u/RADICCHI0

Interstellar objects should be studied aggressively. 3I/ATLAS is scientifically interesting on its own.

But Loeb’s pattern seems to turn uncertainty into spectacle before the evidence earns it. “This is anomalous” should mean “let’s collect more data,” rather than “let’s publicly elevate alien technology as a serious possibility every time a comet behaves strangely.”

The proposed “Loeb Scale” makes this worse, in my opinion. It gives the appearance of formal measurement while sliding from anomaly, to technosignature, to possible threat in one ladder. Those should be separate questions.

Public science communication matters. When a famous scientist repeatedly frames ordinary uncertainty as alien-adjacent drama, it may drive clicks, but it also damages public trust. It makes careful astronomy look like a teaser trailer.

I’d rather see 3I/ATLAS discussed as what it is: a rare interstellar object worth serious observation, not a recurring UFO marketing opportunity.

I'm not surprised

First of all I fully support everyones right to use Suno as they see fit. We are all mature enough to justify ourselves, we don't need others to do it for us.

Thus when I encounter the daily stream of post-sameness re the topic that we as creators are not accepted in musical society, I just grin and bear it. I do that because I actually like to listen to stuff people post, and check out what others are about round these parts.

So... when I then also begin to encounter posts that are in essence gate-keeping USselves then I have to let out an amused sigh, permeated in the absurd irony of it all. That pull toward self-policing I feel is not needed and not helpful.

-Proud Button Masher

edit: also the Great Primate Thesaurus is here to stay. Diffusion is real. The transformer stack is real. We may as well adapt it to our needs and vibes.

[Guise 'tis speculation only, this is not the place to mention how ridiculously silly this idea is, we're simply having some fun physics talk on a nice May Friday! :) ]

Gliese 710 arrives in about 1.3 million years, close enough to perturb the Oort Cloud, we should begin planning to utilize it as source of power for launching high velocity interstellar probes.

Assuming humans are able to persist as a technociv we plan to:

Use Jupiter as the bank shot, the aiming lever. This helps shaped the path and orbital plan. It can throw the craft inward toward the Sun, and set up the timing. Jupiter is the bank shot.

Sun burn: At closest solar approach, we fire whatever absurd future propulsion system is available onboard: fusion, antimatter-assisted fusion, beamed energy, something nastier. Because the probe is already moving fast, the burn has extra payoff.

Head outward toward Gliese 710’s encounter zone, the long outbound intercept leg. The probe swings through the star’s gravity field on a hyperbolic path. If the geometry is right, Gliese changes the craft’s velocity relative to the Sun.

Leave the solar neighborhood. The craft exits on a new interstellar trajectory, ideally faster or better aimed than it could have achieved from the Sun alone.

Alexia M. Lopez and Roger G. Clowes have a new 2026 arXiv preprint, “A Giant Ring on the sky,” extending their earlier work on the Giant Arc and Big Ring.

I’m not a cosmologist, but I’m interested in the observational/methodological side of this.

For people more familiar with large-scale structure work:

1. How strong is the statistical case for treating the Giant Arc, Big Ring, and Giant Ring as related structures rather than separate alignments?

2. What are the main failure modes in this kind of MgII absorber mapping?

3. How seriously should this be taken as pressure on the Cosmological Principle, versus simply an interesting large-scale structure candidate needing more survey confirmation?

4. Are DESI / Rubin-style datasets likely to clarify this soon?

I’d love to understand what the expert objections or strongest defenses are.

A black hole is still the compact object defined by the event horizon. But I wonder if **black engine** is a useful simplifying metaphor for the larger active system around a black hole.

This seems consistent with current language, at least as a simplification. Astrophysics already talks about accretion disks, relativistic jets, AGN feedback, and the “central engine” of active galactic nuclei. NASA describes an active galactic nucleus as a supermassive black hole consuming surrounding matter, with structures such as an accretion disk, corona, dusty torus, and relativistic jets. So “black engine” would not be a replacement for those terms. It would be a compression of the same system-level idea.

The model would be something like this:

- The black hole is the engine block.

- Nearby matter is the fuel.

- Accretion is the intake.

- Gravitational energy conversion is the power stroke.

- Radiation, winds, and jets are the exhaust.

- The surrounding galaxy is the larger machine being affected.

The reason I think this is interesting is that “black hole” names the object, but it can make the system sound more passive than it really is. An active black-hole system is not just an absence or a sink. It can take in matter, convert gravitational energy, produce enormous radiation, launch jets, drive winds, and affect the evolution of its surrounding galaxy.

So the distinction would be:

Black hole: the compact object.

Black engine: the operating system that forms when the black hole is actively interacting with matter and fields.

This also helps explain why activity can ebb and flow. A black hole can persist quietly, but the larger engine depends on available matter, accretion structure, magnetic fields, and surrounding conditions. It can possibly idle, flare, surge, or quiet down.

The metaphor has limits. Nothing is chemically “burning,” and the black hole itself is not literally an engine block. The energy comes from matter falling into a deep gravitational well and being heated, accelerated, radiated, or redirected before some of it crosses the horizon.

But as a metaphoric simplification, I think “black engine” may be interesting because it shifts attention from the hole alone to the surrounding astrophysical system.

A black hole names the boundary.

A black engine names the process.

Does this metaphor hold up? Does it welcome in too much machinery language?

For me, it might be the way science lets us build analogies and metaphors around observation.

A good metaphor does not prove anything by itself, but it can create a bridge between perception, language, and understanding.

That is fascinating to me, in the sense that it can make a difficult idea feel almost graspable.

I am just thinking about how if you really wanted to source and ship some of the goods this profession deals with, there is no way that AI could do anything more than potential reveal unfolding logistics, but I just don't see how even advanced AI agents could process a lot of it, because the global trade environment is so dynamic, and subject to pertrebution.