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A Harvard professor named Avi Loeb, chairman of the Harvard Astronomy Department, believes that the first signal we will get from an extraterrestrial intelligence will not be a spaceship. Rather, think that the first sign we will get of extraterrestrial life will be the garbage of civilization. Loeb has a book due out on January 26 that lays out a case of why a strange asteroid that entered our solar system in 2017 was a piece of alien technology.
The object you are talking about was the first known interstellar object that entered our solar system and traveled into our solar system from the direction of Vega. Vega is a star of about 25 light years, close on the cosmic scale. The object entered the orbital plane of our solar system on September 6, 2017. By September 9, the object, known as Oumuamua, made its closest approach to the sun and, in late September, it traveled beyond the distance. orbital of Venus.
It swiftly passed Earth at approximately 58,900 mph on October 7 and was moving rapidly toward the constellation of Pegasus. The object was about 100 meters long and shaped like a cigar. The big impact the object made was that it was the first interstellar object detected in the solar system. Astronomers came to that conclusion after studying the object’s trajectory. They found that it was not constrained by the Sun’s gravity, suggesting that it was passing through our solar system.
It was initially believed to be an ordinary comet, but Loeb theorized that it could be discarded technology from an alien civilization. Several observations lead him to the conclusion. The first observation was that the cigar-shaped object was 5 to 10 times as long as it was wide, and scientists had never seen a naturally-occurring space body that looked like this.
It was also unusually bright, at least ten times more reflective than typical stony asteroids or comets. The observation that led Loeb to believe that it was discarded alien technology was the way it moved. Said it had too much thrust away from the sun. He said that usually the attraction of the sun will significantly accelerate an object as it approaches, then the object will slow down considerably after the sun passes and moves away. However, Oumuamua accelerated at a slight but statistically significant rate away from the sun.
Loeb believes he was being pushed by a force other than gravity from the Sun. Loeb and his colleagues looked at the numbers related to the shape and size of the object and concluded that it was not shaped like a cigar, but possibly a disk less than one millimeter thick with candle-like proportions. If it were a solar sail, which would explain its acceleration as it moved away from the sun. Not all scientists agree with this theory and will probably never know exactly what Oumuamua was.
