In October 2017, humans identified one of the most peculiar objects we have ever encountered. It was spotted 33-million km into space, from a Hawaiian observatory. At first, astrologists thought it an asteroid. That argument was quickly dismissed. Then we believed it could be a comet. Yet again the evidence suggested otherwise. Fast-forward to today and we still haven’t the foggiest clue as to what it was. The name we gave to this phenomena is Oumuamua.
Oumuamua => Meaning first ‘scout’ or ‘messenger’ from a distant place in Hawaiian.
Right off the bat, Oumuamua will forever be a historical discovery as it is the first identified object that has come from another star, within the milky way, to visit our little solar system. It is the first detected interstellar object. We have nothing but guesses when it comes to brainstorming why and how it ended up within our solar system. Some say it was a natural process, whilst other sexier ideas flirt with the idea that it was artificially made - suggesting extraterrestrials were the builders of it.
The first viewers of Oumuamua claimed it was an asteroid. But asteroids source from asteroid belts within our solar system and astrologists quickly determined that Oumuamua had come from another star, into our solar system.
The next best guess was that it was a comet. But comets are characterised by leaving a tail of gasses and debris as they race across endless space; whereas no such thing was found trailing behind Oumuamua. It was also moving twice as fast as any comet we’ve ever seen and a new study found it could be x10 more reflective than any comet that has entered our solar system.
Now is where shit gets really juicy. Not only was Oumuamua behaving like nothing we had ever seen, but upon further examination, its characteristics left astrologists scratching their heads. They surmised that Ouamuamua was about 100m long, but just A FEW MILIMETRES THICK! As flat as a pancake.
Oumuamua followed a very peculiar flight path. As you can see on the images below, the orbit of a regular comet is supposed to do a lap around our star, the sun. But upon edging closer to the sun, it deviated its path and actually increased in speed, as though it accelerated. My knowledge of Science is little-to-nothing but apparently, this is far from normal.
The path of Oumuamua
Avi Loeb (Chair of Harvard's Department of Astronomy) spoke extensively about Oumuamua on the Lex Fridman podcast last week and proposed it could be the product of aliens. One theory is that it may be a purposely engineered light sail, harnessing sunlight to propel it forward. Before discovering Oumuamua, humans were already researching how to create exactly this. The idea is to shine a laser beam onto a small, thin object, which would accelerate its speed to x10 faster than any rocket we have today. But the potential creators of Oumuamua designed it so that it leveraged sunlight, instead of a laser beam.
A few issues ago I mentioned that I've been consuming a lot of "wacky alien" content as of late and how throughout 2020, I regularly pondered about life beyond our little planet. Prior to these thoughts, I embarrassingly assumed we were probably the only form of life in the universe. How utterly how arrogant of me!
We know that more than 4,000 exoplanets (planets similar to earth in terrains & positioning to a sun-like star) have been discovered and are considered "confirmed." We are doubling this figure every 2.5 years. Then factor in that the world's leading astrologists have deduced that there is one exoplanet per star in our galaxy. There are an estimated 100-400 billion stars within our galaxy (the milky way) meaning there should be over 100-billion planets that have the potential conditions to host life. We just haven’t confirmed most of them yet.
If you subscribe to the theory of the Big Bang, the universe is 13-billion years old. Are we to naively assume that right now on earth, we are experiencing the first and most evolved form of life the ENTIRE UNIVERSE has ever seen? That to me seems improbable. Highly improbable. Almost impossible.
What this issue has provided me with is a healthy reminder that our little human lives are probably meaningless, and that 'the purpose of life' is to form part of the journey of nature's natural selection & evolution. Remember from #25 that one of my favourite things in life is to be humbled? Never get too big for your boots; for you are just a clueless ant, here for an infinitesimally small amount of time, who no force cares about. Don’t think about it, Morty.
On the plus side, in 2022 Chile will host a new telescope, which will have the ability to spot more objects like Oumuamua with greater ease. If and when that happens, we may be able to work out what Oumuamua really was. Until then, I will gladly continue consuming the most outrageous theories as to what it could have been.