What if "Oumuamua" was sent to our solar system to search for signals at the request of an alien civilization? It's a crazy idea, but it is worth considering, according to one astrophysicist.One of my colleagues once pointed out that there was a long line of people waiting outside a Parisian bakery every morning. He said, "I wish someone would be as eager to wait for my scientific papers as Parisians are for their baguettes."This wish is not fulfilled by one exception. This new scientific evidence shows that we are not the only intelligent species in all of the cosmos.Recent evidence has been gathered from two sources.First, the 2017 interstellar object 'Oumuamua was found to have a flat form and seem to have been pushed away by the sun like a lightsail. The "pancake" was seen tumbling once per eight hours. It was created from the rare local standard of rest, which averages the motions of all stars within the vicinity of the sun.Image credit: HMH. Avi Loeb is the author of "Extraterrestrial. The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth"(HMH, 202).Second, the Pentagon will soon deliver a report to Congress that states that UAP are real but their nature is unknown. UAP that originated in China or Russia would not have been made public if they were a national security threat. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that the U.S. government believes some of these objects may not be human-made. There are two options: UAP could be natural terrestrial phenomena, or extraterrestrial origin. Both of these possibilities could mean something interesting and new that we didn't know before. UAP study should no longer be a topic of national security officials and politicians but rather be viewed as a science problem that is being studied by scientists, not government officials.Natural phenomena could be responsible for many or all of the UAP. Even if they are extraterrestrials, could there be a link to 'Oumuamua'?If they are of natural origin, the inferred abundance is not reasonable. Amaya MoroMartn, Ed Turner and I co-authored a 2009 paper that calculated the number interstellar rock species based on the knowledge of the solar system. We assumed that the rocks were ejected in similar planetary systems orbiting other star stars. The expected number of interstellar rock units per volume required to explain the discovery is higher than the population of objects. If they follow random paths with equal probability of moving in every direction, then there should be quadrillions of 'Oumuamua-like items within the solar system.The number would be reasonable if 'Oumuamua were an artificial object that was on a mission towards the sun to collect data from the area near Earth. It is possible that 'Oumuamua was retrieving data from probes already present on Earth. In this case, the thin flat shape of 'Oumuamua could have been similar to that of a receiver. Therefore, the sun pushed 'Oumuamua to propel it. This was due to its flat and thin shape. An artificial rocket booster was also identified by Pan-STARRS in 2020. It had similar characteristics, but it did not have a cometary tail. The artificial object 2020 SO, which was named for its solar sail purpose, had thin walls and a high surface-to-mass ratio.The possibility that UAPs are extraterrestrial at this point is highly speculation. This possibility is only entertained for entertainment. However, the tumbling motions of 'Oumuamua could have been intended to scan signals from all directions. One possible predecessor of 'Oumuamua was a craft that placed small probes in the Earth's atmosphere and didn't get noticed. This could have happened before Pan-STARRS began its operations. This imaginative reasoning could have led to 'Oumuamua appearing as if it were coming from the neutral local standards of rest. It serves as the "galactic parking area" and would not be known its origin.We should not just speculate about possible scenarios but collect more scientific data to clarify the nature and purpose of UAP. State-of-the art cameras can be used on wide-field telescopes to monitor the sky. The sky is not classified. Only government-owned sensors are. Scientists could solve the mystery by searching for unusual phenomena at the same locations as the UAP reports.My recent book Extraterrestrial reveals that I don't enjoy science fiction stories. The story lines often contradict the laws of Physics. However, science may reveal a reality previously thought to be fiction.This article was originally published on ScientificAmerican.com. ScientificAmerican.com All rights reserved. Follow Scientific American @SciAm on Twitter and @SciamBlogs. ScientificAmerican.com is your source for the most recent science, technology and health news.
