Scientists Baffled By Alien Messenger Object That Passed Through Earth

'Oumuamua, the mysterious alien object that passed through Earth, continues to baffle scientists as to what it really is although they all agree that is not from this solar system.

Avi Loeb, chairman of Harvard's astronomy department, said in their study that 'Oumuamua is an "interstellar visitor" that might be an alien spacecraft. The name which means "messenger from afar arriving first" remains a mystery, especially because it has an unusual chemical composition, shape and origin.

Loeb said in her email to NBC News that the object is "clearly weird relative to the typical comets" that scientists have come to know about stars. Likewise, there is no information about the nature of 'Oumuamua and it might also be artificial. Loeb added that it should not be confused as a comet as it doesn't appear like the usual comets observed before.

She is referring to the new theory formulated by scientists at Yale University and the California Institute of Technology. According to the people behind the new study, there is evidence to indicate that the alien object may be another kind of comet. This echoes the findings of another research: "On the Anomalous Acceleration of 1I/2017 U1 `Oumuamua."

Darryl Seligman, a graduate student in astronomy at Yale and the first author of the new paper, said that they are quite confident about their hypothesis. His team suggested that despite the unusual appearance and behavior of 'Oumuamua, they are still aligned with what comets are.

Loeb previously pointed out that 'Oumuamua speeds up in a manner that is not possible or explainable if we consider the gravitational pull of the sun. This weird behavior led to Loeb and another colleague to claim that the object could be "a fully operational space probe sent intentionally to Earth vicinity by an alien civilization."

Seligman, however, said that there is no need to consider less likely explanations for the non-gravitational acceleration. The new study does not entirely answer what the object is but Konstantin Batygin, an astrophysicist at Caltech and a co-author of the paper, said that the remarkable properties of the object could be explained within the realm of relatively standard cometary physics.