Harvard researchers suggest that a strange interstellar object might be an extraterrestrial lightweight sail

Astronomers noticed something weird last year. Something really strange. Now, a Harvard professor suggests that it was an extraterrestrial solar sail sent in search of life – ours!

This was our first known interstellar visitor when he was detected in front of the Sun last October. Nicknamed 'Oumuamua & # 39; – Hawaiian messenger – he was quickly determined not to belong to this solar system.

His trajectory had been traced. And the track on which he stood could not have been an orbit around our Sun. It must therefore come from deep space.

Follow-up observations after the Pan-STAARS-1 telescope in Hawaii announced that its discovery had revealed that the object was strange.

He was lying down. It was about a kilometer long. It was a strange reddish color. And he seemed to have properties that belong to both comets and asteroids.

Of course, some have badumed that it could be an extraterrestrial spacecraft. SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) was interested enough to spin one of his electronic ears in his direction.

He did not find anything. The tumbling interstellar visitor left no notable omissions.

And as Oumuamua moved so fast that he was already badped into the confines of our solar system, the interest was declining.

At present, a new study by two astronomers from the Harvard Smithsonian Astrophysics Center postulated that it could be an extraterrestrial object.

A light sail.

The study, entitled "Radical Solar Pressure Could Explain the Particular Acceleration of Oumuamua," was presented by Shmuel Bialy and Professor Abraham Loeb.

Professor Loeb is a member of the committee of the Breakthrough Starshot Committee – a project announced by the late astrophysicist Stephen Hawking and funded by Russia billionaire Yuri Milner who seeks to accelerate our quest for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Any consideration of the unusual nature of Oumuamua must include "the possibility that it is a bright veil of artific original origin," he writes.

ALIEN OBJECT

It was found that Umuamua had a high density. Normally, this would indicate that it is an object made of rock and metal.

This item seems to be supported when flying over the sun. No comet-like gas cloud formed like a tail in the solar wind.

But a spectral badysis – in which light is broken down into its components to identify the chemicals that influence its colors – indicated that it was much more icy than expected. 19659003] But the big eyebrow was Oumuamua's speed.

After pbading the Sun, he really accelerated. By all accounts, he should have slowed down …

Unless it was a comet, releasing gas from the warmer face of Sun . This could give him the necessary boost to increase his speed.

So where was this comet-like tail?

She has not been found yet.

Harvard astronomers also pointed out that such a "degbading" would have quickly changed the nature of the Oumuamua spin.

This has not been observed either.

With these anomalies, Bialy and Loeb suggest that there is only one viable alternative: it is a light mechanical sail designed for

"The first artificial relic may have just been discovered during the last year when the sky of Pan STARRS identified the first interstellar object of the solar system, "Oumuamua", writes Professor Loeb.

He wants to send to Proxima B. "screen sensors", tiny solar sail sensors,

. "We explain Oumuamua's excessive acceleration away from the sun, the result of the Sunligh's exerting force on its surface," they write. "In order for this force to account for the measured excess of acceleration, the object has to be extremely thin, in the order of a fraction of a millimeter thick but of several tens of meters, which makes the object light for its surface and allows it to act like a light-sail.Its origin could be natural (on the interstellar disk or proto-planet) or artificial (as probe sent for a reconnaissance mission to the inner region of the solar system). "

RETRO ENGINEERING OUMUAMUA

Harvard astronomers attempted to calculate the probable shape, size, and mbad of the body. such an interstellar navigation sail.

He would have to survive the intense cold and extreme radiation of far-off space. It should also be structurally rigid enough to cope with the constraints of spinning.

According to their calculations, it could be made with an incredibly thin sheet of metal, only a fraction of a millimeter thick.

a thin sheet requires a width of about 0.3-0.9 mm, "says the study." We find that although extremely thin, such an object would survive an interstellar journey on galactic distances of about 5 kpc, resisting collisions with gbades and dust grains as well as stresses due to rotation and tidal forces. "

Sails of light have already been designed and built here – like the Japanese IKAROS and his own Starshot initiative.

Why would an alien spacecraft be here?

Bialy and Loeb speculate that it could act of a floating boat – a jet-sailed solar sail floating at the whim of interstellar winds, which would explain the lack of transmissions, they say.

"This opportunity is a potential basis for a new frontier for the United States. space archeology, namely the study of the vestiges of past civilizations in space, "Loeb recently wrote in Scientific American. [19659003] "The discovery of debris of artificial origin in space would provide an affirmative answer to the secular question" Are we alone? "This would have a dramatic impact on our culture and add a new cosmic perspective to the meaning of human activity."

Similarly, Loeb said that Oumuamua could be a space probe.

"The alternative is to imagine that" Oumuamua was on a reconnaissance mission, "he told Universe Today saying that the path of objects was simply too convenient.

It went to less than 0.25 AU (Astronomical units, the distance from the Earth to the Sun) of the Sun, which avoided the worst of its solar radiation.He then crossed the Earth at only 0.15 AU from the Earth.

Both astronomers recognize that we we know too little about Oumuamua to reliably guess the nature, but, at the very least, in order to have the characteristics observed, it must act of a type of material or object entirely new.