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Earlier this week, the mysterious interstellar object Oumuamua was back in the headlines. It has not resurfaced because of new observations or studies since it was in our solar system at the end of 2017, but rather because of a new document suggesting that the object was of extraterrestrial origin.
The paper, written by researchers at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, discusses the behavior of the object as it revolves around the Sun and zooms out into space. This highlights the fact that the object seemed to accelerate by the time it left, ending with vague suggestions that it may be acting from a point of view. alien vessel or even a piece of extraterrestrial junk. Not everyone in the scientific community is willing to take the theory for granted.
Until now, nothing really indicated that this cigar-shaped object was the work of foreigners. This quickly pbaded through our system and, although scientists exchanged information about whether it was an asteroid or a comet, there was no justification for an explanation. involving extraterrestrials. The new document does not change that, but it tries to explain how a spacecraft propulsion system known as the veil of light could be responsible for the acceleration of the object.
A sail of light is like the sail of a boat, only in space. A veil of light would be attached to another object and, when it is hit by material from a star, it gains speed without the use of fuel. No one has yet built or tested a veil of light, but that did not stop researchers from thinking it was a plausible explanation for Oumuamua's increasing speed as she left the solar system.
This suggestion, as well as the implication that an extraterrestrial civilization could have used this object to monitor our system or even study the Earth closely, has angered many people.
"What you have to understand is that scientists are perfectly happy to publish a strange idea if it has any chance of not getting it wrong," said astrophysicist Katie Mack in a thread on Twitter. "Some of us are more conservative, of course. And that surely varies from one area to another. But in my field (astrophysics / cosmology), there is generally no problem in publishing something that (a) is interesting and (b) not completely excluded, whether or not it leads to "the right answer". "
She is not alone and other scientists have doubted the theory. In simple terms, there is no real smoking weapon that screams "aliens!", But there is also not much to prove is not. The result is a theory that seems revolutionary and unbelievable, but certainly a dream.
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