Paris, France
The passage of a strange fireball through the solar system in 2017 made some astronomers think it could be a sign of alien life, a controversial proposition, but still defended by a famous scientist, Avi Loeb, whose essay was published 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 raced through the solar system, evolved in October 2017.
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Detected by the Pan-STARRS1 telescope in Hawaii, Oumuamua – which means “messenger” in Hawaiian – was 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 galaxy.
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, because, according to him, it did not allow for the excessive acceleration of the object, nor its unusual shape, nor the fact that it did not leave a trace of gas or dust as it passed the sun.
Together with another Harvard researcher, he signed an article in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, in which he advanced the theory that Oumuamua can only be a probe propelled by an alien civilization. Its publication was widely criticized, but for Loeb “the debate is lengthy due to the lack of tangible evidence and it cannot but be verified that the phenomenon was and remains an anomaly”.
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During 272 pages, the American-Israeli physicist presents his hypotheses about “this first interstellar visitor ever identified” and “explores whether we are alone in the universe,” according to French publisher Seuil.
It also advocates expanding the field of research beyond the study of possible microbial life on Mars, the target of NASA’s “Perseverance” mission, which will land on the red planet on Feb. 18.