Oumuamua – Was it a Probe from an Alien Civilization?

Yes, yes it absolutely was. If you’re not familiar with Oumuamua, it is a space-bound object and first known interstellar object recently discovered and found to be careening towards our sun at cosmic speeds. Then it whipped around the Sun and headed back out to the depths of space to continue it’s gravitational dance among the stars.

Avi Loeb is a Harvard Scientist who has enjoyed much respect in the annals of science until he too decided to jump on the Oumuamua is a probe from an alien civilization based on several peculiar anomalies. Because he’s a relatively well-known and respected guide in the field of astronomy and cosmology it’s not surprising he’s getting some negative feedback concerning this outspoken announcement. Avi Loeb has gone on record and said that Oumuamua, our recent visitor from what’s suspected to be outside of our solar system, possible outside our galaxy, was/is an interstellar alien visitor possibly in a light sail sort of ship or it may just be a probe without sentience but containing intelligence, either way, he says its aliens.

Why does one scientists and some subset of people around the world think it might be some type of alien probe? There were anomalies associated with Oumuamua when it was first picked up by the Pan-STARRS telescope in Haleakala, Hawaii and ever since then it has been raising many questions. First among them were what is it? Is it a meteor? Is it a comet? Is it a black hole on a trajectory to Earth to show us how much it sucks? Studying Oumuamua with the various Earthbound and space bound telescopes unfortunately could not give us a direct picture of this space bound object due it’s size and limitations of our current telescopes so we’re really not sure what it is.

The anomalous characteristics of Oumuamua which led people to believe it may be something other than a space rock is that upon entry to our solar system, the inbound object was moving at some great speed. The speed and inbound trajectory of Oumuamua could only mean this object originally derived from another solar system or galaxy, or at least outside of our own solar system. On Oumuamua’s outbound trajectory while tracking the telemetry data of this space object it was found to be speeding up. Random objects out in space moving at some speed stay at that speed unless something acts on the object. This could possibly be explained by the outgassing of a comet giving it a push however, Oumuamua is not a comet as comets develop tails as they near the sun, and no tail, outgassing, or other comet-like features or exhaust were found to be present. Another thing that was odd about Oumuamua was its light curve. That’s too technical a term for even me suffice it to say what it means is how the object appeared through telescopes. Though it was not possible to get a direct picture of Oumuamua it was possible to watch how light played upon the surface of this object and the way the light glinted and played non-uniformly led scientists to believe that Oumuamua was a cigar-shaped object tumbling end over end. Now, forgive me, but that’s not the most scientific definition I’ve heard in my lifetime. Because of that description, it has been postulated if it were some type of probe the light curve could match a solar sail, something we have yet to deploy, but only because of materials science issues we as humans have at the moment but that’s a topic for another article. There are a few more ways Oumuamua acted uncharacteristically for your average space rock however some of the descriptions are way more technical than the few items I have touched on above so I leave it to the reader to research further if this interests you and this is an excellent place to start should you desire to do so.

This is the link to the original article which got me interested.

Do I really think that it’s an alien probe? Well it does have some anomalous characteristics based on the few articles and videos I’ve personally researched and I think the possibility is real. Plus I want to go on record and back up Avi Loeb as well. Okay, until next time, bye bye!