A predecessor to 'Oumuamua could have been a craft that deposited small probes into the Earth's atmosphere without being noticed, because it visited before Pan-STARRS started its operations.

But if we entertain this possibility for fun, then the tumbling motion of 'Oumuamua could potentially have been meant to scan signals from all viewing directions. Greetings, Earthlings! 8 ways aliens could contact usĪt this time, the possibility that any UAP are extraterrestrial is highly speculative. 9 strange, scientific excuses for why humans haven't found aliens yet This artificial object named 2020 SO was not designed to be a solar sail (opens in new tab) but had thin walls with a large surface-to-mass ratio for a different purpose. A similar push by reflection of sunlight without a cometary tail were the traits of an artificial rocket booster that was identified in 2020 by the same Pan-STARRS telescope that discovered 'Oumuamua. Hence, 'Oumuamua was pushed by sunlight not for the purpose of propulsion but as a byproduct of its thin flat shape. In such a case, 'Oumuamua's thin, flat shape could have been that of a receiver. One might even wonder whether 'Oumuamua might have been retrieving data from probes that were already sprinkled on Earth at an earlier time.

In fact, there should be a quadrillion (opens in new tab) 'Oumuamua-like objects within the solar system at any given time, if they are distributed on random trajectories with equal probability of moving in all directions.īut the number is reasonable if 'Oumuamua was an artificial object on a targeted mission towards the sun, aimed to collect data from the habitable region near Earth. The population of objects required to explain (opens in new tab) the discovery of 'Oumuamua exceeds the expected number (opens in new tab) of interstellar rocks per unit volume by orders of magnitude. With Amaya Moro-Martín and Ed Turner, I wrote a paper (opens in new tab) in 2009 calculating the number of interstellar (opens in new tab) rocks based on what is known about the solar system and assuming that these rocks were ejected from similar planetary systems orbiting other stars. The inferred abundance of 'Oumuamua-like objects is unreasonably large if they're of purely natural origin. But even if one of them is extraterrestrial, might there be any possible link to 'Oumuamua? Many or even most UAP might be natural phenomena. The study of UAP should therefore shift from occupying the talking points of national security administrators and politicians to the arena of science where it is studied by scientists rather than government officials. Both possibilities imply something new and interesting that we did not know before. This leaves two possibilities: either UAP are natural terrestrial phenomena or they are extraterrestrial in origin. government believes that some of these objects are not human in origin. Hence, it is reasonable to conclude (opens in new tab) that the U.S. If UAP originated from China or Russia and were a national security risk, their existence would have never been revealed to the public. Second, the Pentagon is about to deliver a report to Congress stating that some unidentified aerial phenomena (opens in new tab) (UAP) are real but that their nature is unknown. Avi Loeb is author of ' Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth (opens in new tab)' (HMH, 2021).

Aerial phenomena