both make a decent argument ... and dismissing Loeb out of hand because you don't like where his research might lead, as his YOUTUBE detractor did is, IMHO, at least as dangerous and probably moreso than just jumping on the alien bandwagon.

I am currently in neither camp.

[Peter1469]

Both make a decent argument ... and dismissing Loeb out of hand because you don't like where his research might lead, as his YOUTUBE detractor did is, IMHO, at least as dangerous and probably moreso than just jumping on the alien bandwagon.

I am currently in neither camp.

Me too. We don't have enough data.

[LWW]

Me too. We don't have enough data.

You and I don't.

Eleven days allows for a plethora or measurements to have been taken ... assuming our arrogance didn't interfere with prior preparations to observe something of this type.

Something I've not seen mentioned is how close it came to any of the LaGrange points in the solar system.

[LWW]

Bye the bye, did Sir Arthur Charles Clarke predict this in 'RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA'...having read the book in college makes Loeb's case better than Loeb does that this is a very likely means that an advanced civilization would/could use.

RDZ_S_03-616x766.jpg

[Peter1469]

Update- next mission, intercept one of these rocks to see if is really a rock. Probably a tough mission considering the speed these things travel.

The lead scientist is a Harvard Man.

We Need to Intercept Our Next Interstellar Visitor to See If It's Artificial, Astronomers Say in New Study


Scientists are gaming out the best way to intercept objects that zoom into our solar system from interstellar space, an effort that could provide close-up views of entities that hail from alien star systems. Sending spacecraft to catch up with these interstellar objects, and potentially capture images of them from distances of just a few hundred miles, could reveal important details about their composition, evolution, and their origin beyond our solar neighborhood, reports a new study.


It’s been only five years since the discovery of the first known interstellar visitor—a mysterious 300-foot-wide object known as ‘Oumuamua—which was spotted traveling through the solar system in October 2017. In addition to its sheer novelty, ‘Oumuamua was something of an oddball that puzzled scientists, especially because it underwent a sudden speed boost that still remains unexplained.


Scientists have presented many natural possible origins for the object, while the Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb has famously suggested that it may have been a piece of alien technology. If an intercept mission had been ready to chase down ‘Oumuamua five years ago, we might have some answers to the tantalizing question of the object’s nature and origin. To ensure we don’t miss our next shot at rendezvousing with a similarly strange object, scientists hope to develop a spacecraft that can lay in wait until it is given the green light to pursue an interstellar target.


Now, a team led by Amir Siraj, a student pursuing astrophysics at Harvard University, have outlined some of the physical parameters of such a mission, including the potential timeline, spacecraft speed, and optimal distance of a flyby.


Whereas past studies have mapped out the feasibility of the concept, Siraj and his co-authors, including Loeb, investigated the “requirements for a rendezvous mission with the primary objective of producing a resolved image of an interstellar object” and discuss “the characterization from close range of interstellar objects that, like ‘Oumuamua, don’t have an unequivocally identified nature,” according to a forthcoming study in the Journal of Astronomical Instrumentation that was posted on Sunday to the preprint server arXiv.


“We thought that how we could be most helpful to the conversation is by laying out the physical considerations that go into planning an interceptor mission,” Siraj said in a call with Motherboard. “What are the limits, set by physics, you can't get around no matter what?”

***

Siraj and Loeb have published many studies about interstellar objects, and have identified two meteors that hit Earth over the past decade that may have been interstellar in origin. The pair are now working on an expedition to try to recover the remains of one of the meteors, which struck in 2014, from the South Pacific seafloor.


Loeb thinks that it’s possible that both ‘Oumuamua and the 2014 meteor could be artificial in origin, which has provoked pushback from many other scientists who have said there is insufficient evidence for this position. An intercept mission to an interstellar body could shed light on this question, which is why Siraj and his colleagues discuss ways to distinguish between artificial and natural objects.


“We may anticipate that the spectra of artificial materials of extrasolar provenance may exhibit marked differences with respect to both naturally occurring and human-manufactured materials,” the researchers said in the new study.


“If the main objective of the mission is to discriminate a possible artificial interstellar probe from a natural asteroid or cometary object,” then using a spectrometer “sensitive to the wavelength range of 0.4 to 2.5 µm may be sufficient, based on reference spectra of various artificial and natural minerals,” they added.


The new study also notes that the Vera C. Rubin Telescope’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), a huge 10-year astronomical survey, will be an excellent detector for interstellar objects, and could potentially spot dozens of these visitors. An intercept mission would need to rapidly select one of these potentially abundant targets after its detection, then blast off within weeks in order to have enough time to catch up with it.


“If you're going to go after an interstellar object with a billion dollar spacecraft, you probably want it to look a little bit unusual,” Siraj said. “For an ‘Oumuamua-sized object, it's a couple of months for the trip and for an object 10 times dimmer than ‘Oumuamua, meaning a third of the size of ‘Oumuamua, the trip would be a couple of weeks, so you would need to really decide very quickly.”


For this reason, Siraj and his colleagues suggest parking a spacecraft in Lagrange Point 2 (L2), a stable region in space where the James Webb Space Telescope is currently located. From this spot, a spacecraft could swiftly chase after objects that appear interesting at first glance, though the team noted that a mission could also be parked in orbit around Earth or the Moon, or could launch from the ground.


The mission would then conduct a flyby of the object, ideally from a distance of several hundred miles, which would reveal invaluable insights about its size, shape, composition, and potential origin.

[Bigdog]

Man talk about disappointing, our first encounter with Aliens and they travel in a spaceship that literally looks like a giant turd!

[LescoBrandon]

Man talk about disappointing, our first encounter with Aliens and they travel in a spaceship that literally looks like a giant turd!

Apparently, they were equally impressed. They saw half the US voted for Hillary and they didn't even slow down to say hi.