A Harvard professor named Avi Loeb, the chair of Harvard’s Department of Astronomy, believes the first sign Earth will get of an alien intelligence – won’t be a spacecraft or aliens themselves. Rather he thinks the first sign we will get of extraterrestrial life will be the civilization’s trash. Loeb has a book being published on January 26 that lays out a case for why a bizarre asteroid that entered our solar system in 2017 was a piece of alien technology.
The object he is talking about was the first known interstellar object to enter our solar system and traveled to our solar system from the direction of Vega. Vega is a star about 25 light-years, nearby in the cosmic scale. The object entered our solar system’s orbital plane on September 6, 2017. By September 9, the object, known as Oumuamua, made its closest approach to the sun, and by the end of September and it traveled past Venus’s orbital distance.
The object cruised past Earth at roughly 58,900 mph on October 7 and moved quickly towards the constellation Pegasus. The object was about 100-yards long and was cigar-shaped, so it was incredibly massive! Being that the object was the first interstellar object ever detected in the solar system, professionals were quite intrigued. Then, astronomers found it was not bound by the Sun’s gravity, suggesting it was passing through our solar system.
At first, the object was thought to be a massive comet, but Loeb theorized that the object could be discarded technology from an ancient alien civilization. One of the first signs that this was no ordinary comet, was that the cigar-shaped object was 5 to 10 times longer than it was wide, and scientists have never seen a naturally occurring space body look like that. It was also unusually bright, at least ten times more reflective than typical stony asteroids or comets.
Loeb believes it was being pushed by force besides the Sun’s gravity alone. Loeb and colleagues looked at numbers having do with the shape and size of the object and concluded that it wasn’t cigar-shaped but possibly a disk less than a millimeter thick with sail-like proportions. If it was a solar sail, which would account for his acceleration as it moved away from the sun. Not all scientists agree with this theory and will likely never know exactly what Oumuamua was.
But still…it’s pretty awesome to think about!