Most reasoned take is directly from the paper itself:
"We strongly emphasize that this paper is largely a pedagogical exercise, with interesting discoveries and strange serendipities, worthy of a record in the scientific literature. By far the most likely outcome will be that 3I/ATLAS is a completely natural interstellar object, probably a comet, and the authors await the astronomical data to support this likely origin."
It makes me sad that so many people are seemingly so aggressive against Loeb and his takes on this stuff. Whether things might be aliens or not, people get so upset whenever it's even mentioned as a thought experiment. We should be able to have a bit of fun here and there.
“If this is the case, then two possibilities follow: first that its intentions are entirely benign and second they are malign.”
There is a third: undecided.
“At the heart of this, is a question any self-respecting scientist will have had to address at some point in their career: ‘is an outlier of a sample a consequence of expected random fluctuation, or is there ultimately a sound reason for its observed discrepancy?’ A sensible answer to this hinges largely on the size of the sample in question, and it should be noted that for interstellar objects we have a sample size of only 3, therefore rendering an attempt to draw inferences from what is observed rather problematic.”
Not only the heart of the question, but of the paper.
If it's malign there's really nothing we can do about it. A technology that can traverse the distance between solar systems is so far outside of our technology that it might as well be magic, and our current level of technology is already adequate to obliterate all life on the surface of the Earth. If you have power to travel interstellar distances the power to obliterate all life on a planet with no warning is trivial.
Ironically we might be in less trouble if they have FTL technology, since that might not require quite the outrageous level of technology you would need to do the journey with the physics that we know. The rocket equation is a harsh mistress.
> If this is the case, then two possibilities follow: first that its intentions are entirely benign and second they are malign.
And why do we assume that, if humans can have a whole spectrum of motivations from "entirely benign" to "entirely malign," that a presumably-much-more advanced civilization can't?
> If this is the case, then two possibilities follow: first that its intentions are entirely benign and second they are malign
Even framing this objects actions using human concepts (benign, malign) is very short sighted. It’s possible any alien life experiences complexities were fundamentally unable to comprehend (there’s some good sci fi short stories that explore this).
Related to this is Loeb's proposal to nudge the Juno spacecraft, currently orbiting Jupiter and soon facing EOL, into the path of 3I/Atlas to try to scan it and snap some pictures. I doubt it has enough fuel left, but I hope they're looking into it.
The very same. And also the same guy who claimed ʻOumuamua is likely to be an alien spacecraft.
I don’t know what Harvard is doing lately, but perhaps they ought not to talk about astronomy anymore if this nonsense is all they can contribute to the discussion.
3l/Atlas itself is unlikely to be alien technology, but it is from way outside our solar system and deserves to be examined as closely as possible with every resourse availible, and at this point planning for ways to investigate interstellar objects more closely needs to be figured out......say, blast it with ultra high lasers and see what boils off!
If any alien civilizations believe the "Dark Forest" hypothesis, then they will definitely disguise their probes as asteriods and comets. At least, I would.
Given the difficulty of intercepting it, what are our best options (if any) for getting a decent picture of it? Obviously any data ata ll will be interesting, but I mean something better than a couple of pixels that require a degree in astrophysics to properly appreciate.
Not possible. The least-baddest option I've seen proposed is the Juno probe around Jupiter, but it doesn't have the fuel onboard to achieve the needed velocity, and apparently also had some engine trouble during a previous burn that convinced the team to abort it.
“You know, the most amazing thing happened to me tonight. I was coming here, on the way to the lecture, and I came in through the parking lot. And you won’t believe what happened. I saw a car with the license plate ARW 357. Can you imagine? Of all the millions of license plates in the state, what was the chance that I would see that particular one tonight? Amazing!” — Richard Feynman, Six Easy Pieces
I'm in favor of spending more resources on research projects like building a probe to intercept one of these interstellar objects. It would be worth the investment to go and see, and it looks like the Vera Rubin will give us several targets.
I selfishly would rather invest in mining asteroids so that we may one day be qualified to manipulate their movements and prevent strikes of any planets in our solar system and to get rich of course. Even if it takes a few hundred years to become qualified for such mining that is a tiny blip in this spacetime and could mitigate at least some civilization ending events. The process of heading that direction is likely to result in many advancements in technology and slightly safer playgrounds to develop more intelligent androids assuming they don't get hacked resulting in dragging and flinging 20+ mile wide metal asteroids at us.
We don't quite have the technology. It was spotted a month ago, will cross inside Martian orbit in another 2 months, for another 3 months. The fastest we can get to around Martian orbit is 7 months.
Do we have enough headsup on these to even plan such a mission? Was under the impression that by the time we realize they're there, they're already halfway out the door...
What's the minimum time to intercept something like this? Do we need 6 or 7 years, or is 3 years enough?
Damn this has everything: universally interesting, wild speculation shoehorned into real science, misunderstanding that all things happening in interstellar scale are unlikely, casually dropping cool big rare terms for space shit
(but why would optimum mission be a head on collision? and not getting something flying its near trajectory at near speed?)
If i didn't know so much about how broken the world is already, this is like life path defining stuff
Clearly the best mission would be to shoot something to something it into mars so we can check it out someday.
Then after that success, be inspired to fill the whole outer solar system with somethings, capable of redirecting everything into mars for later catching or eventually murdering all musk's future offspring
The Fermi Argument says it's not going to be aliens. In a universe where the aliens can cause random interstellar objects to have a high probability of being alien devices, the aliens have already colonized everything. That clearly hasn't happened (as our own evolution would have been aborted and the universe would be one big urban area.)
the idea of malign intent ignores the physical economic factors that are true everywhere in the universe. The amount of energy it takes to get here from the next closest place, and the necessary probability that there is at least one other planet with every element we have, in much higher quantities, and closer to them, precludes any motive to wipe us out.
given the effort involved and the alternatives, the only possible reason to contact us is benevolent. also, if there is a single other civilization within range of contacting us, statistically and necessarily, there are also millions, if not billions of others to choose from.
No, there is no malign intent. Even considering it reveals some very mid reasoning. We are very likely emerging up the evolutionary scale to become the stupidest intelligent thing in the universe, but only just over the line of what passes for intelligence among space faring civilizations. The only concievable risk is from ourselves.
I agree that all makes benign much more likely - the Dark Forest arguments mostly come down to "if aliens are as bad as humans (especially as bad as we were hundreds or thousands of years ago), we're doomed".
That seems extremely unlikely, we're far from advanced enough to send a probe to another solar system, by the time we are, I'd like to think we'll be even less likely to want to exterminate or enslave anyone...
This is what is compelling about the abduction angle. In effect that is exactly what a human biologist would do in an alien world: sample the population and study it. You don't need a strong economic incentive to send a field biologist someplace. Things can operate inefficiently in basic research because if one waits for economic viability many findings would not be possible.
Religion is a good example of a solid good reason, even from a human standpoint, for undertaking large projects without a positive expected economic ROI.
And even amongst humans there are many other such factors (ego of the current leader, etc.)
You're also making economic assumptions that might be wrong at an advanced enough level of technology.
A man from the 14th century Americas might understandably believe that
"the idea of malign intent ignores the physical economic factors that are true everywhere on this planet. The amount of energy it takes to get here from across the Atlantic, and the necessary probability that there is at least one other country with every element we have, in much higher quantities, and closer to them, precludes any motive to wipe us out. Given the effort involved and the alternatives, the only possible reason to contact us is benevolent."
A few generations later, that tribe would no longer be recorded in history, wiped out by war and smallpox brought on ships from across the world.
Imagine you are an FTL space alien in search of other FTL civilizations. Would you parade your FTL tech around? Allow others to study your capabilities? I'd probably send something that could plausibly be identified as a rock. If there are other FTL civilizations out there, I'd like to know everything about them before they know anything about me.
I wouldn't be surprised if Avi Loeb was just being used by the US Military to come up with an excuse to militarize space. I mean he's ego driven and loves inserting himself into situations to boost himself.
The American military industrial complex doesn't need Avi Loeb and his stories about aliens to justify militarizing space. The existence of China alone justifies it to the war hawks.
Fun to think about, but think about this: as soon as we have the tech to start catching sight of these things, we start seeing them yearly.
While that does not automatically suggest that they are not technological, they are not likely to be hostile.* We've likely lived through tens of thousands of them passing through.
*Unless you subscribe to the "they are among us" viewpoint. That crazy well has no bottom.
I would bet a large sum that 3I is a natural object, but if it's artificial, I would bet that it's malign.
When it comes to alien civilizations, the probability is that they are millions of years more advanced than us.[1]
Millions of years is enough for natural genetic change to have an impact, and we already know what that impact will be: individuals that have more offsprings will spread through the population and displace individuals with fewer offsprings.[2]
But if you're a technological species, the only limit to having more offsprings is competition with other members of your species.[3]
In effect, over a million-year time-scale, you get into an arms-race to harness as much power/energy as possible to prevent others from killing you and to kill others who are using resources you need.[4]
So if any alien civilization deliberately decides to visit Earth, you can be pretty sure that their intentions are hostile. Maybe, if they are hydrogen-breathers who evolved on gas giants, they will leave Earth for last. But if they are carbon-based, oxygen breathers, they will squash us like bugs.
------------
[1]: Imagine that, over the 10 billion-year history of the galaxy, 100 civilizations appear. What's the chance that a randomly chosen civilization (say, the closest one to us) is less than 1 million years old? Using a Poisson distribution, the chance is 0.01%: a 1 in 10,000 chance.
[2]: This is just a restatement of Darwin's theory. Note that Darwin's theory holds even for intelligent/technological people. E.g., imagine some civilization decides that 2.1 kids is the limit because that yields a stable society. That civilization will be destroyed by one that has no such limit, because the latter civilization will have a need for more resources and will have the power to take it. After millions of years, only expanding civilizations will be left because they will have destroyed all the others.
[3]: Non-technological species are limited by their environment. Ants cannot colonize the ocean or the moon. But technological humans can. Our only limit is physics and other humans.
[4]: As long as there is more than 1 civilization, there will be competition because, over millions of years, the galaxy is a zero-sum arena. If one civilization expands to a star system, then the other one cannot. [And, as I said earlier, if one expands but one doesn't, the expanding one will take over.]
The only possible benign scenario is if there are very few civilizations who don't compete with each other. But in that scenario, they wouldn't be sending probes to our solar system.
You assume evolution is a force that constrains the advance of humanity in some simple survival-of-the-reproductive way, when instead it is an emergent process that no longer operates this way in humans.
What you have proposed as the only path, we have, in our limited time on this planet, already proven false. The vast majority of people are already not harnessing more and more resources in order to reproduce more.
jpcompartir|7 months ago
"We strongly emphasize that this paper is largely a pedagogical exercise, with interesting discoveries and strange serendipities, worthy of a record in the scientific literature. By far the most likely outcome will be that 3I/ATLAS is a completely natural interstellar object, probably a comet, and the authors await the astronomical data to support this likely origin."
King-Aaron|7 months ago
aaron695|7 months ago
[deleted]
JumpCrisscross|7 months ago
There is a third: undecided.
“At the heart of this, is a question any self-respecting scientist will have had to address at some point in their career: ‘is an outlier of a sample a consequence of expected random fluctuation, or is there ultimately a sound reason for its observed discrepancy?’ A sensible answer to this hinges largely on the size of the sample in question, and it should be noted that for interstellar objects we have a sample size of only 3, therefore rendering an attempt to draw inferences from what is observed rather problematic.”
Not only the heart of the question, but of the paper.
Still fun, though!
jandrese|7 months ago
Ironically we might be in less trouble if they have FTL technology, since that might not require quite the outrageous level of technology you would need to do the journey with the physics that we know. The rocket equation is a harsh mistress.
psunavy03|7 months ago
And why do we assume that, if humans can have a whole spectrum of motivations from "entirely benign" to "entirely malign," that a presumably-much-more advanced civilization can't?
pavel_lishin|7 months ago
If I accidentally step on a bug and squish it, it's surely not good for the bug, but I had no intentions towards it one way or another.
aiaikzkdbx|7 months ago
Even framing this objects actions using human concepts (benign, malign) is very short sighted. It’s possible any alien life experiences complexities were fundamentally unable to comprehend (there’s some good sci fi short stories that explore this).
Mizza|7 months ago
https://avi-loeb.medium.com/how-close-can-the-juno-spacecraf...
Zigurd|7 months ago
mattlondon|7 months ago
unknown|7 months ago
[deleted]
Nibiru5|6 months ago
People with fear will deny the existence of something that they do not comprehend so that they do not have to mentally deal with it in any way
mattlondon|7 months ago
taylorius|7 months ago
moi2388|7 months ago
I don’t know what Harvard is doing lately, but perhaps they ought not to talk about astronomy anymore if this nonsense is all they can contribute to the discussion.
xoxxala|7 months ago
"Interstellar Comet 3/I Atlas - Probably Isn't An Alien Spaceship" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MafmhXwPgmo
(It has more to do with why we can't send a probe to investigate 3/I Atlas...)
metalman|7 months ago
JohnCClarke|6 months ago
cyberlimerence|7 months ago
SideburnsOfDoom|7 months ago
Did he give Borisov this treatment? It seems not, so then the answer is "no, only about two thirds of them".
moi2388|7 months ago
s1artibartfast|7 months ago
anigbrowl|7 months ago
827a|7 months ago
neom|7 months ago
criddell|7 months ago
What probability are they talking about?
dvh|7 months ago
baggy_trough|7 months ago
pbmonster|7 months ago
Zigurd|7 months ago
rookderby|7 months ago
JumpCrisscross|7 months ago
Why? I’d rather we continue surveying from a distance while sending probes to places we know will be interesting, like Titan and Europa.
Bender|7 months ago
jojobas|7 months ago
NoMoreNicksLeft|7 months ago
What's the minimum time to intercept something like this? Do we need 6 or 7 years, or is 3 years enough?
s1artibartfast|7 months ago
mellosouls|6 months ago
"A Harvard Astronomer on the Interstellar Object ‘Oumuamua"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18923591
and
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21948804
the above on the same 2019 article, but others can be found
etc
beefnugs|7 months ago
(but why would optimum mission be a head on collision? and not getting something flying its near trajectory at near speed?)
If i didn't know so much about how broken the world is already, this is like life path defining stuff
Clearly the best mission would be to shoot something to something it into mars so we can check it out someday.
Then after that success, be inspired to fill the whole outer solar system with somethings, capable of redirecting everything into mars for later catching or eventually murdering all musk's future offspring
largbae|7 months ago
mattlondon|7 months ago
pfdietz|6 months ago
motohagiography|7 months ago
given the effort involved and the alternatives, the only possible reason to contact us is benevolent. also, if there is a single other civilization within range of contacting us, statistically and necessarily, there are also millions, if not billions of others to choose from.
No, there is no malign intent. Even considering it reveals some very mid reasoning. We are very likely emerging up the evolutionary scale to become the stupidest intelligent thing in the universe, but only just over the line of what passes for intelligence among space faring civilizations. The only concievable risk is from ourselves.
blacksmith_tb|7 months ago
That seems extremely unlikely, we're far from advanced enough to send a probe to another solar system, by the time we are, I'd like to think we'll be even less likely to want to exterminate or enslave anyone...
asdff|7 months ago
sebastiennight|7 months ago
And even amongst humans there are many other such factors (ego of the current leader, etc.)
You're also making economic assumptions that might be wrong at an advanced enough level of technology.
A man from the 14th century Americas might understandably believe that
A few generations later, that tribe would no longer be recorded in history, wiped out by war and smallpox brought on ships from across the world.throwmeaway222|7 months ago
I think it's much more likely that space aliens have FTL. Unless it's the klingons.
asdff|7 months ago
motza|7 months ago
smlacy|7 months ago
DonnyV|6 months ago
krapp|6 months ago
Mistletoe|7 months ago
RajT88|7 months ago
While that does not automatically suggest that they are not technological, they are not likely to be hostile.* We've likely lived through tens of thousands of them passing through.
*Unless you subscribe to the "they are among us" viewpoint. That crazy well has no bottom.
Teever|7 months ago
One of the authors (Abraham Loeb) is well known for writing salami-sliced papers that have tenuous and non-testable premises.
You should be skeptical of anything he writes after watching this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY985qzn7oI&t=1440s
unknown|7 months ago
[deleted]
thrance|7 months ago
j_timberlake|7 months ago
Perenti|6 months ago
j_timberlake|7 months ago
_DeadFred_|6 months ago
xqcgrek2|7 months ago
camillomiller|7 months ago
fourseventy|7 months ago
poulpy123|6 months ago
unknown|7 months ago
[deleted]
GMoromisato|7 months ago
When it comes to alien civilizations, the probability is that they are millions of years more advanced than us.[1]
Millions of years is enough for natural genetic change to have an impact, and we already know what that impact will be: individuals that have more offsprings will spread through the population and displace individuals with fewer offsprings.[2]
But if you're a technological species, the only limit to having more offsprings is competition with other members of your species.[3]
In effect, over a million-year time-scale, you get into an arms-race to harness as much power/energy as possible to prevent others from killing you and to kill others who are using resources you need.[4]
So if any alien civilization deliberately decides to visit Earth, you can be pretty sure that their intentions are hostile. Maybe, if they are hydrogen-breathers who evolved on gas giants, they will leave Earth for last. But if they are carbon-based, oxygen breathers, they will squash us like bugs.
------------
[1]: Imagine that, over the 10 billion-year history of the galaxy, 100 civilizations appear. What's the chance that a randomly chosen civilization (say, the closest one to us) is less than 1 million years old? Using a Poisson distribution, the chance is 0.01%: a 1 in 10,000 chance.
[2]: This is just a restatement of Darwin's theory. Note that Darwin's theory holds even for intelligent/technological people. E.g., imagine some civilization decides that 2.1 kids is the limit because that yields a stable society. That civilization will be destroyed by one that has no such limit, because the latter civilization will have a need for more resources and will have the power to take it. After millions of years, only expanding civilizations will be left because they will have destroyed all the others.
[3]: Non-technological species are limited by their environment. Ants cannot colonize the ocean or the moon. But technological humans can. Our only limit is physics and other humans.
[4]: As long as there is more than 1 civilization, there will be competition because, over millions of years, the galaxy is a zero-sum arena. If one civilization expands to a star system, then the other one cannot. [And, as I said earlier, if one expands but one doesn't, the expanding one will take over.]
The only possible benign scenario is if there are very few civilizations who don't compete with each other. But in that scenario, they wouldn't be sending probes to our solar system.
svnt|7 months ago
What you have proposed as the only path, we have, in our limited time on this planet, already proven false. The vast majority of people are already not harnessing more and more resources in order to reproduce more.
Eduard|7 months ago
datadrivenangel|7 months ago
MalbertKerman|7 months ago
elzbardico|7 months ago
EagnaIonat|7 months ago
This was much more interesting: https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/comets/3i-atlas
digitalsushi|7 months ago
dang|7 months ago
unknown|7 months ago
[deleted]
ConanRus|7 months ago
[deleted]
blisstonia|7 months ago