Tag: Shmuel Bialy

The Pitfalls of Searching for Alien Life

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by Diane Peters                     July 3, 2019                        (thewire.in)

• In October 2017, a telescope at the University of Hawaii picked up a cigar-shaped object which had sling-shotted past the sun at 196,000 miles per hour. Scientists at the university dubbed it ‘Oumuamua’, Hawaiian for scout (depicted above). At first it was labeled an asteroid, and then a comet, but it certainly came from another solar system.

• Avi Loeb, the chair of Harvard University’s astronomy department, and Shmuel Bialy, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard, published a paper in The Astrophysical Journal Letters theorizing that the object could be “light sail”, floating in interstellar space as debris from advanced technological equipment. “Alternatively,” they wrote, “a more exotic scenario is that Oumuamua may be a fully operational probe sent intentionally to Earth vicinity by an alien civilization.”

• While scientists theorizing about alien life may find a rapt public audience, they can also draw cynical, even hostile reactions from their fellow scientists. Paul Sutter, an astrophysicist at Ohio State University, tweeted: “No, ‘Oumuamua is not an alien spaceship, and the authors of the paper insult honest scientific inquiry to even suggest it.” Or they may draw sarcasm, as Neil deGrasse Tyson once quipped to CNN: “Call me when you have a dinner invite from an alien.”

• The threat of being written off as a kook looms large for researchers. Many academics “won’t touch it with a ten-foot pole,” said Don Donderi, a retired associate professor of psychology at McGill University in Montreal who now teaches a non-credit course called “UFOs: History and Reality” in the school’s continuing education department. No one at McGill seemed to mind when Donderi began writing about the paranormal in the 1970’s. But when he applied for a grant to investigate UFO sightings he was rejected. At his retirement, Donderi offered to give a free seminar on his UFO and alien abduction research, and was again turned down.

• Donderi notes that people who speak at UFO conferences “aren’t all equally good enough.” Meanwhile, those engaged in the search through bona fide organizations have come up with minimal results. Astronomers have been trying to communicate with alien life using radio waves since 1959, work that has continued by the SETI Institute to the present, but have found nothing. As a psychologist, Donderi believes that cognitive dissonance keeps the search for ET intelligence in limbo. “[A]cademics will bristle at conclusions that point to aliens,” says Donderi.

• Physicist Richard Bower of Durham University in England studies parallel universes. “We used to say that life is incredibly rare and we’re lucky to live on a habitable planet,’’ Bower said. “But we’ve now observed so many planets that are plausible habitats. It seems, based on scientific evidence, there’s no reason to think that planets like the Earth are rare.” Still, Bower is “less comfortable” with excessive speculation. Simply looking for alien life is too binary: if you don’t find it, you’ve got nothing. It is better to focus on questions that we may soon have the evidence to answer.

• We may be finding nothing because we’re doing it wrong. NASA physicist Silvano Colombano maintains that long-held assumptions have limited the earnest search for extraterrestrial intelligence, and that the “general avoidance of the subject by the scientific community” means no one questions them. Colombano suggests the search for alien intelligence is based on “cherished assumptions” that are holding it back, e.g.: that interstellar travel is unlikely, that alien civilizations use radio waves, that other life must be carbon-based, and that UFOs have never visited earth. Colombano makes a case for discarding these dusty beliefs, and instead imagine how alien societies’ technology might have evolved.

• Donderi concludes that the evidence is rising and feels that cognitive dissonance is at the moment collapsing. “[W]e’re at the beginning of the change,” he stated. Researchers expect more data about interstellar objects when the Large Synoptic Telescope in Chile starts operating in 2022.

 

In October 2017, a telescope operated by the University of Hawaii picked up a strange cigar-shaped object (artist rendering in top image), which had slingshotted past the sun at a more-than-brisk top speed of 196,000 miles per hour. Scientists at the university dubbed it ‘Oumuamua, Hawaiian for scout, and at first labelled it an asteroid, then a comet, but agreed that it came from another solar system.

Avi Loeb

Around the world, telescopes were quickly aimed toward ‘Oumuamua’s path, and scientists dove into the data. One of them, Avi Loeb, the chair of Harvard University’s astronomy department, published a paper in The Astrophysical Journal Letters the following year theorising that the object could be artificial. “Considering an artificial origin, one possibility is that ‘Oumuamua is a light sail, floating in interstellar space as a debris from advanced technological equipment,” he and co-author Shmuel Bialy, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard, wrote. “Alternatively, a more exotic scenario is that ‘Oumuamua may be a fully operational probe sent intentionally to Earth vicinity by an alien civilisation.”

   Don Donderi

That’s not something you read every day in a serious scientific journal. The paper went viral, and Loeb began fielding an onslaught of media calls while fellow scientists weighed in. In terms of his colleagues’ reaction, Loeb said, “almost all of them reacted favourably, and they thought, you know, it’s just an interesting idea.”

Even so, he added, there were some adverse reactions as well. One cutting tweet by Paul Sutter, an astrophysicist at Ohio State University, reads: My publicist asked me for a quote on the ‘Oumuamua story making the rounds. Here it is:
“No, ‘Oumuamua is not an alien spaceship, and the authors of the paper insult honest scientific inquiry to even suggest it.”

Richard Bower

Feel free to use that, @fcain, @tariqjmalik!  — Paul M. Sutter (@PaulMattSutter) November 6, 2018
Also read: India Planning to Launch Own Space Station by 2030, ISRO Chief Says

All this hubbub took place in the aftermath of news reports that the Pentagon had been collecting data on UFO sightings for years. Clearly, the hunt for alien intelligence is alive and well in our solar system, and it’s hot news. Indeed, Loeb’s article was approved for publication in mere days.

                Silvano Colombano

But while scientists tossing around the idea of alien life may find a rapt public audience, they can also draw cynical, even hostile reactions from their fellow scientists, a response summed up by acclaimed physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, who once quipped to CNN: “Call me when you have a dinner invite from an alien.”

This paradox has ripple effects. The threat of being written off as a kook can loom large for researchers, especially young ones. A lot of academics “won’t touch it with a ten-foot pole,” said Don Donderi, a retired associate professor of psychology at McGill University in Montreal who now teaches a non-credit course called “UFOs: History and Reality” in the school’s continuing education department.

Loeb says many discoveries have their roots in theories that were initially dismissed. He thinks open-mindedness keeps scientific inquiry moving forward while shutting down new theories “reduces the efficiency of science.”

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How the Oumuamua Mystery Shook up the Search for Space Aliens

by Corey S. Powell                      December 25, 2018                         (nbcnews.com)

• In 2017, an enigmatic object from beyond our solar system, named Oumuamua (depicted above), startled astronomers when it came streaking past the sun. In November 2018, Avi Loeb, the head of the astronomy department at Harvard University, co-wrote a paper with a post-doctoral student, Shmuel Bialy, reporting that Oumuamua is so unusual that scientists should consider the possibility that it could be an interstellar craft built by extraterrestrials. Oumuamua is a Hawaiian word meaning “messenger from the past.”

• Some of Loeb’s colleagues were intrigued. Others were disconcerted. But suddenly mainstream scientists were seriously talking about alien spaceships. Loeb is well aware that most scientists recoil from anything that sounds like UFO craziness. But he believes an overabundance of skepticism has cut them off from out-of-the box ideas. Says Loeb, “Why have a prejudice? Why argue that it must be natural? What do we gain, other than putting blinders on our eyes?”

• Penn State astronomer Jason Wright shares Loeb’s desire for open discussion. “There’s a real culture change. SETI (the search for extraterrestrial intelligence)is becoming a serious scientific discipline,” he says. Wright raises the possibility that a now-defunct alien civilization may have left behind artifacts on the moon where they could have survived, even if deposited there billions of years ago. Almost all such searches are destined for failure, Wright says, and all it takes is one success to change the world.

• Oumuamua’s unusual trajectory meant it had to have come from outside the solar system — and that it could have been traveling for millions of years. “It’s very elongated, with an axis ratio of at least 7 to 1,” astronomer Karen Meech of the University of Hawaii said. It’s at least seven times as long as it is wide — shaped like a cigar. Or, as Loeb proposes in his paper, maybe a flattened disk. At only 1,000 feet long it is too small to be a comet. And it has no distinctive comet tail. Also, it seems to be much more reflective than the typical comet.

• The biggest puzzle about Oumuamua was the way it moved. (see previous ExoNews article here) As it zoomed away from the sun, it sped up slightly, as if given an invisible push. Comets often accelerate that way when gases boil off their surface under heat from the sun. But observations by the Spitzer Space Telescope showed no such material coming off of Oumuamua.

• At this point, Loeb thought it was time to consider a more radical interpretation. Perhaps Oumuamua isn’t a comet at all, and that the acceleration was caused not by boiling gases but by the pressure of sunlight against a very wide, thin lightweight structure. Loeb and Bialy suggested that such an object could be technological debris or even “a fully operational (alien) probe.”

• Loeb anticipated a harsh reaction to his paper. One anonymous researcher disparaged the Bialy and Loeb paper as “irresponsible,” and “just out to grab attention.” Loeb shrugs off the reflexive dismissals, saying that his lofty academic position actually obligates him to be a pot-stirrer, “I can say these things other people can’t because I have tenure at Harvard. The whole idea of getting tenure is to allow you to be free in your mind. I used the opportunity of Oumuamua to make a statement.” “All I’m doing is following the standard scientific process, looking for explanations,” Loeb says.

 

Last year, an enigmatic object named Oumuamua startled astronomers when it came streaking past the sun, giving humanity its first close-up look at an object from beyond our solar system. This year, the interstellar visitor did something even more remarkable: It made it respectable to talk about alien spaceships.

The turning point came in November, when Avi Loeb, the head of the astronomy department at Harvard University, co-wrote a paper saying that Oumuamua is so unusual that scientists should consider the possibility that it’s not a far-out comet or asteroid, as his colleagues assumed, but rather an artificial structure.

                              Avi Loeb

In other words, maybe it’s an interstellar craft built by extraterrestrials.

Some of Loeb’s colleagues were intrigued. Others were disconcerted. But suddenly mainstream scientists were talking about how to tell if Oumuamua is a natural object or — as Loeb raised as a possibility in his paper — an alien spacecraft designed to capture the force of sunlight (a so-called lightsail).

Loeb is well aware that most scientists recoil from anything that sounds like UFO craziness, but he believes an overabundance of skepticism has cut them off from out-of-the box ideas. “The point of doing science is not to have a prejudice,” he says. “A prejudice is based on the experience of the past, but if you want to allow yourself to make discoveries, then the future will not be the same as the past.”

                 Shmuel Bialy

Jason Wright, a Penn State astronomer who recently launched a graduate program in SETI (the search for extraterrestrial intelligence), shares Loeb’s desire for open discussion — and offers an upbeat assessment of the field’s growing respectability. “There’s a real culture change. SETI is becoming a serious scientific discipline,” he says.

STRANGE VISITOR FROM THE STARS

It was clear from the start that Oumuamua (pronounced oh-MOO-uh-MOO-uh) would shake up astronomy’s status quo. Shortly after its discovery, scientists realized that the object’s unusual trajectory meant it had to have come from outside the solar system — and that it could have been traveling for millions of years. They quickly dubbed the mysterious object Oumuamua, a Hawaiian word meaning “messenger from the past.”

There were more surprises. Oumuamua was too far away for astronomers to observe its shape directly, but they could tell by the extreme way its brightness shifted as it tumbled through space that it wasn’t like any space rock they had ever seen.
“It’s very elongated, with an axis ratio of at least 7 to 1,” astronomer Karen Meech of the University of Hawaii said in an email. In other words, it’s at least seven times as long as it is wide — shaped like a cigar, perhaps. Or, as Loeb proposes in his paper, maybe a flattened disk.

Astronomers’ models predict that most of the small bodies wandering in interstellar space are comets. But when Meech and others examined it, Oumuamua showed no sign of the expected comet-like tail. It’s also quite small, on the order of 1,000 feet long, and it seems to be much more reflective than the comets we know.

Intrigued by its oddities, several groups of SETI researchers listened for possible radio transmissions from Oumuamua — and heard nothing.

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Astronomers Think That a Mysterious Asteroid Might Be a Reminiscence of Alien Wreck

by Asheley Rice                    November 3, 2018                    (healththoroughfare.com)

• In September 2018, an elongated asteroid traveling from outside our solar system, dubbed ‘Oumuamua’, captured the attention of scientists because of its unusual behavior in moving at a high speed when a normal asteroid would slow down. Also, it didn’t spin as an asteroid/comet giving off gasses would do.

• In studying Oumuamua over the past year, Harvard Smithsonian astronomers, Shmuel Bialy and Abraham Loeb, determined that the object was activated and propelled by sunlight. The light radiation from the Sun exerts its force on the rock’s surface and this powers the asteroid on. This means that we could be looking at the reminiscences of a reconnaissance probe conducted by extraterrestrials. These mainstream scientists are putting forth a theory that might seem crazy to others: that Oumuamua might have built by an extraterrestrial civilization.

 

Shmuel Bialy and Abraham Loeb, two astronomers from Harvard Smithsonian made an interesting observation recently. According to them, the mysterious interstellar rock Oumuamua might be a proof that aliens exist. The scientists claim to have noticed signs that the asteroid is part of a light-driven probe. This means that we could be looking at the reminiscences of a reconnaissance mission conducted by extraterrestrials.

The asteroid was spotted out of the Earth’s solar system last September

The mysterious rock drew the scientists’ attention because of its unusual behaviour outside our solar system. Last year, in September, when they noticed it, the asteroid was moving at a high speed when the normal tendency would be to slow down.

At first, the observers thought that the rock is acting so strange because a gas was released inside it. After they looked deeper into the matter, the astronomers realized that if Oumuamua were a comet with abnormal gas releases, the object would have to spin throughout the space.

With all the speed, the asteroid remained flat, so Bialy and Loeb reached the conclusion that Oumuamua is actually activated by the sunlight. How is that possible? The light exerts its force on the rock’s surface and this powers the asteroid on.

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