When the first sign of intelligent life first visits us from space, it will not be a huge plate floating over New York. More likely, it will be the garbage of an alien civilization.
Avi Loeb, president of the Harvard Department of Astronomy, believes he has already found some of that garbage.
In his forthcoming book, “Alien: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), on January 26, the professor presents a compelling case as to why an object that recently wandered in our solar system was not just another rock, but actually a piece of alien technology.
The object in question traveled to our solar system in the direction of Vega, a nearby star, 25 light-years away, and intercepted the orbital plane of our solar system on September 6, 2017.
On September 9, his trajectory brought him closer to the sun. At the end of September, it exploded at about 58,900 miles per hour after the orbital distance of Venus and then, on October 7, fired past the Earth before “moving rapidly to the constellation Pegasus and the darkness beyond,” writes Loeb in the book.
The object was first spotted by an observer in Hawaii that contained the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) – the highest definition telescope on earth.
The space object was nicknamed “Oumuamua” (pronounced “oh moo ah moo ah”), which is Hawaiian for – roughly – “scout”.
As space travel went, it was relatively small, only about 100 meters long, but it was a big problem in the scientific community.
For starters, it was the first interstellar object ever detected inside our solar system. Judging by the trajectory of the object, astronomers concluded that it was not related to the gravity of the sun – suggesting that it was just traveling through.
It was not possible to take clear photos, but the astronomers managed to train their telescopes on the object for 11 days, collecting remnants of other data.
At first, scientists thought it was an ordinary comet. But Loeb said the hypothesis risks allowing “family members to define what we might discover.”
“What if a cave man saw a cell phone?” he asked. “He’s seen stones all his life and would have thought it was just a shining stone.”
Loeb soon opened his mind to another possibility: it was not a comet, but technology abandoned in an alien civilization.
A number of unusual properties about the object helped Loeb to draw this conclusion.
First were the dimensions of “Oumuamua.
Astronomers have looked at how the object reflects sunlight. Its brightness varied ten times every eight hours, suggesting that it was time to complete a full rotation.
Scientists have concluded that the object was at least five to ten times longer than it was wide – about the shape of a cigar.
No natural space body I’ve seen looks like this – or even close.
“This would make Oumuamua’s geometry more extreme at least a few times in aspect ratio – or its width to height – than the most extreme asteroids or comets I’ve ever seen,” Loeb writes in his book.
Moreover, “Oumuamua was unusually bright. It was at least “ten times more reflective than the typical solar system [stony] asteroids or comets “, writes the author.
He compares its surface to that of shiny metal.
But the anomaly that really pushed Loeb to ET’s hypothesis was the way Oumuamua moved.
“Excessive pushing from the sun – that was the thing that broke the camel,” he said.
Using physics, scientists can calculate the exact path an object should take and what speed it should travel due to the gravitational force exerted by the sun. The drawing of the sun will massively accelerate an object as it approaches, then it will throw it from the other side, only for the object to slow down considerably as it moves away.
But ‘Oumuamua did not follow this calculated trajectory. In fact, the object accelerated “slightly, but to a statistically significant extent,” Loeb writes, as he moved away from the sun.
In other words, it was clearly pushed by a force other than the gravity of the sun.
At first the explanation seemed simple. Comets have a similar acceleration, because as they approach the sun, their surface is heated, releasing once frozen gases, which act as a rocket engine.
However, the released materials form the distinctive tail of a comet. Scientists carefully looked for that tail or any sign of gas or dust that could propel Oumuamua and came out naked.
Loeb calculated that, along with these and other anomalies, the chances of “Oumuamua being a random comet were about one in a patrol, which led him to his blockbuster hypothesis.
But what exactly was it?
A possibility, quite strange, could be found in the technology we already have here on earth.
“Some people do not want to discuss the possibility of other civilizations there.”
Avi Loeb, astronomer at Harvard and author of the book “Alien”
About 400 years ago, astronomer Johannes Kepler observed comet tails blowing in what looked like a solar breeze and wondered if the same force could propel rocket ships through space, as the wind pushes boats through the water.
It was a clever idea that scientists are now using to develop lightweight probe cloths. Thin, reflective foils are deployed in space to capture particles flowing from the sun, propelling a ship at high speeds through the hollow void. Alternatively, powerful lasers on earth could be aimed at the sail to make it go even faster.
Loeb, who is involved in a light navigation project to send a small, unmanned craft to a nearby star, said that if Earthlings thought about this idea, then why couldn’t aliens?
He and a colleague shook the numbers and hypothesized that “Oumuamua was not actually cigar-shaped, but probably a disk less than a millimeter thick, with sail-like proportions, which would account for its unusual acceleration as he was moving away from the sun.
As for his goal, Loeb is not entirely sure. He speculated that it could be “space junk” that once served as a kind of space navigation buoy used by an ancient civilization.
“It simply came to our notice then [alien civilizations] is to look for their garbage, like investigative journalists who look through the garbage of celebrities “, said Loeb.
Of course, not everyone in the scientific community agrees with his theory.
In July 2019, the Oumuamua Team of the International Institute of Space Sciences published an article in Nature Astronomy, concluding: “We find no convincing evidence to support an extraterrestrial explanation for ‘Oumuamua.’
Loeb admits that his theories have raised the eyebrows of astronomers, but he is determined about his findings. “Some people don’t want to discuss the possibility of other civilizations there,” he told The Post. “They think we are special and unique. I think it’s a prejudice that should be abandoned. ”
Loeb said skeptics are leaning back to attribute the natural origins to the object and that the explanations they have given to explain its strange properties are not under surveillance.
For example, some scientists have suggested that “Oumuamua’s acceleration was caused by frozen hydrogen on its surface turning into gas and driving it like a comet, and that hydrogen would have been invisible to Earth’s infrared cameras.” which is why I didn’t detect it.
But Loeb and a colleague published a paper showing that “a hydrogen iceberg traveling through interstellar space would evaporate long before it reached our solar system.”
Whatever the truth, the stakes are high.
Accepting that an alien race came in contact – even through its garbage – would trigger a serious search for more garbage, which would lead us to travel to the moon and Mars, for example, for debris that could have landed in thousands or millions of years ago.
And if more evidence is found, we Earthlings should begin to build tools to help us fight aliens, such as space treaties and academia, such as astro-linguistics and astro-economics.
But, perhaps more importantly, any other discovery could redefine our place in the universe.
“It would put us in perspective,” Loeb said. “If we are not alone, are we the smartest children in the block? If there was a species that was wiped out by war or climate change, we can behave together and behave better. Instead, we waste a lot of resources on Earth fighting each other and other negative things that are a big waste. ”
Since the appearance of ‘Oumuamua’, a second interstellar object known as 2I / Borisov has been seen entering the solar system with a Crimean telescope in 2019. But it has turned out to be a simple, old comet.
Until recently, our tools were not sensitive enough to capture such visitors. But Loeb said the technology will soon make it possible to locate more space travelers, and the only way ‘Oumuamua’s mystery will be solved is if a similar object is spotted and investigated in more detail with a probe.
He said his book “should motivate people to collect more data about the next object that seems strange.”
“If we find another one and take a picture and it looks like a light sail, I don’t think anyone will argue with that.”