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Scientific American treats Avi Loeb’s design inference with respect

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It’s about extraterrestrial intelligences, specifically, his claims about Oumuamua in his new book Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth

A design inference, of course:

In conversation, the Harvard University professor explains his shocking hypothesis—and calls out what he sees as a crisis in science.

The object’s discoverers dubbed it ‘Oumuamua—a Hawaiian term that roughly translates to “scout.” The unavoidably cursory examinations of this celestial passerby showed it had several properties that defied easy natural explanation. ‘Oumuamua’s apparent shape—which was like a 100-meter-long cigar or pancake—did not closely resemble any known asteroid or comet. Neither did its brightness, which revealed ‘Oumuamua was at least 10 times more reflective than one of our solar system’s typical space rocks—shiny enough to suggest the gleam of burnished metal. Most strangely, as it zoomed off after swooping by the sun, the object sped up faster than could be explained by our star’s waning gravitational grip alone. Run-of-the-mill comets can exhibit similar accelerations because of the rocketlike effect of evaporating gases jetting from their sunlight-warmed icy surfaces. But no signs of such jets were seen around ‘Oumuamua.

Lee Billings, “Astronomer Avi Loeb Says Aliens Have Visited, and He’s Not Kidding” at Scientific American

You’d need to pay Scientific American to read more.

But maybe they are getting a crash course in the design inference.

See also: 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.

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