Slightly more than one year ago , we spotted an object from another virtuoso journey through our Solar System for the first prison term . There was some argumentation over whether it was acomet or an asteroid – but could it alternatively have been an alien space vehicle equipped with a solar sail ?
Well , no . But still , two scientists have looked into the plausibility of such a scenario anyway , noting some speciality in the objective – knight ‘ Oumuamua – that could lend credenza to such an explanation . The story was first picked up by Matt Williams atUniverse Today .
The discipline , which is available on the pre - print serverarXivand has been submitted to the Astrophysical Journal Letters , was conducted by Shmuel Bialy and Avi Loeb from the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge , Massachusetts .
‘ Oumuamua was odd in that , as it swung past the Sun , it come along to get a strangespeed boost . Scientists have put this down to an outgassing event – with the aim firing textile from its surface like a squirt as it was heated by the Sun .
Bialy and Loeb , however , argue against such an idea . They say the lack of additional rotation in the 400 - meter - farsighted object ( 1,300 feet ) have by the event get it unbelievable an outgassing event was the cause of the change in motion . Instead , they say the acceleration “ may be explained by solar radiation pressure ” .
“ If radiation pressure is the accelerating force , then ‘ Oumuamua represents a new class of slight interstellar stuff , either grow naturally , through a yet unknown process in the ISM [ interstellar mass medium ] or in proto - planetary disk , or of an unreal origin , ” they write .
“ Considering an artificial origin , one possible action is that ‘ Oumuamua is a lightsail , blow in interstellar blank space as a junk from an advanced technological equipment . ”
Such ideas have been deal on Earth for our own journeys to distant star . TheBreakthrough Starshot task , for good example , offer using a lightsail to reach our nearest wiz system – Alpha Centauri – within a multiplication .
If this were true for ‘ Oumumamua , the duo are unsure whether the object was accidentally sent towards us – “ equipment that is not useable any more ” – or an functional investigation “ sent intentionally to Earth neck of the woods by an alien culture . ” They say it could have come from any sensation within 16,000 lightheaded - years .
regrettably , ‘ Oumuamua is now too far from Earth to study it further , let alone visit it , and it will never return again . So we ’ll never be able to test this possibility , however ridiculous it might be .
" The key issue with this possibility is that it can not possibly be tested , " Dr René Heller from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research evidence IFLScience . " It is also an sinful claim without extraordinary evidence . "
