Here ’s the Truth About the Bizarre ‘Alien Spacecraft’ That Buzzed Our Solar System

You surely know the joke: Guy asks a friend, “What do you think the odds are that Angelina Jolie would go out for a drink with me?” Friend answers: “Maybe a trillion to one.” Guy responds: “So you’re saying there’s a chance!” That’s the best way to think about the newly released draft paper by two astronomers from Harvard (Yes, I said Harvard) that Oumuamua, the mysterious, cigar-shaped object that whizzed through the solar system last year and was spotted by the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope in Hawaii, might actually be an alien probe from interstellar space. The authors of the paper, Schmuel Bialy, a post-doctoral researcher, and Avi Loeb, chair of the astronomy department, are right. It might be. But that doesn’t mean the guy in the joke will be inviting the aliens to join him and Angelina for the drink they’re not having tonight. There’s no denying that Oumuamua (which means scout or messenger) is just plain weird. It’s 400 meters long, or about a quarter of a mile, but perhaps as little as a tenth as wide. It flew by us on a trajectory that indicated that it clearly did not come from within the solar system, and it actually accelerated during the course of its transit, suggesting that someone could have been putting the foot — or the tentacle, or the suction cup-enabled pseudopod — to the pedal. It was also red — or at least reddish — which is a nifty color for an interstellar...
Source: TIME: Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Uncategorized onetime space Source Type: news