The idea that 'Oumuamua 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 travel was so fast, at around 64,000 km / h, that they realized that it had to be from any other place.

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

Oumuamua: Normally, scientists assumed 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 – not by the gravitational pull of other objects, as the researchers expected.

This mystery prompted Shmuel Bialy, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysical 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 as if the wind were hitting a sail," except that, instead of wind, it is a light that propels the object forward.

On November 1, Bialy and Loeb published a pre-print article, which is expected to appear in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, later this month, exploring 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 that" Oumuamua may be a fully operational probe intentionally near the Earth by an extraterrestrial civilization. "

The media have since gone to town with headlines claiming that scientists working in a leading institution were suggesting that extraterrestrials were 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 taken on Twitter:

As many of them have pointed out, there is not enough evidence to show that "Oumuamua is a foreign probe, it's just a theory that has not been refuted. 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 The Verge.

Bialy, meanwhile, has a different perspective. "Most likely, our paper is fake 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. is not extraterrestrials, astrophysicists must propose a better option.

Finding another answer will be difficult. 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 have been able to locate 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 are working solely with the conceptions of an artist, from measurements taken by distant telescopes.

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