The idea that &umuamua is a spaceship was supposed to inspire astrophysicists – Quartz

About a year ago, scientists using the Pan-STARRS1 telescope in Hawaii noticed what appeared to be a particular asteroid crossing our solar system. The speed of advance was so fast, at around 64,000 km / h, that they realized that it had to come from any other place.

They nicknamed the asteroid Oumuamua, the Hawaiian word for "messenger from afar who arrives first". . "They thought it could be a potential crowd of extraterrestrial life. But the current telescope technology available did not find anything important about the asteroid.

Still, there are some strange things about 'Oumuamua: Normally, scientists would badume that an interstellar object would be a comet. But the comets are surrounded by gas clouds and 'Oumuamua seemed to have none. Secondly, it seemed to be moving faster and faster – and not under the gravitational pull of other objects, as researchers expected.

It is this mystery that prompted Shmuel Bialy, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysics Center, and Avi Loeb, another Harvard Astronomer, to try to understand what was happening with Oumuamua. One possibility was that the asteroid was navigating on solar radiation. "It's already a known phenomenon that when the radiation hits an object, it can cause acceleration," says Bialy. "It's like the wind is hitting a sail," except that instead of the wind, it propels the object into the foreground.

On November 1, Bialy and Loeb published a pre-print article, which will be published later in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. This month, we explore the hypothesis of solar radiation. Their conclusion: If 'Oumuamua was powered by solar radiation, it should be less than one millimeter thick and several hundred meters long. This form would probably have a hard time withstanding the dust, the plasma and the extreme temperatures of the interstellar medium. And even if its form could withstand interstellar weather, it would always be a different form of everything on Earth or anything that could exist according to the laws of astrophysics currently understood.

In other words? Something weird is going on with 'Oumuamua. Bialy and Loeb concluded that this may have come from an "artificial origin", implying that it was manufactured by something other than natural formation. Or, as they write, "a more exotic scenario is this:" Oumuamua may be a fully operational probe, intentionally sent near Earth by an extraterrestrial civilization.

Media have since gone to town with titles proclaiming scientists in a leading institution suggesting aliens as a real possibility. Many outlets also cited dissident astrophysicists. "I am absolutely not convinced and I honestly think this study is rather flawed," Alan Jackson, a member of the Center for Planetary Sciences at the University of Toronto in Scarborough, told CNN. Other scientists have consulted Twitter:

As many of them have pointed out, there is not enough evidence to show that "Oumuamua is a extraterrestrial probe – it's is just a theory that has not been denied. And as Verge points out, Loeb may be predisposed to looking for razor-thin extraterrestrial probes: he is currently advising a project called Breakthrough Starshot, a project founded by technology entrepreneur Yuri Milner and his wife Julia, who hope to send a message. spacecraft similar to the proposed form of 'Oumuamua at Alpha Centauri, the closest star to our solar system at four light-years away. The late Stephen Hawking and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook were among the board members of the project. Loeb readily admits that he has light veils on the brain. "The fact that I participate in a project using light sailing has allowed, or encouraged, to think about it," he told Le Verge.

Bialy, on the other hand, has a different perspective. "Most likely, our paper is false and there is a simpler explanation [for ‘Oumuamua]," he says. But so far no one has offered a better explanation of what the interstellar object might be. If is not an alien, astrophysicists must propose a better option.

It will be difficult to find another solution. The data on 'Oumuamua' are limited because scientists were only able to observe it for about two weeks before opening it beyond our solar system. It may be impossible to find the simple answer with the information we have.

However, the fact that scientists could spot this interstellar object probably means that they could find more in the future, says Bialy. And if scientists are better prepared to observe interstellar objects, they may be able to get more data about them to determine what they really are. A good starting point would be to obtain a real photographic image of "Oumuamua; At present, scientists work only with the designs of an artist, based on measurements taken by distant telescopes.

Until then, scientists can not exclude the idea that Oumuamua was not . foreign probe. Bialy hopes this will be a sufficient inspiration to try to find out what it really is.