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Comment by ekimekim | Hacker News Reader

> Asked if there is a clear leading candidate explanation for 'Oumuamua's acceleration, Loeb referred Live Science to a not-yet-released book he authored called "Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth," due for publication in January.

I don't know enough about the science to have an informed opinion, but it seems to me that if the main skeptic is also selling a book based in their exciting alternate theory, that's kinda a huge red flag.

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First sign? The first was probably the irrigation canals spotted on mars. Then repeating radio signals. The face on mars. Tabby's star. Each had their day as the first sign. The first real detection won't be some slight variance that we debate for years but solid evidence. If Oumuamua was a triangle, that would be solid evidence. It isn't aliens until it is.

Well, even a 'giant triangle' may still not be enough... There is a giant hexagon on Saturn, after all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn%27s_hexagon

Down in the explanations, a triangle:

> Similar regular shapes were created in the laboratory when a circular tank of liquid was rotated at different speeds at its centre and periphery. The most common shape was six sided, but shapes with three to eight sides were also produced.

Natural processes can make lots of structures that look artificial. See Giant's Causeway: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant%27s_Causeway

"Worth seeing but not worth going to see" –Charles Dickens

And pyrite (fool's gold) crystals: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrite

"It [the giant hexagon] rotates with a period of 10h 39m 24s, the same period as Saturn's radio emissions from its interior."

Interesting. Thanks for posting.

Evidence can be solid as can be, but it will still be debated, made political, etc.

> The first real detection won't be some slight variance that we debate for years but solid evidence.

Don't count on this. It could well be some ambiguous anomaly in the atmospheric spectrum of an exoplanet that we only decide is real after years of alternate hypotheses.

The face with a mountain with coincidental lighting. Everything else has very plausible natural explanations as well.

You're hearing footsteps and hoping for zebras when it's probably horses.

Human neurology is optimized to see and recognize faces, so of course anything facelike will look like a face. Faces in clouds, faces in the uneven paint on drywall, the Man In The Moon.

I'm beginning to suspect human culture is optimised to see aliens, so anything potentially alien-like will be labelled "aliens."

Real aliens stand a good chance of being unimaginably, perhaps even invisibly, alien.

What are the odds that in a galaxy that is billions of years old, first contact will be an encounter with a contemporary-ish technology straight out of a 20th century science fiction novel?

With this approach, you’d be skeptical too if Charles Darwin was also selling a book with his exciting alternate theory on the origin of species.

Yes, if Charles Darwin would publish a book today, with a focus on a layman reader, and then give interviews, instead of publishing his findings in journals, I would be skeptical.

But he is publishing in journals. The article cites his papers.

It’s a very “academic” thing to do. Cite yourself as often as you can.

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