‘Oumuamua, interstellar probe?!

This …interesting… bit has been making the news of late.

You remember ‘Oumuamua, no?  It’s that strangely shaped object that flew by the solar system and exhibited some strange motions and may have looked like this:

Meet 'Oumuamua, the first observed interstellar visitor to our solar systemThe object bewildered scientists, as I mentioned above, not only because of its odd shape but also because its motion seemed odd as well.

Now, we have this:

‘Oumuamua: Cigar-shaped interstellar object may have been alien probe, Harvard paper claims

The money lines from the article, complete with links:

Now, a new paper by researchers at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics raises the possibility that the elongated dark-red object, which is 10 times as long as it is wide and traveling at speeds of 196,000 mph, might have an “artificial origin.”
“‘Oumuamua may be a fully operational probe sent intentionally to Earth vicinity by an alien civilization,” they wrote in the paper, which has been submitted to the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The theory is based on the object’s “excess acceleration,” or its unexpected boost in speed as it traveled through and ultimately out of our solar system in January 2018.
“Considering an artificial origin, one possibility is that ‘Oumuamua is a light sail, floating in interstellar space as a debris from an advanced technological equipment,” wrote the paper’s authors, suggesting that the object could be propelled by solar radiation.

 

So the object’s acceleration as it left the solar system was… odd… and this (among other things) was the reason why these Harvard researchers felt it was possible the object was an artificial creation, one which used “solar sails” to move.

I wonder.

Frankly, it would be beyond exciting to think that there may be probes out there looking in on us.  Exciting… and terrifying.

I suspect that there may eventually be a more “down to earth” (so to speak) explanation for this object’s strange acceleration, but we’ll see.

We’ll see.

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