- Aug 17, 2017
- 1,610
After Oumuamua’s shocking appearance in our system, researchers from the Breakthrough Listen project pointed mechanical ears at it to see if they could hear signals being sent too or from the object. If it were an alien ship, surely it would be communicating with its handlers and we might be able to hear those whispers, or at least that was the plan. Unfortunately, the team heard only silence, but that isn’t stopping some researchers from imagining the possibility of Oumuamua being a spacecraft sent to survey our Solar System or even Earth, specifically.
In a new paper, scientists from the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics break down the case for the cigar-shaped object being of extraterrestrial origin. More to the point, they focus on the object’s strange speed changes as it passed through and exited our system. Oumuamua sped up as it left, which is obviously very odd behavior for a rock, which led some scientists to assume it was a comet, spewing out gas and material as it cruised back out into interstellar space.
This new paper suggests that it might be speeding up because it’s equipped with what is known as a “light sail.” A light sail is an advanced, but still theoretical, form of spacecraft propulsion that would use radiation pressure from a star to push an object along, like wind on a sailboat’s sail. If solar particles slam into the sail, it causes the sail and whatever it’s attached to to speed up.
“Considering an artificial origin, one possibility is that Oumuamua is a lightsail, floating in interstellar space as a debris from an advanced technological equipment,” the paper explains, noting the possibility that it might just be a piece of alien space junk that found its way to our system. However, the team follows up with an even more wild theory, saying “a more exotic scenario is that Oumuamua may be a fully operational probe sent intentionally to Earth vicinity by an alien civilization.”
Source Wait a second, was that weird interstellar object an alien spacecraft after all?
In a new paper, scientists from the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics break down the case for the cigar-shaped object being of extraterrestrial origin. More to the point, they focus on the object’s strange speed changes as it passed through and exited our system. Oumuamua sped up as it left, which is obviously very odd behavior for a rock, which led some scientists to assume it was a comet, spewing out gas and material as it cruised back out into interstellar space.
This new paper suggests that it might be speeding up because it’s equipped with what is known as a “light sail.” A light sail is an advanced, but still theoretical, form of spacecraft propulsion that would use radiation pressure from a star to push an object along, like wind on a sailboat’s sail. If solar particles slam into the sail, it causes the sail and whatever it’s attached to to speed up.
“Considering an artificial origin, one possibility is that Oumuamua is a lightsail, floating in interstellar space as a debris from an advanced technological equipment,” the paper explains, noting the possibility that it might just be a piece of alien space junk that found its way to our system. However, the team follows up with an even more wild theory, saying “a more exotic scenario is that Oumuamua may be a fully operational probe sent intentionally to Earth vicinity by an alien civilization.”
Source Wait a second, was that weird interstellar object an alien spacecraft after all?
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