The Harvard professor says that the object that struck the Earth probably came from an alien world

Cambridge, Massachusetts – A professor at Harvard University argues that we are probably not alone in the universe. Astronomer Avi Loeb’s new book “Extraterrestrial” examines the 2017 flyby of a space object that, according to him, is really out of this world.

“At first people thought, ‘Well, it must be a rock, just like the asteroids or comets we’ve seen before in the solar system,'” Loeb told Paula Ebben of CBSN Boston. they got more data, it seems very strange “.

The cigarette-shaped object seen by the telescopes was christened “Oumuamua,” meaning “a messenger that stretches from the distant past” in Hawaiian.

It was ten times longer than the width and was traveling at speeds of 196,000 mph, researchers said at the time.

“It didn’t look like a comet, but it behaved like something that has an extra boost,” Loeb said.

NASA confirmed that it is “the first object ever seen in our solar system that is known to have originated elsewhere,” but said its origins are unknown.

Loeb argues in his book that the object was probably rubbish from an advanced alien technology: space debris many light-years away. It may have been a type of “light sail” powered by sunlight, a technology that humans are currently developing for space exploration.

“There may be a lot of rubbish out there or it’s a probe,” he said. “We don’t know because we haven’t collected enough data, enough evidence and I’m just alerting everyone to look for objects like this so that the next time someone comes along we look at it more closely.”

Loeb said it’s time for researchers to look for possible “messages in a bottle” like Oumuamua instead of looking only for radio signals as evidence of other civilizations.

He said his ideas are not popular in the scientific community right now: talking about potential extraterrestrial intelligence “is out of the mainstream and shouldn’t be.”

“We should have an open mind and look for evidence instead of assuming that everything we see in the sky should be rocks,” he said.

For those who doubt the existence of aliens, Loeb says to consider the odds.

“We know that half of the sun-like stars have a planet the size of Earth about the same distance from the star, so they can have liquid water on the surface, it’s the chemistry of life,” he said. to say.

“That means if you roll the dice billions of times in the Milky Way galaxy, we’re probably not alone, and we’re probably not the sharpest cookie in the jar, the smartest kid on the block.” .