Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb has long suggested that there's a chance 'Oumuamua, a mysterious object that visited our solar system back in 2017, may have been an alien spacecraft that came by for a visit.<\/p>\n
In a 2021 paper, Loeb argued that 'Oumuamua could have been a probe sent by an extraterrestrial civilization, an explanation that has proven divisive among his peers.<\/p>\n
Most recently, an international team of researchers attempted to dismantle a core aspect of Loeb's argument: that 'Oumuamua was a solar sail, an advanced form of propulsionthat would allowa spacecraft to use the low pressure of solar radiation to move through space.<\/p>\n
According to their study, which has been accepted for publication in the journalAstronomy and Astrophysics, the team concluded that \"'Oumuamua is unlikely to be a light sail. The dynamics of an intruding light sail, if it exists, has distinct observational signatures, which can be quantitatively identified and analyzed with our methods in future surveys.\"<\/p>\n
Loeb, however, isn't having it.He's sticking to his guns.<\/p>\n
\"There are a few points that the authors have overlooked,\" he told The Daily Beastthis week.<\/p>\n
The international team, which was led by Shangfei Liu, an astronomer at Sun Yat-sen University in Zhuhai, China, argued that if 'Oumuamua was a light sail, it would've featured a large, flat surface that would have reflected more light than what we saw emanating from the mysterious object in our limited observations.<\/p>\n
\"If it was a light sail, the brightness variation should be much larger,\" Shangfei told Beast.<\/p>\n
Loeb, however, argues that the sail itself \"need not be flat.\" According to his own research, it could've been a light sail of a different shape, reflecting light in unexpected ways.<\/p>\n
The astronomer went as far as to suggest to Beast that 'Oumuamua \"may not be a sail at all, but just a surface layer torn apart from a bigger object\" in other words, a piece of alien spacecraft detritus that just happened to hurtle through our star system.<\/p>\n
Of course, extraordinary claims call for extraordinary measures. Maybe the object was nothing more than a comet venting gas as it screamed through space.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, it's exceedingly rare to encounter an interstellar object like 'Oumuamua.<\/p>\n
But given the opportunity, and \"with help of a huge amount of highly accurate observation data in the future,\" as Shangfei and his colleagues argue in their paper, perhaps we could finally put the mystery to rest.<\/p>\n
More on 'Oumuamua:Avi Loeb and the Great Unknown<\/p>\n
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More here: Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb has long suggested that there's a chance 'Oumuamua, a mysterious object that visited our solar system back in 2017, may have been an alien spacecraft that came by for a visit. In a 2021 paper, Loeb argued that 'Oumuamua could have been a probe sent by an extraterrestrial civilization, an explanation that has proven divisive among his peers. Continue reading
\nHarvard Professor Defends Claim That Alien Spacecraft Cruised Through Solar System - Futurism<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"