A number of people have asked what is my opinion of Avi Loeb’s theory that we were just visited by an alien probe. He basically noted strange facts about the probe he called ‘Oumuamua. ʻOumuamua was the first interstellar object ever detected passing through our solar system. Formally designated 1I/2017 U1, ‘Oumuamua was discovered by Robert Weryk using the Pan-STARRS telescope at Haleakala Observatory, Hawaii, on October 19th, 2017, 40 days after it passed its closest point to the sun.
Loeb has explained that we can calculate at what rate of speed a solar system will eject rocks during its history. When you look at all the stars in the vicinity of our sun, we discover that they move relative to our sun. In other words, our sun moves relative to their systems around us with respect to speed. However, perhaps one in five hundred stars move as slow as ‘Oumuamua. Therefore, the speed of the object is significantly different and much slower. Most rocks would move roughly at the same speed of the star from which they were ejected. If this object came from another star, that star would have to be very special and moving at an incredibly slow pace.
Then there was the matter of its brightness. It would spin every eight hours, and its brightness changed by at least a factor of ten. The fact that its brightness varies by a factor of ten as it spins means that it is at least ten times longer than its width. It is also possible that the shape is more of a pancake like geometry. The most unusual fact about this object is that when it deviates from an orbit it becomes shaped purely by the gravitational force of the sun. There is also no cometary tail here and there is a deviation from the expected orbit which results in this potential classification to be some sort of probe.
There are some who believe that we are alone in the vast universe with billions of planets. The likelihood of that I find not very credible for why would God create the universe for no reason. Also, human reasoning has been highly questionable. They use to torture and execute people for simply saying the Earth was round and not flat. The story of Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) is rarely told. I believe he is a figure from the past that is in need of rescue because he basically is perhaps the first person to envision a dynamic universe building upon Copernicus’ work. His essential theory saw the universe with many worlds and suns basically as we accept today. He gave his life for that proposition. You can imagine that those who believed God created the world were not about to accept the idea that there were multiple solar systems when they refused to accept that the planets revolved around the sun. Despite the fact that the Bible made no statement that the Earth was the center of the planetary system or that the Earth was flat, that reasoning resulted in the punishment for those who dared to disagree.
On February 17th, 1600, Bruno was taken to the Camo de’ Fior. His tongue was gaged so they would not have to listen to his screams of pain when he was burned alive. The importance of Giordano Bruno’s books was established by being placed on the forbidden list on August 7th, 1603. When Galileo (1564-1642) was confronted for his theory that agreed with Bruno, he had to recant or be burned alive at the stake.
At the risk of being burned at the stake alive, I keep an open mind.
