Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb has drawn criticism for suggesting ‘Oumuamua, a weird object passing through the solar system could be an alien spacecraft. But he insists we must keep an open mind when nature throws us a curveball like this, and that the search for extraterrestrial life is just good science.
It is certainly weird. Observations suggested ‘Oumuamua is likely to be either flat or cigar-shaped, tumbling end over end every 7 hours or so and accelerating at a pace seemingly greater than could be accounted for by gravitational forces alone. Loeb’s colleagues have since come up with various natural explanations for what we glimpsed of ‘Oumuamua’s features, including the idea that it is some sort of giant fractal snowflake. But he is adamant we should at least be open to the possibility that it could be evidence of the existence of extraterrestrial civilisations.
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