That's the shocking claim made by a space scientist who exclusively revealed to The Sun that our visitor could be piloted by a super-intelligent being.
Last week, German scientists announced that they were tracking a distant object heading our way.
The high-speed object, dubbed C/2019 Q4, appears to be in an orbit originating from another star system that will pass close to Mars in October.
Despite several attempts to study C/2019, scientists still don't know what it is. Many speculate that the distant mass is a comet.
According to renowned astronomer Dr. Seth Shostak, while this is the most likely identity of an interstellar traveler, we cannot say for sure that it is not a flying saucer.
Dr. Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the SETI Institute, believes the mysterious visitor could be an alien spacecraft.
This is the first color composite image of the interstellar object, released on Monday.
“We cannot rule out that it is an interstellar probe,” Dr Shostak, a senior astronomer at the SETI Institute in California, told The Sun.
“If we look closely, we can see that it has a metal exterior with portholes and green smiley faces looking out at us.
“However, I would bet that next month’s salary is a comet.”
Dr Shostak, 76, has won numerous awards for his work, which among other things involves scanning the stars for signals sent by extraterrestrials.
He is a leading scientist at the SETI Institute, a nonprofit UFO-hunting organization dedicated to finding out whether we are alone in the universe.
If C/2019 comes from another star system, it would be the second known interstellar visitor to our solar system.
The first was a cigar-shaped object called 'Oumuamua, which shocked the world when it passed Earth in 2017.
Two Harvard University scientists say it could have been a spacecraft, and as the object flew past it triggered a frenzied series of scans, including from SETI-powered telescopes.
Experts found no sign of an extraterrestrial signal, and 'Oumuamua passed by Earth before determining its true source.
Shostak, 76, told The Sun that SETI could soon train its scanning team on C/2019 to look for signs of life, as it did during the 'Oumuamua flyby.
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| Dr. Shostak urged SETI scientists to use the Allen Telescope Array (pictured) to view the object. Image credit: SETI |
“It’s very exciting, and now we’re basically looking at the other side of all our other projects,” Dr. Olivier Hainaut, an astronomer at the European Southern Observatory in Germany, told Business Insider last week.
The first images released on Monday showed the dust behind.
This is usually what is seen on the back of the comet, although scientists say they cannot be sure it is the object.
Further observations of C/2019 have revealed the shape of its orbit.
If the object is indeed an interstellar object, scientists should be able to study it until early 2021, when it will be too faint to be seen.
They'll mostly focus on what it's made of and where it came from, while Alien fans wait with bated breath.
Dr. Shostak firmly believes that there is life beyond Earth and he may have even visited our planet in the past.
“I have no doubt that aliens are out there, we wouldn’t be doing our job if I didn’t,” he told The Sun.
“It’s also possible that they visited Earth at some point, maybe a billion years ago, maybe 100 million years ago. We may never know.
“I suggested to our SETI team that we take a look at this new object with the Allen Telescope Array,” the Virginia-born scientist said. “Then maybe we can take a look.”
OC/2019 was spotted on August 30 by Ukrainian amateur astronomer Gennady Borisov, and scientists around the world have been studying it closely ever since.
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