Astronomy/cosmology questions...

[Buster's Uncle]

I suspect he's NOT a nutter, but consciously talking crap to draw attention to space exploration...

[Lorizael]

His interactions with people in the field suggest otherwise. He's extremely arrogant and dismissive of people who actually know what they're talking about re: comets. And also increasingly paranoid, casting himself, predictably, as a persecuted Galileo figure. (Persecuted, of course, in the modern sense of rich, privileged guy who can get an interview whenever he wants.)

[Rusty Edge]

Lori thinks he's being a nutter...

He's an astrophysicist (read: not an expert on comets, solar system astronomy, or observing) who got high on his own supply and refuses to listen to the people who study objects like this all the time (mostly my colleagues). Anyone else who made the claims (and basic mistakes) he has would never make the news, but because he's a tenured professor at Harvard with books to sell, we're forced to pretend he's saying interesting things.

OH! That reminds me of Tom Nichols' book "The Death of Expertise". I think his doctorate was in Russian stuff. He lived there for a while. He taught at Dartmouth and the Naval War College, now he writes for The Atlantic. He said that there's a tendency to think that everyone's opinion is equally valid in a one man/one vote sort of way. Not true. Experts have judgement, which comes from experience, which comes from making enough decisions to be wrong and learning why.  At least, as long as they stay in their lane.

I assumed Buster was right and he was just jumping on a stump to try to raise awareness and generate research $ for all.

But this sounds a little like some medical doctor who dismissed the opinions of virologists and epidemiologists during the pandemic.

--------------
So Lori-

Is it likely a big rock with frozen gunk on it, OR a dirty snowball with gravel in it?

[Lorizael]

But this sounds a little like some medical doctor who dismissed the opinions of virologists and epidemiologists during the pandemic.

Yeah, the analogy I'm going with is... primatologists discover some new ape species in the jungle, but then a paleontologist writes a blogpost titled, "MAYBE IT'S BIGFOOT... AND HE CAN TIME TRAVEL??", and we all take him seriously because dinosaurs are cool and people who study them must be smart.

Is it likely a big rock with frozen gunk on it, OR a dirty snowball with gravel in it?

The eternal question. The latest from folks in my group, who looked at data from big sky surveys to find out what 3I was up to before it was discovered ("prediscovery"), suggests it's "dynamically old," i.e. it's had a bunch of close encounters with a star before (probably its parent star) and been depleted of fresh surface volatiles.

[Rusty Edge]

I have no degrees in anything.  My theory is that Bigfoot is the ghost of a human/Gigantopithecus hybrid which perished in the ICE AGE because it lacked fire tech.