David Kipping

He's obviously done this before with Oumuamua, which you might remember.

I think he came on here and talked about that.

Yeah, I mean, I...

I don't like throwing shit at other scientists.

That's just not how I jam.

I try to be respectful and appreciative of his contributions, of any scientist's contributions.

And I think some of his work, I was actually referencing some of his work just the other day to get inspired for another paper.

So he's had a huge impact in so many different areas.

I do think he's off base on this one, but he doesn't need to be persecuted for that.

I just think he's made the wrong call.

With this particular object, there was three reasons, I think, why he thought this could be alien.

One was the size of the thing appeared to be really big.

So it was unclear originally whether it was an asteroid or a comet.

And that makes a big difference.

If it's a comet, then it's probably a really small thing surrounded by puffy dust around it.

So what you see is actually not the true size.

The true size is much smaller than what you see.

It's just all the coma, as we call it, around it.

If it's an asteroid, then that whole thing is a giant rock, right?

It's freaking huge in that case.