This has the same basic problem it always does: from a positivist viewpoint, what changes in what we do if we start assuming artificial origin?
We would do all the same experiments we already did (which included sweeping for transmissions), and have the same lack of data that fails to meaningfully distinguish models.
Worse, disproving a hypothesis is not itself evidence in favour of another one unless they're aggressively mutually exclusive - and even then, this is rarely absolute once measurement error/difficulty becomes a factor.
Particularly when you start adding additional items - i.e. unexplained acceleration, okay sure, but how? Either it's something very similar to outgassing (which is what conventional propellants and ion engines are) or it's a new technology we have never encountered, which puts it on worse footing then the more likely explanation of naturally occurring things being observed in an unusual setting (we've never observed an interstellar object before this, haven't after this, it's reasonable to think that the 99.99%+ of it's life it spent outside of the solar system means it starts with surface conditions unlike what we're used to from comets).
But in both cases, starting from the incredible explanation hasn't contributed a way to distinguish the hypotheses - it proposes no new experiments. In fact, generally presuming alien technology artifact shuts down experimental futures: if we're actually being observed by technology, then likely we need do nothing to observe another one - it would be reasonable to expect that aliens are looking for aliens, and will send more probes now that they've found them. Whereas interstellar rocks will require advances in our rocketry and mission staging so we can hopefully find one we can get on an intercept trajectory with.
> In fact, generally presuming alien technology artifact shuts down experimental futures... Whereas interstellar rocks will require advances in our rocketry and mission staging so we can hopefully find one we can get on an intercept trajectory with.
Sorry, but in my mind this is reversed. I think the general sentiment, if you asked a large portion of the populace, would be that something we assume to be of technological origin warrants a much larger investment in time and resources in order to catch up with it and study it thoroughly than something of natural origin. The last thing that comes to my mind when thinking about the possibility of an alien probe having discovered us is to sit around waiting for them to show up.
In either case, we should be a bit ashamed that we're unable to conclusively determine the difference between a rock and a solar sail and we should probably put more effort into developing the capability to do so.
> we've never observed an interstellar object before this, haven't after this, it's reasonable to think that the 99.99%+ of it's life it spent outside of the solar system means it starts with surface conditions unlike what we're used to from comets
In the Lex Friedman Podcast Loeb said that another interstellar object, named Borisov, had been observed since Oumuamua and it had a typical comet shape.
Surface conditions is not the geometry: Oumuamua has spent thousands to millions of years nowhere near the heat of a star, in the interstellar medium. So unlike cyclic comets in orbit around Sol, having an unusual surface chemistry would be expected since it's not being evaporated every few hundred years by close encounters.
The point is, pleading about potentially naturally occurring conditions we've never seen before occurring in an object we've never seen before isn't much of an argument when you have no evidence to actually exclude them (and the observation timeline was in a phase where it was already faint).
We would do all the same experiments we already did (which included sweeping for transmissions), and have the same lack of data that fails to meaningfully distinguish models.
Worse, disproving a hypothesis is not itself evidence in favour of another one unless they're aggressively mutually exclusive - and even then, this is rarely absolute once measurement error/difficulty becomes a factor.
Particularly when you start adding additional items - i.e. unexplained acceleration, okay sure, but how? Either it's something very similar to outgassing (which is what conventional propellants and ion engines are) or it's a new technology we have never encountered, which puts it on worse footing then the more likely explanation of naturally occurring things being observed in an unusual setting (we've never observed an interstellar object before this, haven't after this, it's reasonable to think that the 99.99%+ of it's life it spent outside of the solar system means it starts with surface conditions unlike what we're used to from comets).
But in both cases, starting from the incredible explanation hasn't contributed a way to distinguish the hypotheses - it proposes no new experiments. In fact, generally presuming alien technology artifact shuts down experimental futures: if we're actually being observed by technology, then likely we need do nothing to observe another one - it would be reasonable to expect that aliens are looking for aliens, and will send more probes now that they've found them. Whereas interstellar rocks will require advances in our rocketry and mission staging so we can hopefully find one we can get on an intercept trajectory with.