{"id":110361,"date":"2021-01-04T16:24:04","date_gmt":"2021-01-04T23:24:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=110361"},"modified":"2021-01-04T16:24:04","modified_gmt":"2021-01-04T23:24:04","slug":"a-harvard-professor-says-an-alien-visited-in-2017-and-more-are-coming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2021\/01\/04\/a-harvard-professor-says-an-alien-visited-in-2017-and-more-are-coming\/","title":{"rendered":"A Harvard professor says an alien visited in 2017 and more are coming"},"content":{"rendered":"

Courtesy The Daily Mirror<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

When the first sign of intelligent life first visits us from space, it won\u2019t be a giant saucer hovering over New York. More likely, it will be an alien civilization\u2019s trash. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Avi Loeb, the chair of Harvard\u2019s Department of Astronomy, believes he\u2019s already found some of that garbage. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his upcoming book, Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth\u201d (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), out Jan. 26, the professor lays out a compelling case for why an object that recently wandered into our solar system was not just another rock but actually a piece of alien technology. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The object in question traveled toward our solar system from the direction of Vega, a nearby star 25 light-years away, and intercepted our solar system\u2019s orbital plane on Sept. 6, 2017. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Sept. 9, its trajectory brought it closest to the sun. At the end of September, it blasted at about 58,900 miles per hour past Venus\u2019 orbital distance, and then, on Oct. 7, it shot past Earth\u2019s before moving swiftly toward the constellation Pegasus and the blackness beyond,\u201d Loeb writes in the book. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The object was first spotted by an observatory in Hawaii containing the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) \u2014 the highest definition telescope on earth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The space object was dubbed \u2018Oumuamua (pronounced oh moo ah moo ah\u201d), which is Hawaiian for \u2014 roughly \u2014 scout.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As space travelers go, it was relatively small at just about 100 yards long, but it was a big deal in the scientific community. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For starters, it was the first interstellar object ever detected inside our solar system. Judging from the object\u2019s trajectory, astronomers concluded it was not bound by the sun\u2019s gravity \u2014 which suggested it was just traveling through. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

No crisp photos could be taken, but astronomers were able to train their telescopes on the object for 11 days, collecting reams of other data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


At first, scientists thought it was an ordinary comet. But Loeb said that assumption ran the risk of allowing the familiar to define what we might discover.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What would happen if a caveman saw a cellphone?\u201d he asked. He\u2019s seen rocks all his life, and he would have thought it was just a shiny rock.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Loeb soon opened his mind to another possibility: It was not a comet but discarded tech from an alien civilization. (nypost)<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Courtesy The Daily Mirror When the first sign of intelligent life first visits us from space, it won\u2019t be a giant saucer hovering over New York. More likely, it will be an alien civilization\u2019s trash.  Avi Loeb, the chair of Harvard\u2019s Department of Astronomy, believes he\u2019s already found some of that garbage.  In his upcoming […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[132],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-110361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110361\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}