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Last year 's astronomers discovered the Oumuamua asteroid, which crossed our solar system after arriving from another star. While the cigar-shaped asteroid was passing through our solar system, scientists began to assume that the asteroids could come from far away and that they then remained. Experts have always debated the discovery, and a new theory emanating from Harvard Smithsonian Astrophysical Center experts Shmuel Bialy and Abraham Loeb, said that "Oumuamua could have been sent by extraterrestrials to study other galaxies.
Professor Loeb told Universe Today: "We explain Oumuamua's excessive acceleration away from the sun because of the force exerted by sunlight on its surface.
"In order for this force to explain the measured excess acceleration, the object must be extremely thin, in the order of a fraction of a millimeter in thickness but several tens of meters.
"This makes the object light for its surface and allows it to act like a light sail.
"Its origin could be natural (on the interstellar or proto-planetary medium disks) or artificial (as a probe sent for a reconnaissance mission in the inner region of the solar system)."
However, the astronomer who discovered the asteroid, Robert Weryk, criticized the extraterrestrial theory, calling it "wild" and "exotic".
Mr. Weryk told CBC's Afternoon Drive: "I think it's a remnant of another solar system. It's just something that has fallen on us, and we were very lucky to have used the telescope that night and to have looked in that direction.
"This has been theoretically predicted for decades, but we have never seen it before, until we see another, there are many questions we can not answer."
Other astronomers have also criticized Professor Loeb's theory.
Alan Fitzsimmons, an astrophysicist at Queens University in Belfast, recently said: "Like most scientists, I would like that there is compelling evidence of extraterrestrial life, but it's not the case.
"It has already been shown that its observed characteristics are consistent with a comet-like body ejected from another stellar system.
"And some of the arguments in this study are based on numbers with big uncertainties."
Katie Mack, an astrophysicist at North Carolina State, also had a problem with the theory.
She wrote on Twitter: "What you need to understand is that scientists are perfectly happy to publish a strange idea if it has any chance of not getting it wrong.
"But until all other possibilities have been exhausted a dozen times, even the authors probably do not believe it."
It is thought that this strange cigar-shaped space rock has wandered among the stars for hundreds of millions of years and that it is the first foreign object to be spotted in our solar system.
"Oumuamua is about 400 meters long and is dark red in color. It was spotted by the Pan-STARRS1 telescope in Hawaii on October 19, 2017, traveling at a speed of 95,000 km / h.
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