Tragic. Avi Loeb lost the annual soccer match at his institution!
Last night, we held the annual soccer cup match between the faculty and the students at Harvard’s Institute for Theory & Computation, for which I serve as director. Although I scored 2 goals for the faculty team, the students won 3 to 2. Disappointed by the outcome, I focused on 3I/ATLAS as soon as I woke up the following morning.
On the bright side, it gave him an excuse to remind everyone that he was the director, and to mention that he scored the only two goals on his side. Apparently, no one has told him that these kinds of games are just for fun, that it’s bad taste to focus on the score, and that no one else was trying to “win”. He was disconsolate at “losing,” though, and when he woke up the next morning he decided to cheer himself up by contorting some data to make it fit his idea that 3I/ATLAS was a nuclear-powered starship.
He does a lot of math, and determines that
IF 3I/ATLAS is much smaller than the estimates
THEN it must have an internal light source to get the brightness we observe
Rather than considering that his initial premise could be wrong, he invents some other hypothetical mechanisms.
I first calculated that a primordial black hole with a Hawking temperature of 1,000 degrees Kelvin would produce only 20 nanowatts of power, clearly insufficient to power 3I/ATLAS. A natural nuclear source could be a rare fragment from the core of a nearby supernova that is rich in radioactive material. This possibility is highly unlikely, given the scarce reservoir of radioactive elements in interstellar space.
Wait…why assume an interstellar rock needs a certain amount of power? Never mind, those were explanations he threw out and discarded so we would favor his preferred hypothesis.
Alternatively, 3I/ATLAS could be a spacecraft powered by nuclear energy, and the dust emitted from its frontal surface might be from dirt that accumulated on its surface during its interstellar travel. This cannot be ruled out, but requires better evidence to be viable.
Then he nicely asked NASA to redirect their instruments near Mars and Jupiter to focus on his hypothetical nuclear powered spacecraft. And also contacted the NY Post to write about his sensational discovery.
The man is such a ridiculous glory-hog.
Apparently, he used to be a respectable astronomer. The he discovered that is not what the public wants. I wonder where he learned that from?
“Ridiculous glory-hog”…the byword of the age. It could describe so many prominent people these days.
Also, bullshitter.
I saw an amusing reel the other day making a distinction between lies and bullshit. Even when Cheeto Taco isn’t lying he’s almost always bullshitting.
3I/ATLAS would hardly be able to carry sufficient ramen for its recommended daily caloric intake if it is a bioluminescent space squid bent on conquest, so it must have a backpack full of Lembas, the waybread of the Elves grasped in its mighty tentacles.
I’m a serious scholar why aren’t people taking me seriously?
is 3I/ATLAS also teapot shaped?
@2 “Even when Cheeto Taco isn’t lying”…
You mean, like, when he’s asleep?
devnll, you think Trump sleeps upright? ;)
follow the data or go for the money and fame (clicks)?
OK it is the limelight.
With all that interstellar dirt, we should be able to grow potatoes in a Bussard ramjet.
Has he considered the possibility of a bioreactor running on bovine excrement?
IF my grandmother had wheels
THEN she would have been a bike
It seems, thankfully he is in an institution already, as the first line in the OP says. Although the treatment does not look like it’s working, TBH…
Ah, so you’ve never played in a students vs faculty match. Kickabouts in the park are for fun. This is serious business, with bragging rights at stake, and the chance to clatter some of the arseholes on the other side.
Just a few days ago some UFO believer on another forum brought up this guy:
“See, there’s an actual scientist who agrees with me!”
“Yeah, but virtually everyone else in his field thinks he’s lost it.”
“We need more people like him because mainstream science is wrong!”
Hopeless…
Yeah, the UFO crowd love them a scientist who “breaks the paradigm.” All you have to do is tell them a cool story and bunch of them will buy it hook, line, and sinker, no matter how silly it is
I remember when they used to clean your windshield when you stopped at an intergalactic service station.
I’m living in a quiet region of Germany that’s extremely secluded, and so neanderthals are still allowed to exist here, and alien life forms don’t attract any attention. So they are welcome here anytime, and meanwhile they became some of our best neighbors.
I asked them about Avi Loeb, and one of them said something like “funny earthling”. The other one proposed, he might be one of their secret agents, ordered to distract us from their real invasion plans, by creating wild hypotheses at every opportunity and so on. But eventually he didn’t know it exactly.
OIn the positive side I guess Loeb is rasiing public awareness and intrest of a fascinating interstellar comet that really is pretty amazing by itself – without needing to be a flippin’ alien starship. On the downside, yeah, he’s empowering the cranks and Saucerists here. I hope that when people hear about the comet here perhaps even via Loeb they become more intrested in finding out about the real science than the wild, silly, alien hypotheticals.
Thinking of that real science here’s a good discussion of the serious, and I reckon fascinating and awesome actual science of interstellar comet 3I/Atlas by Anton Petrov – fifteen mins long.
Heh. Here’s a good look at mainstream media featuring the loon: