OK so maybe I should've just linked e.g. to that very detailed (and sort of lengthy, but entertaining) video by acollierastro "harvard & aliens & crackpots: a disambiguation of Avi Loeb" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY985qzn7oI) which is definitely not flamewar-ish.
Guess I've gotten somewhat thin-skinned given the volume of faux / overblown science news of late.
For those reading this, there's yet another post here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37327330) that links to a harvard.edu article that gives more details on why the collectors of the spherules believe they have reason to assume that (1) they are really from the suspected meteorite, (2) the material's composition doesn't resemble materials known from other meteorites.
Many questions remain though; for those interested in spherules from outer space, there's yet another earlier post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37317442) that links to a video that shows how excrutiating it is to collect and sort out teeny meteorites from the environment. Having seen that and a clip about the expedition's method of collecting (lowering a strong magnet to the seafloor) I wonder how often they lifted the thing up to collect material because otherwise they could not produce statistics about abundance in relation to the asteroid's flight path.
Guess I've gotten somewhat thin-skinned given the volume of faux / overblown science news of late.
For those reading this, there's yet another post here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37327330) that links to a harvard.edu article that gives more details on why the collectors of the spherules believe they have reason to assume that (1) they are really from the suspected meteorite, (2) the material's composition doesn't resemble materials known from other meteorites.
Many questions remain though; for those interested in spherules from outer space, there's yet another earlier post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37317442) that links to a video that shows how excrutiating it is to collect and sort out teeny meteorites from the environment. Having seen that and a clip about the expedition's method of collecting (lowering a strong magnet to the seafloor) I wonder how often they lifted the thing up to collect material because otherwise they could not produce statistics about abundance in relation to the asteroid's flight path.