A famous researcher searching for extraterrestrial satellites – NRK Urix

Harvard cosmologist and astrophysicist Avi Loeb has become known for his controversial views that aliens have visited us here on Earth.

Now he wants to prove the existence of intelligent life in space.

Through the Galileo Project, Loeb and his colleagues will attempt to find and identify objects in the sky. The plan is to develop a network of telescopes that will search for evidence of an alien civilization near Earth, writes the scientific journal Scientific American.

It will search for alien satellites

The project is financed, among other things, by private donations and the budget is $1.7 million, equivalent to about 15 million kroner.

Another goal of the project is to search for Earth-orbiting satellites that could be located by aliens who might be observing Earth.

By taking a high-resolution medical image of space, researchers hope to prove the existence of life.

However, criticism was welcome after the project became known. Most people who claim to have seen an unidentified flying object believe that it appeared out of nowhere and disappeared just as quickly.

It’s very hard to imagine how to create a research strategy that has a chance of discovery, says astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard Center for Astrophysics.

– Can help in understanding natural things

Astronomer and astronomer Pål Brekke of the Norwegian Space Center believes that it will not hurt the search for extraterrestrial life, but it will not yield any results.

– We already have several room monitoring systems. Both the United States and Europe have developed programs to monitor all existing waste. Brick says there are about 20,000 items floating in the room with signs and we know where else.

But he believes the project could complement what is already in the research being done in this area.

It may be useful to understand other natural things in the atmosphere, but I will find them and prove to us that we have visited them from other planets, I doubt it.

The target object could be a spacecraft

Much of the inspiration for Loeb’s Galileo project came from the interstellar star ‘Oumuamua’. Discovered in October 2017 at an observatory in Hawaii, it means “messenger from a distant past.”

It was the first object from another solar system to be observed in our own solar system. Therefore, interstellar becomes cold.

At first scientists thought it was a comet and then an asteroid. But neither definition fits, allowing theories to flourish. Maybe this was a spaceship?

“Oumuamua could be a fully functional probe sent for the purpose of reaching the immediate vicinity of the Earth by an alien civilization,” wrote Loeb and the co-researchers. Study from 2018.

The design was based on the fact that an object suddenly increases its speed as it travels through our solar system. Loeb was soon blamed for the lack of solid evidence for his claims.

Don’t agree with lube

Pål Brekke believes there are natural explanations for the acceleration of ‘Oumuamua.

– I don’t think this is a spacecraft. We were late in spotting it and couldn’t notice it until it was on its way from us. The astronomer says it’s accelerating, of course, but it’s far from natural explanations for asteroids and the like that can explain it.

The UFO controversy has also been revived after the US Department of Defense recently released a video of an object flying at supersonic speed. US intelligence cannot rule out the possibility that it was a spacecraft.

for long distances

Although Brekke thinks it’s unlikely Loeb will find traces of extraterrestrials who have visited us, there is a slightly higher chance that traces of intelligent life can be found in space.

But the distances are very large. If we were to visit our nearest star, Proxima Centauri, four light-years away, it would take us about 160,000 years to travel there on a space shuttle, he says.

According to Brikki, most stars have planets around them. In our galaxy, the Milky Way, we have about 100 billion stars. Astronomers estimate that there are 10 billion galaxies in the universe.

So there’s a good chance that there’s intelligent life on one of those planets, now or back and forth through time for millions of years, says Brikki.

If we get a signal from someone 100,000 light years away, it will take 100,000 light years before they get our answer again. So it’s hard to come up with a reasonable way to communicate.