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Comment by ceejayoz | Hacker News Reader

Don't worry, Avi Loeb is on it. https://avi-loeb.medium.com/3i-atlas-rapidly-brightens-and-g...

"Does it employ a power source that is hotter than the Sun?"

Sigh.

I don't like to discourage questions like that, because they kill curiosity. We know what the likely answer is, but reasonable assumptions are just that. Assumptions. Why not let mind wander about the exciting ( if somewhat hard to consider as possible ) lines of thinking.

There's a difference in asking questions and pushing as fact with no evidence. It swings both ways

Plus he is an authority figure with a captive audience. He has a much higher responsibility than the average person speculating.

Yeah it doesn't instill a lot of confidence in the quality of ivy league credentials when guys like this are running around spouting nonsense. I'm surprised there's not a clause in his employee handbook that says to not be an obvious troll. Kooky science is one thing but this is just the type of person the men with butterfly nets and white coats should be interested

Huh? What is Loeb's 'captive audience'?

UFO nuts desperate for anyone with a shred of academic credibility.

What is Loeb pushing as fact with no evidence? Can you provide a representative quote?

You can easily answer this with a Google search.

No, I can't, because all I've seen from Loeb is pretty clear about what is fact, and what is speculation.

I don't know, and there's no way to find via "Google search", what HN user ~dylan604 is specifically alleging has been improperly "pushed as fact".

If it's clear to you, can you share a representative quote from Loeb? He's got a lot of writing to choose from!

[flagged]

He moved from merely asking questions to promoting an unsupported claim without any real evidence (repeatedly). he's not curious.

Planetary scientist academics are angry because he's getting all of the attention and it isn't even in the field he's most known for previously. Even smart humans are still humans.

Wouldn't be especially interesting if it did. Even a mantis shrimp can do that: https://old.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/og0n3b/t...

It would be deeply interesting for a comet to have a power source of any kind.

A volcanic comet?

A (hot) volcano on a comet would be very interesting, especially if said volcano was hotter than the sun.

Even with cryovolcanoes, the power source is not on the comet; it's the sun.

Maybe it's a chunk of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Przybylski%27s_Star -- which admittedly is pretty darned strange in itself.

This doesn't mean everyone is overhyping the comet, it means you're underhyping the mantis shrimp. There are a number of absolutely unimaginable miracles of nature on Earth.

Fewer every year. If 3I/A is ET flyby, perhaps our progress trading primitive simulacra for biological miracles will satisfy it that we pose no great risk, annihilation being costly and reserved for planets with better long term odds

How do you figure? Just because we gain some understanding of how a caterpillar turns to slush, then turns into a butterfly, yet somehow retains some level of memory from before, doesn't mean that it's somehow less of a miracle.

Strongly agree. Our beginning to grasp how it works even adds to the miracle!

But what we're beginning to understand we're also destroying far more rapidly even as we devote more and more effort to digital facsimiles of our faculties

My dry pessimism was a comment on this foolish inversion of priorities. Alien visitors, if the forest is truly dark, may conclude we're well on the way to self-annihilation in pursuit of false idols, while we fail to recognize the miraculous nature of existing biology.

Sure, I can agree. We probably need to spend more time focused on Earth. There are many mysteries still.

Yes, so many.

Dr. Avi has a pretty clear point and he goes into details on the JRE released just yesterday. https://youtu.be/EaAun27gftk

What most stand out is the sheer amount of closed mind people in the accademia, Avi is not afraid of making suggestions of what it might be and even saying “if it turns out of being a rock, so be it”.

Just to be clear, "here he is shilling it to Joe Rogan" was intended to support his theory?

> even saying “if it turns out of being a rock, so be it”

I don't doubt it! He'll get another chance the next time we spot another one.

That's a pretty wild, and public, hypothetical for someone with his standing at Harvard.

That's his grift these days.

He'll have the same to say about the next one.

When we observe a fourth interstellar object, I'll gladly read Avi Loeb's wildest speculations alongside more measured perspectives. This is the third time we're observing an interstellar object?

Yes, this is the third to be spotted.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1I/%CA%BBOumuamua

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2I/Borisov

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3I/ATLAS

2/3 of them Loeb has made wild claims about.

Why would someone "with his standing at Harvard" be expected to avoid "wild, and public, hypothetical[s]"?

Does everyone at any prestigious institution have some duty to remain conventionally mundane in all their musings?

Is there any reason to think such hypotheticals are, on net, more harmful than helpful?

Isn't tenure (like Loeb's) designed to encourage a fearlessness around topics & speech?

Maybe it's being driven by Bat Boy?

I miss the days when tabloid fodder stayed in the tabloids.

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