• Walt J. Rimmer@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    43
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    The U.S. Space Command confirmed with almost near certainty, 99.999%, that the material came from another solar system.

    Yeah, but… Lots of things come to us from other solar systems given enough time. Just naturally. Is it alien? Yes! But that’s nothing special. Is it technology? I mean. Probably not. This is almost certainly a non-story. If the headline read something like, “Harvard professor studying extra-solar fragments,” it would be just as interesting to anyone who actually cares. But that group is very niche. As it is, the headline we get is eye-catching but stupid and malicious.

    • justgohomealready@lemmy.pt
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      17
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      You don’t have the whole context. The relevance of it being interstellar is that, at the speeds it was travelling, it should have vaporized completely when entering out atmosphere. The fact that pieces survived reentry is anomalous, as it indicates that it must have been made from alloys not naturally present in any other object that we’ve seen entering out atmosphere from outer space.

      If those alloys are natural (but never seen before) or artificial (and so created by some other intelligence), that’s the question here.

      • Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        15
        ·
        1 year ago

        I believe you could potentially fill an endless space with the amount of knowledge humans currently lack.

        This is a potentially cool discovery, but it seems a massive leap to suggest the alloy was intelligently derived.

        • Walt J. Rimmer@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          1 year ago

          That was more my point. This is a fascinating thing to study! It’s new and from very far away and observations around it are odd! That’s all exciting! But that’s all exciting without having to force in, “ALIENS CONFIRMED???” into the conversation around it.