"Considering an artificial origin, one possibility is that ‘Oumuamua is a lightsail, floating in interstellar space as a debris from an advanced technological equipment," researchers wrote in the paper.
The paper continues: "Lightsails with similar dimensions have been designed and constructed by our own civilization, including the IKAROS project and the Starshot Initiative. The lightsail technology might be abundantly used for transportation of cargos between planets or between stars."
They even theorized that Oumuamua "may be a fully operational probe sent intentionally to Earth vicinity by an alien civilization," though that scenario was called "exotic."
The paper was written by postdoctoral researcher Shmuel Bialy and professor Abraham Loeb, the director at the CfA's Institute for Theory and Computation.
Other studies have suggested that other "Oumuamua-like objects" will potentially enter our solar system, with some potentially carrying life.
"The likelihood of Galactic panspermia is strongly dependent upon the survival lifetime of the putative organisms as well as the velocity of the transporter," according to a paper published in The Astronomical Journal by Manasvi Lingam and the aforementioned Loeb.
It might be a lightsail sent by aliens! Wow! Ow wait, it could also just be a big metallic rock. Hmmm, I wonder which it is?
In October 2017, a fast moving, cigar-shaped comet of extrasolar origin was discovered close to the Earth with the Pan-STARRS1 telescope in Hawai’i. Officially named 1I/2017 U1 (‘Oumuamua), the comet was presumably ejected from a forming planetary system, probably by a gravitational kick from a giant exoplanet. Now, using data from ESA’s star-mapping Gaia satellite, Dr. Coryn Bailer-Jones of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy and co-authors have identified four stars as possible homes of ‘Oumuamua.
http://www.sci-news.com/astronomy/oumuamua-home-stars-06451.html
The big question, in my mind, is whether the object, and its inhabitants, will arrive in time to vote in the midterms on Tuesday. I’m guessing they have to be alien Trump supporters that were just waiting until we got our $#!¥ together.
RAMA!............................
It’s not a lightsail or anything else artificial according to studies already done.
Oumuamua is a mildly active comet, and the first interstellar object detected passing through the Solar System. Formally designated 1I/2017 U1, it was discovered by Robert Weryk using the Pan-STARRS telescope at Haleakala Observatory, Hawaii, on 19 October 2017, 40 days after it passed its closest point to the Sun.
When first seen, it was about 33,000,000 km (21,000,000 mi; 0.22 AU) from Earth (about 85 times as far away as the Moon), and already heading away from the Sun.
Oumuamua is a small object, estimated to be about 230 by 35 by 35 meters (800 ft × 100 ft × 100 ft) in size. It has a dark red color, similar to objects in the outer Solar System.
Oumuamua showed no signs of a comet tail despite its close approach to the Sun, but has since undergone non-gravitational acceleration consistent with comet outgassing.
It has significant elongation and rotation rate, so it is thought to be metal-rich with a relatively high density. Oumuamua is tumbling, rather than smoothly rotating, and is moving so fast relative to the Sun that there is no chance it originated in the Solar System.
It also means that Oumuamua cannot be captured into a solar orbit, so it will eventually leave the Solar System and resume traveling through interstellar space. Oumuamua’s system of origin and the amount of time it has spent traveling amongst the stars are unknown.
In September 2018, astronomers described several possible home star systems from which Oumuamua, that was detected passing through the Solar System in October 2017, may have begun its interstellar journey.[15]
However, the object didn’t pass particularly close to any of the objects, making its origin from any one of them improbable.
Okay, it’s a rock or metal object that’s four football fields long and almost a football field wide. How much would that weigh?
And it’s NOT a lightsail. At best, it’s a tiny fragment of an ancient lightsail that was originally much, much larger and heavier. Gotta wonder, how much would the whole thing weigh?
Humans are experimenting with lightsails right now and to send a tiny, teeny thumbnail size “spacechip” to the nearest star will require an ENORMOUSLY powerful laser, so big no one even knows how to build it yet, and a “sail” that’s probably going to have to be kilometers across. And the larger our spacechip is, the exponentially larger and exponentially more expensive the laser and sail will have to be. So... are these super-duper advanced aliens so rich and/or stupid that they couldn’t find something lighter than, oh, say, a trillion tons of rock to build the superstructure of their lightsail out of? Just wondering...
First, look for the simplest explanation. Your inability to understand does not automatically narrow down the possibilities to the only one that you can think of.
It is a shame Art Bell’s voice cannot narrate a good Oumuamua story. I would love to stay up and listen to him, interspersed with Baygen hand cranked radio spots.
Occam’s razor: It’s a rock
*ping*
It comes all that way and only makes one pass?
Stupid aliens.
It is a rock
“Rendezvous with Rama,” by Arthur C. Clarke