Prof. Avi Loeb making observations at his Harvard U. Observatory
Right: The odd-shaped object Oumuamua as an artist's conception and which has Prof. Loeb transfixed. And yet he doesn't accept UFOs.
For those who may not know, or have missed it, Harvard Professor of Astronomy Avi (Abraham) Loeb has been making quite a name for himself in the press with his unconventional theory concerning the strange object Oumuamua. Despite hyped up headlines in the WaPo and elsewhere ('Harvard's Top Astronomer Says An Alien Ship May Be Among Us') he isn't necessarily saying there are any aliens manning the object, only that it is possible that it might be of extraterrestrial origin.
For example, in an interview appearing in The New Yorker last month Loeb was asked by the interviewer, Isaac Chotiner (not exactly the brightest bulb in the room):
So this civilization would be out of the solar system and in the galaxy?
Loeb:
In the galaxy. It may be dead by now, because we don’t take good care of our planet. Imagine another history, in which the Nazis have a nuclear weapon and the Second World War ends differently. You can imagine a civilization that develops technology like that, which would lead to its own destruction.
It’s possible that the civilization is not alive anymore, but it did send out a spacecraft. We ourselves sent out Voyager I and Voyager II. There could be a lot of equipment out there. The point is that this is the very first object we found from outside the solar system.
Chotiner again:
The term U.F.O., in popular usage, has basically come to mean aliens of some sort. My question is whether we tend to see things that we can’t know or understand through the prism of things we have heard about since we were kids. Aren’t we more likely to see something like an alien society as an explanation than something we maybe can’t even comprehend or put into words?
Before giving Prof. Loeb's response let me sound the warning that he makes the classic error of too many academics in media interviews: giving legitimacy to the daft definition of the know nothing interviewer. So, no, "UFO" does not mean "aliens of some sort". It means unidentified flying object but which is unfortunately conflated in the popular literature with "flying saucers" i.e. "alien" artifacts and technology.
Now, the technical definition is that first given by Prof. J. Allen Hynek :
former Chair of the Astronomy Dept. at Northwestern University - now deceased. This was from his book, UFOs- A Scientific Inquiry:
“A UFO is the reported perception of an object or light seen in the sky, the appearance, trajectory and general dynamic behavior of which do not suggest a logical, conventional explanation and which is not only mystifying to the original percipients but remains unidentified, after close scrutiny of all available evidence by persons who are technically capable of making a common sense identification, if one were possible.”
So this civilization would be out of the solar system and in the galaxy?
Loeb:
In the galaxy. It may be dead by now, because we don’t take good care of our planet. Imagine another history, in which the Nazis have a nuclear weapon and the Second World War ends differently. You can imagine a civilization that develops technology like that, which would lead to its own destruction.
It’s possible that the civilization is not alive anymore, but it did send out a spacecraft. We ourselves sent out Voyager I and Voyager II. There could be a lot of equipment out there. The point is that this is the very first object we found from outside the solar system.
Chotiner again:
The term U.F.O., in popular usage, has basically come to mean aliens of some sort. My question is whether we tend to see things that we can’t know or understand through the prism of things we have heard about since we were kids. Aren’t we more likely to see something like an alien society as an explanation than something we maybe can’t even comprehend or put into words?
Before giving Prof. Loeb's response let me sound the warning that he makes the classic error of too many academics in media interviews: giving legitimacy to the daft definition of the know nothing interviewer. So, no, "UFO" does not mean "aliens of some sort". It means unidentified flying object but which is unfortunately conflated in the popular literature with "flying saucers" i.e. "alien" artifacts and technology.
Now, the technical definition is that first given by Prof. J. Allen Hynek :
former Chair of the Astronomy Dept. at Northwestern University - now deceased. This was from his book, UFOs- A Scientific Inquiry:
“A UFO is the reported perception of an object or light seen in the sky, the appearance, trajectory and general dynamic behavior of which do not suggest a logical, conventional explanation and which is not only mystifying to the original percipients but remains unidentified, after close scrutiny of all available evidence by persons who are technically capable of making a common sense identification, if one were possible.”
As to the question of whether such objects are "believed in", this is what Dr. Kenneth L. Franklin (then head of the Hayden Planetarium) had to say in his first ever lecture in Barbados in 1975, when asked that question:
"Asking me if I believe in UFOs is like asking me if I believe in Chicago. Of course I do! What you're really asking me when you ask that question is whether I believe UFOs are spacecraft from another planet, and I don't."
In other words, Dr. Franklin took the extraterrestrial interpretation as one possible hypothesis for UFOs - not an identification with them. Now we go to Prof. Loeb's response to Chotiner's query:
"The main argument against any of the U.F.O. stories that you may have heard about is that the technology of detection have improved dramatically over the past few decades. We have cameras that are far better than we used to have, and nevertheless the evidence remains marginal. And so that is why there is no scientific credibility to U.F.O.s."
But that is where Dr. Loeb is woefully wrong. In fact there is an enormous amount of scientific credibility to the subject - it's just that he appears to be unfamiliar with the research. For example, my paper ('Transient Optical Phenomena of the Atmosphere' ) was certainly deemed fit for publication in The Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, despite proposing an alternative hypothesis of extraterrestrial origin for an object seen by a Founding member of the Barbados Astronomical Society, e.g.
Transient Optical Phenomena of the Atmosphere - a Case Study
Why the difference? Well, because I did not employ the loaded term "UFO". Loeb is also wrong in his take given other scientists (like Dr. J. Allen Hynek) have devoted years of their life to the study of UFOs. Hynek himself in the previously cited work, indicated the nature of UFO Close Encounters of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd kind - to differentiate between the effects of proximity.
Then there is The Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects, which was conducted by the University of Colorado and Physicist Edward U. Condon, under contract to the United States Air Force. See e.g.
Brane Space: Yes - Scientific Analysis of UFOs Is Certainly Possible!
Finally, I can point to solar physicist Peter Sturrock's excellent monograph : The UFO Enigma: A new Review of the Physical Evidence, See e,g,
Brane Space: Is Scientific UFO Inquiry Possible?
In his New Yorker interview, Loeb insisted (ironically) that "there is no scientific credibility to UFOs" yet the object (Oumuamua) of his recent research is itself a UFO - according to the strict technical definition of J. Allen Hynek. Thus Loeb has inveighed against his own research being of scientific value. Yet he cogently has argued the observed behavior of the object means "it can’t be, as is commonly imagined, a clump of rock shaped like a long potato, but rather an object that’s very long and no more than 1 millimeter thick, perhaps like a kilometer-long obloid pancake — or a ship sail — so light and thin that sunlight is pushing it out of our solar system."
This indeed was the basis of his co-authored paper appearing
The blowback from peers was indeed as fierce as one might expect as if he'd co-authored a paper on UFOs as opposed to a trans-stellar object or artifact powered by solar radiant energy. For example, Paul M. Stutter, an astrophysicist at Ohio State University, shortly after the paper was published, tweeted
'Oumuamua is not an alien spaceship, and the authors of the paper insult honest
scientific inquiry to even suggest it,"
This is exactly what those who misconstrue the meaning of UFO (like Loeb did in his New Yorker interview) would argue. Then we also see, as if to reinforce this, a guy named Ethan Siegel writing in Forbes:
"A shocking example of sensationalist, ill-motivated science"
Again, exactly what a UFO skeptic would have screamed about Peter Sturrock's book or any of J. Allen Hynek's contributions, including his groundbreaking book, 'UFOs - A Scientific Inquiry.' Then there is North Carolina State University astrophysicist Katie Mack who suggested to the Verge that Loeb was engaging in a "common practice in which an astrophysicist poses a theory they might not believe". Only problem with this take is Prof. Loeb does believe it to the point he has declared he "doesn't care what his colleagues think" and even if Harvard demoted him (in his position as Chairman of the Astronomy Dept.) he would have the time to pursue more research "without the burdens of administration."
All of this brings up Dr. Hynek's revelation on how the "in public" UFO skeptic Carl Sagan had admitted to him that he really did accept the validity of UFOs but "couldn't admit it in front of colleagues." See e.g.
For my own part, I've never shied away from broaching my own UFO observation (in North Miami in March, 1962) even in front of colleagues, say at scientific conferences. That was, of course, assuming there was a logical or rational opening for such discussion! The last such opportunity arrived in Baltimore in June, 1984 during a Solar Physics conference at the 164th meeting of the American Astronomical Society. One morning I had sat down to breakfast at the (Johns Hopkins University) cafeteria with several astronomers including the famed Martin Schwarzschild, author of 'The Structure and Evolution of the Stars' (the same text I'd used in my undergrad astrophysics at USF in 1970) See e.g. for a review:
Structure and Evolution of the Stars: Physics Today: Vol 11, No 12
Schwarzschild had brought up a strange sighting he'd made several weeks earlier in Arizona or some other place he'd been visiting. But he added that its dynamical behavior ("hovering then speeding away") didn't make sense. I then made mention of my own sighting: an orange disk the size of the full Moon that appeared to hover overhead for 1-2 seconds - then raced toward the southern horizon.
Intrigued, Prof. Schwarzschild asked if I suspected a piloted craft or some atmospheric phenomenon. I told him if I had to make an educated guess it would have to be the former, given no natural phenomenon I'd ever observed behaved in such fashion. He nodded and said "Interesting!". What was notable is there was no mockery or disbelief expressed. He took it in a matter of fact manner despite the fact we both understood that piloted craft meant "alien craft".
It is also of interest to examine Loeb's support arguments (in his Scientific American article ) for his claim that Oumaumau is of extraterrestrial origin:
1- Oumuamua implies that the population of interstellar objects is far greater than expected. Each star in the Milky Way needs to eject 1015 such objects during its lifetime to account for a population as large as ‘Oumuamua implies. Thus, the nurseries of ‘Oumuamua-like objects must be different from what we know based on our own solar system.
Intrigued, Prof. Schwarzschild asked if I suspected a piloted craft or some atmospheric phenomenon. I told him if I had to make an educated guess it would have to be the former, given no natural phenomenon I'd ever observed behaved in such fashion. He nodded and said "Interesting!". What was notable is there was no mockery or disbelief expressed. He took it in a matter of fact manner despite the fact we both understood that piloted craft meant "alien craft".
It is also of interest to examine Loeb's support arguments (in his Scientific American article ) for his claim that Oumaumau is of extraterrestrial origin:
1- Oumuamua implies that the population of interstellar objects is far greater than expected. Each star in the Milky Way needs to eject 1015 such objects during its lifetime to account for a population as large as ‘Oumuamua implies. Thus, the nurseries of ‘Oumuamua-like objects must be different from what we know based on our own solar system.
2- Oumuamua originated from a very special frame of reference, the so-called local standard of rest (LSR), which is defined by averaging the random motions of all the stars in the vicinity of the sun. Only one star in 500 is moving as slowly as ‘Oumuamua in that frame. The LSR is the ideal frame for camouflage, namely for hiding the origins of an object and avoiding its association with any particular star.
3- If ‘Oumuamua came from a typical star, it must have been ejected with an unusually large velocity kick. To make things more unusual, its kick should have been equal and opposite to the velocity of its parent star relative to the LSR, which is about 20 kilometers per second for a typical star like the sun. The dynamical origin of ‘Oumuamua is extremely rare no matter how you look at it,
4- We do not have a photo of ‘Oumuamua, but its brightness owing to reflected sunlight varied by a factor of 10 as it rotated periodically every eight hours. This implies that ‘Oumuamua has an extreme elongated shape with its length at least five to 10 times larger than its projected width....The inferred shape is more extreme than for all asteroids previously seen in the solar system, which have an length-to-width ratio of at most three .
5-The Spitzer Space Telescope did not detect any heat in the form of infrared radiation from ‘Oumuamua. Given the surface temperature dictated by ‘Oumuamua’s trajectory near the sun, this sets an upper limit on its size of hundreds of meters. Based on this size limit, ‘Oumuamua must be unusually shiny, with a reflectance that is at least 10 times higher than exhibited by solar system asteroids
6- The trajectory of ‘Oumuamua deviated from that expected based on the sun’s gravity alone. The deviation is small (a tenth of a percent) but highly statistically significant....Altogether, ‘Oumuamua does not appear to be a typical comet nor a typical asteroid, even as it represents a population that is far more abundant than expected.
All Loeb's reasons are compelling, but for my money - the ones pertaining to the Local Standard of Rest (LSR, points 2, 3, 4) are most cogent and lead me to agree with Prof. Loeb's conclusion that Oumaumau is not an object of natural origin.
Now, if he would only get off his anti-UFO high horse and admit his object is in the same class as those studied by J. Allen Hynek and since embraced by Carl Sagan - after confessing to Hynek of being a pseudo-skeptic!
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