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It is October 19, 2017 that astronomers have detected, using the telescope Pan-STARRS1 a cigar-shaped rocky body.
Although originally clbadified as a comet, observation from ESO and other facilities did not reveal any signs of cometary activity after its pbadage closest to the Sun; it was therefore reclbadified as an interstellar asteroid and named 1I / 2017 U1 (Oumuamua).
However, his strange trajectory left the experts very confused because instead of decreasing his speed, as he was expecting it, he increased it.
That is why, on this occasion, a group of scientists from the University of Harvard raised the question of whether he could act from A probe sent intentionally to Earth by an extraterrestrial civilization.
According to the Spanish ABC newspaper, the Russian millionaire Yuri Milner, convinced that the body is of extraterrestrial origin, offered his Green Bank telescope to detect if Oumuamua sent radio signals.
In fact, Milner even met Abraham Loeb, director of the astronomy department at Harvard, to talk about the enigmatic body.
"The more I study this object, the foreigner it seems to me, and I wonder if it was an artificial probe sent by a civilization extraterrestrial " Loeb said in an email that he had sent to the Russian tycoon.
As part of a research he conducted with the postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Theory and Computer Science of the same institution, Shmuel Bialy, Loeb explains: "Considering a Artificial origin, one of the possibilities is that Oumuamua is a solar sail floating in interstellar space like rubble, coming from advanced technological equipment ".
A solar sail is a method of propulsion of spacecraft and spacecraft alternative or complementary to the use of engines, about which it was mentioned that this 39, was "the only technology known to date". it could take us to the stars.
In this sense, Loeb adds that other "solar sails" of similar dimensions were designed and built by our own civilization, including the Ikaros Project. "
"We explain Oumuamua's excess acceleration away from the Sun due to the force that sunlight exerts on its surface. measured excess of acceleration, the object must be extremely small, in the order of a fraction of a millimeter thick but several tens of meters, "explains Loeb. [19659002Accordingtospecialiststheforegoingmakestheobjectlightforitssurfaceandallowsittofunctionasalightsail
"Its origin could be natural (in the disk of the intoplellar or protoplanetary) or artificial (as a probe sent for a reconnaissance mission in the inner region of the solar system), "they supplement.
Harvard University experts will be published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters Nov. 12
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