[ad_1]
(CNN) – According to astronomers at Harvard University, a mysterious cigarette shaped object seen around our solar system last year could have been an alien vessel sent to study the Earth.
The object, identified with the name of "Oumuamua," which means in Hawaiian "a messenger coming from a distant past," was discovered in October 2017 by the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope in Hawaii.
READ: This object should not be in our solar system, from where does it come from?
Since its discovery, scientists have not been able to agree to explain its unusual characteristics and its precise origin. Some researchers initially said that it was a comet, then an asteroid, before determining that it was the first of the genre: a new class of interstellar objects.
A new work by researchers at the Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics at Harvard suggests the possibility that the elongated dark red object, 10 times longer than wide and moving at a speed of 315,000 kilometers per hour, may have an "artificial origin".
"" Oumuamua could be a fully operational probe sent to the Earth's neighborhood by an extraterrestrial civilization, "the researchers wrote in a paper presented to the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The theory is based on the "excessive acceleration" of the object or the unexpected impulse of its speed as it was finally traveling and leaving our solar system in January 2018.
"Considering an artificial origin, a possibility is that" Oumuamua is a solar sail, floating in interstellar space as the remains of advanced technological equipment, "wrote the authors of the book, in which they suggest that the object could be driven by solar radiation
The paper was written by Abraham Loeb, professor and director of astronomy, and Shmuel Bialy, postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics at Harvard.
Source link
