On October 19, 2017, the University of Hawaii detected a strange object traveling through our solar system.
The first descriptions of this indicated that it was a red and extremely elongated asteroid.
The researchers called it Oumuamua, a Hawaiian word meaning explorer or messenger, the first interstellar body detected within the Milky Way, in short, the first to come from another galaxy.
Considered to be the first interstellar object to come from outside the solar system, this asteroid was investigated by astrophysicist Stephen Hawking as well as other scientists, who sense traces of alien intelligence.
Scientists have been studying Oumuamua (Hawaiian for ‘first messenger’), the first interstellar asteroid to enter our solar system, since it was discovered on October 19 by astronomers at the University of Hawaii.
The Breakthrough Listen team, an ambitious scientific project to search for extraterrestrial life in other galaxies, is using one of the world’s largest telescopes to monitor the strange interspatial object, which is located in West Virginia (USA), for 10 hours. USA). The observation began this Wednesday afternoon and ended Thursday morning, although its results have not yet been announced.
Scientists are looking for electromagnetic signals from Oumuamua that cannot be produced by nature, so if such signals are found, it would confirm that it is an alien spacecraft.
The asteroid, considered the first interstellar object to come from outside the solar system, was defined by NASA as a rocky object in the shape of a needle or cigar —something strange, since most comets are round— and reddish in color It travels at about 315,000 kilometers per hour.
“We don’t want to sensationalize in any way, and we are very realistic about the chances of this being contrived.”
The project’s funder, Russian billionaire Yuri Milner, told Scientific American magazine.
“It is very mysterious how it has formed this appearance.”
Scientists do not know for sure what material Oumuamua would be made of, but they are considering the possibility that it is rock or metal, since the typical cloud of space dust left by asteroids is not found.
“We think this asteroid is very long, about 400 meters, and narrow, about 40 meters. It has a very strange shape. How it has formed this appearance is very mysterious.”
Said the director of the Center for the Study of Near-Earth Objects at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Paul Chaos, in a video on the NASA YouTube channel.
The elongated shape of the asteroid makes it likely that it is an interspace ship, since it minimizes friction and damage from interstellar gas and dust, as explained by the scientists in a statement on the Breakthrough Listen website.
‘Oumuamua, the first visitor from another star system.
They also clarify that although the origin is possibly natural, there is still no consensus on what it could have been.
“The more I study this object, the more unusual it seems to me, which makes me wonder if it could be an artificial probe being sent by an alien civilization.”
Avi Loeb, director of the Department of Astronomy at Harvard University, admitted to Milner, collects The Atlantic.
Oumuamua is two astronomical units from Earth, that is, twice the distance between our planet and the Sun, and it does not pose any danger to Earth as it is leaving the solar system.
The asteroid was captured once it was moving away from our planet.
