Object that hissed through Earth likely came from alien world, says Harvard professor

Cambridge, Massachusetts – A professor at Harvard University argues that we are probably not alone in the universe. Astronomer Avi Loeb’s new book, “Extraterrestrial,” examines the 2017 flyby of a space object that he said was truly out of this world.

“At first people thought, ‘Well, it must be a rock, just like any asteroids or comets we’ve seen in the solar system before,” Loeb told CBSN Boston’s Paula Ebben. “But since they have more data on this, it looks very weird.”

The cigar-shaped object seen by telescopes was nicknamed “Oumuamua” – which means “a messenger from the distant past” in Hawaiian.

It was 10 times as long as it was wide and was traveling at a speed of 196,000 mph, researchers said at the time.

“It didn’t look like a comet, but it behaved like something that has extra thrust,” Loeb said.

NASA has confirmed that it is “the first object ever seen in our solar system that is known to originate elsewhere,” but said its origins were unknown.

Loeb argues in his book that the object was likely debris from advanced alien technology – space debris many light years away. Perhaps it was a type of “light sail” propelled by sunlight, a technology that humans are currently developing for space exploration.

“It’s possible that there is a lot of space garbage out there or that it is a probe,” he said. “We don’t know because we haven’t collected enough data, enough evidence and I’m just alerting everyone to look for items like this so that the next time there are any. have one, we are examining it more carefully. “

Loeb said it was time for researchers to look for potential “messages in a bottle” like Oumuamua instead of just looking for radio signals as evidence from other civilizations.

He said his ideas aren’t popular in the scientific community right now – talking about potential alien intelligence is “out of the mainstream, and it shouldn’t be.”

“We need to be open-minded and look for evidence rather than assuming that everything we see in the sky must be rocks,” he said.

For those who doubt the existence of aliens, Loeb says to consider the odds.

“We know that half of the sun-like stars have an Earth-sized planet roughly the same distance from the star, so they can have liquid water on the surface – that’s is the chemistry of life, ”he said.

“This means if you roll the dice billions of times in the Milky Way galaxy, we’re probably not alone, and besides, we’re probably not the sharpest cookie in the pot, the most child. smart of the block.