Alien visitation advocate Avi Loeb is claiming more ordinary objects as spacecraft

Of course he is. Because that's what keeps his funding flowing from the Tech Bros who listen to too much Rogan.

Avi Loeb, formerly a respected Harvard astrophysicist, made a name for himself in 2018 when he claimed that space rock ‘Oumuamua was consistent with an alien mother ship.¹ He later went even farther, suggesting that it may have been the source of the “craft” depicted in the US Navy videos.

Well, money came flowing quickly. Tech bros throughout Silicon Valley, all with more money than sense, heard him on Rogan and threw money at him to prove that aliens actively visit the Earth. He happily obliged, even forming an institute (the “Galileo Project”²) to accept their wire transfers.³

Perhaps it’s been a while, and the Galileo Project coffers might be drying up, so he’s decided to have another go. Comet 3I/ATLAS was discovered in May of this year, and is the third object to be confirmed to have an interstellar origin.

He takes his first swing…

Loeb wasted no time. Just over a week ago, he posted on his blog “Preliminary Anomalies of 3I/ATLAS” in which he compared the object to the giant alien mother ship in Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama. Of 3I/ATLAS, he wrote “It did not inherit a random velocity in interstellar space but instead was sent towards the inner solar system by design.”

By design! Wow, that means it must be under alien control.

He then complained that Wikipedia refused to characterize 3I/ATLAS as an alien ship:

…When the details of 3I/ATLAS were summarized on Wikipedia a few days after its discovery, the editors of that entry omitted any reference to anomalies of 3I/ATLAS. They learned about my paper from colleagues on July 4 but responded that this paper must be published in a journal before being referenced on Wikipedia.

Wikipedia has always worked this way. References must be reliable ones. You can’t write a personal blog and expect Wikipedia to treat it as authoritative — especially not when you’ve been the loudest crackpot in the room on this subject for the better part of a decade. Loeb posted his blog up onto a preprint server, hoping to skirt the restriction; but that totally doesn’t do it.

And so he complained further of suppression and closed-minded thinking:

This practice by the Wikipedia gatekeepers provides yet additional evidence for the thesis presented in a new paper that I posted with the psychologists Omer Eldadi and Gershon Tenenbaum on July 9, explaining the psychological reasons for the suppression of paradigm-breaking evidence by the scientific community.

When he says “the suppression of paradigm-breaking evidence” discovered by the “scientific community,” he means “the laughing away of ridiculous nonsense” published by “him and his cohorts promoting alien visitation.” Spin it however you like, Avi; you’re not going to be taken seriously until you return to doing serious work — if you ever do.

He takes his second swing…

Thus thwarted, apparently he no longer saw any benefit to treading lightly; so he let his hair down and went full-throttle alien visitation conspiracy theorist with his next blog post a few days later: “Is the Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS Alien Technology?”

…The silence in searches for radio signals by the SETI community is not caused by the lack of extraterrestrial intelligent civilizations, but is instead a consequence of them fearing mutual destruction.

Wow! He’s not only identified the aliens, he even knows their secret motivations. He’s even figured out how they plan to avoid detection by us by intentionally passing on the far side of the sun:

3I/ATLAS achieves perihelion on the opposite side of the Sun relative to Earth. This could be intentional to avoid detailed observations from Earth-based telescopes when the object is brightest or when gadgets are sent to Earth from that hidden vantage point.

…because, as any reasonable astronomer would naturally conclude from the data, the aliens do not wish us to observe them performing a braking maneuver:

In an Oberth maneuver, the thrust of a spacecraft is applied at its maximum orbital speed, namely at periapsis, so as to maximize the resulting change in kinetic energy. This applies both to accelerating to achieve Solar System escape, or alternatively to slow down from a high speed (a `reverse Oberth maneuver’) in order to break, stay bound to the Sun and potentially visit a planet like Earth. It is this optimal breaking point for 3I/ATLAS that is obscured from our view by the Sun.

He gets frustrated and throws his bat up into the grandstands

Well, just about the entire astronomy community fell down laughing, as they always do whenever he publishes anything these days, as he clearly has no interest at all anymore in legitimate work, only in summoning larger donations. So he puts his usual “These are probably aliens!” spin on every piece of astronomy news. I’m still waiting for him to say the same about a Starlink train.

So yesterday he grabbed all his toys and ran home, by blogging “On Lovers and Haters of the Search for a Higher Intelligence.” If I had read it without knowing the author, I might have guessed that it was clever sarcasm. It displays just about every straw man argument that paranormalists make against scientists, and it does so brilliantly. I’ve always given Loeb the benefit of the doubt and believed that he was consciously acting unscientifically in a deliberate bid for donation money, but I am seriously beginning to suspect he actually has gone off the rails. The first clue was when he employed the Galileo Gambit to name his institute.

I’m not even going to take the time to go through all of his fallacies, but here are just a few. Let’s start with his title:

On Lovers and Haters of the Search for a Higher Intelligence

He is in no way “searching for higher intelligence”. Astrobiologists, exoplanet experts, and radio astronomers are. They are combing through spectra, looking for technosignatures and biosignatures. Loeb is pointing at other people’s discoveries and shouting “I bet that’s an alien!” And yet he portrays himself as Christ on the Cross.

…Some of the most vocal SETI advocates are speaking against the possibility that anomalous interstellar objects… might be technological in origin. Deep down, they are fascinated by the hypothesis but they have a hard time being honest with themselves and admitting it.

Nobody is “speaking out against the possibility.” Loeb is drawing outrageous conclusions without any evidence at all, and legitimate astronomers are criticizing him for it.

They are “fascinated by his hypothesis”?? Hardly. It’s not worthy of fascination. They may be fascinated by the actual possibility of life in the universe, that they continue searching for via valid means. But Loeb’s claim that they are too ashamed to admit he’s right is just — well, it’s a crock of bullshit. Nobody thinks he’s right, because there’s nothing to suggest he might be.

Unfortunately, some scientists use science to promote their status, claim to know the answers in advance of conclusive evidence, and deny the need for being curious.

The irony of this statement is astounding. Pot kettle black, much? Other scientists are the ones claiming to know the answers “in advance of conclusive evidence”? And as far as legitimate scientists “deny the need to be curious” — Bless your heart, Avi.

One reason I seek a higher intelligence in outer space is because I have a hard time finding it among these colleagues. I can only hope that they too will finally exhibit a sense of humility once we will all encounter clear signs of alien technology in the Solar System.

Well, we’ve certainly been put in our place. Loeb does shit work (knowingly, I believe) in pursuit of money; and since real astronomers call him out on it, the answer must be that they lack intelligence.

But let’s let his final line stand: clearly he believes the proof is just around the corner that our solar system is filled with alien technology. And then we’ll see who’s right.

OK, Avi. That’s a deal.

1. https://lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/~loeb/Loeb_Astrobiology.pdf

2. Note how Loeb named it after the Galileo Gambit, long a refuge of the crackpot: “They laughed at Galileo but he turned out to be right; therefore, since they laugh at me, I too will turn out to be right.” Well, no. A Copernican model of the solar system had been a standard model for centuries; Galileo was the first to provide solid evidence of it. Nobody laughed at him. The Church accused him of heresy, but that was Because Jesus, not because they knew anything about models of the solar system. With Loeb, on the other hand, everyone in the astrophysics community laughs at him because his claims are ridiculous.

3. https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/galileo/home