A Harvard professor says that an extraterrestrial object came to Earth in 2017.
In his upcoming book Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth, theoretical physicist Avi Loeb talks about his theory about a strange-shaped object that came into our solar system a number of years ago.
The “Oumuamua” object was first seen in 2017 by the Pan-STARRS telescope at the Haleakala Observatory in Hawaii. Researchers found that it had come from the direction of Vega, a star in the Lyra constellation that is about 25 light-years away from Earth and had crossed the ecliptic plane on September 6.
Oumuamua, whose name in Hawaiian means “scout,” began to move faster just three days later. Loeb says that it finally got close to Earth on October 7 by moving quickly toward the constellation Pegasus and the blackness beyond.
Loeb, who is the head of the astronomy department at Harvard University, says that the idea that Oumuamua, which is thought to be the first interstellar object found in our solar system, was just another comet is wrong because it puts too much emphasis on the “familiar.”
He asked the New York Post what a caveman would think if he saw a cellphone. Since he has always lived near rocks, he would have thought it was just another shiny rock.
Loeb says there are two important signs that show Oumuamua wasn’t just a comet but rather an advanced piece of technology from another planet. The first piece of specific information is the size of the object. It was found to be “five to ten times longer than it was wide.” Loeb says that it is unusual for a natural space object to look like a cigar.
The theoretical physicist says that the movement of Oumuamua is the most important piece of evidence for his idea.
He said that the excessive push away from the sun was the last straw that broke the camel’s back.
Loeb says that as an object moves closer to the sun, the sun’s gravity would make it move faster. As the object moved farther away, the sun’s gravity would push it back and make it move slower. Loeb says that this didn’t happen with Oumuamua. He says that as it got farther away, it sped up “a little, but a statistically very significant amount.”
If we’re not the only ones, are we the smartest kids on the block? Loeb queried. “If there was a species that went extinct because of war or a change in the environment, we could get our act together and act better. Instead, we waste a lot of Earth’s resources by doing bad things like going to war.
