Spacial Remnant
Jonah Goldberg drifted off into space a couple weeks ago on his Remnant podcast with Harvard space scientist Avi Loeb.
Now, I like Jonah’s podcast a lot, but the political content of many episodes is probably the least interesting to me, even if it might be the most soothing: listening to political views I agree with doesn’t cause much cerebration, but instead has a calming effect like chewing gum or a favorite piece of music. The content is familiar enough that if the sound were to drop out, I could hum the tune in my own mind.
Instead, the I Want to Believe episode (podcast link) provided something completely different to think about, something different from our everyday terrestrial set-pieces. Prof. Loeb had received some attention for suggesting that the large asteroid named “Oumuamua” might be actual evidence of an object fashioned by another species of intelligent beings somewhere outside our solar system. To begin with, it was clear to astronomers that the elongated object was indeed from outside our solar system—something we had never seen up close. Furthermore, its oblong shape was completely unlike the shape of other asteroids we have ever seen, even with our species’ best determined skywatching efforts.
We still didn’t get a great view, though. Estimates of its size ranged from 10 to 100 meters based on what we could see. It was dark and fast, and didn’t appear to have a comet-like tail. And yet, it may have had jet-propulsion.
At any rate, it makes for an entirely new topic of discussion. An enjoyable listen far away from our alienating political divides. See you next time. (No you won’t: this is a newsletter.)
Oh, Mama!
You know, we need to keep extrasolar objects out of the solar system. Who knows what they could be doing?
I propose that we build a giant sphere around the solar system, and get the rest of the galaxy to pay for it.