<story><title>Discovery of spherules of likely extrasolar composition in the Pacific Ocean [pdf]</title><url>https://lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/~loeb/Interstellar_Expedition.pdf</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tptacek</author><text>What is Loeb&amp;#x27;s reputation among astrophysicists?&lt;p&gt;He&amp;#x27;s written &amp;quot;over 800 scientific papers&amp;quot;. Is that... a good thing in his field?</text></item><item><author>sxp</author><text>Avi Loeb is an interesting scientist. I read a longer article about him that gave some more background about his work [1]. While he is famous for going on podcasts and making wild claims about objects being signs of alien intelligence, the actual hard science that he&amp;#x27;s doing is interesting. E.g, this expedition he managed to get funding to recover these extrasolar particles. The clickbaity pop media says that this is &amp;quot;alien tech&amp;quot; but reading his blog [2] shows some hard science about how his team isolated the extrasolar candidates and launched an expedition. He&amp;#x27;s also trying to fund another project to watch the skies for more UFOs&amp;#x2F;extraterrestiral technology [3]. Even though the clickbaity aspect is that this is for hunting aliens, the likely worst case scenario is that he managed to raise a bunch of funds using the current UFO hype to gather more evidence about meteors entering Earth&amp;#x27;s atmosphere. I think it&amp;#x27;s unlikely that any of the unknown sightings are aliens, but I fully support Loeb because the science he is doing will have interesting results even without the discovery of aliens.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nytimes.com&amp;#x2F;2023&amp;#x2F;08&amp;#x2F;24&amp;#x2F;magazine&amp;#x2F;avi-loeb-alien-hunter.html?unlocked_article_code=4mbvH8chkVNv_Yr5SB9xVpLeKYvCHdo7lPkeMN6Lc4djpVavmHFuuRYI1LHZX-H80DJzJ73A61MttxYhBO0LVSNcyQQzpMsbUhwBn7-s87s4NR30CYS6wJlqOQogTlJgjhATy9kHRsxf9fS67EZEt6TH9eKvG1hWjDLGIcZMgL-UYBf6_rjsc1z6nZ6rvZnnK5GR5BSuZj-V6nH5DQqGnqe30qtdNAwIWnRF61qYN74r_Nw0PZgqRO1fmTod1kH15Wk9hmEfg-gn_Le0K2o2UiCvb1--n95ts2e9-gfuCJrtxWu6lhUpskFytfF89HmBExj3NmuRpZrfVUedTJEF8g&amp;amp;smid=url-share&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nytimes.com&amp;#x2F;2023&amp;#x2F;08&amp;#x2F;24&amp;#x2F;magazine&amp;#x2F;avi-loeb-alien-h...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;avi-loeb.medium.com&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;avi-loeb.medium.com&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[3] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;projects.iq.harvard.edu&amp;#x2F;galileo&amp;#x2F;home&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;projects.iq.harvard.edu&amp;#x2F;galileo&amp;#x2F;home&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>consilient</author><text>&amp;gt;  What is Loeb&amp;#x27;s reputation among astrophysicists?&lt;p&gt;Not an astrophysicist but several friends are. The consensus seems to be that he was a good scientist at one point but has turned into a sensationalist attention monger.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; He&amp;#x27;s written &amp;quot;over 800 scientific papers&amp;quot;. Is that... a good thing in his field?&lt;p&gt;He&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;been an author&lt;/i&gt; on over 800 scientific papers: that includes his work, work he&amp;#x27;s been a significant collaborator on, and student work he&amp;#x27;s supervised. 800 is a lot for someone his age but not unheard of. People care &lt;i&gt;much&lt;/i&gt; more about paper quality (or less charitably, citation count) than quantity.</text></comment>
<story><title>Discovery of spherules of likely extrasolar composition in the Pacific Ocean [pdf]</title><url>https://lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/~loeb/Interstellar_Expedition.pdf</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tptacek</author><text>What is Loeb&amp;#x27;s reputation among astrophysicists?&lt;p&gt;He&amp;#x27;s written &amp;quot;over 800 scientific papers&amp;quot;. Is that... a good thing in his field?</text></item><item><author>sxp</author><text>Avi Loeb is an interesting scientist. I read a longer article about him that gave some more background about his work [1]. While he is famous for going on podcasts and making wild claims about objects being signs of alien intelligence, the actual hard science that he&amp;#x27;s doing is interesting. E.g, this expedition he managed to get funding to recover these extrasolar particles. The clickbaity pop media says that this is &amp;quot;alien tech&amp;quot; but reading his blog [2] shows some hard science about how his team isolated the extrasolar candidates and launched an expedition. He&amp;#x27;s also trying to fund another project to watch the skies for more UFOs&amp;#x2F;extraterrestiral technology [3]. Even though the clickbaity aspect is that this is for hunting aliens, the likely worst case scenario is that he managed to raise a bunch of funds using the current UFO hype to gather more evidence about meteors entering Earth&amp;#x27;s atmosphere. I think it&amp;#x27;s unlikely that any of the unknown sightings are aliens, but I fully support Loeb because the science he is doing will have interesting results even without the discovery of aliens.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nytimes.com&amp;#x2F;2023&amp;#x2F;08&amp;#x2F;24&amp;#x2F;magazine&amp;#x2F;avi-loeb-alien-hunter.html?unlocked_article_code=4mbvH8chkVNv_Yr5SB9xVpLeKYvCHdo7lPkeMN6Lc4djpVavmHFuuRYI1LHZX-H80DJzJ73A61MttxYhBO0LVSNcyQQzpMsbUhwBn7-s87s4NR30CYS6wJlqOQogTlJgjhATy9kHRsxf9fS67EZEt6TH9eKvG1hWjDLGIcZMgL-UYBf6_rjsc1z6nZ6rvZnnK5GR5BSuZj-V6nH5DQqGnqe30qtdNAwIWnRF61qYN74r_Nw0PZgqRO1fmTod1kH15Wk9hmEfg-gn_Le0K2o2UiCvb1--n95ts2e9-gfuCJrtxWu6lhUpskFytfF89HmBExj3NmuRpZrfVUedTJEF8g&amp;amp;smid=url-share&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nytimes.com&amp;#x2F;2023&amp;#x2F;08&amp;#x2F;24&amp;#x2F;magazine&amp;#x2F;avi-loeb-alien-h...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;avi-loeb.medium.com&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;avi-loeb.medium.com&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[3] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;projects.iq.harvard.edu&amp;#x2F;galileo&amp;#x2F;home&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;projects.iq.harvard.edu&amp;#x2F;galileo&amp;#x2F;home&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>defrost</author><text>He&amp;#x27;s numerically sound (astrophysics is &lt;i&gt;a lot&lt;/i&gt; of math) but stretching things on alien interpretations.&lt;p&gt;His wikipedia page captures both facets:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    Loeb is the Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science at Harvard University. He had been the longest serving chair of Harvard&amp;#x27;s Department of Astronomy (2011–2020), founding director of Harvard&amp;#x27;s Black Hole Initiative (since 2016) and director of the Institute for Theory and Computation (since 2007) within the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

    Loeb is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Physical Society, and the International Academy of Astronautics. In July 2018, he was appointed as chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy (BPA) of the National Academies,
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
and:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    In June 2023, Loeb announced the project had found interstellar material on the ocean floor..

    These claims were criticized by other scientists as hasty, sensational, and part of a pattern of improper behavior.

    Peter Brown, a meteor physicist at the University of Western Ontario, argued the material can be explained as non-interstellar, [...] Brown further said he was disturbed by Loeb&amp;#x27;s lack of engagement with relevant experts.

    Astrophysicist Steve Desch, at Arizona State University, commented &amp;quot;[his claims are] polluting good science—conflating the good science we do with this ridiculous sensationalism and sucking all the oxygen out of the room&amp;quot;, and said several of his colleagues are consequently refusing to engage with Loeb in the peer review process.
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
As noted elsewhere about a competant brain surgeon believing pyramids to be hollow, it&amp;#x27;s entirely possible to reason well about physical forces and black holes and to also be utterly incorrect about material science of metallurgy.&lt;p&gt;quotes from: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Avi_Loeb&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Avi_Loeb&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>