Scientists conclude cigar-shaped interstellar object not an alien spaceship

Of course, if it was an alien ship, would they say it was an alien ship or no?

 

An alien ship would have to be considered a potential threat to national security. So it they could keep it a secret, they would.

I will never forget a quote from Margaret Thatcher, in a book about the Rendlesham Forest incident having the same title . "You can't tell the people!"

True, dunno. But the book was published 12 years before Thatcher died.

 

There is a notable flaw in the reasoning behind many skeptics and cynics. It centers on this question: What are the odds of an alien visitation?

Many people implicitly assume that because something lies at the edge or beyond our level of knowledge, the odds of it occurring are very small. But this is circular reasoning. For example, a parallel question is, "Is the speed of light an absolute limitation?". What are the odds?

There are no odds other than gut feelings.

If the speed of light is an absolute limit, then there is no chance of exceeding the limit; not 1% or 10%, it is 0%.

If the speed of light is not an absolute limit, then we can talk about the odds of a race achieving that technology. But since it is beyond our level of knowledge, we have no basis for speculation. It may be inevitable for an advanced race to discover faster than light travel. Or, it might not be practical for any race, no matter how advanced they might be,

If the speed of light is not a limit, and FTL travel or other is common for advanced races, then the odds of an alien visitation may be near 100%

Or, it may be 0%. But we can only make wild guesses at anything in between.

So the best say is that there is between a 0% and 100% chance of an alien visitation.

 

Scientists working in physics divide themselves between experimental science (which is what is usually meant by "science") and theoretical physics (which works with mathematical models.

One of the criteria for being a hypothesis is that it must be possible to prove that it's false if it is indeed false - that is, it must be testable.

The Higgs particle/field was part of theoretical physics until CERN came along and was actually able to test. As you point out, it could then become a theory. Moving from the world of theoretical physics to the world of science was a major event - they had a party.

Yes, we can't totally rule out general ideas which we can't test! So, like religion there are thousands of string theories active at any one time with no method of determining whether they have any value. Scientific American has an article about finding a quadrillion string theories that each explain our universe. And these are just the ones that require the dimensions of space, time and 6 other dimensions that are "compactified" and thus undetectable. What does THAT mean given that all strings are undetectable and no dimensions beyond space and time have been detected!!

I'm fine with that as it can help science know where to look (like with Higgs), but let's remember it is a field of unrestricted and untestable ideas based on math models.

We certainly can take the speed of light in a vacuum as an absolute according to science. Anyone who is saying anything different than that has a WORLD of explaining to do, and it better be good, because this would be a modification of a stupendous amount of physics that is universally accepted, continuously tested and used daily.

 

I disagree. For the moment (and until proven otherwise) the Theory of Relativity and all it implies has to be taken on face value. Which means FTL travel, by whatever means has to be ruled out as an option for any intelligent species wanting to explore the galaxy, however much we all might wish this was not the case.

I fully concede that this might, at some unspecified time in the future change given some fundamental / unforeseen breakthrough in our understanding of how the universe works. However any such breakthrough is at the moment pure speculation - which means we have to work with what we have and know to be true now rather than what we wish was true regarding any speculation about space fairing intelligence's visiting the Earth or for that matter Human Beings visiting other star systems.

 

Unfortunately there is a fundamental problem with thermodynamics at play here. The object in question was not radiating any heat above and beyond what any natural solar (or extra-solar object without an atmosphere would do). To do 'work', any kind of work, complex systems (inanimate objects e.g. stars, machines (any type) or living beings (any type) have to expend energy to function and that means a heat gradient. Energy is converted from one form to another and in the process heat (and other outputs like changes in velocity) are produced.

Our spaceships, like any complex machine radiate heat as a bi-product of their functioning. The object in question radiated nothing - like any other piece of rubble that had cooled after it formed down to the ambient temperature of the environment around it.

Now there are ways of masking heat output in space (cooling a spacecraft) and as far as we know these involve either deploying radiators (which can be seen), reflecting ambient solar heat using a sun-shield (which can be seen) or expelling ultra cold gases (which cannot - at the moment) but this only works so long as you have stored coolant on board. Run out of 'gas' and you heat up like anything else. None of these things were observed with our target object.

Now I concede that an advanced intelligence might be able design and build machinery that operates efficiently at ultra-cold temperatures on minimal energy inputs. This doesn't seem likely based on what we know or think we know about molecular and atomic motion but OK lets assume it's possible, even though your own laptop or PC would radiate heat like a bitch in space for the few brief seconds before its heat sink failed and melted. However what they couldn't do is design a system packed with this kind of electronics that then propels itself across the galaxy at high velocities. That requires energy in huge amounts of energy which also means lots of heat.

So in conclusion coating a spaceship with elements found in outer space makes no difference whatsoever our 'visitor's would still have looked like a suspiciously hot rock in a solar system fool of cold rocks. Which leaves a dead spaceship from another solar system - to which the answer is (1) it didn't look like a spaceship and (2) Occam's Razer - i.e. the odds of it being a 'rock' are billions to one more likely than it being spaceship. So until proven otherwise it was most likely a rock - or a duck.

 

One of my favorite astronomers.

 

Sorry, it won't load.

 

???what are you trying to do?

 

I'll GUESS that if ET's were capable and did make it to Earth...that there would be no ambiguity about their presence...

 

Sorry, I meant the video comes up as 'unavailable' when I try to play it.

 

Find it on youtube instead.