Avi Loeb

But the big stuff.

Oh, more and more.

In 2017, the first detected interstellar object showed no cometary tail, no visible outgassing, and yet it accelerated away from the sun.

Avi proposed it could be a light sail, a thin, flat object pushed by solar radiation.

His critics called it a dark comet, a comet with no tail, no gas that doesn't behave like a comet.

And he makes a fair point.

At one point is a comet that acts nothing like a comet, just not a comet.

Then there's the Pacific expedition.

In 2023, his team dragged magnets across the ocean floor near Papua New Guinea to recover material from IM1.

That's the first recognized interstellar meteor, which was confirmed by U.S.

DOD data.

They found spherules with a composition never seen in solar system materials, beryllium, lanthanum and uranium at a thousand times the expected abundance.

Critics from institutions like the University of Chicago published a rebuttal arguing it matched Kolash.

Avi's team compared the profiles and says the match doesn't hold.

The isotope analysis is still underway and could be definitive.

Avi brought up something I hadn't considered though.

There's a company called Reflect Orbital applying to the FCC right now, as in right now, to put 50,000 mirrors in orbit to beam sunlight down to Earth at night.

Now, it sounds like a good idea until you realize it would blind every telescope on the planet.

We wouldn't be able to see near-Earth objects coming.

And they framed it as a potential new answer to the Fermi paradox.