Why are they even talking about it possibly being a spacecraft? Even if it was (and likely is) a mundane natural object of interstellar origin it would be of great scientific value to find it.
Because the UFO angle brings free publicity. Everything I’ve read of his about this sort of thing is always couched in language that makes it clear he’s not convinced it’s definitely aliens, he just wants to push a boundary and found a useful untapped stream of free PR and the funding that can bring so he writes regularly plausible science up, but plays up the Alien angle to get crowd attention… in part because he got fed up with even the suggestion that something being aliens was ridiculous when a large percentage of scientists consider the chances were completely alone in the universe to be quite low.
Just like how almost all planetary science projects are presented to the public as efforts to find life. This is just "manufacturing consent" messaging to ensure continued funding and public interest.
Hypothesizing about a billion year old alien remnant is not Loch Ness monster, it’s just discussing statistics about a phenomena we have no good statistics for - except we know it’s plausible since we already know interstellar space is already populated by two probes launched by a civilization of sentient creatures. I’d say its a topic solidly in the domain of scientific inquiry, but it’s not well defined yet since people trying to discuss it are labeled loonies (reminds me of atom theory and plate tectonics- two phenomena which were prominently ridiculed as well). Of course, ”alien studies” is a domain that is quite hard at the moment-and may always remain so.
And sure, there is lots of crazy talk around the topic. But the fact we have people trying to invent perpetual motion machines does not make every thermodynamicist and machine engineer looney.
Have you listened to any of his other talks? Do you understand his reasoning as to why he mentions aliens? He addresses stereotypical attitudes identical to yours.
It was travelling faster than the stars in our vicinity, which indicates it didn’t come from them. It was also observed to be tougher than other meteors that go through our atmosphere, indicating different materials or formation.
It’s still very unlikely, but it also raises interesting questions.
The toughness claims seem a bit overstated in some contexts, e.g. the paper linked in the post compares it to the average toughness but doesn't compare to other outliers not suspected of being artificial, while the Wikipedia article for CNEOS 2014-01-08 compares to other outliers but uses the the high end of the strength estimate.
I think trying to retrieve it is a good idea, but I also get a whiff of motivated reasoning in most articles describing how unique it is.
All of the heavier metals on earth came from outside of the solar system (such as, for instance, Tungsten). How much of the ore deposits on earth do we attribute to extraterrestrial technology? I'd wager none.
All our own technological signatures will be reduced to odd mineral deposits if we wait long enough. On a planet with active geology like Earth, tens of millions of years should be quite enough to do it.
