The truth is out there: Harvard’s top astronomer believes in extraterrestrial life

Professor Avi Loeb, former chair of astrophysics at Harvard University, believes that an object that passed through our solar system had extraterrestrial origins, but his colleagues largely disagreed.

In late 2017, scientists at a Hawaiian observatory spotted a strange object soaring through our inner solar system.

The object, nicknamed “Oumuamua”, was shaped like a pancake and was as big as a football field. It had no tail, so it was not a comet and was moving too fast to be an asteroid.

Former Harvard University Professor of Astrophysics, Professor Avi Loeb, was intrigued by the object, eventually coming to the conclusion that it was likely a piece of advanced technology created by a distant alien civilization.

Professor Loeb exposes this controversial theory, which angered some of his colleagues, in his new book Extraterrestrial.

Speaking with Kim Hill, Loeb said that a series of anomalies convinced him that this object was not simply a rock hurtling through space.

“The Oumuamua object showed around six anomalies, but the most surprising of them is that it was pushed away from the sun by a force that declined inversely with distance squared in a gentle way and showed no outgassing, no comet tail, and no trace. of gas or dust coming out of it.

“And generally, such a force is associated with a rocket effect, when gas evaporates from a comet, but in this case there was no comet tail and the only way to explain this force was from the reflection of light. solar”.

He compared Oumuanmua to another object discovered by the same observatory in September last year, which behaved similarly. This object, named 2020 SO, was later discovered to be a booster rocket that had been launched into space from Earth.

“We know it had thin walls and so it had a large area for its weight and could have been pushed by reflected sunlight,” he said.

“So it was artificial, we know that because we produced this booster rocket, the question is who produced Oumuamua, this object from 2017 that showed similar qualities.”

Other possible explanations the scientists found for Oumuamua was that it could be an iceberg made from pure hydrogen, or a kind of ‘dust bunny’ from outer space, an object made from a collection of loose dust particles.

However, Loeb said that both explanations had major flaws, and that neither a hydrogen iceberg nor a dust rabbit could withstand the heat of the sun.

“I maintain that an artificial origin, something like a very thin object similar to 2020 SO, which I related to a light candle, a thin object pushed by the light could be a possibility, and nature does not make light candles, it has to be some another civilization. “

He said similar technology was currently being developed that uses ‘light sails’ for space exploration, an advantage that could mean that spacecraft would not need to carry fuel.

Loeb’s theories have not been accepted among his peers, who have argued that a natural explanation for the object was much more likely. However, Loeb said that most of the time, scientists are more insecure than they show.

“Most of the time we are not sure, we have limited evidence and we have multiple interpretations of that evidence,” he said.

“If the public recognized that most of the time scientists don’t have enough evidence and there are multiple interpretations, then scientists would be much more credible because when they came to a consensual point of view, it would be clear that there is enough evidence and that now the public believe them. “

He said that explanations for Oumuamua’s natural origin still required more evidence that had not been provided, and if they were found to be true, it would also be something that we had never seen before.

“If explanations of natural origin involve something we’ve never seen before, we better get evidence to decide why we will learn something new no matter what,” he said.

“The only way we won’t get evidence is if we say ‘it’s always rocks, never aliens’ and that would be similar to a caveman looking at a cell phone and saying ‘it’s just a shiny rock.’