Okay re the importance of reproducibility but it was never clear why Oumuamua was supposed to be ET anyway. More Oumuamuas would not make it more likely.
Extraterrestrial life
NASA stresses naturalist origin of life to kids
Example: In response to a question re space aliens, ““The question presumes that aliens do exist. And again, because we haven’t found any yet, we don’t know if they do. It is possible they may exist, for one simple reason: we exist. Whatever made the likes of bacteria evolve into complex bodies with intelligent brains on Earth may have also occurred on another planet.”
Would specified complexity help us find extraterrestrial intelligences?
Specified complexity is what we should be looking for in signals from intelligent beings — orderly patterns that hold meanings not found in inanimate nature.
One theory about why we don’t see extraterrestrials provides support for Earth as a privileged planet
If intelligent life forms are trapped in the interior oceans of rocky moons and planets, Earth is a special planet—much better suited to space exploration.
Astrophysicist: If there really are extraterrestrials, what difference would it make?
Scharf: “Eventually it might all just be a bit of a relief. We’ll neither be alone, nor surrounded by anything particularly extraordinary. Copernican mediocrity will be somewhat restored, and we can go back to worrying about everything else that can go wrong on our speck of rock and water as it sails through the cosmos.”
Ethan Siegel tells us why he thinks colonizing super-Earths would end in disaster
Siegel thinks that a rocky planet of more than 30% greater radius than Earth stands a good change of becoming a gas giant in consequence of its size. Earth is the right size to avoid that.
Does the habitability of exoplanets depend on nitrogen?
It plays an unexpected role in planetary temperature, researchers found: While most research about the habitable zone has focused on a star’s brightness (as temperature dictates whether water on a planet could be liquid, ice or gas), new research is showing that this is an extremely simplified and naive picture. The true test for whether Read More…
Scientific American treats Avi Loeb’s design inference with respect
Maybe the people at SciAm are getting a crash course in the design inference?
Here are some reviews of Avi Loeb’s book about space debris Oumuamua as a space alien signal
Some of us still think Loeb is way off the beam about Oumuamua but at least he is talking about how you would know that something is designed. If anyone is interested, it is called the design inference.
Avi Loeb talks to Sean Carroll at Preposterous Universe about why he thinks Oumuamua represents extraterrestrials
He ends up, we are told, sounding like an ID type.
Avi Loeb on why he thinks Oumuamua might be an alien signal
“Nature does not produce such things”
According to some NASA researchers, all the ETs have destroyed themselves
They raise the question whether progress of science and technology inevitably lead to the destruction of civilizations.
Science writer: Space aliens might have different values from ourselves
Would they have different values from ourselves or do all enduring civilizations end up having similar values?
An astrobiologist suggests changing how we search for alien life
Walker: “A popular definition that “life is a self-sustaining chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution” excludes any organisms that can’t reproduce because they are not capable of evolution—therefore mules and many senior citizens are excluded if you read the definition too strictly.”
From the “They’re Out There” files: New Scientist cautious on that strange radio signal
These are curious times in science, as fact and reason appear less attractive every day to just the people one would expect to value them and people who might have been able to get away with tabloid news show more sense instead.