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Important context: this is Avi Loeb, the guy who insisted that Oumuamua might be aliens. Here's a nice exposé on him and his shoddy work https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY985qzn7oI

Just as more context, his body of work overall is exceptional. He's been a Harvard professor for 30 years, he didn't get that position by accident. He's taken the Linus Pauling career path the last few years though, which is unfortunate. But the bulk of the mans career he's published good research and good books, people shouldn't reflexively junk those parts of his work just because he's gone loopy now.
That's partially fair, but it is not really helpful to estimates of the reliability of his current work to point out that in the past, before he got all loopy, his work was reliable.

The fact that he's gone all loopy recently is absolutely the most important context for deciding if you want to take his word on faith or not.

Nobody, and let me be clear, absolutely nobody should take Loeb's word for anything at all. His schtick for the last half decade or so is a dressed up 'God of the Gaps' argument, where everything he can't explain is aliens and if someone is able to show better explanations it's not science working but people bullying him.

Which is completely fair. He's done it to himself. No quarrels from me. But there's also a understandable urge to toss everything and that's an overreaction. Pauling being a crank is his late career doesn't mean he didn't deserve the Nobel for his earlier career, and likewise Loeb is/was very important to modern cosmology, you just have to ignore most of what he's published since 2017 or so.

> Oumuamua might be aliens

Yes, it has few properties which are unusual for natural objects, so it can be an alien artifact. Probability is very low, but non-zero.

> Here's a nice exposé on him and his shoddy work

I have no time for this audiobook.

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