Are We Alone?

In October 2017, a telescope in Hawaii detected the first confirmed “interstellar object” spotted in our solar system. Christened ‘Oumuamua (pronounced oh-MOO-uh-MOO-uh), Hawaiian for “messenger from the past,” it became an astronomical cause célèbre.

A wealth of anomalous data fueled curiosity. Beyond its pancake-like shape, high reflectivity and a strange rotational pattern best described as “tumbling,” the stadium-sized visitor tracked a peculiar trajectory. Instead of being dragged into the sun’s orbit so astronomers could get a better look, it actually accelerated on its way out of the solar system. “The more we found out about this object,” Harvard University astronomer Abraham Loeb told Spiegel Online, “the weirder it got.”

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