Row erupts over Harvard claim that cigar-shaped asteroid Oumuamua is an alien spaceship
Experts from the world-famous university had suggested the giant space rock 'may be a fully operational probe sent intentionally to Earth vicinity by an alien civilisation'
SCIENTISTS have today hit back at "outlandish" claims a cigar-shaped interstellar body zooming through our solar system might have been sent by aliens to spy on us.
Experts from Harvard had suggested the giant space rock "may be a fully operational probe sent intentionally to Earth vicinity by an alien civilisation".
However, several renowned astronomers have now challenged the out-of-this-world suggestion.
"Like most scientists, I would love there to be convincing evidence of alien life, but this isn't it," said Dr Alan Fitzsimmons of Queens University Belfast.
"It has already been shown that its observed characteristics are consistent with a comet-like body ejected from another star system.
"And some of the arguments in this study are based on numbers with large uncertainties."
Another well-known astrophysicist, Dr Katie Mack from North Carolina State, was blasted the claim on Twitter.
"The thing you have to understand is: scientists are perfectly happy to publish an outlandish idea if it has even the tiniest *sliver* of a chance of not being wrong," she wrote.
"But until every other possibility has been exhausted dozen times over, even the authors probably don't believe it."
Astronomers from Harvard's Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics (CfA) detected an unexpected boost in speed and shift in trajectory in Oumuamua as it passed through the inner solar system.
The change in course and speed was so pronounced they concluded it “might be a lightsail of artificial origin”.
Constantly streaming solar particles, called photons, could be harnessed in huge sails in the same way as wind is on Earth.
The said: “Considering an artificial origin, one possibility is that Oumuamua is a lightsail, floating in interstellar space as a debris from an advanced technological equipment.
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“Alternatively, a more exotic scenario is that Oumuamua may be a fully operational probe sent intentionally to Earth vicinity by an alien civilisation.”
Theoretical physicist Avi Loeb Loeb Universe Today: “Oumuamua could be an active piece of alien technology that came to explore our Solar System, the same way we hope to explore Alpha Centauri using Starshot and similar technologies
“The alternative is to imagine that Oumuamua was on a reconnaissance mission.”
What is Oumuamua and where did it come from?
Oumuamua, named after the Hawaiian term which means "a messenger from afar arriving first" is the first visitor to our solar system that has come from somewhere else in our galaxy.
The cigar-shaped space rock is said to have first soared past Earth in November.
The 400m long rock has intrigued scientists because it is only a tenth as wide.
Even its needle shape is peculiar. Asteroids which typically soar through our solar system are round.
Comets usually follow an ellipse-shaped orbit around the sun. But Oumuamua appears to orbit at an angle.
Its path suggests it entered our solar system from the direction of the constellation Lyra.
Oumuamua is said to have first entered our solar system on September 2, speeding at 27 miles per second.
The rock then made its closest approach to the Sun, seven days later, before suddenly spinning 15 million miles under Earth's orbit on October 14.
Scientists became even more fascinated with the pale pink space rock because of its movement. Oumuamua "tumbles" smoothly through our solar system, instead of simply moving like other asteroids.
Although there was initially a non "consensus" on its origins, researchers are slowly starting to crack the code of its whereabouts.
New research shows that Oumuamua "very likely"; came from a binary star system, which (unlike our Sun) is one with two stars orbiting a common centre.
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