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Notes -
Some hard science news, that nevertheless became part of culture wars.
As you probably heard, third recorded interstellar object is on the way. It stands out of sample of three, just like the previous two.
The usual suspects, most prominent Avi Loeb and John Brandenburg of ancient nuclear war on Mars fame sound an alarm to warn from incoming alien invader.
Mainstream science dismisses the concerns and sees the object as ordinary red colored D-type asteroid.
< tinfoil hat> well, what are they supposed to do? </tinfoil hat>
Not that "we" as mankind could do anything if ayys were really here. See just Avi Loeb's proposals.
Nah. I cannot imagine better way to ensure Earth's swift destruction than to introduce aliens to United Nations. Compared to this plan, doing nothing at all is the superior alternative.
How is this CW?
I guess I should be glad that the final frontier isn’t also, somehow, a referendum on Donald Trump. That impulse is at war with the one that tells me this is dumber than a sack of primitive, ferrous construction equipment.
In unrelated news, have you read The Dark Forest? Not for the apocalyptica. For the galaxy-brained strategy, agreed upon by the best and brightest of all humanity, of giving global power to one shmuck. Truly, something that could never have been created in the Western canon.
It was at least somewhat justified by the bullshit tech the aliens had. (Which very conveniently could completely control all scientific experiments but not, you know, actually KILL anyone.)
The real problem with The Dark Forest (spoiler alert) was the concept that all of humanity, working for more than a century on a problem with existential stakes, failed to come up with a theory that, uh, most people interested in cosmology already knew about in the 70s as a potential answer to the Fermi paradox. (Also, the deterrent threat at the end doesn't even really work because it would send a message out only in the plane of the ecliptic. Sigh. I wouldn't mind the bad science so much if it weren't wearing the skinsuit of Hard Sci-Fi.)
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