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According to a new article written by Harvard scientists, a long, flat piece of space rock that scientists have been missing since it came to our planet last year could actually be an extraterrestrial technology,
The paper – written by Abraham Loeb, president of astronomy, and Shmuel Bialy, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysical Center – was submitted to the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters.
In this paper, they hypothesized that "Oumuamua – the cigar-shaped object that briefly visited us from a distant star system – can be a fully operational probe, intentionally sent near the Earth by a civilization. extraterrestrial".
I am the maxim of Sherlock Holmes. When you have ruled out the impossible, all that is left, however improbable, must be the truth.– Abraham Loeb, Chair of the Astronomy Committee of the Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysical Center
"I'm Sherlock Holmes' maxim," says Loeb As it happens host Carol Off. "When you have ruled out the impossible, all that is left, however improbable, must be the truth."
The paper has not yet been peer reviewed and several scientists, including those who studied at Oumuamua, are skeptical of Loeb's findings.
"Oumuamua was discovered in October 2017 by Canadian astronomer Robert Weryk at the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Hawaii.
This is our first known interstellar visitor – and scientists have struggled to explain it.
"It's very weird, it's nothing we've seen before," Loeb said. "It seems to have an extreme shape based on the reflectance of sunlight, its dimensions are very strange, it is at least five to ten times longer than it is wide."
At first, the researchers declared "Oumuamua, an asteroid – a large mbad of rocks containing very little water. After a more thorough inspection, it was later considered a comet, consisting mainly of dust and ice.
But & # 39; Oumuamua does not behave like a comet either.
What is stimulating? Oumuamua?
On the one hand, he stepped off the trajectory that he had to follow because of the gravitational pull of the sun.
A comet can do this when it releases gases, producing a rocket effect called degbading. But & # 39; Oumuamua does not have the telltale comet tail badociated with degbading.
What else, degbading should have sent & # 39; Oumuamua in rotation, but no rotation was detected.
So, what has pushed this big mystery to turn in space at an accelerated speed out of its natural course?
Abraham Loeb is Professor and Chair of Astronomy at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. (Submitted by Abraham Loeb)
"There is something that drives him in addition to gravity," said Loeb.
"The possibility we suggest is that it's sunlight – the sun's radiation is growing, and for it to be effective, it must be very thin."
So thin, he says, it could be artificial.
Sail in the sun
One thing that fits this description is a sail of light, also known as the solar sail – a type of propulsion that allows a spacecraft to move under the force of solar radiation reflected by large mirrors.
Essentially, a light-sailing spaceship sails in space in the sun.
Loeb is the chairman of the Breakthrough Starshot advisory committee, an organization that is working to launch a light sail to the nearest star, Proxima Centauri.
"Oumuamua," he says, "can be an extraterrestrial version of that same technology.
Solar sail technology uses the sun's pressure to propel a spaceship. (NASA)
"It could be a space debris that is a piece of equipment, it could be out of date, it might not be operational," Loeb said.
"But at the same time, it could be space debris left behind by another civilization, simply because they are so peculiar and that nothing resembles the rocks we see in the solar system."
"No reason to believe" extraterrestrial theory: scientist
Weryk, the Canadian scientist who discovered and researched Oumuamua, questioned Loeb's extracurricular theory.
"There is no reason to believe" Oumuamua is anything other than a natural object (a comet from another solar system) based on the observations of the team with which I worked, "said Weryk at Motherboard, Vice's scientific site.
"That's right, there are many things we do not know about interstellar comets, and we'll have to really find more to understand them." It may take a while, but now that we know they exist, let's look more near each new [near-Earth object] discovery we make. "
Eric Berger, a writer at Arts Technica, hinted that the media had seized Loeb's unproven theory because of its "clbadic clickbait title."
But as for Loeb, he says that he is motivated only by curiosity and the search for the truth.
"I do not play on the basis of what I expect from my colleagues, I do it according to my interests," he said. "And the fact that the public is interested, that's a benefit."
Written by Sheena Goodyear with Nicole Mortillaro's records. Interview with Abraham Loeb produced by Tracy Fuller.
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