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By David Freeman
Maybe it's an extraterrestrial spaceship.
Scientists are puzzled over Oumuamua since this mysterious space object rocked under the sun late in 2017. Given its high speed and unusual trajectory, the red frame or stadium size clearly came from the 39 outside our solar system. . But its flattened, elongated shape and its acceleration through the solar system distinguish it from asteroids and classical comets.
Two Harvard researchers now evoke the possibility that Oumuamua is an extraterrestrial spacecraft. As they say in an article to be published Nov. 12 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, the "object" could be a fully operational probe, intentionally sent to the vicinity of the Earth by an extraterrestrial civilization. "
The researchers do not directly claim that extraterrestrials have sent Oumuamua. But after a meticulous mathematical analysis of how the interstellar object accelerated when he swept the sun, they said that Oumuamua could be a spacecraft pushed through the sky. Space by the light falling on its surface. light veil of artificial origin. "
Who would have sent such a spaceship on our way – and why?
"It's impossible to guess the purpose of Oumuamua without more data," Avi Loeb, chairman of the Harvard Astronomy Department and co-author of the newspaper, told NBC News MACH. If Oumuamua is a veil of light, he added, one possibility is that it was floating in interstellar space when our solar system hit it, "like a ship hitting a buoy at the surface of the ocean ".
Earthlings has launched its own solar-powered solar headlight system and Loeb is the advisor to Breakthrough Starshot, an initiative that plans to send a fleet of tiny, laser-powered headlamps to the nearest star system. But technology is in its infancy – at least here on Earth.
Loeb and his collaborator, Shmuel Bialy, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysical Center, recognize that the alien spacecraft scenario is an "exotic" scenario. And it is perhaps not surprising that other space scientists have serious doubts about this.
"It is certainly ingenious to show that an object of the size of Oumuamua could be sent by extraterrestrials to another astronomical system with the sole power of a solar sail," said Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at SETI. Institute of Mountain View, California, in an email. "But we must not blindly accept this intelligent hypothesis when there is also a mundane (and a priori more likely) to explain Oumuamua – namely that it is a comet or an asteroid by far. "
Coryn Bailer-Jones, astronomer at the Max Planck Institute of Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany, expressed similar objections. "In science," he said in an email, "we have to ask," Where are the proofs? And no "Where is the lack of evidence so that I can incorporate any hypothesis I like?"
Bailer-Jones, who earlier this year led a group of scientists who identified four dwarf stars as likely points of origin of Oumuamua, notably asked about the tilting movement of the object .
"Why send a spaceship that does that?" he said. "If it was a spaceship, this tilting would make it impossible to hold instruments pointed at the Earth." Of course, one could now say that it was an accident, or the aliens did that for We can always imagine more and more implausible suggestions that have no proof to maintain an idea ".
But Loeb called the conjecture "purely scientific and evidence-based," adding, "I'm Sherlock Holmes' maxim: when you've ruled out the impossible, all that's left, no matter how unlikely, is to be the truth ".
The truth may be hard to establish because Oumuamua has left the solar system and is no longer visible even with telescopes. Whatever the case may be, noted Loeb, the fact that we have observed an interstellar object such as Oumuama suggests that others may be on the market – and that astronomers should start looking for them.
"An investigation of veils of light as technosignatures [of extraterrestrial civilizations] in the solar system is justified, "he said," regardless of whether Oumuamua is one of them. "
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