Is Oumuamua a Solar Sail Spacecraft from Another Star? Probably Not
It’s been about a year since the mysterious interstellar asteroid (or maybe comet) Oumuamua passed through our Solar System. It was going so fast and was so far away that astronomers could see very little before it was off and away into deep space again.
The strange motions of the object as it zipped through the Solar System have left astronomers puzzled about what it is, and some interesting theories are continuing to come out to explain it. And one really extreme idea is that it could be a solar sail sent from another civilization.
Watch the video here:
Comments (4)
I greatly respect Dr. Loeb, and I think he’s a much needed breath of fresh air in the astronomy community. At the end of the day, the sensationalization (what a word. Wow.) of stories like KIC 8462852 (which I imagine John Michael Godier saying in his voice whenever that star’s name comes up haha), Oumuamua, and the like, brings in attention from people who aren’t really space and science geeks, like we all totally are, and that’s a huge benefit in the long run every single time. Sure, some people of the general public might see alien megastructure reports on the news as an utter waste of time, thoughts, and tax money, but it also inspires many adult and kids to start doing their OWN research—which can ignite that nerd spark within them, helping us reach more & more ppl to spread the understanding of the importance of STEM research, and sharing our awe-inspiring knowledge of the Universe we live in with the rest of humanity. Whatever anyone thinks about Dr. Avi as a person is pretty much irrelevant when it comes to his incredible impact on The Earth 🌍 and the Milky Way itself. He’s intelligent, he knows his stuff, he LOVES his stuff and his team’s work (which’s super important) And like Fraser said, he’s got the backbone to put himself out there and risk his career, risk damage to his reputation, and may well receive large amounts of ridicule from some for the completely “out there” scientific hypotheses and theories 💡, in order to discover the real science
As "Extraordinary ideas require..." then any one-off report of any out of place phenomenon has to be categorically rejected, regardless of the oddness of the one-time event. I have no reason to consider our likely extra-solar visitor to be designed by anyone, but I would like to see agreement by a team of tenured astronomers on precisely what trajectory changes would signal to them that the object was autonomous. Just trajectory. No radiation, nothing else.
It could be Rama. :) (Remembering A. C. Clarke...)
Sir Arthur was born on 16 December 1917. The visitor was discovered on October 19, 2017. Quite in time for the centennial. ;) Was it your joke, Arthur? :D