ENTAUS

  I owe my (five) readers part two of my review of the annual AAPC organized and sponsored by the SCU; but in the meantime, there are a few things on my mind that I can offer before we get to the last part of that review. And what is right now in my mind is more from the annals of Loebism.  This recent Medium article (of 18 July this year) dealing with the Loeb/‘Oumuamua controversy, which the historian Greg Eghigian altered us to on Facebook, pretty much settles the debate. At least for now: Loeb has offered, as the authors of this piece show, no detailed model of an artificial “light sail” (or something answering to that description) that is consistent with the observational facts – or any convincingly detailed model that proposes that the object was a manufactured artifact rather than a natural space rock. And those observational facts – which aren’t being disputed, crucially – are in fact consistent with the behavior of known natural phenomena, as the authors of this...