3I/ATLAS

[môrgondír]

I don't think I'm that clever, but I'll stop responding now anyway.

 

[MoonSong]

Yes, but unless it just happens to be a very special frog, it probably isn't crawling up there to cure your cancer, either.

But actually, the way science spins off knowledge, information on those aliens is likely to help in human medicine - they imply new materials, new physics to be used in diagnostic machines and computers, greater understanding of biology, all of which can then be turned around to influence your life.

But, by all means, you get to like the frog all you want. Nobody's questioning that. Have fun with the amphibian of your choice!

Magic in all but name again?

 

[Umbran]

Magic in all but name again?

If I understand what you mean by that comment, no. Not magic in all but name. Just tech and understanding we haven't gotten to yet. I don't claim that knowing about aliens will magically solve all our problems - just that we'd learn a lot.

 

[Gradine]

As a layperson with a YouTube history littered with videos re: the Fermi Paradox, the Dark Forest, Great Filters, etc. my base level of understanding is that finding evidence of life elsewhere in the universe would almost certainly be bad news for us

 

[Reynard]

As a layperson with a YouTube history littered with videos re: the Fermi Paradox, the Dark Forest, Great Filters, etc. my base level of understanding is that finding evidence of life elsewhere in the universe would almost certainly be bad news for us

Nah. The distances and challenges between stars is so great that interstellar hostility makes no sense at all.

 

[Pale Violet Light]

Yes, but unless it just happens to be a very special frog, it probably isn't crawling up there to cure your cancer, either.

It could be: cinobufagin is a natural product isolated from a toad that shows promise in cancer treatment. Though frog up the Khyber Pass seems an unorthodox delivery method.

But actually, the way science spins off knowledge, information on those aliens is likely to help in human medicine - they imply new materials, new physics to be used in diagnostic machines and computers, greater understanding of biology, all of which can then be turned around to influence your life

But will they give us their secrets, or will we have to wrest them from their many charred corpses?

 

[Hriston]

New images of 3I/ATLAS taken with the Nordic Optical Telescope on 11/11/25 show no evidence for breakup following perihelion and still exhibiting a sunward "anti-tail".

https://faculty.epss.ucla.edu/~jewitt/NOTpictures.pdf

 

[Umbran]

It could be: cinobufagin is a natural product isolated from a toad that shows promise in cancer treatment.

Sure. There's over 6000 species of frogs and toads in the world. That's one. That qualifies as a "very special frog", like I allowed for.

 

[Umbran]

And us just going to space had a huge effect on science, medicine, and even food. Seeing how others do it would be, as I said, transformative.

The first step in figuring out how something novel is done is to see proof it can be done

As a layperson with a YouTube history littered with videos re: the Fermi Paradox, the Dark Forest, Great Filters, etc. my base level of understanding is that finding evidence of life elsewhere in the universe would almost certainly be bad news for us

Youtube very much wants to scare us. Scaring us gets clicks. Scaring us also engages fear responses that do a number on our ability to assess risks, which wasn't all that great to start with.