Paris, France
The passage of a strange fireball through the solar system in 2017 led some astronomers to believe that it could be a sign of extraterrestrial life, a controversial thesis, but still defended by a well-known scientist, Avi Loeb, whose essay was published on Thursday.
“If I’m right, this is the greatest discovery in human history,” said Avi Loeb, director of the astronomy department at Harvard University.
In his essay “The first sign of extraterrestrial intelligent life”, this black hole specialist explains how the detection of Oumuamua, a cigar-shaped object that rushed through the solar system, developed in October 2017.
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Detected by the Pan-STARRS1 telescope in Hawaii, Oumuamua – which means “messenger” in Hawaiian – measured 400 meters long and 40 meters wide. Its speed was so high that it could only come from a distant star: it was the first object detected to come from another star system.
After describing it as an asteroid, a team from the European Space Agency estimated that it was most likely a comet. But this hypothesis did not satisfy Loeb, as, according to him, it did not explain the excessive acceleration of the object, nor its unusual shape, nor the fact that it left no trace of gas or dust when passing by the sun.
Together with another Harvard researcher, he signed an article in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, advancing the theory that Oumuamua could only be a probe propelled by an extraterrestrial civilization. Its publication has been widely criticized, but for Loeb “the debate is prolonged due to the lack of tangible evidence and it can only be verified that the phenomenon was and continues to be an anomaly.”
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Over 272 pages, the American-Israeli physicist presents his hypotheses about “this first interstellar visitor ever identified” and “explores the problem of knowing if we are alone in the universe,” according to the French publishing house Seuil.
It also supports the expansion of the field of research, beyond the study of a possible microbial life on Mars, the goal of NASA’s “Perseverance” mission, which will land on the red planet on February 18.