Comment on We've got it all worked out
mrmanager@lemmy.today 4 hours agoI saw some Ai generated videos saying it broke up but there are amateur astronomers filming it as we speak. You are saying it broke up but still looks the same, or? Because someones I dont understand is “broken up” means what I think it does. To me it should be gone if that happened?
ameancow@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
There are clear pictures of multiple nucleuses after it passed the sun, which is entirely common for comets, they are loosely held together balls of rock and ice. Some crackpots (Avi Loeb specifically) are now pushing the media-grabbing narrative that this is just the “spaceship” now “turning on its thrusters” despite no real unexpected changes to its velocity or behavior.
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We have observed some unusual properties from the comet, but this is more like “unusual for a long-range comet” and not “OMG ALIENS.” This is likely because it originated in another part of the galaxy a very, very long time ago and thus is made of different proportions of elements and may even have new compounds in it that react slightly differently to light and heat. In some other, better timeline, we would have probes stationed around the solar system to intercept and study interstellar objects and maybe we would make new discoveries.
For now, all we get are youtubers and sensationalist book authors flailing their arms in the air about aliens, because that’s what sells headlines.
mrmanager@lemmy.today 4 hours ago
Thats not whats happening at all. I have read Loebs posts and seen his videos about this comet. He says we should be open to the possibility of it being something else than a comet. He doesnt say “omg aliens” at all. Have you read his medium posts?
As for Youtubers, sure, tons of Ai generated shitty videos to make money, yeah.
ameancow@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
I haven’t read any of Loeb’s recent anything because, and I cannot stress this enough, is a crackpot trying to sell books and get media attention. I used to follow him because I liked the idea of being open to studying more areas of astronomy with an open mind to figuring out if there are unknowns we’ve been missing like Von Neuman probes in the asteroid belts and so on.
But since those earlier days of speculation, he has gotten more and more radical and “grifty” and disrespecting his own peers like the head of SETI and declaring anything that moves to be possible signs of aliens, to say nothing of his doubling down on recovering industrial waste from an expensive mission to retrieve ocean gunk on some longshot, hyperbolic narrative that he knew where an alien ship crashed. He does nothing but media and podcast tours and doesn’t take criticism. Not a scientist.
We can do better.
mrmanager@lemmy.today 4 hours ago
Yeah ive noticed this about the reactions to the comet. There are two camps, one who thinks Loeb is all the negative things you said, and another who thinks he makes a lot of sense.
Either way, I think the comet is very interesting and look forward to following it the coming weeks. :)