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sudo wrote

100% chance this article is sensationalized. Sadly, they don't link to the actual paper, so I can't see what the researchers actually said.

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fairilu wrote

COULD SOLAR RADIATION PRESSURE EXPLAIN ‘OUMUAMUA’S PECULIAR ACCELERATION?

and the abstract for the Nature article, if you're fortunate enough to have access to it somehow

You're right, it is sensationalized. Every discussion of the potential for extraterrestrial life is. But I think from a scientific perspective, trying to come up with theories about ETs based on our scant knowledge of the universe is still reasonable, even if any wild speculation gets more media attention than more likely options.

As I understand it, Oumuamua is one of the first objects we've discovered from outside our solar system. So that's pretty fucking cool, even if it is just a rock.

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sudo wrote

Ok, I got the Nature version from Library Genesis, and re-hosted it on my personal Onion site. (PDF Warning) Here it is.

You're right, it is sensationalized. Every discussion of the potential for extraterrestrial life is. But I think from a scientific perspective, trying to come up with theories about ETs based on our scant knowledge of the universe is still reasonable, even if any wild speculation gets more media attention than more likely options.

Sure. It's the wild media attention part that I object to. The same exact thing happened with Tabby's Star - astronomers found a weird object, said that it could be an alien megastructure but that there are far more likely explanations, the media ignored the latter disclaimer and sensationalized the hell out of it, and now the first thing the public thinks of when they hear Tabby's Star is "Dyson Sphere? Could it be? We don't knoooooow," when it really should be "Weird object we don't have an explanation for." (Also, recent observations of Tabby's Star ruled out the Dyson Sphere hypothesis - it's looking more like a lot of dust in a weird pattern that's eclipsing the star.) This type of media sensationalization presents far-fetched hypotheses to laypeople as if they were the most likely explanation, causing bullshit to propagate, leading to the collective dumbing-down of humanity.

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