There's a good post over at Centauri Dreams about what SETI researchers are looking for as potential tell tales if the oddly-shaped interstellar asteroid turned out to be an alien construct. Of course it's probably not, and even if it were the approaches they outline make a lot of big assumptions about how it would behave if it were (although I guess it's hard to avoid making big assumptions in this exercise). Anyway figured it might be an interesting thought experiment for people writing about first-contact scenarios.
I see a lot of incorrect science in that article unfortunately. Everything from the analysis of the spectrum, to the idea that it’s not on a free trajectory, to the idea that Earth’s EM leaks are detectable from any sort of distance. It’s all just plain wrong.
Reminds me of what we were taught in school, back in the dark ages - you need a minimum of three sources to verify the correctness of anything.
Even so, the state of peer reviewed articles is pretty bad right now. Most of the time, when a paper is retracted, it’s left in the archives so we have tons and tones or articles that are no longer valid and are constantly being sourced from. Drives me nuts when I see that.
