Is There an Alien Crisis in Astronomy? Was ‘Oumuamua natural or artificial?

Why is the interstellar interloper ‘Oumuamua from 2017 back in the news? Is Professor Avi Loeb right, is there an alien and ego crisis in astronomy?

My rambling thoughts on the on the matter

Cool Worlds video:

Scientific American Article:

Starts with a Bang: The Uncensored Guide To ‘Oumuamua, Aliens, And That Harvard Astronomer

The Natural History of ‘Oumuamua

[RyanRidden]

This rant ended up longer than I had planed! Let me know your thoughts on 'Omuamua and on this style of a less edited video!

[CoolWorldsLab]

Thoughtful and well-delivered as always, thanks Ryan

[mikescott]

Interesting. I make no assertions of Oumuamua being artificial or not, but I don't think it is fair to say that it is unrealistic. All bias aside, it is considered that Loeb's claims are unrealistic because the object being artificial is far too unacceptable. Loeb even made comment on his peers and how they wished Ouamuamua never existed because of its strangeness, and that no definitive answer to its true nature can be certain. Also it is fair to point out that all this attention he is receiving wasn't ferociously sought out, as he made no public address. This got blown up because of his book and his stature. Although he is most certainly riding the wave now.
My thoughts is this; We know of what to expect from our observations of comets and asteroids - Oumuamua never acted in the same way. It is interstellar, thus reasonable to assume that it has been travelling for 10s of thousands of years (perhaps even far longer than that). Does this make it artificial? No. But it does make it a phenomenon that has never happened in human history with nothing compare it to. Thus, even leading the main scientific community to make their own assumptions with clear uncertainty

[NaumRusomarov]

"bird watching goes both ways" >_> o_o <_<

[kurisuuu]

This is clearly a Mon Calamary MC80A Star Cruiser!

[PeterHamiltonz]

On the subject of aliens, as Carl Sagan said, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".

Claims regarding alien origin for Oumuamua come across, to me at least, as "Well you don't have any better evidence".

[pottierkurt]

Just found this channel last week. So refreshing, I have favorite channels now about space and science and stuff I'm interested in, but regrettably to dumb to understand. So thanks for explaining it LI5.

The other channel is Anton Petrov btw.

How come you are so underrated??

[AndrewSkow]

How many men have died just from you absentmindedly turning to look at something, sending that jaw crashing through mortar and man like so little air?

[thetaleteller]

Since at least New Horizons took that Picture from "Ultima Thule" we can be sure small objects from out there can have any shape imaginable. Having it rotating on arbitrary axis is more proof of being natural than artificial. Loeb is out for attention, lastly he made a paper about Life in the very early universe, like when the CMB had 30°c. Wild Speculations, to say it nicely.

[panominotv]

Luv ur vids, fans from Germany! Godspeed on your way to 100k subs, Dr. Ridden ☺️✌️💪

[earthknight]

This approach is not at all uncommon in all sorts of fields. It's one of the reasons why it's recommended that research papers are used for references rather than books. There is no peer-review of books.

Another good example of this is Jared Diamond's books. Historians and anthropologists regularly complain that Diamond cherrypicks the evidence he uses for his proclamations, he ignores 'inconvenient' evidence that doesn't support his ideas, relies on very outdated ideas of culture, etc, etc.

You can pick up *many* popular books in any of the sciences (hard or soft), in history, etc and see examples of this everywhere.

[solstice]

Thanks for your insight and explanation of this issue. I'm looking forward for your next videos.

[Duthjoods]

recently discovered this channel...even tho its small the content is great! keep it up!

[alistairmerrifield]

Interesting comment on science being debated in the public arena... we are seeing a great deal of this in the fields of climate change and public health (covid). So certainly not just limited to astronomy! (Not even going to mention that years of scientific training and method can be negated by someone viewing YouTube videos or Facebook posts.... 🙄).

[ericdano]

I still think the acceleration it showed is because it is actually getting "pulled" by Planet 9.

[guiart]

How long is the ‘object’? Love your channel!

[themadman]

That's a rather interesting shirt you have there

[ronmani]

It would be nice if we could have something that could land on or at least explore some of these cosmic interlopers either ready to launch with short notice or already in orbit. It could be a relatively simple probe and if it landed we could use it as a "free ride" out into the think how neat that might be if we did that and as it got close to a sun it would start transmitting a message just to let others know they arent alone (or werent alone, depending how long it traveled)

[revolverocelot]

I wish someone sent a probe that would make a close fly by with this rock... It's a shame our space presence sucks so much we can't just send a high dV probe to any interesting object that pops up

[therogueprince]

I must say when I first heard about Oumuamua, I didn't think it had this much of a controversy surrounding it. When I heard about it being alien in origin, I naturally assumed it meant it was an object from outside our solar system and it has a unique shape. Then I started getting onto the more UFO conspiracy videos which I'll admit is a guilty pleasure of mine and the whole claim it's an alien probe was quite a fun viewing experience.