Book · 26 January 2021
Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth
Also known as Extraterrestrial (Loeb)
Avi Loeb · Houghton Mifflin Harcourt · 256 pages · ISBN 978-0-358-27814-6
Glimpses
I submit that the simplest explanation for these peculiarities is that the object was created by an intelligent civilization not of this Earth.
Over the years, I have come to believe that the laws of physics cease to apply in only two places: singularities and Hollywood.
In the case of ‘Oumuamua, the object’s brightness varied tenfold every eight hours, which we deduced to be the amount of time that it took to complete one full rotation.
When ‘Oumuamua sped part of the way around the Sun, its trajectory deviated from what was expected based on the Sun’s gravitational force alone. There was no obvious explanation for why.
Extraterrestrial (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2021) is the Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb's popular account of ʻOumuamua, the elongated object seen passing through the inner solar system in October 2017, the first known visitor from another star. Loeb lists what made it odd, including its shape, its brightness and the slight push away from the Sun with no visible gas trail, and argues that the simplest explanation may be that it was artificial, perhaps a thin light sail built by another civilization. The book is also a memoir and a plea for scientists to keep an open mind about extraterrestrial technology.
It became a New York Times bestseller and drew sharp criticism. Reviewers noted that Loeb's best evidence is that the natural explanations seem unconvincing to him, which falls short of the "extraordinary evidence" standard he explicitly rejects; by 2021 most astronomers regarded ʻOumuamua as natural, perhaps a fragment of nitrogen ice or an altered comet-like body. Loeb went on to found the Galileo Project to look for such technology with telescopes.
Sources: Wikipedia · Wikipedia — Avi Loeb · The New Yorker (2021)
Facts and claims
- claimed Loeb argues that ʻOumuamua, the first known interstellar object, detected in 2017, may be a piece of technology from an alien civilization, such as a thin light sail. — Avi Loeb Source: en.wikipedia.org (archived)
- claimed The suggestion is considered unlikely by the scientific community; by 2021 there was broad agreement that ʻOumuamua's properties are consistent with a natural object. Source: en.wikipedia.org (archived)
Connected files
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- Avi Loeb (authored by)
Books
Mentioned in this file
- Galileo Project (Harvard) (Organization)
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