‘Cigar’ asteroid 'might be something far more interesting'
Earlier this year, for the first time ever, astronomers spotted an object that had entered our Solar System from interstellar space – a strange cigar-shaped thing up to 400 meters long.
Researchers first thought it was a comet - then an asteroid - but now some scientists suggest it could be something far more interesting.
Dr Jason Wright from Pennsylvania State University says that it might be a broken alien spacecraft – tumbling through our Solar System helplessly without its engines.
Dr Wright writes, "Such derelict craft would, if they are not travelling so fast that they escape the Galaxy, eventually ‘thermalize’ with the stars and end up drifting around like any other interstellar comet or asteroid.
"In fact, since they (presumably) no longer have attitude control, one would expect that they would eventually begin to tumble, and if they are very rigid that tumbling might distinguish them from ordinary interstellar asteroids… and in fact, just because their propulsion is broken doesn’t mean that their radio transmitters would be broken."
Upon its discovery, the interstellar object was nicknamed ʻOumuamua - the Hawaiian word for "messenger" or "scout". But so far there have been no reports of communications from the space rock.
Dr Wright suggests the object may be a "Von Neumann probe" – a self-replicating probe which scientists theorise might be a way that aliens explore other solar systems.
He added, "Such a discovery would imply that there are lots of these things in the solar system at any given moment (even if they are deliberately targeting the sun, they are hard to spot and we’ll miss most of them), and so lots of opportunities to study them."
