“Oumuamua”
No, I’m not making up a new word. This is the title given to an object that some are certain originated from beyond our Solar System. Perhaps you remember reading about the event that occurred in 2017? The word itself is Hawaiian and means “messenger from the distant past.”
Those who are interested in and study this sort of thing wondered if the object was a comet. Or an asteroid. Or something else … perhaps something entirely unique?
Maybe even a visitor from elsewhere in the galaxy? 😮
Apparently, one scientist was certain about that last hypothesis. So …
ignoring the large amounts of research done by other professionals who specialize in this particular field …he embarked on a public crusade to convince the world of the most far-fetched explanation for this natural phenomenon: aliens.
The individual who presented this POV is Avi Loeb, an Israeli-American theoretical physicist who works on astrophysics and cosmology (Wikipedia).
According to this article, Mr. Loeb “has produced pioneering and provocative research on black holes, gamma-ray bursts, the early universe and other standard topics of his field. But for more than a decade he has also courted a more contentious subject—namely, space aliens, including how to find them.” (emphasis added)
The article goes on to say:
In late 2018 Loeb and his co-author Shmuel Bialy, a Harvard postdoctoral fellow, published a paper in the Astrophysical Journal Letters arguing that ‘Oumuamua had been nothing less than humanity’s first contact with an artifact of extraterrestrial intelligence.
As one might expect, while popular with journalists, the paper fell flat with most of Loeb’s astrobiology-focused peers — who disagreed and provided reasoning for their conclusions. You can read all about it here. (Note: A rather lengthy article.)
I bring up Mr. Leob’s speculations based on the various and sundry comments that were shared on one of my previous posts. It appears there are some who tend to think we have been –or could be– visited by folks from the far reaches of space.
(If you happen to be one of those individuals, you might be interested in reading Mr. Leob’s book: Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Life Beyond Earth, available on Amazon.)
In any event, feel free to share your thoughts and imaginative comments about “Oumuamua.”
Nan's Notebook 
If so, the aliens for some reason built a space probe which looks and behaves exactly like an ordinary chunk of dead rock flying through interstellar space. Whatever, aliens are probably weird.
Right next to my computer there’s a French-English dictionary. Or maybe it’s an alien space probe cleverly designed to look and behave exactly like a French-English dictionary, so it can study me unobtrusively. For that matter, the whole world is probably crawling with cunningly-disguised alien artifacts. Maybe the QAnon people are right and the world is being ruled by Satanic lizard people from outer space who are so painstakingly disguised as humans that we can’t tell the difference.
Or maybe what looks and acts like an ordinary chunk of rock is just an ordinary chunk of rock.
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Agree. 😁
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As best I understand it, Loeb claims that the object might be a discarded solar sail, not a space vehicle with intelligent beings on board. However, others specialising in the same fields as him have scorned the idea. On this I will side with the majority.
While it seems to me to be reasonable to assume that some form of life may have developed elsewhere in the universe (or multiverse), anything beyond that is in the realm of speculation given our current knowledge.
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Barry, your usage of the term “multiverse” triggered my thinking … I may have to do some research along those lines for another “spacey” post since it’s also a rather provocative topic. 👽 Thanks!
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While I consider multiverses to be speculation, I all find speculation fun, provided we understand the difference between speculation and reality.
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Most times we forget the difference
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Speak for yourself!
Nah, just kidding 🙂
I think it’s true that a great many people not only forget the difference, but even worse, some can’t tell the difference.
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That’s a tragedy!
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Except its size and speed and configuration may not be that “ordinary”. After all, from the image Nan provided, it looks exactly like Ve’eger, the Star Trek merged alien artifact ready to desroy the earth! 🙂
Did anyone think to beam a recording of whale song to the object?
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Let’s go with the ‘ordinary chunk of rock. Sometimes they also contain metal and ice. They are a known part of our solar system, as old or maybe older than earth. We find them more often lately because our technology is changing so fast. The difference between optical, X-ray, infra-red, and radio telescopes is vast. The outstanding fact was that it came from outside our solar system. It was tracked from the time it was first discovered, traveling at a constant speed on a predictable course. That trajectory will true until oumaumau strikes or comes very near a body large enough that gravity will alter its course. Just because we are just now able to detect such things doesn’t mean this is a first.
‘Oumuamua had been “nothing less than humanity’s first contact with an artifact of extraterrestrial intelligence.”
That is a pretty high-minded statement. He had zero evidence to support it. The kind of thinking that creates gods.
On the heels of oumaumau, we have 21/Borisov. Mon April 20, 2020 (CNN)
When interstellar comet 2I/Borisov entered our solar system last year, this time capsule from another place in the universe opened and revealed information about its origin, according to new research.
The scientific community is in danger of becoming like religion in that fantastic ideas and theories are thrown out for public consumption with no trace of evidence for the claim. Critical examination has been the thing that separates science from religion. Religion has no desire nor need for proving theory or declaration.
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A perfect example of scientific community babble was the whole hoo-dee-hoo over “the convergence” of certain planets a couple of months ago. Endless “scientistic” babble about how rare it is yadadadaddada. It has absolutely no real world importance, but….
I guess I have never been a stargazer. Even though I love(d0 science fiction, staring at dots in the sky just never caught my interest. 🙂
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Hi Brian. I count on the scientific community, of whatever persuasion, to deal with facts or to declare that they are working with a theory.
Thanks to science, the earth is no longer flat and the earth robots the sun. I love astronomy. I have a 10-inch f5/6 primary reflector mirror I have yet to polish and get it silvered. Mostly I like the work of astrophysicists who have opened the universe up to all of us. Thanks, Carl Sagan. The primary mirror in the James Webb Space Telescope is 21 feet. The Hubble primary is 8 feet. Nearly three times the light gathering area of Hubble.
Recently, astronomers announced that Hubbell has detected the galaxy MACS0647-JD, the farthest object yet known, as it appears through a gravitational lens imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope. The galaxy is 13.3 billion light-years from Earth and formed 420 million years after the Big Bang. The JWST is going to push that limit farther than 13.3 billion light-years. The best estimates are the universe is 13.8 billion years old. From the Big Bang theory. We may be about to look further back than that, or we may see the end of the universe. I’m going with the first part of that statement.
Here is the part I don’t like. This was on Space.com this morning:
“Scientists find clump of black holes inside the heart of globular cluster”
The globular cluster NGC 6397, a conglomeration of stars about 7,800 light-years from Earth, likely harbors a clump of small black holes at its heart, a new study reports. “Likely.”
The headline and the “likely” statement in the body of the article do not agree. They go from “scientists find” to “likely harbors.” I just think they need to keep it clear. They have a lot of work to do on the black holes and the big bang.
My early reading was Edgar Rice Burroughs, Arthur C. Clarke, and Larry Niven, among others. And the King James, but thanks to the others I fully understood Ezekiel’s Wheel.
“The church is like Ichneumonidae”: The family of parasitic wasps that deposit eggs inside or on top of the larvae of other insects. Once hatched, the ichneumonid larva slowly eats its host alive from inside out.
That was once attached to a statement by Charles Darwin. (Happy Birthday Charles Darwin.)
We don’t need our children exposed to any more of religion than we can possibly prevent.
Brian, I hope you, and I, are young enough that you will see the JWST positioned in space and transmitting new wonders back to the earthlings.
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and the earth robots the sun
Fascinating. I need to do some research and find out what this amazing new discovery means.
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That is the first mistake I’ve made in my life, and it had to be the most egregious.
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Just because we are just now able to detect such things doesn’t mean this is a first
Good point. No doubt comets, asteroids, and even planets get ejected from solar systems all the time. Interstellar space is probably full of all kinds of flying crud that regularly passes near or through our solar system. OnanMauMau was just the first one of substantial size to pass near us since we developed the technology to notice such things.
The scientific community is in danger of becoming like religion in that fantastic ideas and theories are thrown out for public consumption with no trace of evidence for the claim
I don’t think so. Loeb was one guy, not “the scientific community”, which quickly repudiated his fantasies. It’s the media that build up isolated oddballs like him and constantly mis-report and over-dramatize real or imagined scientific discoveries (notice how every new hominid fossil discovery gets reported in the media as somehow challenging or undermining the accepted narrative of human evolution, whereas in reality such fossils usually fit in with the accepted theories quite well). The essence of religion is its beliefs; the essence of science is the methods by which it deduces conclusions from evidence. The media can lie about that difference, but they can’t change it.
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While I agree with you, it does seem like theoretical physics is going a bit off the deep end. Theories that can never be tested, let alone falsified. A focus on “elegance” and “beauty” as a goal for the mathematics. Of course I say this as a rank amateur utterly lacking the intelligence or training to even hope to understand a lot of what they are talking about! 🙂
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I am also an amateur, and somewhat rank. The education in mathematics, physics, chemistry, and in those areas necessary for the achievements we witness daily is far beyond my feeble mind. But I can gimp along and enjoy what others are doing in these fields.
Now and then I come across something that trips me up even more, but this is also probably due to my admitted ignorance. A relatively new thing has come up in the world of astrophysics. There seems to be a lot of material missing from the universe. Scientists say that according to their calculations there should be more gasses and dust, etc., from the Big Bang.
I have a problem with that. To start with, the big bang is still a theory. Add to that the fact that they have no idea of what went bang, its mass, or its chemistry. I think they have begun to assign mathematical values to their theoretical assumptions.
I prefer they keep going. Skepticism, curiosity, and critical examination are necessary to further discovery.
“Thanks to science, the earth is no longer flat and the earth ‘no longer’ robots the sun.” Robots? I will not blame my spell checker.
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I agree. But I see a lot of things announced and not as a theory. I hope they can continue to police their ranks and shut down the nonfactual pronouncements. Speculation keeps us moving ahead as long as it is followed up with critical inquiry.
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Nan, as I read this I recall the scientist Jodie Foster played in “Contact.” When answering the question are their other folks out there, she said something like it sure would be a waste of space if their was not. Note, this movie was based on a book by Carl Sagan, a pretty smart person. Keith
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“Sometimes, a thing is exactly what it seems to be.”
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Nan I remembered this post from way back and thought you or your readers might enjoy this..
https://www.livescience.com/oumuamua-not-nitrogen-iceberg
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