This guy is infamous for his crackpot theories. How he ever got employed by Harvard is beyond me. He does have a lot of expertise in one particular area -- getting his name inserted into the media cycle du jour.
Interesting idea. The only response short of SENDING IT BACK I can think of would be to measure its velocity, divide by our best estimate of its diameter, and broadcast the resulting frequency over radio in all directions.
> With the typical albedo of 5% for an asteroid, the diameter of 3I/ATLAS needs to be 20 kilometers in order to account for its brightness. But as argued in my first paper about it, the reservoir of rocky material in interstellar space can only deliver a 20-kilometer rock once per 10,000 years.
He's still repeating this?
Loeb previously performed an analysis that said if 3I/ATLAS wasn't a comet and was instead an asteroid with no coma, it would have to be an unusually large object to explain its brightness. Since then, we pointed the Hubble at it and clearly saw that it was a comet, not an asteroid, so the entire premise of the calculation is wrong.
> When I proposed that it might be technological in origin, just like 2020 SO, this notion was ridiculed by comet experts, in a historical echo of Chladni’s scrutiny.
To quote Carl Sagan: "They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."
I'm not sure Avi Loebs writings are worth any serious discussion on HN.
He exploits bad science journalism to get his name out there.
Generally with proper science journalism, it runs along the lines of the saying: "It's never aliens, until it is", but with Avi Loebs it always tends to be "It's always aliens, until it isn't".
Grifter hint - he references a self-named entity "Loeb Scale" that isn't already well-established with term with his name.
I seem to remember a anecdote that Peter Shor gave lectures on his quantum factorization algorithm and only referred to it as the "quantum factoring algorithm" (or something like that) rather than "Shor's algorithm".
This may taking it a too far - he's too modest. Once it is well-established, go ahead and use the self-named theory.
But, some good smell tests for bad theories are a bibliography of mostly the same author and/or promotion of self-named entities.
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[ 101 ms ] story [ 746 ms ] threadI feel like these are fun thought experiments.
See Alexander Abian. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Abian
He's still repeating this?
Loeb previously performed an analysis that said if 3I/ATLAS wasn't a comet and was instead an asteroid with no coma, it would have to be an unusually large object to explain its brightness. Since then, we pointed the Hubble at it and clearly saw that it was a comet, not an asteroid, so the entire premise of the calculation is wrong.
> When I proposed that it might be technological in origin, just like 2020 SO, this notion was ridiculed by comet experts, in a historical echo of Chladni’s scrutiny.
To quote Carl Sagan: "They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."
Angela Collier has the final word on physics and crackpots. Hilarious.
He exploits bad science journalism to get his name out there.
Generally with proper science journalism, it runs along the lines of the saying: "It's never aliens, until it is", but with Avi Loebs it always tends to be "It's always aliens, until it isn't".
I seem to remember a anecdote that Peter Shor gave lectures on his quantum factorization algorithm and only referred to it as the "quantum factoring algorithm" (or something like that) rather than "Shor's algorithm".
This may taking it a too far - he's too modest. Once it is well-established, go ahead and use the self-named theory.
But, some good smell tests for bad theories are a bibliography of mostly the same author and/or promotion of self-named entities.