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THE DAILY ASTRONOMER

Thursday, October 27, 2022

Four Quintillion Alien Spacecraft Around Our Solar System?!

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Just for the benefit of those like myself who are bedeviled by the proliferation of zeroes, four quintillion = 4,000,000,000,000,000,000

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Wait!

Before you become hopelessly enraptured by yet another DA installment, go outside and look up. Yes, we realize it is the middle of the day. As you gaze put into the boundless vault of cerulean blue, take a moment to contemplate the startling possibility that an incomprehensibly vast swarm of extraterrestrial space vessels could at that very moment be darting, weaving, buzzing, soaring, and zipping through our humble little niche within the Orion-Cygnus arm of the Milky Way Galaxy. Do you see them? No, of course not. They are concealed...far beyond the detection capabilities of we Earthling yokels. Yet, up and out there they are, in staggering numbers, numbers far larger than the current human population. And up there they have been while we, utterly oblivious, have conceitedly wondered if we were alone in the Universe. Well, not only are we not alone in the Universe. We are surrounded by a crush of aliens like frightened tourists on a Tokyo subway.

According to two Havard astronomers Carson Ezell and Abraham Loeb, this could be a possibility. (They don't know with any certainty, of course.) In September 2022 , Ezell and Loeb published a non-peer reviewed paper entitled "The Inferred Abundance of Interstellar Objects of Technological Origin."       In this paper they calculate that there could be as many as 4,000,000,000,000,000,000 alien spacecraft or spacecraft parts within and outside our very own solar system.     Most are so small and far away as to be undetectable.    Others, however, could be large enough and sufficiently close to be found by the James Webb Space Telescope.  Provided, of course, that they would be permitted telescope time to conduct their search (Good luck.)        While that 4 quintillion figure is impressive, so, too, is the volume of space separating the Sun from the nearest star system Alpha Centauri.         Since the separation distance equals 4.37 light years, the solar system has about 325 cubic light years of space to itself.   

Not only are we not alone, but we could live amidst a bustling swarm of alien spacecraft numbering as high as four quintillion, a number so large it sets off the spell-checker.  Nobody is asserting that these vessels actually exist in such profusion, but, well, could.

This notion is entirely predicated on the arrival of that interstellar interloper Oumuamua which glided through the inner solar system about five years ago.   While most astronomers insist that this object was merely an asteroid dislodged from another solar system, some believe it might have literally been an alien spacecraft.   Perhaps a moribund vessel careening aimlessly through the galaxy, crewed by corpses and one slovenly Liverpudlian trapped in a 3-million year-long stasis.   Or, perhaps a fragment of a craft that long ago detached from the mother ship and has been tumbling through space ever since.          Granted, many scientists dismiss this possibility out of hand.      We know interstellar space is littered with comets and asteroids from other star systems, some of which will happen to intersect with our solar system as they move through the galaxy.   There was no evidence to suggest that Oumuamua, meaning "Scout" in Hawaiian, was anything but a long thin rock.      Then again, there is no evidence to suggest it wasn't.     Astronomers weren't able to scrutinize it for long during its fleeting visitation.   Now that it is moving rapidly away to other parts, it has moved well beyond our view.   

The two astronomers based their calculation on the rate of interstellar material detections.   We can confirm the discovery of four such objects within the last eight years:   Oumuamua, the interstellar meteors CNEOS 2014-01-08 and CNEOS 2017-03-09 and the interstellar comet  Borisov.      Based on the frequency of these detections, the region in which those objects were found and the extent of the space within and outside the solar system, they estimate that as many as 40 decillion (40,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) objects well outside our view to a comparatively minuscule 4,000,000,000,000,000,000 that could venture into the inner solar system.      It should be noted that these would not all be as large as Oumuamua.  Most would be small, as little as three feet in diameter, and many would be fragments: pieces of alien craft that are hurling through the inky black toward no destination in particular.

We should also point out that these numbers are highly speculative.   Ezell and Loeb are not claiming that all those vessels and pieces of technological flotsam are actually milling about. Instead, they are asking us to accept the possibility that alien machinery is all around us: flying in and out of our solar system like shadows passing in the night.  (Our favorite hackneyed expression.)       This entire scenario is predicated on the belief that life abounds in the galaxy in all directions and at various stages of development.  

We just don't know, yet.    However, if nothing else, the concept of all these alien vessels and vessel parts floating through the sky gives us yet another compelling reason to look up and realize that we're likely seeing a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of all that exists around us.    

 

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