A physicist weighed in on the mystery surrounding the interstellar object ‘Oumuamua’, which flew past Earth at an extremely high speed in 2017.
Harvard professor Avi Loeb noted in an interview with Salon that it is possible that the fast, cigar-shaped object was an interstellar spacecraft.
“Initially, astronomers assumed it had to be a comet, because these are the objects that are most loosely bound to stars,” Loeb said. “The problem with that was that there was no comedy tail.”
Loeb wrote a book on the subject entitled: “Extraterrestrial: the first sign of intelligent life outside the earth.” The book will be released next week.
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Performance by an artist from ‘Oumuamua, a visitor from outside the solar system. Credit: The International Gemini Observatory / NOIRLab / NSF / AURA artwork by J. Pollard
“Some people say, ‘OK, it’s not a comet, maybe it’s just a rock.’ But the problem is that about half a year later it was reported that there was an excess pressure above and beyond the gravity acting on it by the sun, ‘he continued. “It shows a little extra power. Usually the power of the rocket effect comes from the comet tail, but there was no comet tail. So the question was, what is this excess pressure? “
Loeb said on the website that another object was discovered that displayed excessive pressure called 2020-SO, which he said was ultimately a rocket launcher from a failed mission of the lunar lander, Surveyor II, which launched in 1966 is. He said because the object was made artificially and had no cometic trace, it provides ‘evidence’ that we can see the difference between a rock and an object – such as the rocket amplifier – being pushed by sunlight.
“For me, it proved the case that ‘Oumuamua may have been artificial, certainly not made by us, because it was only a few months near us. We could not even chase it with our best rockets,'” he added. Salon said.
Loeb added that it was at the “brighter tip of all the objects we saw of the solar system.”
In November 2018, a study published by Loeb and others at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics suggested that ‘Oumuamua’ may be a ‘light sail of artificial origin’ sent from a different civilization. However, the researcher who discovered ‘Oumuamua, the Canadian physicist and astronomer Robert Weryk, said the idea that it came from a different civilization is just’ wild speculation ‘.
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‘Oumuamua, which means’ pathfinder’ or ‘scout’ in Hawaii, was first classified as an asteroid when it was spotted in 2017 while traveling 196,000 km / h. However, it has recently been found more similar to a comet.
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NASA confirmed that it was the “first object ever seen in our solar system, known to have originated elsewhere.”
Fox News’ Chris Ciaccia Contributed to This Report