# Oumuamua: Aliens! **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [November 6, 2018, 8:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oumuamua-aliens/824062 "2018-11-06T08:41:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 1
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2018, 8:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oumuamua-aliens/824062/1 "2018-11-06T08:41:40Z")
Oumuamua was that piece of rock that sailed through the solar system from interstellar space. Odd shape, and apparently it behaved strangely, taking on speed that it should not have. \*[Now](https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/scientists-say-mysterious-oumuamua-object-could-be-alien-spacecraft-ncna931381) a pair of Harvard researchers are raising the possibility that Oumuamua is an alien spacecraft. As they say in a paper to be published Nov. 12 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, the object “may be a fully operational probe sent intentionally to Earth vicinity by an alien civilization.” The researchers aren’t claiming outright that aliens sent Oumuamua. But after a careful mathematical analysis of the way the interstellar object sped up as it shot past the sun, they say Oumuamua could be a spacecraft pushed through space by light falling on its surface — or, as they put it in the paper, a “lightsail of artificial origin.”\* Or maybe it is a piece of an alien spaceship that broke off and floated away, and just happened to drift through our solar system. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oumuamua-aliens/824062)._