More recently, in October, our solar system was first visited by an interstellar space object. The body, called Oumuamua (which means "messenger" in Hawaiian), has attracted the attention of astronomers and space enthusiasts from around the world. It got to the point that there was even a suggestion that this object could be an interstellar space probe sent by an intelligent and very advanced civilization.
The controversy in the scientific community attracted even the Russian billionaire Yuri Milner, behind the Breakthrough Listen science initiative, intrigued by the possibility. Therefore, shortly after meeting with the head of the department of astronomy at Harvard Avi Loeb, the initiative research group Breakthrough Listen announced that it was going to follow Oumuamua and check if he was transmitting any subtle radio signals, which would clearly indicate that he is not just another space cobblestone.
In correspondence with Milner, Loeb noted:
"The more I study this object, the more unusual it begins to seem to me, forcing me to think about whether it is artificial and whether it is some kind of probe sent by an extraterrestrial civilization."
Outside observers note that to some extent Loeb's suspicions are indeed justified. The object was first detected by the Pan-STARRS telescope located on the island of Hawaii, and immediately showed some properties very unusual for a simple asteroid or comet. To tell the truth, scientists at first thought that Oumuamua was exactly a comet, but since he did not have a coma - a cloud of dust and gas that usually surrounds the comet's nucleus, as well as a tail - this assumption was quickly abandoned.
The shape of the object was also very unusual. It is strongly elongated and has a small width, while most of the previously observed asteroids were much more circular in shape. Of course, such a feature does not exclude the possibility that the object is an asteroid (especially given that it is definitely not a comet, since it does not have a tail), but nevertheless it raises some additional questions.
Breakthrough Listen will begin observing the object with the Green Bank Radio Telescope this Wednesday, December 13th. In the hope of finding and intercepting the radio signal transmitted by the object, the telescope will monitor it for ten hours, in the range of four radio frequencies. Of course, scientists are more confident that Oumuamua is a naturally formed object, but science, as a rule, does not discard various assumptions until the opposite is proved.
Nikolay Khizhnyak
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