Asteroid to be studied for signs of alien technology
An object 400m long that has been hurtling through our solar system at about 315,500km/h is going to be studied for signs of alien technology.
The dark and reddish cylindrical asteroid was spotted in October by astronomers at the University of Hawaii using the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope. They said it was an asteroid and named it ’Oumuamua — Hawaiian for “messenger”.
They also concluded that the object is a rare interstellar traveller from beyond our solar system, the first object of its kind observed by humans.
Some scientists, though, have not yet ruled out more extraordinary origins. “The possibility that this object is, in fact, an artificial object — that it is a spaceship, essentially — is a remote possibility,” said Andrew Siemion, director of the Berkeley Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Research Centre.
Siemion is a member of the Breakthrough Listen initiative: a US$100 million ($143.9m) project, backed by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner, to hunt for extraterrestrial intelligence. This week, researchers with the Breakthrough Listen initiative announced that a radio telescope will probe ’Oumuamua for signs of technology.
The telescope, nestled within the hills of the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia, begins its search today.
’Oumuamua behaves oddly. Planets and asteroids circle the sun on the same plane, like water swirling around a basin. ’Oumuamua dipped into the solar system from outside the plane, as faucet.
It is shaped strangely, too. Most asteroids of this size are spherical. This object has the proportions of a giant cucumber. Harvard University astronomer Avi Loeb recently said ’Oumuamua has the optimal design of a vessel meant to travel through space, the Atlantic reported.
Yet all of its features are “entirely consistent with being a natural object”, said Karen Meech, the University of Hawaii astronomer who led the research team to measure ’Oumuamua’s physical properties. “That being said, we cannot disprove the unlikely hypothesis that it is not,” Meech said.
“Green Bank is the most capable radio telescope in the world for conducting these types of observations,” Siemion said.
Meech added: “This is the sort of opportunity that one would hate to miss, even if the chances are extremely low for success.
“If you don’t try the experiment, you will never know.” if leaked from a cosmic