DID ET REALLY VISIT US FOUR YEARS AGO?

Extraterrestrial Avi Loeb John Murray £20

Have aliens ever been to our solar system? A quick trawl of the internet will reveal any number of people who think that they have, but when the suggestion comes from a distinguished Harvard astrophysicist, maybe it’s time to sit up and take notice. Professor Avi Loeb is not only certain that an alien spacecraft has visited, he can specify the exact time and location.

In October 2017, astronomers tracked a mysterious object leaving our solar system. It had actually entered our neighbourhood at the end of September, but hadn’t been spotted until it was on the way out, too late to try to grab a photograph. Nonetheless, the observatory in Hawaii that identified it was able to collect an impressive amount of data. It also bestowed on it a name, ’ Oumuamua, a Hawaiian word that roughly translates as ‘scout’. The scientific consensus is that’ Oumuamua was a commonor-garden come tor a steroid, but Loeb thinks this is nonsense and his reasons are compelling. Its shape was utterly unlike any natural body ( up to ten times longer than it was wide) and there was no sign of the gas trail commonly associated with comets. It was at least ten times more reflective than the average asteroid, glowing with a level of brightness similar to ‘shiny metal’. And to cap it all, its trajectory was not in accordance with the gravitational pull of the Sun. Loeb is convinced that ’Oumuamua is an alien artefact, perhaps a scout ship, perhaps a kind of interstellar buoy, possibly just cosmic junk. So why are so few of his fellow scientists prepared to believe him? Perhaps they’re unwilling to rock the boat, Loeb speculates, but there may be profound psychological reasons as well. Are we prepared to face up to the possibility that we are not alone in the universe? More than that, are we ready to acknowledge that ‘ we cannot be the smartest species out there’?