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A Harvard professor named Avi Loeb, chairman of Harvard’s Department of Astronomy, believes the first sign we’ll get from alien intelligence won’t be a spaceship. Rather, he thinks that the first sign we will get from alien life will be the garbage of civilization. Loeb published a book on January 26 which explains why a bizarre asteroid that entered our solar system in 2017 was alien technology.
The object he is talking about was the first known interstellar object to enter our solar system and travel to our solar system from the direction of Vega. Vega is a star about 25 light years away, nearby on a cosmic scale. The object entered the orbital plane of our solar system on September 6, 2017. On September 9, the object, known as the Oumuamua, came closest to the sun and at the end of September it has exceeded the orbital distance of Venus.
It crossed Earth at around 58,900 mph on October 7 and quickly made its way to the constellation Pegasus. The object was about 100 meters long and was shaped like a cigar. The big splash the object made was that it was the first interstellar object ever detected in the solar system. Astronomers came to this conclusion after studying the object’s trajectory. They discovered that it was not bound by the Sun’s gravity, which suggests that it was passing through our solar system.
Initially, it was believed to be an ordinary comet, but Loeb speculated that it could be rejected by the technology of an extraterrestrial civilization. Several observations lead him to the conclusion. The first observation was that the cigar-shaped object was 5 to 10 times longer than it was wide, and scientists have never seen a natural space body look like this.
It was also unusually bright, at least ten times more reflective than typical asteroids or stony comets. The observation that made Loeb believe it was abandoned alien technology was the way it moved. He said he was pushing excessively away from the sun. He said that typically, the sun’s pull will dramatically accelerate an object as it gets closer, and then the object will slow down considerably after passing the sun and move away. However, Oumuamua accelerated to a slight but statistically significant speed away from the sun.
Loeb believes he was pushed by force in addition to the Sun’s gravity alone. Loeb and his colleagues looked at the figures related to the shape and size of the object and concluded that it was not cigar-shaped but possibly a disc less than a millimeter thick with proportions in the form of a veil. If it was a solar sail, which would explain its acceleration away from the sun. Not all scientists agree with this theory and will probably never know exactly what Oumuamua was.
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