An odd , cigar - mold object has been stumping scientist ever since it zoom along into our solar system last year . Dubbed’Oumuamua(pronounced oh - MOO - ah - MOO - ah ) , it was first escort through the Pan - STARRS 1 telescope in Hawaii in October 2017 . ' Oumuamua moved at an unusually high speed and in a unlike kind of orbit than those of comets or asteroid , leading scientists to close that it did n’t originate in our solar organisation . It was the first interstellar object to arrive from somewhere else , but its visit was brief . After being spot over Chile and other locus , ' Oumuamua left last January , leave scads of question in its wake .
Now , two researchers at Harvard University sink a surprising suggestion in a new newspaper that analyse the object ’s movement : ' Oumuamua could be an alien probe . Sure , why not ?
First , astrophysicist Shmuel Bialy and Abraham Loeb argue that ' Oumuamua is being drive through space by solar irradiation pressing , which could explain its uncharacteristic pep pill . But for that theory to crop , they reckon that the object must be outstandingly lean . Bialy and Loeb then analyze how such a svelte object might withstand collisions with debris and gases , and the force of rotation , on its interstellar journeying .
Then things get uncanny .
" A more alien scenario is that ' Oumuamua may be a to the full usable investigation sentintentionallyto Earth vicinity by an foreign civilization , " they indite [ PDF ] . They suggest that ‘ Oumuamua could be be a lightsail — an artificial aim propelled by radiation therapy pressure — which also pass off to be the engineering that theBreakthrough Starshotinitiative , of which Loeb is the advisory committeechair , is trying to send into infinite . " Considering an artificial line of descent , one hypothesis is that ' Oumuamua is a lightsail , floating in interstellar distance as a junk from an advanced technical equipment , ” they write .
Their report , which was not peer - reviewed , was posted on the pre - print platform arXiv .
Loeb is well love for theorizing about foreign tech . He previously suggested that intense tuner signals from 2007 could be the work of foreigner who travel through blank on solar canvass . However , Loeb acknowledged that this possibility apportion more with possibility than probability , The Washington Postnoted . “ It ’s deserving putting estimate out there and letting the information be the judge , ” Loeb told the paper last year .
[ h / tCNN ]
