Amid the 3I/ATLAS buzz, Professor Avi Loeb, the Harvard astrophysicist, is facing backlash from the astronomy community at large for his sensationalist speculations about the comet displaying alien probe-like behavior. His 10 anomalies listicle has been taken to task, but the believer in Loeb is relentless. In his latest update on the Medium blog, the Israeli-American physicist who founded the Black Hole Initiative announced an official bet with skeptic Michael Shermer. He wrote
Yesterday, I placed an official bet with Michael Shermer, executive director of the Skeptics Society, that within five years (by December 31, 2030) there will be undisputable scientific evidence for a technological artifact from an extraterrestrial civilization. The bet money will go to the non-profit Foundation of the Galileo Project — of which both Michael and I are members.
Prof Loeb’s statement to the Long Now Foundation which is officiating the bet, reads as follows:
Meanwhile, on the LongBets site, Michael Shermer’s following prediction on alien visitation is still unchallenged
“Discovery or disclosure of alien visitation to Earth in the form of UFOs, UAPs, or any other technological artifact or alien biological form, as confirmed by major scientific institutions and government agencies, will not happen by December 31, 2027.”
In his challenge he called out the disclosure community for purposefully gatekeeping information, stating it would be a threat to their lives. Shermer quipped,
More recently, proponents of UAPs as alien spacecraft have appeared before the U.S. Congress, confidently claiming that they know people who have seen and even touched aliens and/or their spaceships, back-engineered their technologies, and even communicated with the aliens.
He added,
Yet when pushed for evidence, they always demur, saying that it’s “classified” or “top-secret,” that Men-in-Black threatened them into silence, that their careers and even their lives are at stake if they disclose said evidence, that they could only reveal the evidence in a “SCIF” (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility) but not in Congress, and that many people in the U.S. government, CIA, FBI, NSA, etc. (never named) have this information and evidence of alien visitation.
Who do you wager will win the bet?
See Also: Avi Loeb Speculates 3I/ATLAS Could Be A Probe By Aliens Monitoring Us: ‘Maybe They’re Unhappy’
See Also: 3I/ATLAS: Astronomer Jason Wright Demystifies Prof. Avi Loeb’s 10 Anomalies One By One
