I know in Part 2/3, I promised a submarine. That was a lie. Please proceed with caution.
Part 1/3 --> HERE
Part 2/3 --> HERE
On October 19, 2017, the University of Hawaii's Pan-STARRSI telescope discovered 1I/2017U1 'Oumuamua, what's considered the first interstellar object to visit our solar system. NASA writes:
While originally classified as a comet, observations revealed no signs of cometary activity after it slingshotted past the Sun on Sept. 9, 2017 at a blistering speed of 196,000 miles per hour (87.3 kilometers per second). It was briefly classified as an asteroid until new measurement found it was accelerating slightly, a sign it behaves more like a comet.(fn1)
They describe the object as "cigar-shaped", with a reddish color. As various telescopes around the world began measuring the object's orbit, brightness, and color, it was discovered by a team of astronomers that the object -- 'Oumuamua -- "varies in brightness by a factor of 10 as it spins on its axis every 7.3 hours".(fn2) Now, I don't understand what that means, so if there's an astrophysicist who would like to explain that to me in layman's terms, please do.
NASA explains that the significance of this find comes from the fact that our solar system does not possess -- to the best of our knowledge -- any asteroids or comets that have such variety in "brightness, with such a large ratio between length and width" as 'Oumuamua. (fn3)
These properties suggest that 'Oumuamua is dense, composed of rock and possibly metals, has no water or ice, and that its surface was reddened due to the effects of irradiation from cosmic rays over hundreds of millions of years. (fn4)
As of right now, 'Oumuamua is headed out of our solar system towards the constellation Pegasus.
The name 'Oumuamua comes from Hawaiian, meaning "'a messenger from afar arriving first'"(fn5).
Let's go further back to 2014, when a meteor called IM1 crashed off the cost of Papua, New Guinness. It was believed to have come from interstellar space.(fn6)
Well, Baird Professor of Science and Institute director at Harvard University -- Avi Loeb -- famously suggested that 'Oumuamua from 2017 was not "a cigar-shaped space rock", but an alien spacecraft, a UFO!
In 2021, Loeb founded the Galileo Project, whose aim in short is to get a good photo of a UFO by building "a global network of cameras and telescopes".(fn7)
Interesting Engineering also writes:
Loeb also pointed out that one of the reasons the meteor might be so touch is 'because they are artificial in origin...launched a billions years ago from a distant technological civilization. (fn8)
IM1 crashed into the Pacific at an anom
alous speed. This garnered the interest of Loeb, who -- after not insiginificant struggle -- has finally completed his Interstellar Expedition, a Galileo Project.
On his medium blog, Loeb wrote a couple days ago, on July 3, 2023:
I still find it mind boggling that we managed to retrieve milligram-mass spherules of sub-millimeter size from a 2-kilometer depth in the Pacific Ocean using a meter-wide sled scanning a 10-kilometer-wide region. This accomplishment is testimony to the ingenuity and professional skills of all team members. (fn9)
I must confess, I don't think I've done this ongoing story justice in this blogpost, in an attempt to keep it short; but also due to my ignorance on a lot of the information.
All sources are linked within the text. More relevant sources here:
1) BBC
2) Independent
3) WION
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