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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. In today,

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Speaker 1: we're bringing you a follow up, a rare, long awaited

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Speaker 1: follow up on an episode from last year that was

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Speaker 1: about a messenger from another solar system. Oh yes, muamua.

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Speaker 1: That's right. So in this episode from last year, it

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Speaker 1: aired in December, it was called first Messenger from an

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Speaker 1: Alien Star. We discussed the first ever extra solar object

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Speaker 1: known to enter our solar system, which has come to

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Speaker 1: be known as Umuamua. Now, of course, as usual, the

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Speaker 1: big question whenever there's something interesting that happens in space

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Speaker 1: is is it aliens? And that's what people wanted to

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Speaker 1: know back then. Of course, back then the answer seemed

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Speaker 1: to be no. The answer, as a spoiler, I think

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Speaker 1: still seems to be no. But the question has gotten

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Speaker 1: a little more interesting even though the answer does still

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Speaker 1: seem to be no. Yeah. Basically, it was a weird

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Speaker 1: object when it was first observed, and it continued, it

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Speaker 1: remained weird, It continued to do weird things. And then

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Speaker 1: there's one paper in particular we're gonna be talking about well,

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Speaker 1: actually a couple of papers that put some some some

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Speaker 1: some fascinating spins on it that hypothesize what could be

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Speaker 1: going on with the Mua mua, and one of those

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Speaker 1: hypotheses involves the concept that it's an alien spaceship. So

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Speaker 1: the the idea that it is aliens has not completely

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Speaker 1: died away, and we're talking about among um reputable scientists,

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Speaker 1: not merely you know, people on the outskirts that they

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Speaker 1: just want to see aliens in everything. Right. Well, of course,

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Speaker 1: as we discussed in the last episode, anytime there's anything

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Speaker 1: weird in space, the Daily Mail is going to break

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Speaker 1: out It's aliens as their headline, and people are gonna

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Speaker 1: be popping there it's aliens Champagne. It's not time to

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Speaker 1: out the Champagne. But we did promise in that last

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Speaker 1: episode that if future research came along and proved us

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Speaker 1: wrong and saying it was an aliens, we would of

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Speaker 1: course do a follow up episode. Has that happened, Well, no,

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Speaker 1: it hasn't been proven to be aliens, but the object

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Speaker 1: has continued to appear even more strange and even more

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Speaker 1: interesting all the time, and plenty of media outlets have

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Speaker 1: have used a new paper by astrophysicist Abvie Loebe and

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Speaker 1: Schmoolbiali to run with the Okay, now it's aliens headlines.

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Speaker 1: And obviously some people have flagged these articles for us

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Speaker 1: on social media, so we thought it would be worth

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Speaker 1: a look, come back, revisit it and uh and see

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Speaker 1: what's happened since last year. And now I have to

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Speaker 1: go ahead and remind everyone that we're we're not against

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Speaker 1: the idea of it being aliens necessarily, Like that would

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Speaker 1: be really interesting if that were to come to pass.

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Speaker 1: I don't know about you. I hate aliens. I just

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Speaker 1: h well, the idea, it just curdls my blood. It

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Speaker 1: would be a huge change, obviously, and change is scary.

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Speaker 1: It would it would definitely messed with some of our

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Speaker 1: science fiction. That's probably where I feel the most threatened

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Speaker 1: by it is. Um, you know, I've got I've got

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Speaker 1: some some stuff pending that that might be messed up.

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Speaker 1: If if if aliens are suddenly a reality, uh, and

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Speaker 1: then then all of our sci fi has to be

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Speaker 1: like alternate reality sci fi, like this is what the

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Speaker 1: future might have been like had there not been aliens

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Speaker 1: as we know them to be. That's a really good point.

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Speaker 1: I mean, this was why when it makes all first

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Speaker 1: contact stories alternate histories. Yeah, I mean I'm not sure

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Speaker 1: if this is I haven't verified this, but I remember

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Speaker 1: reading that when two thousand and one Space Odyssey was

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Speaker 1: in production, Stanley Kubrick either did or tried to take

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Speaker 1: out an insurance policy, uh in the event that alien

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Speaker 1: life was discovered before the film came out. Um, so

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Speaker 1: you know I'm not alone in my paranoia. Oh that's good,

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Speaker 1: but no, no, once again, today is not going to

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Speaker 1: be an It's Aliens party, but it is going to

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Speaker 1: be a fascinating exploration of a very weird thing in space, right,

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Speaker 1: and we will consider the possibility because that's going to

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Speaker 1: be part of this episode is talking about the idea

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Speaker 1: that it could be an alien spaceship. Okay, brief refresher

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Speaker 1: crash course on this object. On October nine, the Pan

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Speaker 1: Stars one telescope in Hawaii on Haliakala caught sight of

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Speaker 1: a small object that was moving rapidly through the Solar System,

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Speaker 1: and so of course they called in other observatories to

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Speaker 1: look and confirm what they had seen, and at first

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Speaker 1: it was believed to be a comet, and then later

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Speaker 1: it was determined to be some kind of interstellar object,

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Speaker 1: asteroid like object, traveling at lightning speed into and then

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Speaker 1: back out of our Solar System. So how fast was

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Speaker 1: the thing going? Well, at its fastest when it made

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Speaker 1: its nearest approach to the Sun on September nine, it

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Speaker 1: was going about hundred and ninety six thousand miles per

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Speaker 1: hour or eighty seven point three kilometers per second. Last

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Speaker 1: I heard, it's already headed back out of the Solar System,

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Speaker 1: and somewhere around seventy thousand miles per hour already passed

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Speaker 1: the orbit of Jupiter. I think I read nearing the

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Speaker 1: orbit of Saturn, or it might be there by now.

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Speaker 1: In another four years it will pass the orbit of Neptune,

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Speaker 1: and it will basically be heading way back out into

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Speaker 1: interstellar space. Whatever it is, it ain't local, so the

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Speaker 1: speed is already weird. Then you've got the trajectory, so

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Speaker 1: it apparently entered the ecliptic plane of the Solar System,

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Speaker 1: the the relatively flat orbital plane that things where things

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Speaker 1: go around the Sun at an inclination of about a

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Speaker 1: hundred and twenty three degrees, and things in our Solar

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Speaker 1: System are generally not like that though some comets have

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Speaker 1: pretty tilted orbits, this object basically shot into our Solar

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Speaker 1: system from above or from below. There is of course

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Speaker 1: no upper down in space, but from an angle perpendicular

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Speaker 1: to the flat plane of the Solar system. And it

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Speaker 1: passed very close to the Sun inside the orbit of Mercury.

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Speaker 1: Then Sling shot it around the Sun and headed back out.

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Speaker 1: Its orbit is what's called hyperbolic, meaning it will not

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Speaker 1: be returning. It's it's going right. And so so when

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Speaker 1: we talk about it, uh, passing the orbit of Saturn,

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Speaker 1: we're not talking about it sort of sailing past Saturn

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Speaker 1: in a sort of star trek the next generation uh

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Speaker 1: you know, solar vista kind of way. We're talking about. Uh,

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Speaker 1: this this trajectory that shoots above the solar plane right

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Speaker 1: if you zoom way out, it would look kind of

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Speaker 1: like a big v where it goes straight down right

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Speaker 1: by the Sun and then just straight back off into space. Now,

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Speaker 1: what is this object up close? That's that's obviously what

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Speaker 1: people are wondering, like, is it a pegasus, is it

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Speaker 1: a flaming sphere? What is it? So we can't see

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Speaker 1: any details about the surface or geometry of the object,

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Speaker 1: because it is purely a point like light source. It's

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Speaker 1: very small, and it's very far away, and so with

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Speaker 1: our telescopes all we can see is a point of light.

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Speaker 1: But we can learn things from that point of light.

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Speaker 1: One of the things we can do is look at

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Speaker 1: variations in the brightness of that point of light and

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Speaker 1: look at the patterns of those variations, and using those

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Speaker 1: patterns we can we can do what's known as a

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Speaker 1: light curve analysis, and this is just like a graph

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Speaker 1: that shows the intensity of the light coming from an

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Speaker 1: object over time. Based on this kind of light curve analysis,

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Speaker 1: we have come up with some very weird conclusions about

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Speaker 1: how this object is shaped and how it's moving. It

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Speaker 1: appears to be a very narrow, elongated object, maybe at

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Speaker 1: a roughly ten to one length to width and depth ratio,

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Speaker 1: so imagine. People have often called it cigar shaped. I've

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Speaker 1: seen it called baguette shaped. There are other analyzes that say, well,

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Speaker 1: maybe you could produce this kind of light curve if

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Speaker 1: it's some kind of flat, pancake like shape. Whatever it is,

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Speaker 1: it is not a normal roughly spherical or even slightly

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Speaker 1: roughly spherical object. And of course this is one of

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Speaker 1: many things that leads uh, that lends itself to the

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Speaker 1: to the inter protation that it's some sort of artificial structure,

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Speaker 1: that it is a say, a space ship, or more specifically,

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Speaker 1: maybe I'm thinking the sarcophagus of a robeast launched from

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Speaker 1: the planet, doomed towards Earth to battle earth mightiest heroes

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Speaker 1: in a giant robotic suit. It's a space mummy. It's

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Speaker 1: on a cosmic journey. Now, if it is a space mummy,

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Speaker 1: I would hope the space mommy doesn't get car sick

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Speaker 1: because another thing about the what we can tell from

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Speaker 1: analyzing the light emitted by this reflected by this object,

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Speaker 1: is that it is tumbling. It is not rotating around

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Speaker 1: a principal axis. It's tumbling in an irregular way. It

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Speaker 1: appears to be rotating once every about seven point three hours.

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Speaker 1: The coloration on it is kind of interesting. Light reflection

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Speaker 1: analysis indicates that there's a red coloration on its surface,

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Speaker 1: consistent with objects in our Solar System, like asteroids that

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Speaker 1: have been bombarded by cosmic rays. Now, another question people

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Speaker 1: wondered is where did it come from? And the answer is,

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Speaker 1: we don't know. On it's a pro trajectory. It seems

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Speaker 1: like it was coming basically from the direction of the

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Speaker 1: star known as Vega, which is in the constellation Lira.

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Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean that it came from anything around

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Speaker 1: the star Vega, because we have to remember that our

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Speaker 1: view of the night skies moving, and so whenever whenever

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Speaker 1: it came from where Vega is now, Vega wasn't there yet.

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Speaker 1: So even if you don't follow space news very closely,

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Speaker 1: you can probably guess. We did not conclude it was

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Speaker 1: aliens in November of last year when there was all

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Speaker 1: the hubbub about this, though people did listen for it

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Speaker 1: to emit radio signals and nada, we didn't hear anything.

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Speaker 1: With multiple radio observatories at different times, there was nothing,

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Speaker 1: all right, So if it was, it was slash it

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Speaker 1: is an alien ship, it was certainly wasn't trying to

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Speaker 1: communicate with us in any um detectable sense exactly. And

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Speaker 1: so that is about where we stood last time when

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Speaker 1: we did the first podcast on this object. But there

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Speaker 1: have been a lot of development since then. So I

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Speaker 1: want to start by looking at a very curious NASA

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Speaker 1: press release from June of this year. So earlier this year,

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Speaker 1: using observation data from a number of observatories, including the

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Speaker 1: Hubble Space Telescope. He had a team of researchers that

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Speaker 1: found that Umu MUA's trajectory was different from what we

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Speaker 1: would expect based on gravity alone. Marco Mischelley of the

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Speaker 1: ESA S Space Situational Awareness Near Earth Objects Coordination Center

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Speaker 1: in Italy said, quote, our high precision measurements of Umu

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Speaker 1: MUA's position revealed that there was something affecting its motion

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Speaker 1: other than the gravitational forces of the Sun and the planets.

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Speaker 1: By the way, Marco also stated that quote, we think

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Speaker 1: it is a tiny weird comment, a tiny weird comment

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Speaker 1: which which I think some things up nicely. Well we

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Speaker 1: uh So, last time we talked about the object, I

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Speaker 1: think we were speaking at a time when the consensus

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Speaker 1: was around it being an asteroid like interstellar rock key body,

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Speaker 1: and now things seem to be coming back around to

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Speaker 1: the idea of it being some kind of comet like body.

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Speaker 1: Now again to establish the difference an asteroid versus a comet,

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Speaker 1: and asteroid tends to be a rocky or metallic body.

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Speaker 1: A comet is more ice and dust has more volatile

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Speaker 1: materials in it, And when a comet gets heated up,

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Speaker 1: it will tend to lose mass, things will get ejected

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Speaker 1: off of it and out gasses, and that's where you

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Speaker 1: get a comets tail exactly. Now, if you're making a

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Speaker 1: connection there with the speed boost that Michelle just mentioned,

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Speaker 1: you you might be on the right track. David fair

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Speaker 1: Nokia at NASA JPL found that the speed boost observed

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Speaker 1: on Umumua was consistent with what you would see from

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Speaker 1: the out gassing of a comet. So, so how does

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Speaker 1: that work? Well, The speed boost on a comet works

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Speaker 1: by the same principle as a rocket. Actually it works

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Speaker 1: by reaction propulsion. A rocket ejects gas out the back

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Speaker 1: of it to push the front of it forward, or

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Speaker 1: I guess that actually push the whole thing forward, to

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Speaker 1: push it forward in the opposite direction of its emissions.

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Speaker 1: And a comet likewise, has volatile material on it and

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Speaker 1: within it, and when it gets close to the Sun,

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Speaker 1: that material heats up and gets ejected in jets of

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Speaker 1: gas and dust, and these jets form a kind of

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Speaker 1: natural rocket engine which pushes the comet through space, adding

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Speaker 1: speed in addition to the comets original momentum. So there's

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Speaker 1: absolutely nothing out of the ordinary there right, sometimes comets

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Speaker 1: turn into little rockets that can alter their own speed

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Speaker 1: as they pass near the sun. Except researchers weren't expecting

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Speaker 1: to see any speed boost of this kind due to outgassing,

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Speaker 1: because there was otherwise no direct evidence about gassing at all.

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Speaker 1: In fact, this is why people were concluding earlier on

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Speaker 1: that it was some kind of rocky object more like

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Speaker 1: an asteroid, because they thought if it was some kind

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Speaker 1: of comet like object, they should be seeing these these

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Speaker 1: gas and dust emissions. You'd see the tail, like, where's

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Speaker 1: the tail? Let's I mean, every every child knows that, right,

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Speaker 1: if you're drawing the comet, it needs to have a

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Speaker 1: tail or some kind of visible emission. There should be

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Speaker 1: something you should see, and they didn't see anything like that.

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Speaker 1: So whatever it is, you should you should be able

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Speaker 1: to see it happening with your telescopes. But nothing. So

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Speaker 1: the team in the in this research hypothesize that maybe

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Speaker 1: what's going on is that Umumua is out gassing released

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Speaker 1: very little dust enough to give it a speed boost,

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Speaker 1: but not enough to see reflecting the sunlight in a

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Speaker 1: way that our telescopes could pick up. The University of

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Speaker 1: Hawaii astronomer Karen Meach, who was the head of the

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Speaker 1: team that announced the discovery of the object last year.

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Speaker 1: She suggested that maybe small grains of dust that you

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Speaker 1: would normally find on a commet within our solar system,

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Speaker 1: those things had all been blown off of a mummua

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Speaker 1: as it hurtled through the interstellar void for all those

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Speaker 1: thousands or millions of years. Yeah, and that I've also

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Speaker 1: read that they would just leave like larger grains of

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Speaker 1: dust and that that's that's what would be um outgassing here. Yeah. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So so there are a couple of different ways you

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Speaker 1: can think about it. You could think that what's getting

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Speaker 1: ejected from the this comet like object could be large

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Speaker 1: grains of dust that don't reflect light as well as

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Speaker 1: many smaller grains would, and that's why we can't see them,

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Speaker 1: or it's just it's just been stripped of dust and

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Speaker 1: what's being ejected has mass enough to give it a

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Speaker 1: speed boost, but it doesn't it doesn't reflect light in

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Speaker 1: the way we can see. In any case, whatever is

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Speaker 1: going on with it is weird, Yes, a tiny weird comment, Okay,

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Speaker 1: But I want to move on to another another piece

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Speaker 1: of news, another NASA press release again this time from

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Speaker 1: November of this year, and it said that in November

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Speaker 1: of researchers used NASA's infrared Spitzer space telescope to look

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Speaker 1: for the object after its original sighting. So this is

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Speaker 1: an infrared telescope. It's looking at the infrared part of

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Speaker 1: the electromagnetic spectrum, which usually indicates the emission of heat

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Speaker 1: heat energy, and Spitzer looked for more than two months

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Speaker 1: and was never able to detect the object. These results

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Speaker 1: were published in the Astronomical Journal by Trilling at All

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Speaker 1: and believe it or not, the fact that it couldn't

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Speaker 1: see the object was actually a very useful result, despite

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Speaker 1: the fact that there was no data we could gather.

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Speaker 1: The fact that we couldn't see it with an infrared

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Speaker 1: observatory tells us something about the object. First of all,

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Speaker 1: it must be very small, and this is actually consistent

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Speaker 1: with without gassing like a comet, providing the speed boost

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Speaker 1: to change its trajectory in the way that we saw it.

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Speaker 1: Had originally been concluded that the object must be no

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Speaker 1: longer than two thousand, six hundred feet or eight hundred

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Speaker 1: meters in its longest dimension, but the Spitzer result limits

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Speaker 1: its size even more. Quote Spitzer's non detection limited Mu

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Speaker 1: mu a spherical diameter, and that spherical diameter is is

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Speaker 1: just based on the way they were looking for it.

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Speaker 1: Obviously they do not think it's spherical, but they have

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Speaker 1: to sort of average it and treat it as if

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Speaker 1: it were a sphere. It limits that diameter to forty

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Speaker 1: feet or four hundred forty or four hundred and sixty

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Speaker 1: feet or a hundred and forty or perhaps as little

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Speaker 1: as three hundred and twenty ft or a hundred meters,

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Speaker 1: and it must also be highly reflective, and this non

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Speaker 1: detection means that it may reflect up to ten times

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Speaker 1: more light than solar system comments. And you can tell

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Speaker 1: this because of how cold it is. It's too cold

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Speaker 1: for the infrared telescope to detect. And of course you

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Speaker 1: know from experience, dark surfaces have a lower albedo, meaning

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Speaker 1: they reflect less light and absorb more heat. If you

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Speaker 1: want to get hot, dress up in a dark suit,

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Speaker 1: and lighter surfaces have a higher albedo, meaning they reflect

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Speaker 1: more light and absorb less heat. And the object apparently

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Speaker 1: reflects a lot of light and absorbs very little heat.

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Speaker 1: Trailing and his co authors that they point out that

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Speaker 1: this might be due to a coating created by outgassing

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Speaker 1: from its close approach to the Sun prior to its discovery.

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Speaker 1: And this, they remind us, following millions of years worth

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Speaker 1: of travel through that interstellar void far from any star

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Speaker 1: that could have refreshed its surface. Yeah, exactly so. So

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Speaker 1: they speculate that maybe as a Mumu made its close

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Speaker 1: approach to the Sun, the heat from the Sun warmed

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Speaker 1: up the ice on its surface, turned it into gas,

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Speaker 1: blew away everything, and then it released some gas that

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Speaker 1: recovered the surface of the object with a bright layer

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Speaker 1: of ice and snow, and this made it highly reflective

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Speaker 1: in a way we could see while remaining very cold

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Speaker 1: and non absorbing. So at this point it seems pretty

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Speaker 1: reasonable to me to conclude that the object is is weird.

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Speaker 1: It's not like things were you know, we normally see.

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Speaker 1: But it's probably some sort of interstellar comet like object

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Speaker 1: behaves sort of like a comet, but sort of not

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Speaker 1: like a comet from within our own solar system. And uh,

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Speaker 1: and that's maybe all we'll get to know about it,

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Speaker 1: because another thing about it is that it's it's on

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Speaker 1: the way out. We're not we're probably not going to

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Speaker 1: be able to gather any more information about it unless

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Speaker 1: we go chase it down, and with the propulsion systems

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Speaker 1: of today, we can't do that. Well there, we'll get

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Speaker 1: to some of the some answers on that in a

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Speaker 1: little bit, because there are some people who think that

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Speaker 1: that we can catch it well with the propulsion systems

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Speaker 1: of tomorrow, right well with while they're looking at within

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Speaker 1: three to five years, Like they're basically talking about what

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Speaker 1: would happen if we got serious about catching it now,

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Speaker 1: and therefore we're able to launch a mission and say

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Speaker 1: what could be what could be feasible? Well, I think

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Speaker 1: we'll have to come back to that later in the episode.

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Speaker 1: We should take a break, let's do it. Thank alright,

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Speaker 1: we're back. So again, everything that the that Mumu is

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Speaker 1: doing has thus far been explained rather well given what

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Speaker 1: we know about the behavior of of comments and other

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Speaker 1: astronomical objects. Right, it doesn't behave exactly like we would

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Speaker 1: expect a comment to. You know, there's some observations that

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Speaker 1: don't quite match up, but you can at least say, well,

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Speaker 1: here's why I think it might not be matching our

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Speaker 1: normal expected observations for a comet like object. It's weird,

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Speaker 1: but within the parameters that have been that are that

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Speaker 1: are in place, without having to dragon the idea of

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Speaker 1: of alien intelligence. Before we get into alien intelligence, I

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Speaker 1: just wanted to visit a little bit of other weirdness

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Speaker 1: that I came across. This first one was in a

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Speaker 1: speculative astrophysics paper I came across. It's just too odd

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Speaker 1: to pass up. So this is This was published and

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Speaker 1: of course the archive preprint server called could one eye

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Speaker 1: and that's that's a designation because it's the first interstellar

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Speaker 1: object one I slash umuamua be macroscopic dark matter and

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Speaker 1: this is by Cincinnaties at all. So I'll try to

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Speaker 1: do this quick because I have not found any experts

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Speaker 1: who think this answer is likely. This is basically just

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Speaker 1: a paper sitting in the void, though it was too

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Speaker 1: fun not to mention. So the authors ask, what if

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Speaker 1: it's not an asteroid or a comet but some type

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Speaker 1: of quote macroscopic chunk of dark matter. The very short

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Speaker 1: version on dark matter. When you look at galaxies and

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Speaker 1: galaxy clusters way out in space, you can detect how

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Speaker 1: much mass they have based on gravitational effects. But at

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Speaker 1: the same time the galaxies we look at appear to

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Speaker 1: have far less normal matter in them than we would

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Speaker 1: guess based on those gravitational effects. So people have come

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Speaker 1: up with this idea, well, there must be some other

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Speaker 1: kind of matter that's actually there's much more of it

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Speaker 1: out there than there is normal matter, and this is

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Speaker 1: dark matter. The most common version of dark matter people imagine,

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Speaker 1: I think, is usually some kind of quote, weakly interacting

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Speaker 1: massive particle. Meaning you've got these elementary particles out there

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Speaker 1: that have mass, and they have gravitational effects, and they

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00:20:54,880 --> 00:20:57,199
Speaker 1: can affect the gravity of things around them, but they

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Speaker 1: don't interact with regular matter in other ways, so they

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Speaker 1: can pass right through it. They don't reflect or absorb

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Speaker 1: electromagnetic radiation, and so forth. But the authors of this

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Speaker 1: paper right quote. Contrary to widely held misconceptions, dark matter

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Speaker 1: need not be in the form of weakly interacting elementary particles,

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Speaker 1: but might instead be found in much larger pieces, with

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Speaker 1: masses best measured in grams or kilograms and cross sections

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Speaker 1: best measured in cinemeter squared. Specific candidates include primordial black holes,

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Speaker 1: strange quark or baryonic matter, and other speculative approximately nuclear

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Speaker 1: density standard model or beyond the standard model objects. So

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Speaker 1: given that this object reflected sunlight, because we could see

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Speaker 1: it with telescopes, we know that Umumua was not a

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Speaker 1: primordial black hole, so they propose it is some form

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Speaker 1: of strange matter of quote nuclear density, and this means

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Speaker 1: the density of the nucleus of an atom, which is

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Speaker 1: of course ridiculously dense. One point of comparison I found

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Speaker 1: is that it's more than two point one times tend

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Speaker 1: to the fourteen times greater than the density of water.

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Speaker 1: All right, So that's pretty dense. A little bit dense, okay,

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00:22:13,960 --> 00:22:16,920
Speaker 1: so that's some hard water. There's a nice part about

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Speaker 1: this weird hypothesis, though, unlike aliens, you can actually falsify

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00:22:21,040 --> 00:22:24,840
Speaker 1: this one because they said, wow, if an object that massive, uh,

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Speaker 1: that big, a hunk of dark matter where to pass

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Speaker 1: through our solar system like this, it would gravitationally alter

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00:22:30,359 --> 00:22:32,879
Speaker 1: the orbits of mercury, the Earth, and the Moon in

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00:22:32,920 --> 00:22:35,679
Speaker 1: ways that you could detect. And I have found no

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Speaker 1: evidence that anyone has detected shifts in our orbit or

404
00:22:38,640 --> 00:22:41,359
Speaker 1: the orbit of mercury or the Moon. So as fun

405
00:22:41,400 --> 00:22:44,159
Speaker 1: as this one is, I think we can ignore this hypothesis,

406
00:22:44,320 --> 00:22:47,080
Speaker 1: all right, how about one more strange yet cool hypothesis

407
00:22:47,359 --> 00:22:52,959
Speaker 1: uh from Mattie Chuk in Astrophysical Journal Letters. In this

408
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Speaker 1: one is called one I Umumu as a title disruption

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Speaker 1: Fragment from a Binary Star System short version. Here the

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00:23:01,359 --> 00:23:06,280
Speaker 1: author models various scenarios and speculates that Omuma was once

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Speaker 1: part of a planet. That planet was quote tidally disrupted

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Speaker 1: in a catastrophic encounter with some kind of extremely dense

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Speaker 1: red dwarf star and then ejected into interstellar space from

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Speaker 1: a binary star system. Yeah. I think this seemed to

415
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Speaker 1: be working on the conclusion. I could be wrong, but

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Speaker 1: I think this seems to be going on the basis

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Speaker 1: of the idea that Mumu is more likely a rocky

418
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Speaker 1: asteroid type object rather than a volatile comet type object.

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Speaker 1: So this might not be as plausible now as it

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Speaker 1: was when this was published. But okay, I think it's

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Speaker 1: time to talk about the Aliens paper. So the authors

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Speaker 1: here are Avy Loebe and schmool By Alley. Avy Loebe

423
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Speaker 1: is a Harvard astrophysicist, very very you know, not some

424
00:23:52,680 --> 00:23:58,239
Speaker 1: internet cook, very well respected working astrophysicists, superactive in the

425
00:23:58,280 --> 00:24:01,720
Speaker 1: field all over the place, involved with the Brazilian projects

426
00:24:01,840 --> 00:24:04,960
Speaker 1: I could find. Uh, So you know this is not

427
00:24:05,040 --> 00:24:10,280
Speaker 1: timecube guy, right? When when when this individual speculates on aliens?

428
00:24:10,359 --> 00:24:14,960
Speaker 1: You listen. Yeah. But at the same time, somebody's credibility

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00:24:15,000 --> 00:24:17,399
Speaker 1: within a field or authority shouldn't make you just like

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Speaker 1: take whatever they speculate on at face value. So let's

431
00:24:21,560 --> 00:24:23,639
Speaker 1: take a look at it. These authors wrote a paper

432
00:24:23,680 --> 00:24:28,240
Speaker 1: called could solar radiation pressure explain Mumu was peculiar acceleration?

433
00:24:28,359 --> 00:24:33,119
Speaker 1: Acceleration in the Astrophysical Journal Letters UH in two thousand

434
00:24:33,160 --> 00:24:35,960
Speaker 1: and eighteen. It was just recently published. Now I have

435
00:24:36,040 --> 00:24:39,280
Speaker 1: to say, it's always a good sign when the the

436
00:24:39,400 --> 00:24:44,520
Speaker 1: alien hypothesis is not mentioned in the headline. I don't know.

437
00:24:44,680 --> 00:24:48,760
Speaker 1: It sometimes gives one hope, I think. Okay, So picking

438
00:24:48,840 --> 00:24:52,639
Speaker 1: up on the fact that Umu Mua quote showed deviations

439
00:24:52,680 --> 00:24:56,159
Speaker 1: from a Keplerian orbit at a high statistical significance, and

440
00:24:56,200 --> 00:24:59,320
Speaker 1: they're they're just saying it had a trajectory that was

441
00:24:59,480 --> 00:25:02,280
Speaker 1: not it would not have been powered by gravity alone.

442
00:25:02,359 --> 00:25:06,000
Speaker 1: It got the speed boost we've been talking about. And remember,

443
00:25:06,040 --> 00:25:09,000
Speaker 1: of course that previous researchers concluded it must be some

444
00:25:09,160 --> 00:25:12,920
Speaker 1: comet like object receiving a reaction boost from out gassing

445
00:25:13,000 --> 00:25:16,520
Speaker 1: in some unusual way that we can't detect. Loeb and

446
00:25:16,560 --> 00:25:20,679
Speaker 1: Bally right quote. Such an acceleration is naturally expected for

447
00:25:20,760 --> 00:25:25,800
Speaker 1: comets driven by the evaporating material. However, recent observational and

448
00:25:25,840 --> 00:25:29,720
Speaker 1: theoretical studies imply that Umu Mua is not an active commet.

449
00:25:30,119 --> 00:25:34,120
Speaker 1: We explore the possibility that the excess acceleration results from

450
00:25:34,160 --> 00:25:38,119
Speaker 1: solar radiation pressure, in other words, being pushed by the

451
00:25:38,280 --> 00:25:41,240
Speaker 1: radiation emitted by the Sun. And we'll come back to

452
00:25:41,280 --> 00:25:42,960
Speaker 1: that in a minute. And just to go back to

453
00:25:43,000 --> 00:25:47,840
Speaker 1: our earlier, earlier ideas about comets and outgassing, this would

454
00:25:47,840 --> 00:25:51,800
Speaker 1: be inverse acceleration consistent with the behavior of outgassing comets

455
00:25:52,000 --> 00:25:55,159
Speaker 1: again despite the lack of visible outgassing. Yeah, and oh

456
00:25:55,280 --> 00:25:57,480
Speaker 1: and one thing that has been pointed out is that, yeah,

457
00:25:57,520 --> 00:26:02,720
Speaker 1: this acceleration is seems to be the acceleration is decreasing

458
00:26:03,160 --> 00:26:06,320
Speaker 1: at a rate consistent with the inverse square law. Now,

459
00:26:06,320 --> 00:26:09,120
Speaker 1: the inverse square law, of course applies to like the

460
00:26:09,160 --> 00:26:12,920
Speaker 1: intensity of radiation as you get farther away from a

461
00:26:12,920 --> 00:26:16,280
Speaker 1: source of radiation emitting in all directions. I mean, a

462
00:26:16,400 --> 00:26:19,359
Speaker 1: terrible way to describe this, probably it's like the further

463
00:26:19,480 --> 00:26:22,880
Speaker 1: way you get from the sun, the less solar radiation

464
00:26:22,880 --> 00:26:24,919
Speaker 1: there is pushing you, in the same way that the

465
00:26:24,960 --> 00:26:28,600
Speaker 1: further paper airplane gets away from a uh, you know,

466
00:26:28,680 --> 00:26:32,440
Speaker 1: a fan or an air conditioner unit, the less it's

467
00:26:32,480 --> 00:26:34,600
Speaker 1: going to be propelled by that air well. Yeah kind of,

468
00:26:34,640 --> 00:26:38,160
Speaker 1: because yeah, the force is spreading out in all directions.

469
00:26:38,400 --> 00:26:40,880
Speaker 1: It's spreading out across two dimensions as you go back

470
00:26:40,920 --> 00:26:44,200
Speaker 1: in one dimension, and so that that's the inverse square law.

471
00:26:44,240 --> 00:26:46,800
Speaker 1: But of course what would also be pointed out by

472
00:26:46,800 --> 00:26:51,240
Speaker 1: the comet like object proponents is that basically an inverse

473
00:26:51,280 --> 00:26:55,560
Speaker 1: square law type slowdown in the acceleration would also be

474
00:26:56,160 --> 00:26:59,879
Speaker 1: consistent with the commentary outgassing, because as you get far

475
00:27:00,000 --> 00:27:02,480
Speaker 1: they're away from the sun, the heat on your surface

476
00:27:02,560 --> 00:27:05,920
Speaker 1: also decreases, and there's less heating of the material, less

477
00:27:05,920 --> 00:27:09,000
Speaker 1: heating of the material, and therefore less outgassing to create

478
00:27:09,040 --> 00:27:13,720
Speaker 1: that natural rocket propulsion. So that could be consistent with

479
00:27:13,760 --> 00:27:16,320
Speaker 1: either one with it being some kind of a radiation

480
00:27:16,359 --> 00:27:19,919
Speaker 1: pressure thing getting blown by the solar radiation or the

481
00:27:19,960 --> 00:27:24,720
Speaker 1: outgassing the natural rocket. So nobody's saying, oops, it looks

482
00:27:24,720 --> 00:27:28,440
Speaker 1: like it turned on. It's a photon thrusters or no. Now.

483
00:27:28,520 --> 00:27:31,680
Speaker 1: In fact, even I haven't come across anybody saying that

484
00:27:32,040 --> 00:27:35,520
Speaker 1: it looks like it is artificial propulsion due to a

485
00:27:35,560 --> 00:27:39,480
Speaker 1: reaction drive. The only things I've seen are natural reaction

486
00:27:39,680 --> 00:27:45,399
Speaker 1: propulsion and artificial solar radiation propulsion. So anyway, I listened

487
00:27:45,400 --> 00:27:48,360
Speaker 1: to a brief interview with av Loeb that helped clarify

488
00:27:48,440 --> 00:27:51,680
Speaker 1: his thinking for me. So basically, he talked about how

489
00:27:52,080 --> 00:27:55,119
Speaker 1: Mumu is weird. We've never seen anything like it before

490
00:27:55,240 --> 00:27:58,119
Speaker 1: apart and that's apart from the fact that it is

491
00:27:58,200 --> 00:28:01,359
Speaker 1: extra solar in origin, and so we pointed out several

492
00:28:01,400 --> 00:28:04,160
Speaker 1: things that make it make it seem like maybe this

493
00:28:04,240 --> 00:28:07,359
Speaker 1: could be an alien spacecraft. First of all, there is

494
00:28:07,400 --> 00:28:10,440
Speaker 1: the weird shape we know based on the variations in

495
00:28:10,440 --> 00:28:13,560
Speaker 1: in the way it reflects light, that it's extremely long

496
00:28:13,600 --> 00:28:17,080
Speaker 1: and narrow, moving through space in a tumbling pattern. He

497
00:28:17,160 --> 00:28:20,600
Speaker 1: mentioned one thing that the object seems to be at

498
00:28:20,600 --> 00:28:24,560
Speaker 1: the quote local standard of rest, and this basically means

499
00:28:24,600 --> 00:28:27,920
Speaker 1: that it is moving along with the average of all

500
00:28:28,080 --> 00:28:32,440
Speaker 1: stars in the our solar neighborhood. So if you look

501
00:28:32,480 --> 00:28:35,400
Speaker 1: at all the stars around us and how their movement

502
00:28:35,560 --> 00:28:39,400
Speaker 1: averages out, that's basically how this thing is going. Now,

503
00:28:39,560 --> 00:28:42,000
Speaker 1: Loebs says, quote, if you think about it, that's the

504
00:28:42,040 --> 00:28:44,760
Speaker 1: best frame to camouflage yourself if you don't want anyone

505
00:28:44,840 --> 00:28:47,960
Speaker 1: to know where your origins are, because there is no

506
00:28:48,120 --> 00:28:51,040
Speaker 1: star that is exactly at rest in that frame. But

507
00:28:51,160 --> 00:28:54,000
Speaker 1: this object seems to be there, so I don't know

508
00:28:54,000 --> 00:28:55,600
Speaker 1: about that. We can come back to that reasoning in

509
00:28:55,640 --> 00:28:58,560
Speaker 1: a bit now. He mentions also that it's cold, right,

510
00:28:58,600 --> 00:29:02,080
Speaker 1: so the infrared search with the Spitzer telescope revealed no

511
00:29:02,200 --> 00:29:05,880
Speaker 1: thermal emission, and you know, it's just very cold object,

512
00:29:05,960 --> 00:29:09,640
Speaker 1: meaning probably that it reflects rather than absorbs sunlight, so

513
00:29:09,640 --> 00:29:13,200
Speaker 1: it's highly reflective. There is, of course, the trajectory indicating

514
00:29:13,200 --> 00:29:15,800
Speaker 1: a speed boost more than what it could receive from

515
00:29:15,840 --> 00:29:18,920
Speaker 1: the gravity of the Sun and the planets alone. And

516
00:29:18,960 --> 00:29:21,800
Speaker 1: of course Loeb thinks that the speed boost cannot be

517
00:29:21,960 --> 00:29:25,400
Speaker 1: due to commentary out gassing, and he and here's why.

518
00:29:25,480 --> 00:29:28,320
Speaker 1: He says, First of all, we can't see any evidence

519
00:29:28,320 --> 00:29:31,840
Speaker 1: about gassing. A comet has a detectable tale from out gassing,

520
00:29:31,840 --> 00:29:34,440
Speaker 1: and we couldn't detect anything like that on a mom

521
00:29:34,480 --> 00:29:37,240
Speaker 1: on no images of it. Number two, he says, the

522
00:29:37,280 --> 00:29:39,800
Speaker 1: fraction of its mass that it would need to lose

523
00:29:40,000 --> 00:29:42,240
Speaker 1: in order to get the speed boost it has is

524
00:29:42,280 --> 00:29:46,680
Speaker 1: pretty significant. And then third, he says that outgassing from

525
00:29:46,720 --> 00:29:50,640
Speaker 1: comets tends to change the spin period. So if you

526
00:29:50,640 --> 00:29:53,520
Speaker 1: think about this thing about it being this weird elongated

527
00:29:53,600 --> 00:29:58,200
Speaker 1: commet that's tumbling through space, and then jets start shooting

528
00:29:58,240 --> 00:30:01,360
Speaker 1: out of part of it to increase its movement through space,

529
00:30:01,720 --> 00:30:05,240
Speaker 1: this would seem to probably change it's tumbling. Right. If

530
00:30:05,280 --> 00:30:08,280
Speaker 1: you imagine turning on some random air jets on a

531
00:30:08,320 --> 00:30:11,000
Speaker 1: spacecraft in orbit, Yeah, you would think that if it's

532
00:30:11,000 --> 00:30:13,480
Speaker 1: spinning faster, you'd get like a sonic the hedgehog situation,

533
00:30:13,560 --> 00:30:15,840
Speaker 1: right yeah, Or or it would stabilize it in one

534
00:30:15,880 --> 00:30:18,120
Speaker 1: direction or another. You'd see some kind of change, which

535
00:30:18,320 --> 00:30:21,400
Speaker 1: due to this out gas. Yeah, and so uh so

536
00:30:21,520 --> 00:30:23,920
Speaker 1: do we see anything like that? Well, Loeb says no,

537
00:30:24,160 --> 00:30:27,600
Speaker 1: there's no detectable change in the spin period of this object.

538
00:30:28,200 --> 00:30:31,280
Speaker 1: So what gives Mumua the extra push? Loeb and b

539
00:30:31,360 --> 00:30:35,600
Speaker 1: Alley's paper, as we said, hypothesizes that it is behaving

540
00:30:36,000 --> 00:30:39,080
Speaker 1: like a light sale also known as a solar sale,

541
00:30:39,280 --> 00:30:41,440
Speaker 1: and this would mean that the object is in fact

542
00:30:41,920 --> 00:30:43,920
Speaker 1: in this They work this out in a way. That's

543
00:30:43,920 --> 00:30:46,360
Speaker 1: also consistent with the light curve we saw in it.

544
00:30:46,600 --> 00:30:49,560
Speaker 1: The object is in fact less than a millimeter thick,

545
00:30:50,000 --> 00:30:53,840
Speaker 1: but with the surface area of twenty meters or more um.

546
00:30:53,920 --> 00:30:57,160
Speaker 1: And it's just it's highly reflective on at least one

547
00:30:57,240 --> 00:31:00,120
Speaker 1: surface when it's you know, because it's supposed to be

548
00:31:00,200 --> 00:31:03,600
Speaker 1: reflective as a solar sale. And so this is a

549
00:31:03,640 --> 00:31:07,960
Speaker 1: really interesting thing to consider, at least even if it's wrong. Yeah,

550
00:31:08,040 --> 00:31:11,040
Speaker 1: because the idea would be that this is, uh, this

551
00:31:11,120 --> 00:31:14,160
Speaker 1: is an artificially created solar sale, this is this is

552
00:31:14,200 --> 00:31:18,840
Speaker 1: a probe powered by solar sale propulsion. Yea, So what's

553
00:31:18,840 --> 00:31:21,360
Speaker 1: the deal with a light sale? Yeah, let's let's back

554
00:31:21,400 --> 00:31:23,080
Speaker 1: up and just talk about what a light sale is,

555
00:31:23,120 --> 00:31:26,280
Speaker 1: because it's it's an it's awesome concept. I believe we've

556
00:31:26,280 --> 00:31:27,720
Speaker 1: talked about it on the show in the past, but

557
00:31:27,760 --> 00:31:30,800
Speaker 1: it's always great to revisit it. So the concept itself

558
00:31:30,800 --> 00:31:34,600
Speaker 1: actually dates back to astronomer and mathematicition Honnes Kepler in

559
00:31:34,640 --> 00:31:37,840
Speaker 1: the sixteenth century, and it has to do with comets.

560
00:31:38,280 --> 00:31:41,080
Speaker 1: He noted that comet tales always point away from the sun,

561
00:31:41,520 --> 00:31:44,800
Speaker 1: and he inferred that sunlight itself was pushing them around

562
00:31:44,880 --> 00:31:48,520
Speaker 1: like cosmic wind socks. So essentially he predicted the so

563
00:31:48,640 --> 00:31:53,680
Speaker 1: called solar wind. We talked about solar radiation, uh, you know,

564
00:31:53,760 --> 00:31:56,920
Speaker 1: blasting out from from the sun in all directions. Now,

565
00:31:57,040 --> 00:31:58,880
Speaker 1: I think we want to be careful not to confuse

566
00:31:58,960 --> 00:32:01,320
Speaker 1: the idea of the solar radiation being the wind in

567
00:32:01,360 --> 00:32:04,520
Speaker 1: this analogy with the solar wind, which is the charged

568
00:32:04,600 --> 00:32:07,160
Speaker 1: particles string from the Sun, which is usually how if

569
00:32:07,400 --> 00:32:10,080
Speaker 1: an astronomer today talks about solar wind, I think they

570
00:32:10,080 --> 00:32:13,200
Speaker 1: mean that stream of charged particles. But this would be

571
00:32:13,560 --> 00:32:17,320
Speaker 1: something that's pushed along just by the radiation pressure of

572
00:32:17,360 --> 00:32:20,040
Speaker 1: the of what's coming off of the Sun. So so

573
00:32:20,080 --> 00:32:22,760
Speaker 1: how does that happen? Well, it has to do with

574
00:32:22,760 --> 00:32:24,840
Speaker 1: the photons. So a lot of the star is made

575
00:32:24,880 --> 00:32:27,120
Speaker 1: up of photons. And while photons don't possess mass, they

576
00:32:27,120 --> 00:32:29,600
Speaker 1: do have linear momentum and when they bounce off of

577
00:32:29,600 --> 00:32:32,680
Speaker 1: a reflective surface, they push against the surface. So all

578
00:32:32,720 --> 00:32:35,840
Speaker 1: you need is a reflective surface in order to have

579
00:32:36,000 --> 00:32:39,960
Speaker 1: a sail. And now we've u and this is not

580
00:32:40,000 --> 00:32:44,560
Speaker 1: just like purely hypothetical. We have experimented with solar sales.

581
00:32:45,040 --> 00:32:48,440
Speaker 1: The Mariner Tin Probe successfully demonstrated this technology in nineteen

582
00:32:48,920 --> 00:32:52,200
Speaker 1: four that the craft had solar arrays that were used

583
00:32:52,200 --> 00:32:56,040
Speaker 1: as impromptu sales, and then further experiments have proved it

584
00:32:56,040 --> 00:32:59,000
Speaker 1: out completely and it was used as a primary means

585
00:32:59,000 --> 00:33:02,400
Speaker 1: of propulsion on the Icarus probe. That's I K A

586
00:33:02,680 --> 00:33:04,960
Speaker 1: R O S. That was a Japanese probe. But yeah,

587
00:33:05,040 --> 00:33:08,600
Speaker 1: that was that was the Jackson probe, an interplanetary kite

588
00:33:08,600 --> 00:33:12,200
Speaker 1: craft accelerated by radiation of the Sun. Oh that's what

589
00:33:12,280 --> 00:33:16,360
Speaker 1: the acronyms. Yeah. Uh so. One of the things though

590
00:33:16,400 --> 00:33:20,760
Speaker 1: about sailing uh on the on on the rays of

591
00:33:20,800 --> 00:33:24,040
Speaker 1: the Sun is that you need to be patient if

592
00:33:24,080 --> 00:33:26,280
Speaker 1: you're using it as your primary means of propulsion for

593
00:33:26,320 --> 00:33:31,080
Speaker 1: interstellar travel. If you want a Mario Kart analogy, it's

594
00:33:31,120 --> 00:33:34,880
Speaker 1: like being Donkey Kong or Bowser. I think like you

595
00:33:34,920 --> 00:33:37,120
Speaker 1: get you get a better top speed in the end,

596
00:33:37,200 --> 00:33:39,000
Speaker 1: but it takes you a little while to get there.

597
00:33:39,120 --> 00:33:42,440
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, slow, bit dependable, right um or it's in

598
00:33:42,480 --> 00:33:46,760
Speaker 1: the in the initial stages anyway. So based on our

599
00:33:46,800 --> 00:33:50,680
Speaker 1: technology technology we have now, a journey to the nearest

600
00:33:50,720 --> 00:33:55,560
Speaker 1: star would take about seven thousand years using solar sales. Now.

601
00:33:55,600 --> 00:33:59,440
Speaker 1: I chatted with noted solar sale authority Dr Gregory L.

602
00:33:59,560 --> 00:34:02,800
Speaker 1: Matt Off about all of this, I think eight years ago,

603
00:34:03,320 --> 00:34:06,320
Speaker 1: and at the time he thought that it was possible

604
00:34:06,360 --> 00:34:08,920
Speaker 1: to maybe get that down to two thousand years with

605
00:34:08,960 --> 00:34:12,120
Speaker 1: the right kind of solar sale construction, uh construction that

606
00:34:12,160 --> 00:34:14,160
Speaker 1: we need to take place in orbit, and then we

607
00:34:14,239 --> 00:34:18,480
Speaker 1: might might be able to eventually get below a thousand years.

608
00:34:19,280 --> 00:34:22,680
Speaker 1: But below a hundred he said, that stretched all believability,

609
00:34:22,960 --> 00:34:26,120
Speaker 1: you know, from his standpoint. So, but I have to

610
00:34:26,120 --> 00:34:28,840
Speaker 1: stay this is unless you had a laser or particle

611
00:34:28,880 --> 00:34:33,160
Speaker 1: beam accelerator that was that was essentially creating its own

612
00:34:33,200 --> 00:34:36,600
Speaker 1: wind for the vehicle to try to travel on, and

613
00:34:36,920 --> 00:34:39,400
Speaker 1: that has been proposed. Yeah, so the idea here is

614
00:34:39,400 --> 00:34:41,440
Speaker 1: wine de pinned on the sun to push your sail

615
00:34:41,840 --> 00:34:44,520
Speaker 1: when you can use some sort of high powered laser

616
00:34:44,640 --> 00:34:48,840
Speaker 1: or particle beam accelerator to create a new like laser

617
00:34:48,960 --> 00:34:53,319
Speaker 1: highway for your solar sale vessel to sail upon. This

618
00:34:53,400 --> 00:34:57,120
Speaker 1: is a concept I believe we actually saw demonstrated, or

619
00:34:57,120 --> 00:35:01,959
Speaker 1: at least maybe not demonstrated, but they illustrated a little

620
00:35:02,000 --> 00:35:04,360
Speaker 1: bit in the Tron movies. I believe there's a solar

621
00:35:04,400 --> 00:35:08,279
Speaker 1: sale looking vessel. Oh, it's kind of flowing through the

622
00:35:08,920 --> 00:35:11,440
Speaker 1: what the internet? The computer world of whatever they call

623
00:35:11,640 --> 00:35:14,239
Speaker 1: super monorail? Is that what they called it? No? I

624
00:35:14,280 --> 00:35:19,080
Speaker 1: know now of course, in contemplating the possibility of a

625
00:35:19,120 --> 00:35:22,279
Speaker 1: space pro hope created by an alien civilization that's thousands

626
00:35:22,360 --> 00:35:25,480
Speaker 1: or millions of years older than us, Uh, some manner

627
00:35:25,520 --> 00:35:28,800
Speaker 1: of advanced solar sale need not be the only propulsion

628
00:35:28,920 --> 00:35:33,080
Speaker 1: technology and play. Uh. But but then again, I guess

629
00:35:33,080 --> 00:35:36,399
Speaker 1: it could be like a trolling motor, or maybe it's

630
00:35:36,400 --> 00:35:39,279
Speaker 1: the primary propulsion system and we're just letting human more

631
00:35:39,440 --> 00:35:42,960
Speaker 1: moral mortality or morality get in the way of our

632
00:35:43,080 --> 00:35:48,200
Speaker 1: understanding of of the time frame involved. Right, Um, you

633
00:35:48,239 --> 00:35:50,759
Speaker 1: know we we even today we tend to I think

634
00:35:50,800 --> 00:35:52,680
Speaker 1: we can fall into the trap of thinking like, well,

635
00:35:52,680 --> 00:35:54,279
Speaker 1: what kind of people are on this vessel or what

636
00:35:54,360 --> 00:35:56,200
Speaker 1: kind of people are waiting to hear back from it?

637
00:35:56,600 --> 00:36:00,080
Speaker 1: And certainly, if you if you push your idea of

638
00:36:00,160 --> 00:36:06,520
Speaker 1: um of intelligence in the universe beyond like the human lifespan,

639
00:36:06,880 --> 00:36:10,439
Speaker 1: you can certainly play with models uh that don't need

640
00:36:10,520 --> 00:36:13,640
Speaker 1: to hear back from their probe anytime soon. Yeah. And

641
00:36:14,000 --> 00:36:16,680
Speaker 1: I mean, of course, if you're thinking about it being

642
00:36:16,760 --> 00:36:21,480
Speaker 1: like a crude spacecraft with passengers, I don't know, were

643
00:36:21,520 --> 00:36:24,960
Speaker 1: we allowed to just play with our intuitions here. My intuition,

644
00:36:25,120 --> 00:36:27,759
Speaker 1: not based on evidence, is that if this were an

645
00:36:27,760 --> 00:36:31,040
Speaker 1: alien probe, which I don't think it is, it's probably uncrude. Right,

646
00:36:31,040 --> 00:36:33,720
Speaker 1: it doesn't have people, and it it doesn't have space

647
00:36:33,800 --> 00:36:38,919
Speaker 1: people not living ones anyway, maybe like a dead alien king. Right, Yeah,

648
00:36:38,960 --> 00:36:41,400
Speaker 1: But I don't know what are our intuitions worth. Maybe nothing,

649
00:36:41,960 --> 00:36:45,120
Speaker 1: nothing when it comes to aliens. But just if we're

650
00:36:45,520 --> 00:36:49,320
Speaker 1: if we just stick to the human answers for why, uh,

651
00:36:49,719 --> 00:36:52,920
Speaker 1: some civilization would send something like that out? I mean

652
00:36:53,000 --> 00:36:56,400
Speaker 1: we we can look to examples of you know, the

653
00:36:56,520 --> 00:37:00,839
Speaker 1: time capsule, a a tomb, a simple hey is there

654
00:37:00,840 --> 00:37:03,120
Speaker 1: anybody else in the universe? A message sent out into

655
00:37:03,120 --> 00:37:05,799
Speaker 1: the voice survey. Yeah. Yeah, So I think all of

656
00:37:05,800 --> 00:37:08,320
Speaker 1: that is possible, just to get based on the human

657
00:37:08,360 --> 00:37:11,759
Speaker 1: experience extrapolated to try and understand why an alien might

658
00:37:11,920 --> 00:37:14,440
Speaker 1: do something like this. But even backing out and not

659
00:37:14,520 --> 00:37:17,960
Speaker 1: trying to imagine alien psychology, if you just look at

660
00:37:18,000 --> 00:37:20,640
Speaker 1: it as a piece of technology, which is basically all

661
00:37:20,680 --> 00:37:24,320
Speaker 1: that Bali and Loweb were doing, they don't start talking

662
00:37:24,360 --> 00:37:28,759
Speaker 1: about civilizations. They're just saying, like, is it plausible that

663
00:37:28,880 --> 00:37:31,680
Speaker 1: this is what it is? And they conclude, yeah, if

664
00:37:31,719 --> 00:37:34,399
Speaker 1: you take that as a would it be plausible? They

665
00:37:34,400 --> 00:37:37,440
Speaker 1: do think it's plausible. They do some calculations to say,

666
00:37:37,600 --> 00:37:40,480
Speaker 1: would a light sale that matches the kind of acceleration

667
00:37:40,560 --> 00:37:42,920
Speaker 1: we saw on Umuma, would it make it through the

668
00:37:42,960 --> 00:37:45,920
Speaker 1: interstellar journey? And they say yeah, probably would. Would it

669
00:37:46,080 --> 00:37:48,640
Speaker 1: match the things we've seen so far, they say, yeah,

670
00:37:48,760 --> 00:37:51,680
Speaker 1: probably would. The question is do you have reason to

671
00:37:51,719 --> 00:37:54,320
Speaker 1: conclude that it is a light sale in the first place?

672
00:37:55,080 --> 00:37:57,200
Speaker 1: And we should also throw in here that that this

673
00:37:57,280 --> 00:38:00,360
Speaker 1: is part of kind of the Setti approach to to

674
00:38:00,560 --> 00:38:03,719
Speaker 1: looking for evidence of alien life is is not only

675
00:38:03,719 --> 00:38:07,640
Speaker 1: looking for transmissions, but looking for the signatures like this,

676
00:38:07,800 --> 00:38:09,920
Speaker 1: like what where is an exist what's an example of

677
00:38:10,000 --> 00:38:15,400
Speaker 1: something something out there in space doing something unexpected? Uh,

678
00:38:15,520 --> 00:38:19,440
Speaker 1: either in its its movements or how it's emitting h energy,

679
00:38:19,520 --> 00:38:22,120
Speaker 1: how it's visible or not visible to us, et cetera.

680
00:38:22,400 --> 00:38:25,520
Speaker 1: I mean, so many of the coolest things in the

681
00:38:25,560 --> 00:38:30,280
Speaker 1: history of astronomy that people have thought, well, maybe that's aliens.

682
00:38:30,320 --> 00:38:35,440
Speaker 1: It's always just something weird and we can't really explain

683
00:38:35,520 --> 00:38:37,760
Speaker 1: We don't know the best way to explain it without

684
00:38:37,800 --> 00:38:41,640
Speaker 1: invoking aliens, even though there's no clear indication it's aliens.

685
00:38:41,680 --> 00:38:43,319
Speaker 1: It's just kind of like, well, I don't know what

686
00:38:43,440 --> 00:38:46,120
Speaker 1: else to say about it. That's you know, that's the

687
00:38:46,160 --> 00:38:49,000
Speaker 1: thing with the Wow signal, Like there's no clear indication

688
00:38:49,040 --> 00:38:51,640
Speaker 1: that it's aliens, but it just like has defied a

689
00:38:51,640 --> 00:38:56,200
Speaker 1: lot of other natural explanations, so people keep obsessing about it. Yeah,

690
00:38:56,239 --> 00:38:58,319
Speaker 1: I mean to a certain extent, it's it's kind of

691
00:38:58,360 --> 00:39:01,400
Speaker 1: like ancient people staring up into the sky seeing something

692
00:39:02,280 --> 00:39:05,560
Speaker 1: unexplainable and then attributing it to the gods, like the

693
00:39:05,560 --> 00:39:10,239
Speaker 1: alien aliens are our our modern gods and in many respects,

694
00:39:10,320 --> 00:39:14,160
Speaker 1: and uh maybe there's even like a subconscious uh need

695
00:39:14,239 --> 00:39:17,400
Speaker 1: to to explain things in the in that in that way,

696
00:39:17,440 --> 00:39:19,960
Speaker 1: you know. And of course, as the ancient streamed of

697
00:39:20,000 --> 00:39:23,799
Speaker 1: becoming gods themselves and achieving apotheosis, we are doing the

698
00:39:23,880 --> 00:39:27,640
Speaker 1: same things that we're they're currently being hypothesized as the

699
00:39:27,680 --> 00:39:30,840
Speaker 1: products of advanced alien civilizations. We're trying to put together

700
00:39:31,160 --> 00:39:35,000
Speaker 1: these light sale interstellar probes like ABVI. Loeb himself is

701
00:39:35,040 --> 00:39:37,719
Speaker 1: involved in something called Breakthrough star Shot, which is a

702
00:39:37,719 --> 00:39:41,440
Speaker 1: program to develop a fleet of small light sale probes

703
00:39:41,520 --> 00:39:44,760
Speaker 1: that will travel to another solar system, such as Alpha Centauri,

704
00:39:44,840 --> 00:39:47,160
Speaker 1: which is more than four point three light years away.

705
00:39:47,400 --> 00:39:49,839
Speaker 1: I should also point out that that Matt Loff, who

706
00:39:49,920 --> 00:39:52,360
Speaker 1: is a pioneer in solar sales, is also involved in

707
00:39:52,400 --> 00:39:54,360
Speaker 1: that project. Yeah, but it seems like a lot of

708
00:39:54,360 --> 00:39:56,400
Speaker 1: people are Yeah. Yeah, there's a you can go to

709
00:39:56,440 --> 00:40:00,120
Speaker 1: their their their website at Breakthrough Initiatives dot org. His

710
00:40:00,520 --> 00:40:03,239
Speaker 1: holdest of people, including Freeman Dyson, is on there. It's

711
00:40:03,280 --> 00:40:09,040
Speaker 1: just I mean, it's a cool project. Sober He was

712
00:40:09,080 --> 00:40:13,000
Speaker 1: the villain and one of the Bond movies, right, yeah,

713
00:40:13,040 --> 00:40:14,920
Speaker 1: I think so. Yeah, he was the one. He was

714
00:40:14,960 --> 00:40:18,440
Speaker 1: the guy who was his His grand plan was just

715
00:40:18,520 --> 00:40:21,920
Speaker 1: to be a cocaine lord. Yeah. Yeah, he was a

716
00:40:21,920 --> 00:40:24,239
Speaker 1: pretty vicious villain, but not not involved in this this

717
00:40:24,280 --> 00:40:27,200
Speaker 1: project at all. Let's go ahead and squash rumors that

718
00:40:27,360 --> 00:40:30,200
Speaker 1: Bond villains are building a solar sale. No, I made

719
00:40:30,239 --> 00:40:33,040
Speaker 1: that up. I'm sorry. Oh, you don't know. I should

720
00:40:33,080 --> 00:40:35,680
Speaker 1: mention some other things that have been cited as evidence

721
00:40:35,760 --> 00:40:39,640
Speaker 1: of the possible artificial origins of this object. One is

722
00:40:39,719 --> 00:40:42,880
Speaker 1: just that if it's a random piece of natural interstellar

723
00:40:42,960 --> 00:40:46,720
Speaker 1: space debris, there must be a lot more interstellar space

724
00:40:46,760 --> 00:40:50,920
Speaker 1: debris than our astronomical models have predicted we we generally

725
00:40:50,960 --> 00:40:53,799
Speaker 1: didn't think there was enough that we would have randomly

726
00:40:53,840 --> 00:40:57,040
Speaker 1: seen one like this, but we did. So either there's

727
00:40:57,080 --> 00:41:00,160
Speaker 1: a lot more interstellar space debreath than we thought, or

728
00:41:00,239 --> 00:41:04,000
Speaker 1: this thing probably isn't interstellar space debris, which would mean

729
00:41:04,040 --> 00:41:06,960
Speaker 1: it's either local, which seems unlikely based on a lot

730
00:41:06,960 --> 00:41:10,960
Speaker 1: of analyzes I've read, or that it is artificial in origin,

731
00:41:11,520 --> 00:41:13,560
Speaker 1: or or I guess you know, we're a one in

732
00:41:13,719 --> 00:41:15,520
Speaker 1: I don't know how many one in a million chance

733
00:41:15,640 --> 00:41:20,320
Speaker 1: or something. Yeah, and most i've seemed like maybe one

734
00:41:20,520 --> 00:41:24,480
Speaker 1: speculation that it ultimately isn't from beyond our Solar System.

735
00:41:24,480 --> 00:41:27,200
Speaker 1: It comes I mean from the or cloud. But oh yeah,

736
00:41:27,320 --> 00:41:30,720
Speaker 1: multiple people have have proposed that I saw one paper

737
00:41:30,800 --> 00:41:34,239
Speaker 1: really putting the hammer down on those hypotheses, saying, it's

738
00:41:34,280 --> 00:41:38,000
Speaker 1: just really hard to explain the characteristics of this object,

739
00:41:38,040 --> 00:41:41,800
Speaker 1: including it's it's hyperbolic trajectory and everything by reference to

740
00:41:41,880 --> 00:41:44,480
Speaker 1: things within our Solar system. The main hypothesis there is

741
00:41:44,520 --> 00:41:47,840
Speaker 1: that it's like it was some kind of or cloud

742
00:41:47,880 --> 00:41:50,680
Speaker 1: object that got thrown out of whack due to a

743
00:41:50,760 --> 00:41:53,799
Speaker 1: hidden ninth planet. You know, that planet acts out there,

744
00:41:53,800 --> 00:41:57,120
Speaker 1: which nobody ever really finds any evidence of uh, and

745
00:41:57,200 --> 00:42:00,399
Speaker 1: so I think that is not a favorite hypothesis. Well,

746
00:42:00,400 --> 00:42:03,320
Speaker 1: that's planet Doom. That's where the robi's come from. Oh yeah,

747
00:42:03,360 --> 00:42:05,959
Speaker 1: the space mommies. There was another thing that I thought

748
00:42:06,000 --> 00:42:08,800
Speaker 1: was funny in this interview I listened to with Avy Loebe.

749
00:42:09,200 --> 00:42:11,480
Speaker 1: It was on some program I found on YouTube called

750
00:42:11,600 --> 00:42:16,200
Speaker 1: Event Horizon. But anyway, so Lobe says, he makes this comparison.

751
00:42:16,239 --> 00:42:18,239
Speaker 1: He says, you know, when when you're looking at a mum,

752
00:42:18,560 --> 00:42:20,719
Speaker 1: it's kind of like you're walking on the beach and

753
00:42:20,719 --> 00:42:23,360
Speaker 1: you're picking up seashells and then you come across a

754
00:42:23,400 --> 00:42:26,920
Speaker 1: plastic bottle. It's unlike the things around it. It seems

755
00:42:26,960 --> 00:42:29,719
Speaker 1: like it could have been artificial in origin. And I

756
00:42:29,719 --> 00:42:32,200
Speaker 1: couldn't help but notice this is somewhat similar to the

757
00:42:32,320 --> 00:42:35,480
Speaker 1: argument that the English theologian William Paley made with the

758
00:42:35,480 --> 00:42:38,880
Speaker 1: watchmaker idea. You know, he says, you're walking across the

759
00:42:38,960 --> 00:42:41,360
Speaker 1: heath and you you kick your foot into a watch

760
00:42:41,440 --> 00:42:43,600
Speaker 1: You know it can't have been artificial. You know, it

761
00:42:43,640 --> 00:42:46,160
Speaker 1: can have been natural in origin. It must have been designed.

762
00:42:46,760 --> 00:42:49,080
Speaker 1: It's like the turtle on a fence post argument. Right,

763
00:42:49,120 --> 00:42:50,640
Speaker 1: I guess. So I don't know how it got there,

764
00:42:50,640 --> 00:42:54,239
Speaker 1: but it must have had some help. Now, as we've

765
00:42:54,280 --> 00:42:57,960
Speaker 1: said before, Ivy Lobe is certainly not just some internet

766
00:42:58,000 --> 00:43:00,680
Speaker 1: kok this is, And in fact I have not come

767
00:43:00,680 --> 00:43:03,560
Speaker 1: across any there may be this out here out there,

768
00:43:03,560 --> 00:43:05,239
Speaker 1: but I was looking around and I couldn't find any

769
00:43:05,280 --> 00:43:10,720
Speaker 1: experts disagreeing with the essential core mathematical reasoning in his paper,

770
00:43:11,080 --> 00:43:13,279
Speaker 1: which spends most of the time making the case that

771
00:43:13,320 --> 00:43:16,040
Speaker 1: it's plausible that this thing could be a light sale,

772
00:43:16,040 --> 00:43:18,480
Speaker 1: and that would explain what we see about it. But

773
00:43:18,719 --> 00:43:21,040
Speaker 1: of course a lot of people have taken issue with

774
00:43:21,040 --> 00:43:24,480
Speaker 1: the conclusions he draws from it, that we should conclude

775
00:43:24,520 --> 00:43:27,799
Speaker 1: it's possible that it's a light sale because people tend

776
00:43:27,920 --> 00:43:31,200
Speaker 1: to be skeptical about going to the it's aliens explanation.

777
00:43:31,719 --> 00:43:33,360
Speaker 1: So I guess we should move on to that. We

778
00:43:33,360 --> 00:43:36,080
Speaker 1: should look at some criticisms of this idea. Is it

779
00:43:36,160 --> 00:43:39,600
Speaker 1: really aliens this time? But let's take a break first

780
00:43:39,600 --> 00:43:42,319
Speaker 1: before we get to that. Let's keep you hanging. We'll

781
00:43:42,320 --> 00:43:47,279
Speaker 1: be right back. Thank alright, We're back, all right. So

782
00:43:47,320 --> 00:43:49,399
Speaker 1: we ended last time by saying, looking at everything we've

783
00:43:49,400 --> 00:43:51,680
Speaker 1: seen so far, should we conclude, yes, it really is

784
00:43:51,719 --> 00:43:54,880
Speaker 1: aliens this time? I think the answer is no, we

785
00:43:54,920 --> 00:43:57,480
Speaker 1: are not justified to conclude that. But it is true

786
00:43:57,520 --> 00:44:01,160
Speaker 1: that this object has gotten even weirder more interesting, and

787
00:44:01,160 --> 00:44:03,399
Speaker 1: there there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, there's nothing

788
00:44:03,400 --> 00:44:07,719
Speaker 1: wrong with the mystery. Yeah. Love has mentioned uh in

789
00:44:07,920 --> 00:44:12,560
Speaker 1: in interviews, he's mentioned Sherlock Holmes. I think this might

790
00:44:12,560 --> 00:44:15,359
Speaker 1: be a bad analogy, but we'll see. Yeah, he he

791
00:44:15,520 --> 00:44:17,920
Speaker 1: uh he said. He points out the Holmes quote that

792
00:44:18,040 --> 00:44:21,000
Speaker 1: is tossed around a lot. When you have eliminated the impossible,

793
00:44:21,040 --> 00:44:24,960
Speaker 1: whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. And um,

794
00:44:26,120 --> 00:44:28,799
Speaker 1: you know, I think it's perhaps, based on what I've

795
00:44:28,800 --> 00:44:30,920
Speaker 1: looked at, it's evens like it's a stretch to say

796
00:44:31,000 --> 00:44:34,000
Speaker 1: that we've really ruled out all possibilities. You know, I

797
00:44:34,040 --> 00:44:37,080
Speaker 1: don't think so at all. He to make that quote work,

798
00:44:37,120 --> 00:44:40,240
Speaker 1: he would have to be once you have eliminated the improbable,

799
00:44:40,320 --> 00:44:43,400
Speaker 1: or something like that. Yeah. I should also point this

800
00:44:43,400 --> 00:44:45,719
Speaker 1: is one of those quotes. The Sherlock Holmes quote is

801
00:44:45,760 --> 00:44:48,719
Speaker 1: often used as a way to prop up improbable ideas

802
00:44:50,280 --> 00:44:53,360
Speaker 1: by other individuals and uh And as much as we

803
00:44:53,400 --> 00:44:56,239
Speaker 1: respect Sherlock Holmes as a fictional bastion of logic, I

804
00:44:56,280 --> 00:44:59,200
Speaker 1: think we should always remember that his creator was personally

805
00:44:59,239 --> 00:45:02,839
Speaker 1: taken in by a lot supernatural nonsense later on in

806
00:45:02,920 --> 00:45:06,160
Speaker 1: his life. Well, which you know that's a part of

807
00:45:06,160 --> 00:45:09,080
Speaker 1: that of course, is just a lesson that so many

808
00:45:09,120 --> 00:45:11,840
Speaker 1: of us are susceptible to that kind of thing. But also,

809
00:45:11,920 --> 00:45:16,160
Speaker 1: let's not confused shell like homes with the real person. Right,

810
00:45:17,040 --> 00:45:19,759
Speaker 1: So before we look at some the major criticisms of

811
00:45:19,800 --> 00:45:23,480
Speaker 1: this idea, uh, let's let's refresh on the main arguments

812
00:45:23,560 --> 00:45:26,440
Speaker 1: that Mumu is a light sale. First of all, you've

813
00:45:26,480 --> 00:45:29,560
Speaker 1: got the increase in its speed, which would be consistent

814
00:45:29,640 --> 00:45:33,239
Speaker 1: with commentary outgassing, but we couldn't see any sign of

815
00:45:33,280 --> 00:45:37,440
Speaker 1: commentary outgassing. Then you've got its weird shape, low temperature,

816
00:45:37,520 --> 00:45:42,520
Speaker 1: high reflectivity, all would be consistent with the strange shape

817
00:45:42,600 --> 00:45:46,200
Speaker 1: and reflectivity of a light sale. Plus the authors do

818
00:45:46,280 --> 00:45:49,360
Speaker 1: all these calculations to show that a hypothetical light sale

819
00:45:49,360 --> 00:45:52,840
Speaker 1: would be able to survive the interstellar journey and produce

820
00:45:52,880 --> 00:45:56,000
Speaker 1: the results we've observed. And they point out the fact

821
00:45:56,080 --> 00:45:59,640
Speaker 1: that it's spin period doesn't appear to change, and they say,

822
00:45:59,800 --> 00:46:02,160
Speaker 1: so if it's out gassing, if jets of gas are

823
00:46:02,200 --> 00:46:04,200
Speaker 1: coming off of it to give it the speed boost,

824
00:46:04,440 --> 00:46:07,040
Speaker 1: shouldn't that have changed the way the object was tumbling

825
00:46:07,120 --> 00:46:09,920
Speaker 1: or rotating in space? And we didn't see any evidence

826
00:46:09,960 --> 00:46:12,240
Speaker 1: of that. We didn't see any evidence of a change

827
00:46:12,239 --> 00:46:15,600
Speaker 1: in the tumbling pattern. Now, one critic I found was

828
00:46:15,680 --> 00:46:19,040
Speaker 1: quoted consulted by an article in NBC News, and this

829
00:46:19,160 --> 00:46:21,880
Speaker 1: critic was a Core and Baylor Jones, and astronomer at

830
00:46:21,880 --> 00:46:26,200
Speaker 1: the Max Plank Institute in Heidelberg, Germany. And Baylor Jones

831
00:46:26,320 --> 00:46:29,560
Speaker 1: started with a general comment saying, in science we must

832
00:46:29,600 --> 00:46:32,160
Speaker 1: ask ourselves where is the evidence, not where is the

833
00:46:32,280 --> 00:46:35,000
Speaker 1: lack of evidence, so that I can fit any hypothesis

834
00:46:35,040 --> 00:46:37,799
Speaker 1: that I like. And specifically, what Baylor Jones pointed out

835
00:46:37,840 --> 00:46:39,719
Speaker 1: that I thought was a good point was about the

836
00:46:39,760 --> 00:46:45,000
Speaker 1: tumbling motion of the spacecraft. Baylor Jones said, quote, why

837
00:46:45,120 --> 00:46:48,080
Speaker 1: send a spacecraft which is doing this? If it were

838
00:46:48,080 --> 00:46:51,360
Speaker 1: a spacecraft that's this tumbling would make it impossible to

839
00:46:51,480 --> 00:46:54,520
Speaker 1: keep any instruments pointed at the Earth. Of course, one

840
00:46:54,560 --> 00:46:57,200
Speaker 1: could now say it was an accident, or the aliens

841
00:46:57,239 --> 00:47:00,000
Speaker 1: did this to deceive us. One can always come up

842
00:47:00,040 --> 00:47:03,600
Speaker 1: with increasingly implausible suggestions that have no evidence in order

843
00:47:03,640 --> 00:47:07,279
Speaker 1: to maintain an idea. Well, but then again, who says

844
00:47:07,320 --> 00:47:10,920
Speaker 1: that they're interested in Earth. I mean that's well, I mean,

845
00:47:11,719 --> 00:47:15,120
Speaker 1: if it was an interstellar probe, what what would it

846
00:47:15,200 --> 00:47:19,239
Speaker 1: be doing if it was not trying to look for something? Yeah,

847
00:47:19,280 --> 00:47:23,200
Speaker 1: but not necessarily Earth? Right, Well, I mean what applies

848
00:47:23,239 --> 00:47:27,040
Speaker 1: to Earth would apply to anything there to see us? Right,

849
00:47:27,520 --> 00:47:29,960
Speaker 1: if it's stumbling, why would if it's stumbling, it's going

850
00:47:30,000 --> 00:47:32,839
Speaker 1: to have trouble looking at anything in particular. I mean

851
00:47:32,840 --> 00:47:36,160
Speaker 1: that's assuming the ship is functioning correctly and it's not

852
00:47:36,239 --> 00:47:38,799
Speaker 1: in a catastrophic spin. Right. Well, this is something that

853
00:47:39,280 --> 00:47:41,840
Speaker 1: the Lobe and Bali point out in their paper. They're like, well,

854
00:47:41,880 --> 00:47:44,360
Speaker 1: you know, maybe we shouldn't assume that it is a

855
00:47:44,520 --> 00:47:49,520
Speaker 1: functioning spacecraft. This could be a long dead, long derelict

856
00:47:49,680 --> 00:47:55,080
Speaker 1: piece of technology, and good things always come of derrelic spaceships.

857
00:47:55,320 --> 00:47:58,040
Speaker 1: Seen enough films to know that. But that would explain

858
00:47:58,080 --> 00:48:00,080
Speaker 1: several things. That would explain why doesn't appear to be

859
00:48:00,120 --> 00:48:04,000
Speaker 1: emitting any kind of radio signals, why it's tumbling, all

860
00:48:04,040 --> 00:48:07,640
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. Now here's another set of criticisms.

861
00:48:07,800 --> 00:48:10,080
Speaker 1: I thought this was really good. Actually, Robert, do you

862
00:48:10,080 --> 00:48:13,600
Speaker 1: ever watch the uh the PBS Space Time show. Yes,

863
00:48:13,600 --> 00:48:16,759
Speaker 1: I've checked this out before. Yeah, So the host of

864
00:48:16,960 --> 00:48:20,000
Speaker 1: PBS Spacetime, which is like a video series, is the

865
00:48:20,080 --> 00:48:24,560
Speaker 1: astrophysicist Matt O'Dowd. I think he's Australian and I liked

866
00:48:24,600 --> 00:48:26,240
Speaker 1: his take on this. I thought he had a smart,

867
00:48:26,440 --> 00:48:29,239
Speaker 1: measured take. Of course, he's one of these people you

868
00:48:29,320 --> 00:48:32,200
Speaker 1: can trust not to jump to the it's aliens conclusion,

869
00:48:32,520 --> 00:48:35,319
Speaker 1: right right, he stands by the the thing it's never

870
00:48:35,360 --> 00:48:38,200
Speaker 1: aliens until it is. Yeah, And I thought his analysis

871
00:48:38,239 --> 00:48:40,320
Speaker 1: was pretty good. So he you know, basically he points

872
00:48:40,320 --> 00:48:43,960
Speaker 1: out that most of this light sale hypothesis would kind

873
00:48:43,960 --> 00:48:46,200
Speaker 1: of fall apart if there was just direct evidence of

874
00:48:46,239 --> 00:48:49,520
Speaker 1: out gassing. Right, So is it possible that this could

875
00:48:49,560 --> 00:48:52,480
Speaker 1: be a comet like object getting a speed boost from

876
00:48:52,480 --> 00:48:55,839
Speaker 1: outgassing in a way that's invisible to us as far

877
00:48:55,880 --> 00:48:58,759
Speaker 1: as we know. Sure, sure, that's possible. The authors of

878
00:48:58,840 --> 00:49:02,200
Speaker 1: that June ten paper that we mentioned earlier, they hypothesized

879
00:49:02,239 --> 00:49:04,440
Speaker 1: that either it's a comet with little to no dust

880
00:49:04,600 --> 00:49:07,799
Speaker 1: or large grains of dust that reflect less light than

881
00:49:07,840 --> 00:49:11,319
Speaker 1: many smaller grains. And so what about the fact that

882
00:49:11,360 --> 00:49:16,520
Speaker 1: the hypothetical outgassing hasn't changed the spin period of the object. Well,

883
00:49:16,560 --> 00:49:19,680
Speaker 1: that is perhaps harder to explain. But O'Dowd says, you know,

884
00:49:19,719 --> 00:49:23,040
Speaker 1: nobody has shown proof that the outgassing must change the

885
00:49:23,080 --> 00:49:26,799
Speaker 1: tumbling pattern in an observable way, so this argument really

886
00:49:26,840 --> 00:49:29,920
Speaker 1: doesn't sense it yet, even though it does seem weird. Well,

887
00:49:29,920 --> 00:49:33,080
Speaker 1: how about that strange elongated shape, O'Dowd says here, you know,

888
00:49:33,120 --> 00:49:35,840
Speaker 1: maybe it was created in some kind of odd event.

889
00:49:36,200 --> 00:49:39,319
Speaker 1: Think of that paper we mentioned earlier about the fracturing

890
00:49:39,360 --> 00:49:42,520
Speaker 1: of a planet due to tidal disruption from a red

891
00:49:42,560 --> 00:49:45,640
Speaker 1: dwarf star and then ejection from a binary system. You

892
00:49:45,640 --> 00:49:48,320
Speaker 1: can think about that maybe producing a weird shaped object

893
00:49:48,360 --> 00:49:51,960
Speaker 1: in space. Or maybe this object was somehow broken apart

894
00:49:52,000 --> 00:49:54,960
Speaker 1: as it was traveling and then reformed in an elongated

895
00:49:55,000 --> 00:49:58,560
Speaker 1: shape due to gravity during its travels through space. Something

896
00:49:58,560 --> 00:50:01,520
Speaker 1: like that. We we can't rule that out. What about

897
00:50:01,520 --> 00:50:04,440
Speaker 1: this fact we mentioned earlier that we would expect interstellar

898
00:50:04,560 --> 00:50:07,600
Speaker 1: debried to be too rare for us to have encountered

899
00:50:07,640 --> 00:50:10,719
Speaker 1: in the way we encountered this one, O'Dowd here says,

900
00:50:10,800 --> 00:50:12,880
Speaker 1: you know, first of all, maybe we just got lucky.

901
00:50:13,280 --> 00:50:15,520
Speaker 1: You can't ever rule that out, though I don't really

902
00:50:15,560 --> 00:50:17,560
Speaker 1: think that's a good option to resort to, since it

903
00:50:17,640 --> 00:50:21,000
Speaker 1: is by definition unlikely. Yeah, I mean you you're supposed

904
00:50:21,040 --> 00:50:24,200
Speaker 1: to approach things where along the lines that there's there's

905
00:50:24,200 --> 00:50:27,680
Speaker 1: nothing special about the about the about the Earth perspective,

906
00:50:27,680 --> 00:50:30,719
Speaker 1: about the human perspective. Yeah, if you're if you're saying,

907
00:50:30,760 --> 00:50:32,799
Speaker 1: maybe we just got lucky, I'm not sure that's a

908
00:50:32,840 --> 00:50:37,120
Speaker 1: better explanation than it's aliens. But the other ones. Okay,

909
00:50:37,160 --> 00:50:39,880
Speaker 1: he here we go. Maybe it's actually from inside our

910
00:50:39,920 --> 00:50:43,520
Speaker 1: Solar system somehow. For example, maybe this thing we mentioned earlier,

911
00:50:43,520 --> 00:50:46,319
Speaker 1: that it's some hidden ninth planet out there. It's sent

912
00:50:46,400 --> 00:50:49,120
Speaker 1: the object on this fast rejectory. Though as I mentioned,

913
00:50:49,160 --> 00:50:52,640
Speaker 1: i've seen papers tearing apart this hypothesis. It's really hard

914
00:50:52,680 --> 00:50:55,919
Speaker 1: to explain things about this object if it came from here,

915
00:50:55,960 --> 00:50:59,040
Speaker 1: So that doesn't seem very likely. Then the last option,

916
00:50:59,120 --> 00:51:01,400
Speaker 1: this does seem maybe like the one we should be

917
00:51:01,440 --> 00:51:04,239
Speaker 1: looking at. Maybe there's just a lot more interstellar junk

918
00:51:04,280 --> 00:51:07,279
Speaker 1: than we thought. Maybe, for example, stars at the end

919
00:51:07,320 --> 00:51:10,279
Speaker 1: of their life tend to shed comments in their or

920
00:51:10,440 --> 00:51:13,959
Speaker 1: cloud and just pump a ton of volatile stuff into

921
00:51:14,000 --> 00:51:17,480
Speaker 1: interstellar space. Another thing O'Dowd points out that I think

922
00:51:17,560 --> 00:51:19,880
Speaker 1: is a good point is this, if you just assume

923
00:51:20,000 --> 00:51:23,000
Speaker 1: that this is a broken probe that randomly entered our

924
00:51:23,040 --> 00:51:26,279
Speaker 1: Solar system traveling through interstellar space, and is not some

925
00:51:26,360 --> 00:51:31,120
Speaker 1: kind of functioning functional object. You would have to assume,

926
00:51:31,719 --> 00:51:34,840
Speaker 1: much like the interstellar space debriefing, that there are just

927
00:51:35,040 --> 00:51:38,600
Speaker 1: tons of these broken probes out there. Right, he gives

928
00:51:38,600 --> 00:51:40,799
Speaker 1: the number that you you'd have to expect that there's

929
00:51:40,840 --> 00:51:43,719
Speaker 1: like ten to the fifteen of them per star in

930
00:51:43,760 --> 00:51:46,720
Speaker 1: the Milky Way. That's just probes coming out the gills.

931
00:51:46,719 --> 00:51:49,520
Speaker 1: Why would there be that many probes. Also, one more

932
00:51:49,560 --> 00:51:51,400
Speaker 1: point he makes, and I think this might actually be

933
00:51:51,560 --> 00:51:56,080
Speaker 1: his best point. Uh, it's that though Mumu is moving

934
00:51:56,160 --> 00:51:59,600
Speaker 1: very fast by solar system standards, is actually moving very

935
00:51:59,640 --> 00:52:03,360
Speaker 1: slow by mature light sale standards. The whole point of

936
00:52:03,400 --> 00:52:06,359
Speaker 1: a light sale is that over time it can build

937
00:52:06,440 --> 00:52:09,759
Speaker 1: up speeds much greater than any known rocket based propulsion

938
00:52:09,840 --> 00:52:12,879
Speaker 1: up to you know, large fractions of the speed of light,

939
00:52:12,880 --> 00:52:15,359
Speaker 1: like the speed of light or something. That that's why

940
00:52:15,440 --> 00:52:17,719
Speaker 1: you would have a light sale for long distance and

941
00:52:17,920 --> 00:52:22,920
Speaker 1: interstellar travel. Donkey Kong in the early stages sonic long

942
00:52:23,000 --> 00:52:24,840
Speaker 1: term stages. Yeah, it's supposed to build up to this

943
00:52:24,920 --> 00:52:28,080
Speaker 1: incredible speed, which was you know, a move was fast,

944
00:52:28,120 --> 00:52:31,240
Speaker 1: but it wasn't anything like that. So if it were

945
00:52:31,360 --> 00:52:34,960
Speaker 1: a light sale probe, why was it going so slow? Now,

946
00:52:35,080 --> 00:52:38,239
Speaker 1: for any of these and there's some indication that Lobe

947
00:52:38,280 --> 00:52:41,879
Speaker 1: actually does this, for any of these criticisms, you could say, well,

948
00:52:41,920 --> 00:52:44,640
Speaker 1: maybe the aliens were just trying to disguise it, you know,

949
00:52:44,760 --> 00:52:46,960
Speaker 1: they're trying to make it look not like a probe.

950
00:52:47,239 --> 00:52:49,839
Speaker 1: What if it was tumbling to discourage us from thinking

951
00:52:49,880 --> 00:52:52,000
Speaker 1: it's an alien probe. What if it's going slow to

952
00:52:52,160 --> 00:52:55,759
Speaker 1: discourage us from thinking it's an alien probe. That's the

953
00:52:55,840 --> 00:52:57,440
Speaker 1: kind of thing that you know, that that makes it

954
00:52:57,520 --> 00:53:00,920
Speaker 1: kind of unfalsifiable. You can't rule out explanations like that.

955
00:53:00,920 --> 00:53:02,919
Speaker 1: But that's also just not a good way to think

956
00:53:02,960 --> 00:53:06,080
Speaker 1: about explanations. I mean, it's a fun way to think

957
00:53:06,080 --> 00:53:09,360
Speaker 1: about it, um, but you know, but by that logic,

958
00:53:09,480 --> 00:53:12,480
Speaker 1: you can believe almost anything about anything. You can always

959
00:53:12,600 --> 00:53:17,560
Speaker 1: hypothesize that there's intention behind not wanting something to seem

960
00:53:17,600 --> 00:53:19,480
Speaker 1: like what it is. Right. You see this though in

961
00:53:19,520 --> 00:53:23,320
Speaker 1: a lot of paranoid thinking and in conspiracy theory thinking,

962
00:53:23,760 --> 00:53:26,440
Speaker 1: where yeah, if you assume that everyone is lying to you,

963
00:53:26,520 --> 00:53:29,399
Speaker 1: then pretty much any fantastic model you're trying to present

964
00:53:29,440 --> 00:53:31,680
Speaker 1: as possible. That's what they want you to think. Man.

965
00:53:32,200 --> 00:53:35,160
Speaker 1: You know, so like, yeah, if you measured the contents

966
00:53:35,200 --> 00:53:37,640
Speaker 1: of a contrail on an airplane and you find it's

967
00:53:37,680 --> 00:53:40,319
Speaker 1: nothing but water vapor, they're like, well that you know,

968
00:53:40,360 --> 00:53:42,960
Speaker 1: they're just trying to their spring water vapor up there

969
00:53:42,960 --> 00:53:45,400
Speaker 1: to distract you from the times it's not water vapor.

970
00:53:46,120 --> 00:53:50,239
Speaker 1: I mean, anytime there's intentions and deception behind your explanation

971
00:53:50,280 --> 00:53:52,959
Speaker 1: of something, you can resort to that to explain why

972
00:53:53,000 --> 00:53:55,120
Speaker 1: it doesn't look the way it should if you're right.

973
00:53:55,440 --> 00:53:57,840
Speaker 1: An At the same time, I mean, you do have

974
00:53:57,880 --> 00:54:01,200
Speaker 1: to acknowledge that if to a certain extent it would

975
00:54:01,239 --> 00:54:05,200
Speaker 1: make sense to make your probe inconspicuous or not so

976
00:54:05,280 --> 00:54:10,400
Speaker 1: conspicuous that it would demand, you know, enormous efforts to

977
00:54:10,480 --> 00:54:13,960
Speaker 1: chase after it. I wonder if, I mean, here's a

978
00:54:14,040 --> 00:54:17,440
Speaker 1: question I haven't fully considered. Would there just be better,

979
00:54:17,600 --> 00:54:21,640
Speaker 1: simpler ways of making the same kind of probe inconspicuous?

980
00:54:22,080 --> 00:54:24,239
Speaker 1: I mean, couldn't you have probably made it in such

981
00:54:24,280 --> 00:54:26,160
Speaker 1: a way that we wouldn't have detected it in the

982
00:54:26,160 --> 00:54:29,560
Speaker 1: first place. I don't know, but maybe yeah. I mean,

983
00:54:29,560 --> 00:54:34,440
Speaker 1: of course, it depends on the how technologically advanced a

984
00:54:34,600 --> 00:54:39,480
Speaker 1: given civilization within a given star system would happen to

985
00:54:39,480 --> 00:54:42,320
Speaker 1: be right, because certainly there are plenty of models of

986
00:54:42,400 --> 00:54:46,360
Speaker 1: human civilization that would never have seen Mulla Mula, and

987
00:54:46,360 --> 00:54:49,480
Speaker 1: then conceivably there are versions of our future. There are

988
00:54:49,560 --> 00:54:52,759
Speaker 1: future possibilities in which we could easily check it out.

989
00:54:53,000 --> 00:54:57,160
Speaker 1: If you imagine this did come from another star system,

990
00:54:57,200 --> 00:54:59,799
Speaker 1: it would have to have been sent long before there

991
00:54:59,840 --> 00:55:03,239
Speaker 1: was anything like technological civilization on Earth. So it could

992
00:55:03,320 --> 00:55:06,520
Speaker 1: not be that like they heard our radio signals and

993
00:55:06,640 --> 00:55:09,400
Speaker 1: responded by sending a probe, right, and then they certainly

994
00:55:09,400 --> 00:55:12,759
Speaker 1: couldn't anticipate our level of our specifically our level of

995
00:55:12,800 --> 00:55:15,239
Speaker 1: technological advance. Yeah, it appears this thing has been out

996
00:55:15,280 --> 00:55:18,520
Speaker 1: there for thousands, millions of years. So again it comes

997
00:55:18,520 --> 00:55:19,960
Speaker 1: and it comes back to the fact that we shouldn't

998
00:55:19,960 --> 00:55:23,439
Speaker 1: take ourselves too seriously in trying to figure out what

999
00:55:23,480 --> 00:55:27,480
Speaker 1: this is. You know, an astrophysicist that I follow on Twitter,

1000
00:55:27,880 --> 00:55:31,040
Speaker 1: Katie mack, I saw in an article that she had

1001
00:55:31,080 --> 00:55:34,319
Speaker 1: some tweets that got highlighted The thought were very insightful

1002
00:55:34,760 --> 00:55:37,480
Speaker 1: about research of this kind, and she she was just

1003
00:55:37,520 --> 00:55:41,759
Speaker 1: basically trying to explain what causes research like this to

1004
00:55:41,800 --> 00:55:44,560
Speaker 1: be published. Not what I'm saying, this shouldn't have been published.

1005
00:55:44,640 --> 00:55:48,640
Speaker 1: But uh, you know, generally most astrophysicists are not going

1006
00:55:48,680 --> 00:55:51,080
Speaker 1: to look at this and be convinced that it's aliens.

1007
00:55:51,600 --> 00:55:53,800
Speaker 1: And yet at the same time we keep seeing things

1008
00:55:53,840 --> 00:55:56,439
Speaker 1: like this. So she points out how you know, there's really,

1009
00:55:57,000 --> 00:56:00,680
Speaker 1: for an astrophysicists not much of a downside to publishing

1010
00:56:00,760 --> 00:56:03,640
Speaker 1: something like this. It's interesting and it gets you attention

1011
00:56:04,200 --> 00:56:07,279
Speaker 1: as long as you're not fudging the numbers or something,

1012
00:56:07,320 --> 00:56:09,839
Speaker 1: as long as you know your underlying logic is there.

1013
00:56:09,920 --> 00:56:12,920
Speaker 1: Even if it doesn't justify the conclusion that it's aliens,

1014
00:56:13,640 --> 00:56:16,600
Speaker 1: You're you're showing that something is not ruled out by

1015
00:56:16,640 --> 00:56:19,000
Speaker 1: what we know. So you end up with something that

1016
00:56:19,040 --> 00:56:23,720
Speaker 1: she calls quote not obviously wrong and also huge if true.

1017
00:56:24,320 --> 00:56:26,960
Speaker 1: And so the you know, the chance that this will

1018
00:56:27,080 --> 00:56:29,919
Speaker 1: backfire and really hurt your career is kind of low

1019
00:56:30,520 --> 00:56:33,840
Speaker 1: because you've basically you've done your homework correctly in publishing

1020
00:56:33,880 --> 00:56:37,040
Speaker 1: this paper. But there's also a slight chance that maybe

1021
00:56:37,040 --> 00:56:38,880
Speaker 1: it turns out it is aliens and you were the

1022
00:56:38,920 --> 00:56:41,000
Speaker 1: first person to say so, and then they name it

1023
00:56:41,080 --> 00:56:44,000
Speaker 1: after you, right, And so I think that's an interesting

1024
00:56:44,120 --> 00:56:46,480
Speaker 1: way of thinking about it. I don't know what our

1025
00:56:47,840 --> 00:56:52,600
Speaker 1: base level of skepticism about aliens explanations should be, because

1026
00:56:52,600 --> 00:56:55,200
Speaker 1: obviously I tend to be of the skeptical nature and

1027
00:56:55,200 --> 00:56:57,640
Speaker 1: to not think, oh, yeah, it's aliens. But also I

1028
00:56:57,640 --> 00:57:01,120
Speaker 1: don't think aliens explanation are on the same level as

1029
00:57:01,160 --> 00:57:03,680
Speaker 1: saying like it's a ghost or something not at all.

1030
00:57:03,920 --> 00:57:07,000
Speaker 1: So so what what is the bar of entry for

1031
00:57:07,080 --> 00:57:12,120
Speaker 1: explanations that invoke extraterrestrial artificial origins of things? I mean,

1032
00:57:12,160 --> 00:57:15,960
Speaker 1: as extraterrestrials are, depending on which experts you talk to,

1033
00:57:16,280 --> 00:57:20,640
Speaker 1: arranges from possible to uh, you know, extremely likely. Where

1034
00:57:20,680 --> 00:57:23,160
Speaker 1: the math gets limiting is is when you're trying to

1035
00:57:23,320 --> 00:57:26,360
Speaker 1: decide if it's something that we could ever possibly encounter, right.

1036
00:57:26,680 --> 00:57:28,280
Speaker 1: I mean, you can stare up at the night sky

1037
00:57:28,600 --> 00:57:31,400
Speaker 1: and think to yourself, somewhere out there, there's a planet

1038
00:57:31,960 --> 00:57:34,400
Speaker 1: and it has something on there that is that is

1039
00:57:34,560 --> 00:57:36,960
Speaker 1: life like, that is life in a in a way

1040
00:57:37,000 --> 00:57:38,920
Speaker 1: that is very much like life here on Earth to

1041
00:57:38,960 --> 00:57:41,880
Speaker 1: some extent. But will we ever see it, will ever

1042
00:57:41,920 --> 00:57:44,360
Speaker 1: see us well we ever have any knowledge of it?

1043
00:57:45,040 --> 00:57:49,200
Speaker 1: Is it alive right now or is it long dead? Etcetera? Um,

1044
00:57:49,680 --> 00:57:52,760
Speaker 1: you know that that's where it gets tricky. Well it

1045
00:57:53,000 --> 00:57:55,640
Speaker 1: and certainly is it capable of traveling here and and

1046
00:57:56,080 --> 00:58:00,040
Speaker 1: and and all the you know the complexities involved with

1047
00:58:00,040 --> 00:58:02,760
Speaker 1: with thinking about interstellar travel, and would it even want to?

1048
00:58:03,000 --> 00:58:05,840
Speaker 1: I mean, we always just assume space exploration would be

1049
00:58:05,880 --> 00:58:09,160
Speaker 1: a goal of any intelligences. They've got to come home that, yeah,

1050
00:58:09,160 --> 00:58:11,360
Speaker 1: I mean, we've got an out rushmore, we've got the

1051
00:58:11,360 --> 00:58:14,120
Speaker 1: Grand Canyon, We've got all these great things. Really, they

1052
00:58:14,120 --> 00:58:15,920
Speaker 1: want to come and see the whales. I don't know

1053
00:58:16,000 --> 00:58:18,520
Speaker 1: the best way to reconcile this. I'm sure somebody out

1054
00:58:18,520 --> 00:58:22,000
Speaker 1: there has done philosophical work on like what the what

1055
00:58:22,200 --> 00:58:26,040
Speaker 1: the prior probability of aliens should be. I'm sure somebody's

1056
00:58:26,080 --> 00:58:28,280
Speaker 1: got some smartass paper about how it should be zero

1057
00:58:28,480 --> 00:58:30,760
Speaker 1: or something. But you know what I mean, Like, it's

1058
00:58:30,880 --> 00:58:33,360
Speaker 1: it's just hard to know what your base level of

1059
00:58:33,640 --> 00:58:37,720
Speaker 1: entry on these kind of questions is. How weird would

1060
00:58:37,720 --> 00:58:41,160
Speaker 1: a comment have to be behaving before you start thinking

1061
00:58:41,200 --> 00:58:44,720
Speaker 1: it's more likely that it's aliens then that it's some

1062
00:58:44,800 --> 00:58:47,920
Speaker 1: weird comment, you know, Like how weird does it have

1063
00:58:48,000 --> 00:58:50,120
Speaker 1: to get? But this brings me back to, you know,

1064
00:58:50,440 --> 00:58:53,720
Speaker 1: ideas about the Dyson's fear. Yes, the idea that this

1065
00:58:53,800 --> 00:58:56,720
Speaker 1: is the kind of cosmic megastructure you might look for,

1066
00:58:57,040 --> 00:58:59,760
Speaker 1: or and not even necessarily seeing it specifically, but seeing

1067
00:59:00,200 --> 00:59:05,080
Speaker 1: something that is behaving like a dicense fhear, well, techno signatures. Yeah,

1068
00:59:05,080 --> 00:59:07,680
Speaker 1: but what happens if you do see something that matches

1069
00:59:07,720 --> 00:59:09,640
Speaker 1: that techno signature? Then do you say, oops, well it's

1070
00:59:09,640 --> 00:59:12,560
Speaker 1: a dicenspear, that's a that's some sort of megastructure created

1071
00:59:12,560 --> 00:59:14,640
Speaker 1: by an alien civilization? Or do you or do you

1072
00:59:14,680 --> 00:59:17,640
Speaker 1: then ask well, what else could be creating the signature

1073
00:59:17,640 --> 00:59:19,880
Speaker 1: of a dicense fhere? What is it about the universe

1074
00:59:19,920 --> 00:59:23,960
Speaker 1: that I don't understand that I'm tempted to um to

1075
00:59:24,080 --> 00:59:27,960
Speaker 1: interpret as a dicense fhere? I think our fiction has

1076
00:59:28,200 --> 00:59:33,560
Speaker 1: very been very poor at comparing us for the more

1077
00:59:33,680 --> 00:59:36,840
Speaker 1: likely way that we would encounter alien technology, which is

1078
00:59:36,840 --> 00:59:41,160
Speaker 1: in a in an ambiguous way. You know, it's always clear,

1079
00:59:41,320 --> 00:59:44,600
Speaker 1: isn't it? Isn't it always clear? It's at least eventually clear.

1080
00:59:44,680 --> 00:59:48,240
Speaker 1: And almost all sci fi stories, first contact stories, uh

1081
00:59:48,400 --> 00:59:51,440
Speaker 1: like you you know, okay, yeah, it's definitely aliens. We're

1082
00:59:51,440 --> 00:59:53,920
Speaker 1: getting a signal in English or something, or they're coming

1083
00:59:53,960 --> 00:59:56,919
Speaker 1: here to put us in a pie. It's never just like, well,

1084
00:59:57,000 --> 01:00:00,520
Speaker 1: we saw something really anomalous in space, and we don't

1085
01:00:00,600 --> 01:00:02,840
Speaker 1: quite know how to explain it, and some people think

1086
01:00:02,840 --> 01:00:05,440
Speaker 1: it's aliens and other people don't, and we never really

1087
01:00:05,480 --> 01:00:08,360
Speaker 1: got a confident answer one way or another. But I

1088
01:00:08,400 --> 01:00:11,120
Speaker 1: think that maybe that's the more likely scenario. We're gonna

1089
01:00:11,120 --> 01:00:14,480
Speaker 1: be stuck with these mysteries and everybody arguing until the

1090
01:00:14,600 --> 01:00:16,520
Speaker 1: end of time about whether it was aliens or not.

1091
01:00:17,160 --> 01:00:20,040
Speaker 1: This brings me back to something Farranocchia said. Um. He

1092
01:00:20,120 --> 01:00:24,160
Speaker 1: said concerning um a mulla mula quote. We probably know

1093
01:00:24,240 --> 01:00:26,680
Speaker 1: as much about a mulla mula as we're ever going

1094
01:00:26,800 --> 01:00:30,400
Speaker 1: to know. You know, it's it's points that it's gone forever,

1095
01:00:30,440 --> 01:00:32,200
Speaker 1: it's on it's it's it's on its way out. It's

1096
01:00:32,200 --> 01:00:35,080
Speaker 1: already as far from the Sun as the orbit of Saturn.

1097
01:00:35,160 --> 01:00:37,680
Speaker 1: So what if that is the thing that ends up

1098
01:00:37,720 --> 01:00:41,240
Speaker 1: in our history books. There was this weird comment, but

1099
01:00:41,640 --> 01:00:45,360
Speaker 1: maybe according to to to some experts, it could have

1100
01:00:45,440 --> 01:00:50,040
Speaker 1: been something else and we'll never know. Well, but wait

1101
01:00:50,040 --> 01:00:53,240
Speaker 1: a minute, that that's what we're stuck with. The telescopes

1102
01:00:53,320 --> 01:00:55,680
Speaker 1: and uh and powers of observation we have now but

1103
01:00:55,680 --> 01:00:57,800
Speaker 1: if we were to get close to it again, if

1104
01:00:57,840 --> 01:00:59,920
Speaker 1: we sent something out to catch it. We we we

1105
01:01:00,040 --> 01:01:01,560
Speaker 1: talked earlier about how we would come back to this,

1106
01:01:01,680 --> 01:01:03,880
Speaker 1: the idea of going out to catch it. Could we

1107
01:01:04,000 --> 01:01:06,600
Speaker 1: learn more? I mean obviously there the answer is yes,

1108
01:01:06,640 --> 01:01:09,440
Speaker 1: we could send a probe to try to catch it. Unfortunately,

1109
01:01:09,600 --> 01:01:12,520
Speaker 1: with today's propulsion we would not be able to reach

1110
01:01:12,560 --> 01:01:17,880
Speaker 1: it in time or at least with normal rocket based propulsion. Right. Well, basically, yeah,

1111
01:01:17,960 --> 01:01:20,600
Speaker 1: so this is where we get to uh, what's what's

1112
01:01:20,640 --> 01:01:23,800
Speaker 1: referred to as Project Lira. Uh. This is and now

1113
01:01:23,840 --> 01:01:26,080
Speaker 1: this this is based on some information that came out

1114
01:01:26,200 --> 01:01:29,560
Speaker 1: last November uh and uh and and basically this is

1115
01:01:29,600 --> 01:01:32,840
Speaker 1: an ambitious scheme to reach a mua mua quote within

1116
01:01:32,880 --> 01:01:36,280
Speaker 1: the time frame of a few decades. And the the

1117
01:01:36,320 --> 01:01:39,840
Speaker 1: authors of this uh this paper, they concluded that quote,

1118
01:01:39,840 --> 01:01:43,560
Speaker 1: although reaching the object is challenging, UH, there seemed to

1119
01:01:43,560 --> 01:01:47,840
Speaker 1: be feasible options based on current and near term technology. UH.

1120
01:01:47,880 --> 01:01:50,959
Speaker 1: And with this we're talking about generally they're talking about

1121
01:01:51,040 --> 01:01:54,800
Speaker 1: launch dates of around with the X, with with the

1122
01:01:55,200 --> 01:01:57,959
Speaker 1: you know, the expectation that if we were to push

1123
01:01:58,000 --> 01:02:00,320
Speaker 1: forward with any of these efforts, there would in pitably

1124
01:02:00,360 --> 01:02:03,000
Speaker 1: be delays as well. This comes, by the way, from

1125
01:02:03,000 --> 01:02:06,200
Speaker 1: the Initiative for Interstellar Studies. It's a UK based not

1126
01:02:06,320 --> 01:02:09,439
Speaker 1: for profit company with a strong emphasis on education and

1127
01:02:09,600 --> 01:02:11,320
Speaker 1: if you live in the UK you should definitely check

1128
01:02:11,320 --> 01:02:13,400
Speaker 1: out their website. They do a number of talk summer

1129
01:02:13,400 --> 01:02:17,720
Speaker 1: schools and so forth. UH. Their website is I for

1130
01:02:18,080 --> 01:02:22,760
Speaker 1: i S dot org. But this in this particular paper,

1131
01:02:22,800 --> 01:02:25,520
Speaker 1: they looked at a few different ways of pulling this

1132
01:02:25,600 --> 01:02:29,680
Speaker 1: off of chasing down the Mua mua UM, namely sending

1133
01:02:29,720 --> 01:02:33,720
Speaker 1: spacecraft after it via a Jupiter fly by or a

1134
01:02:33,840 --> 01:02:37,840
Speaker 1: Solar oh birth maneuver. So these are essentially gravity assists

1135
01:02:37,840 --> 01:02:40,840
Speaker 1: by which a craft falls into the gravity well of

1136
01:02:40,880 --> 01:02:44,920
Speaker 1: a given planet, star, or other object and then accelerates

1137
01:02:44,960 --> 01:02:48,640
Speaker 1: out when its fall reaches maximum speed. They also looked

1138
01:02:48,640 --> 01:02:51,200
Speaker 1: at using a few different current in near future launch

1139
01:02:51,280 --> 01:02:54,439
Speaker 1: and propulsion technologies stuff coming online in the next few years,

1140
01:02:54,440 --> 01:02:58,640
Speaker 1: like NASA's Space Launch System UH, SpaceX Falcon Heavy and

1141
01:02:58,640 --> 01:03:01,320
Speaker 1: the space X Big Falcon Pocket. And they also touch

1142
01:03:01,360 --> 01:03:04,480
Speaker 1: on solar and laser sales UH and UH. They also

1143
01:03:04,560 --> 01:03:07,320
Speaker 1: touch on the prospect of Project star Shot, which we

1144
01:03:07,400 --> 01:03:10,520
Speaker 1: mentioned already, and in all of this they calculate the

1145
01:03:10,520 --> 01:03:13,960
Speaker 1: necessary mass of such a craft, including a shielding for

1146
01:03:14,000 --> 01:03:16,960
Speaker 1: anything using a solar oh birth acceleration because it would

1147
01:03:16,960 --> 01:03:19,040
Speaker 1: have to get closer to the Sun and then the

1148
01:03:19,080 --> 01:03:23,760
Speaker 1: craft needs to decelerate as well as it reaches a muamua. Right,

1149
01:03:24,000 --> 01:03:27,240
Speaker 1: So this is an interesting fairly in depth of the paper.

1150
01:03:27,800 --> 01:03:30,600
Speaker 1: But I should also note that they ultimately present these

1151
01:03:30,640 --> 01:03:32,920
Speaker 1: ideas as things we could put in place for the

1152
01:03:33,000 --> 01:03:36,280
Speaker 1: next muamua. UH. This in part to the fact that

1153
01:03:36,320 --> 01:03:38,560
Speaker 1: they would inevitably be to beat a LAS if we

1154
01:03:38,560 --> 01:03:41,480
Speaker 1: were to push for one launch UH, and they want

1155
01:03:41,480 --> 01:03:43,360
Speaker 1: to focus in the future on two to three more

1156
01:03:43,400 --> 01:03:47,320
Speaker 1: specific plans that could be utilized. But I think the

1157
01:03:47,760 --> 01:03:51,240
Speaker 1: most optimistic flight time that they specifically mentioned in the

1158
01:03:51,240 --> 01:03:56,280
Speaker 1: paper is a potential laser sale propulsion method requiring three

1159
01:03:56,320 --> 01:03:59,800
Speaker 1: point five years to launch, uh, though they mentioned that

1160
01:04:00,040 --> 01:04:03,520
Speaker 1: five or even ten years maybe unrealistic, and then taking

1161
01:04:04,200 --> 01:04:10,280
Speaker 1: seven years to reach the destination. So yeah, if if

1162
01:04:10,320 --> 01:04:13,080
Speaker 1: we really wanted it, if if I want it, I

1163
01:04:13,080 --> 01:04:14,720
Speaker 1: mean I want, But I mean, you know that's the

1164
01:04:14,720 --> 01:04:17,760
Speaker 1: thing about magic megaprojects more. I it can't just just

1165
01:04:17,800 --> 01:04:24,120
Speaker 1: be me that um enough people and governments there has

1166
01:04:24,160 --> 01:04:26,760
Speaker 1: to there has to be a will to go after it,

1167
01:04:27,240 --> 01:04:29,240
Speaker 1: and uh, yeah, I'm not sure we're there. And it

1168
01:04:29,280 --> 01:04:30,880
Speaker 1: kind of comes back to the whole idea is it

1169
01:04:30,920 --> 01:04:34,520
Speaker 1: conspicuous or not? Because if it were conspicuous, if there

1170
01:04:34,600 --> 01:04:37,200
Speaker 1: was like a more of a solid argument that this was,

1171
01:04:37,520 --> 01:04:42,120
Speaker 1: say a Darrylic spaceship that that fell into our system here,

1172
01:04:42,680 --> 01:04:45,680
Speaker 1: then there would be probably more pushed to go and

1173
01:04:45,760 --> 01:04:48,400
Speaker 1: check it out, or certainly more pushed to please stay

1174
01:04:48,400 --> 01:04:50,400
Speaker 1: away from it because we've seen all the movies. Well,

1175
01:04:50,440 --> 01:04:54,840
Speaker 1: I mean, I wonder if exploring possibilities that it could

1176
01:04:54,840 --> 01:04:58,400
Speaker 1: be an alien intelligence in the most responsible way without

1177
01:04:58,480 --> 01:05:02,080
Speaker 1: you know, running the Daily Mail headline, Uh, just exploring

1178
01:05:02,120 --> 01:05:05,040
Speaker 1: you know what, if is it plausible? Could could you

1179
01:05:05,080 --> 01:05:07,560
Speaker 1: work out the details on how it could be consistent

1180
01:05:07,600 --> 01:05:10,680
Speaker 1: with an alien probe? If that it could help get

1181
01:05:10,720 --> 01:05:13,200
Speaker 1: the kind of funding to study objects like this in

1182
01:05:13,240 --> 01:05:15,640
Speaker 1: the future, like you're talking about, Yeah, that that could

1183
01:05:15,680 --> 01:05:17,520
Speaker 1: be on the right track. Well, to go back to

1184
01:05:17,560 --> 01:05:21,720
Speaker 1: the Daily Mail example, I mean, possible derelict alien spaceship

1185
01:05:22,000 --> 01:05:25,800
Speaker 1: much better headline than weird comment. You know which one

1186
01:05:25,880 --> 01:05:29,000
Speaker 1: is going to uh, you know, invoke the most interest,

1187
01:05:29,080 --> 01:05:31,480
Speaker 1: get those dollars pouring in. Well, I mean one thing

1188
01:05:31,480 --> 01:05:33,320
Speaker 1: I do want to say, though, I think in the

1189
01:05:33,440 --> 01:05:35,840
Speaker 1: end I am not one over by the idea that

1190
01:05:35,960 --> 01:05:38,360
Speaker 1: it is an alien probe, And to be very fair,

1191
01:05:38,400 --> 01:05:41,080
Speaker 1: to be alien lobe, they're not saying it is an

1192
01:05:41,080 --> 01:05:44,800
Speaker 1: alien probe. They're just they're playing with the hypothetical. They're saying,

1193
01:05:44,840 --> 01:05:47,280
Speaker 1: if it were an alien probe, would it be consistent

1194
01:05:47,320 --> 01:05:49,880
Speaker 1: with what we see, would it be more consistent than

1195
01:05:49,960 --> 01:05:52,920
Speaker 1: it being some type of comment like object. And they

1196
01:05:53,080 --> 01:05:56,600
Speaker 1: they're trying to make that case. But either way, I

1197
01:05:56,640 --> 01:05:58,920
Speaker 1: think they are at least highlighting that, Hey, it'd be

1198
01:05:58,920 --> 01:06:02,120
Speaker 1: a good thing to have a program to look for

1199
01:06:02,240 --> 01:06:06,680
Speaker 1: techno signatures of potential alien technology, such as light sales.

1200
01:06:06,720 --> 01:06:08,840
Speaker 1: I mean, we've talked before, as as you mentioned earlier,

1201
01:06:08,880 --> 01:06:12,360
Speaker 1: about ways of looking for Dyson's fears out there among

1202
01:06:12,400 --> 01:06:15,160
Speaker 1: the stars. We should also have ways of looking for

1203
01:06:15,280 --> 01:06:18,200
Speaker 1: light sales that are traveling in the interstellar medium or

1204
01:06:18,240 --> 01:06:21,480
Speaker 1: traveling through the Solar system, right, And we ultimately have

1205
01:06:21,520 --> 01:06:25,640
Speaker 1: to keep updating the sort of techno signatures we're looking

1206
01:06:25,640 --> 01:06:28,840
Speaker 1: for based on our own advancements. Yeah, but regardless of

1207
01:06:28,840 --> 01:06:31,880
Speaker 1: whether MUA is actually one of these, it's it's at

1208
01:06:31,920 --> 01:06:34,720
Speaker 1: least a good impetus to start thinking about how we

1209
01:06:34,720 --> 01:06:37,520
Speaker 1: would detect these things. Yeah, and indeed how we might

1210
01:06:37,560 --> 01:06:39,840
Speaker 1: respond to them, how we might go and check up

1211
01:06:39,920 --> 01:06:42,919
Speaker 1: check it out, and how we might bring back artifacts

1212
01:06:43,240 --> 01:06:46,280
Speaker 1: from it to to terrorize our planet that sort of.

1213
01:06:47,480 --> 01:06:50,160
Speaker 1: But I yeah, I'm, I'm I'm certainly not one over

1214
01:06:50,160 --> 01:06:52,800
Speaker 1: that the pro but I really I really want it

1215
01:06:52,840 --> 01:06:56,480
Speaker 1: to be because that's like the most romantic thing, like

1216
01:06:56,520 --> 01:07:00,640
Speaker 1: we wouldn't. I mean, that's what what you want in

1217
01:07:00,720 --> 01:07:05,160
Speaker 1: life to to have lived long enough too to see

1218
01:07:05,200 --> 01:07:07,200
Speaker 1: something that might be a spaceship, but not have to

1219
01:07:07,280 --> 01:07:09,560
Speaker 1: deal with the consequences of it actually being one. So

1220
01:07:09,640 --> 01:07:13,280
Speaker 1: if it is a robast sarcophagus and there is a

1221
01:07:13,320 --> 01:07:17,360
Speaker 1: space mummy on there, what would the mummies curse on

1222
01:07:17,400 --> 01:07:19,640
Speaker 1: that ship be? Like? Well, I mean, what's gonna happen?

1223
01:07:19,640 --> 01:07:23,600
Speaker 1: Our beatles going to crawl out of my eyes? Um? Well,

1224
01:07:23,640 --> 01:07:25,640
Speaker 1: that that kind of brings us back to our our

1225
01:07:25,640 --> 01:07:28,280
Speaker 1: older episode. I'll never take your your helmet off on

1226
01:07:28,320 --> 01:07:31,919
Speaker 1: an alien planet because there's a whole host of bad

1227
01:07:31,920 --> 01:07:35,480
Speaker 1: things that could happen. Yeah, okay, well, yeah, so I

1228
01:07:35,480 --> 01:07:38,160
Speaker 1: think my conclusion has to be probably not a probe,

1229
01:07:38,320 --> 01:07:41,400
Speaker 1: probably not aliens, but it is one of the most

1230
01:07:41,440 --> 01:07:45,560
Speaker 1: interesting things in space, right. It's a it's probably just

1231
01:07:45,600 --> 01:07:48,919
Speaker 1: a weird comment, but in being a weird comment, it's

1232
01:07:49,000 --> 01:07:51,320
Speaker 1: just it reveals that there's so much more out there

1233
01:07:51,360 --> 01:07:54,080
Speaker 1: that we don't understand, you know, that we're just we're

1234
01:07:54,120 --> 01:07:59,560
Speaker 1: continuing to to understand how the universe works, and and

1235
01:07:59,560 --> 01:08:01,360
Speaker 1: that alone is amazing. It does not have to be

1236
01:08:01,440 --> 01:08:05,320
Speaker 1: an alien spaceship to be amazing. Well said. And either way,

1237
01:08:05,440 --> 01:08:08,040
Speaker 1: I think somebody out there should create a tiki drink

1238
01:08:09,200 --> 01:08:11,560
Speaker 1: named the Muamua because I think there are a lot

1239
01:08:11,560 --> 01:08:14,040
Speaker 1: of possibilities that you could have the the ice in

1240
01:08:14,040 --> 01:08:17,840
Speaker 1: the tiki drink shaped like go a muamua. I think

1241
01:08:17,880 --> 01:08:20,040
Speaker 1: that could be really interesting. So, any bar tenders listening,

1242
01:08:20,240 --> 01:08:23,360
Speaker 1: baghette shaped ice, baggett shaped ice, Yeah, drop it in there.

1243
01:08:23,560 --> 01:08:25,559
Speaker 1: Uh if you're so. Anyway, if you're a bar tender

1244
01:08:25,600 --> 01:08:28,439
Speaker 1: out there, please create this drink and tell me about it.

1245
01:08:28,479 --> 01:08:33,519
Speaker 1: The mold could double for some kind of novelty baghet

1246
01:08:33,640 --> 01:08:37,519
Speaker 1: themed French drink, and they could also double for some

1247
01:08:37,600 --> 01:08:42,519
Speaker 1: kind of novelty cigar themed Cuban drink. What else? What

1248
01:08:42,560 --> 01:08:44,200
Speaker 1: else could you? Oh man, I don't know, but just

1249
01:08:44,240 --> 01:08:48,120
Speaker 1: the hot dog drink a custom mua mua ice mold

1250
01:08:48,280 --> 01:08:51,160
Speaker 1: like that. I'm surely somebody's working on that. They should

1251
01:08:51,360 --> 01:08:53,280
Speaker 1: they should totally steal that idea from it. I think

1252
01:08:53,320 --> 01:08:55,880
Speaker 1: i Kea already makes that. Actually, yeah, they've got these

1253
01:08:55,920 --> 01:09:01,120
Speaker 1: like long ice straws. I don't know what it seems weird. Well,

1254
01:09:01,200 --> 01:09:04,600
Speaker 1: I'll have to check that out anyway. Um. Either way,

1255
01:09:04,240 --> 01:09:07,080
Speaker 1: I'm sure everyone has some thoughts on this particular episode,

1256
01:09:07,120 --> 01:09:09,160
Speaker 1: so we would love to hear from you. Uh. In

1257
01:09:09,200 --> 01:09:11,519
Speaker 1: the meantime, check out stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

1258
01:09:11,600 --> 01:09:14,280
Speaker 1: That's the mothership. That's our mothership where you'll find all

1259
01:09:14,360 --> 01:09:17,120
Speaker 1: the podcast episodes links out to our social media accounts.

1260
01:09:17,160 --> 01:09:19,200
Speaker 1: You'll find a tap for our store, our cool te

1261
01:09:19,320 --> 01:09:22,559
Speaker 1: public store that has all sorts of cool uh bits

1262
01:09:22,560 --> 01:09:25,799
Speaker 1: of merchandise, T shirt stickers, etcetera, with some cool stuff

1263
01:09:25,840 --> 01:09:28,880
Speaker 1: that we've just pumped out for the holidays. So great

1264
01:09:28,880 --> 01:09:31,600
Speaker 1: place to go for stocking stuffer or just you know,

1265
01:09:32,160 --> 01:09:34,240
Speaker 1: buy yourself a gift. It's a great way to support

1266
01:09:34,240 --> 01:09:35,640
Speaker 1: the show. And if you don't want to support the

1267
01:09:35,640 --> 01:09:37,479
Speaker 1: show that way, if you want to do it the freeway,

1268
01:09:37,760 --> 01:09:40,080
Speaker 1: just simply rate and review us wherever you have the

1269
01:09:40,080 --> 01:09:42,760
Speaker 1: power to do so huge things. As always to our

1270
01:09:42,880 --> 01:09:46,840
Speaker 1: excellent audio producers Alex Williams and Tory Harrison. If you

1271
01:09:46,880 --> 01:09:48,680
Speaker 1: would like to get in touch with us directly to

1272
01:09:48,800 --> 01:09:51,000
Speaker 1: let us know feedback on this episode or any other,

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Speaker 1: to suggest a topic for the future, just to say hi,

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01:09:54,040 --> 01:09:55,720
Speaker 1: let us know where you listen from, how you found

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Speaker 1: out about the show, all that kind of stuff. You

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Speaker 1: can email us at blow the Mind at how stuff

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Speaker 1: were dot com for more on this and thousands of

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Speaker 1: other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com? Believe

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Speaker 1: I think the Big MANU