Controversial astronomer Abraham Loeb has presented
new evidence supporting his hypothesis that 'Oumuamua is an object sent
intentionally by an extraterrestrial civilization. Here's the latest on the
case.
There are many unsolved mysteries in the
universe and millions of secrets that we still don't know.
Extraterrestrial life is like that: enigmatic, frustrating, but
with the passion needed to awaken the inner fervor of scientists who want to
try to unravel even a small part of it.
However, we are at a time in Earth's history where
technology is advancing at a rapid pace, allowing us to create and use tools to explore corners that
were previously impossible.
In this way,
Abraham Loeb , head of the
Galileo project and founding director of the
Black Hole Initiative at Harvard University , closely studies Oumuama, a strange space object sighted in 2017 about
which there is almost no reliable information.
In fact, the
Harvard scientist — who is also the
author of the book Extraterrestrial:
Humanity Facing the First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth — is
often labeled as someone who has “controversial” ideas about ‘Oumuamua and other mysteries of the universe, and now,
in a recent opinion piece, he has proposed another hypothesis about the strange
object.
This is what is known about Oumuamua and the latest
news from Avi Loeb.
Another theory
has been revealed about Oumuamua, the strange object that may have come from an
alien civilization. Photo: NASA.
Abraham Loeb and the curious proposal of the age and
origin of Oumuamua
“We live in an exciting time ,” Loeb said in a column for the Spanish
newspaper El Confidencial . According
to the scientist, the “first large interstellar objects” were discovered in the
last decade.
These include the interstellar meteor IM1 (2014), Oumuamua
—described as an anomalous near-Earth object—(2017) and the interstellar
comet Borisov (2019).
Oumuamua, in
particular, has been controversial. No one knows what it is, which is why it is
simply called an “object,” since it has no precedent.
It was spotted for the first and only time in 2017 by
the University of Hawaii's Pan STARRS
telescope . Its trajectory was monitored
for three days, but then it was lost from view. It was a rocky object, 400 meters long and with a
reddish surface.
As described by the
BBC , “it was spinning rapidly, its trajectory was
chaotic and its brightness changed abruptly.” They named it Oumuamua, which in Hawaiian means “messenger
from afar who arrives first.”
“A fundamental unknown is the likely origin of each of
these unusual objects outside the solar system,” Loeb wrote. He revealed that he had offered a
summer project to a Harvard University student, Shokhruz Kakharov, to figure
out the trajectories of each one.
That way, they
could try to find out where they came from, but also their age , a mystery that many other researchers are
eager to unravel.
Another theory
has been revealed about Oumuamua, the strange object that may have come from an
alien civilization. Photo: NASA.
As Loeb explained, following this trajectory would
help us understand the galactic region where their orbits occurred in the
past: “For example, if they originated
close to a star, we could constrain the age of the star and the physical
processes that could have produced each of these interstellar objects.”
And so they did. After several calculations, drawings
and an in-depth investigation of Oumuamua, they discovered that this strange
object had “a small vertical extension of its trajectory outside the median
plane of the Milky Way, approximately six times smaller than that of the Sun.”
“This suggests that ‘Oumuamua originated near the
midplane of the thin disk of young stars
,” the scientist wrote.
In simpler terms, after tracking the trajectory of
this mysterious object through space,
they found that its age could be less than 1 or 2 billion years.
“Cosmologically speaking, ‘Oumuamua is a baby,
an order of magnitude younger relative to the age of the Universe.”
“It is still much younger than the Sun, which is a late phenomenon in cosmic
history.”
The discovery of Oumuamua’s age could be an important
step towards understanding its origins. For the Harvard scientist, this could indicate that it has a
“technological origin”, that is, it could be a type of alien spacecraft
originating from an extraterrestrial civilization.
“Although some may consider this idea controversial
and heretical, it seems common sense to me.
But what can I say? I am just a naive and curious farmer, not as
intellectual as some Scientific American editors, those who prefer not to
confuse their readers with common sense,” he wrote in his defense.
And after his theory came to light publicly, several
researchers criticized the proposal.
Another theory
revealed about Oumuamua, the strange object that may come from an alien
civilization.
The theory that Oumuamua comes from an alien
civilization
Some hypotheses suggest that Oumuamua is an asteroid
or comet, however, its characteristics
do not exactly correspond to those of a celestial body.
Recently, astronomers at Harvard University published
in the Astrophysical Journal
Letters that they believe it may be an object sent by an
alien civilization.
“Oumuamua may be a fully operational probe,
intentionally sent to Earth’s vicinity by an alien civilization ,” said scientists from the prestigious
university, including Abraham Loeb and Shmuel Bialy.
The theory has been widely criticized by a group of
researchers, who say the study the Harvard scientists relied on is “seriously
flawed.”
Alan Jackson, a fellow at the University of Toronto's Center for Planetary Science, told CNN he is not convinced by the hypothesis and that "Carl Sagan once said, 'Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,' and this paper clearly does not have that evidence, and there is no extraordinary evidence."
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