Enjoy Extraterrestrial: The First Sign Of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth Edited By Avi Loeb Represented In Interactive EBook

the concept is extremely interesting our first interstellar visitor, and to think, it may have been alien in nature! this book is less thanpages of genuine discussion of 'Omuamua and overpages of random biographical stories that bored me to tears and had no relation to 'Omuamua at all endless, repetitive whining about The Man dragging scientific progress down complaining about how everyone

cares more about getting likes on social media instead of seeking true knowledge and history lessons about science that, while interesting, were only dragged out to underscore the bone he has to pick with conservative science.


Honestly, I ended up skimming the lastpages, Whatever credibility he had at the start of the book had faded away by the time he repeated his story about herding chicks fresh out of the incubator, like that has any relation to the hard science behind the origins of 'Omuamua.
I have a lot to read, including another recent book about space, and I'm not going to waste my time on yet another story about his life on the farm as a kiddo.
Sorry, Dr. Loeb, I generally don't read biographies! This book slaps, Like, brought Avicii back from the dead to headline Coachella, slaps, Like, found out your state is legalizing marijuana in the same year that the Grateful Dead and Phish are doing a weeklong concert in your town, Instilling a renewed sense of childhood wonder, The way Aloe Vera is on sunburn, this book is to the mind,

Starting with the negatives because theyre sparse, The single major drawback to this book is that its explaining very complex mathematical physics for laypeople, As such its difficult to really evaluate the credibility of the author without relying on heuristics, The guy works at Harvard, Did research at Princeton. Im guessing hes more than your average kook, but Ive taken it nowhere near the number of physics or mathematics classes to understand the fine points of what is being talked about.
My guess is that there are underpeople in the world who finally could refute the mathematics of what is going on behind the scenes, So most of the math and science here goes straight over my head, I was about halfway through before I realized that the light sail hes talking about on Oumuamua, is not the same light sail he was talking about shooting a laser at to propel away from earth in earlier chapters.
I was very confused as to how the laser powered light sail could be used in a scenario where there were no lasers, Google tells me it has to do with electrons, guess they workout or something,

There are also some analogies and rhetorical bits that rubbed me the wrong way, For example, towards the end of the book the author talks about occams razor and how simple is better than complicated, giving us a reminder not to overfit your model.
He gently chides Aristotle for creating tortured mathematics to justify a heliocentric view of the world, Then like three pages later he goes on talking about his black hole equation and how he still needs to “finetune the mathematics, ” Im convinced this is a case of my ignorance making me look the fool, I just found this type of thing to be more confusing than anything, Help a mathematical toddler out, Thankfully, most of the similar quabbles I have with the writing are ultimately inconsequential to the general sweep of the book, These fall into what I consider to be more personal frustrations than global indictments of the quality of the book,

The rest of the book is a highly successful IPO of knowledge on three major points,

One, holy fahkong shit is science cool, Do you know that feeling you had as a little kid learning about dinosaurs, lasers, Norse Mythology or any sort of other thing that made you go “oh wow, awesome!” And then proceed to spend the next three months of your little life learning everything about them This book is that for adults.
Id read a bit, then start googling whatever sweet concept this guy was talking about and end up in a Wikipedia hole deeper than the one I tried to dig as a kid when I was obsessed with big trucks and whether or not I could find China.


Two, a reminder to not gatekeep scientific research because its ultimately detrimental to science and society as a whole, This book has one of the better systematic criticisms of deficits in our current science research and post graduate world that Ive seen, The author discusses how he is not your typical candidate for highlevel Ivory tower funded research, But due to a series of fortunate mentors and lucky breaks he was able to contribute significantly to the small corner of the astrophysics universe that he lives in, I thought the personal bits were very well written and humble, Should be a must read for that reason alone for people considering doctorates or going into research,

Third. Dude, aliens. Heck yeah. I thought the book was fantastic in the way it was not solely focused on extraterrestrial aliens, But the author builds a pretty compelling case to point out why its possible that evidence associated with Oumuamua could lead us to conclude that we have been visited by some form of alien something.


Read this book, Geek out and enjoy yourself, Astroarchaeology. Thats a thing this guy talks about, Searching for ancient alien civilizations as a field, Spacemothaflunkingarchaeology. Where was this book when I was a lost undergrad trying to figure out what to work on with my life I could have ended up whatever the equivalence to the British appropriating historical artifacts from Egypt is to the galaxy.
Me parece muy interesante, arriesgada y valiente la hipótesis sobre Oumuamua que nos expone Avi Loeb en este libro, pero a pesar de lo corto que es lo he encontrado bastante repetitivo.
Pascals wager only convinces fools or the already superstitious, The authors conviction which he turns into a wager is that a rock hurling through space making an inexplicable deviation as it zoomed past the sun is most simply explained by an advanced civilizations thrown away garbage technology equipped with a solar sail.
The author thinks that by itself merits a Pascal like wager such that we assume that the rock must have come from an advanced civilization and we should drop everything else and assume that fact free assertion as real and act as if humanity depends on that belief.
When you multiple even the smallest probability by infinity, you get an infinite effect,

The author kept on calling a doubter in his fact free assertions about proof for advanced alien civilizations arrogant, or full of hubris, or not rational and not using reason.
Just because one might think that there is no evidence for asserting that the universe is teeming with advanced civilizations doesnt make one arrogant, I think it makes one a follower of the evidence, I think Fermis paradox is reasonable, I think the great filters are real and the author skimmed over them because it didnt fit his story, For example, he doesnt mention symbiogensis,

I want to appeal to the first Mrs, Carl Sagan, Lynn Margulis. She was mocked, ignored, argued against and then finally fully accepted as if what she was saying was obvious all along with her symbiogenesis theory, that is when a prokaryotic got swallowed by another prokaryotic and gave us eukaryotic thus leading to a complex life form on earth.
A great filter event here on earth which perhaps might have only happened once in the galaxy leading to the production of the currency for complex life through producing ATP.
The point is becoming complex is not an easy thing to do and as far as we know has only happened once in the,billion years life has existed on earth, All complex life links back to that mitochondria event plants do something slightly different with photosynthesis, It is not arrogant to think that can be an incredibly rare event and maybe has not happened elsewhere in the observable universe or at least in our own galaxy.


I pick Lynn Margulis great filter event for another reason, The author thinks that the simple explanation is better than the correct explanation or the best explanation, Margulis also thought the simple explanation for the World Trade Center/attack was most easily explained as an inside job which of course is nutty, She also thought the earth was alive and Gaia best explained earths balance which of course is foolish, She was right about one very big thing, and foolish about other things, Simple as the author advocates is not the only guide that we should abide by,

Conspiracy theories are best ignored, they always have nonrefutable hypothesizes, Qanon is not worth refuting, They will tell you that they are simple and therefore the correct explanation, Only a fool will engage with responding because it is a nonrefutable hypothesis and is therefore a pseudoscience, Chandra Wickramasinghe advocates panspermia life on earth came from outer space, this author dwells on panspermia as part of his belief system but doesnt mention Wickramsinghe, Nobody should waste their time refuting that hypothesis, as nobody should waste their time refuting Qanon, or unsubstantiated hypothesizes which state that solar sails exist on rocks as part of space junk from advanced civilizations because a slight deviation in acceleration needs to be explained.
Actually, I didnt understand exactly how the imaginary solar sails would have solved the deviation problem better than other phenomena, but I suspect strongly that other mechanisms could explain the deviation in acceleration problem just as well.
I mention Wickramsinghe because a book I once read said that Wickramsinghe thought it was up to others to prove him wrong, and the author said that he just didnt want to waste his time on assertions without foundations.
I feel the same way with this authors assertion, I cant say panspermia is not real, and I cant say that rocks with solar sails from other star systems arent real, but I dont think Ill dwell on it or definitely I would not waste my career on either assertion.


It is not arrogant to believe there are not advanced civilizations within our galaxy, The simple explanation is not always the correct explanation, Instead of saying God did it as a Christian apologist does, this author is just saying advanced aliens did it, Just because we cannot fill in the blanks doesnt mean we should put God in the gaps, or in this case, advanced aliens in the gaps, By all means, I hope we continue SETI research, but I reject the framing of a rock hurling in space must be from an alien civilization as Pascals wager and assuming that not accepting wild theories about alien civilizations is an existential threat to future humanity or makes me arrogant because I have doubts.
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