I think its totally fair to be aggressive in pushing back against abstracts like "and hypothesize that this object could be technological, and possibly hostile as would be expected from the ’Dark Forest’ resolution to the ’Fermi Paradox’".

There is zero testing of either the hypothesis that it is technological or that it is hostile. At best, the methodology he employs in the paper could be argued to test the hypothesis that its path through our solar system is synthetic and intentional; but that's it, and that's also not remotely close to what he said.

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druskacik 7 days ago | parent | next [-]

Intentionality of the path is a good prerequisite of the object being technological, and its hostility is a possibility given the Dark Forest resolution is true (which we can't prove nor disprove). The sentence sounds a bit sensationalist but it seems scientifically valid to me, considering this is an area where we have little more than a bunch of unprovable hypotheses.

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gopher_space 7 days ago | parent [-]

My favorite aspect of Dark Forest is that simply coming up with the concept also provides a resolution to the Fermi Paradox.

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krapp 6 days ago | parent [-]

It isn't a good resolution, because it assumes all intelligent species in the universe must think and act according to the same rationale. But the one example of an intelligent species we're aware of (humanity) doesn't think and act this way - we've been blindly sending signals and probes out for decades now, and anyone observing our planet would probably notice obvious tech signatures.

	▲	zeven7 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		The ones who behave that way don’t last long enough to be witnessed by new civilizations like humanity, hence the darkness

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Perenti 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

His argument regarding the trajectory into our Solar System is pretty flaky. It completely disregards Hopkin's computation of a "steep entry angle" and supposition that it comes from the "thick disk", instead assuming the incoming trajectories of interstellar objects are uniformly distributed across the celestial sphere.

Mass distribution in our galaxy is decidedly anisotropic - most mass lies in the galatic plane.

Loeb's estimate of the comet size is strange, when two observatories concur that the maximum size is around 10km.

Look at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44713579 for links to real science.

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thegrim33 7 days ago | parent | prev [-]

"There is zero testing of the hypothesis" - He, as well as multiple unrelated others, also wrote papers detailing available options to intercept the object by re-purposing existing satellites from Mars or Jupiter, which would allow for data collection which would directly test the hypothesis.

	▲	827a 7 days ago \| parent [-]
		Yes he did so: Poorly. His idea [0] to use Juno is a pretty bad one, given that it doesn't have the fuel to do what he suggests, and even if it did, one of its engines was damaged during a recent maneuver. And, at least according to Jason Wright, Loeb should have known all this but ignored it [1], because headlines. The ESA has a possibly more promising plan to divert a probe that's on its way to Jupiter right now [2]. So, again: If you're going to write "The feasibility of intercepting 3I/ATLAS depends on the current amount of fuel available from the propulsion system of Juno" one thing a real scientist would do is, idk, try to find out how much fuel it has left, talk to team members, etc. Instead, Loeb just does presumptive math, which ends up being wrong, but that didn't stop a Florida state rep from taking this "idea from a harvard scientist" and turning it into an official request of NASA, which now more real scientists will have to waste their time with [3]. [0] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.21402 [1] https://x.com/Astro_Wright/status/1951530225533329789 [2] https://www.newscientist.com/article/2490618-can-we-send-a-s... [3] https://x.com/RepLuna/status/1951379349128815062