Incoming interstellar object ‘Oumuamua (1I/2017 U1) remains unidentified by scans. Is this UFO an extraterrestrial craft? The world’s leading theoretical physicist and eminent cosmologist, Steven Hawking, thinks perhaps it is. As the mysterious cigar-shaped object passes by at a top speed of almost 200,000 miles per hour, our news anchor girl, Ani P, analyses the situation in a mind-blowing fireside chat (video below).

Have a cigar!

Is there any evidence to indicate that this UFO is an alien megastructure, as many people suspect? Yes. As researchers explained, the shape is significant: An official statement from SETI’s Breakthrough Listen project acknowledged that a we would expect an interstellar vehicle to be cigar-shaped: “Researchers working on long-distance space transportation have previously suggested that a cigar or needle shape is the most likely architecture for an interstellar spacecraft, since this would minimise friction and damage from interstellar gas and dust.”. A typical asteroid would not survive rotating as fast as this cigar-shaped object is, so there’s definitely something extraordinary about it.

There are other important telltale signs that it is not a natural asteroid or comet, like its apparently clean, smooth, featureless exterior (which appears red in colour) and the lack of any dust, gas or trail.

Then, there’s the close solar flyby performed by the object — a tight, hyperbolic, perfect slingshot manoeuvre around the Sun, passing closer to it (0.255 au) than any of the planets, a route that would also have been optimal for solar recharging. And guess which planet did Oumuamua pass nearest to? If it was a spaceship, it was most interested in Earth, as one would expect. It got closer to Earth (0.163 au) than it did any other planet — by far!

As you study more of the observations and data about the object, it gets even weirder. Oumuamua is by very far the fastest object ever observed in the solar system, with the highest orbital eccentricity ever recorded. Oumuamua is also by far the longest object ever observed in space, with a length-to-width aspect ratio of about 10:1. There’s nothing ordinary about this quarter-mile-long unidentified object.

Using the latest data, the Drake equation predicts that intelligent life has evolved on other planets  — unless the chances of advanced life occurring are less than one in 10 billion trillion! (This estimate takes into account the exponential growth in the number of new exoplanets being discovered each year, including potentially habitable planets.) If the odds of alien life are that low, this planet of ours would be pretty unique! However, given that the building-blocks for life do occur spontaneously in the lab under terrestrial conditions, together with the fact that we are here despite the relatively young age of Earth, life obviously can and does happen in this universe. Moreover, it would be irrational to disregard the overwhelming anecdotal evidence of extraterrestrial presence right here on our own planet.

Although scans have detected no significant radio transmissions originating from the UFO, this flawed methodology assumes that an extraterrestrial civilisation would use the same primitive communication technology as we do. Alien technology is likely to be millions or billions of years ahead of ours, especially if they have achieved interstellar travel. Planet Earth is not even 5 billion years old, and look how far we’ve come already! The universe is almost 14 billion years old!! Human civilisation is only about 5,000 years old, and we invented radio communication a mere 200 years ago. Trying to detect alien technology by looking for radio signals is akin to trying to detect modern human technology by looking for flint arrows flying through the air! But major projects like SETI and Breakthrough Listen utterly depend on this flawed assumption. Would you detect contemporary human transportation technology by scanning for the sound of a horse and cart?

The Breakthrough Listen project had only started scanning four radio channels (1-12 GHz), and barely began to analyse the petabytes of data collected so far, when the mainstream media unscientifically proclaimed the news with misleading headlines like “Unidentified space object not alien ship, say scientists after first scans” (Sky News, 15 Dec). [We don’t link to fake news from this website, especially when it is disseminated by MSM networks owned by Rupert Murdoch.] Such headlines are in stark contrast to the last press release by the actual scientists involved: “Our team is excited to see what additional observations and analyses will reveal”. Breakthrough Listen is still scanning and analysing, and there has been no conclusion yet about the origin of the object.

When the rock was first detected, NASA promptly issued a press release assuring us that, hey, it’s “probably made of rock” and helpfully providing a high-res “artist’s concept” picture of the object — depicting it as a rough, irregular chunk of space rock. NASA put considerable effort into making Oumuamua look as much as possible like a typical asteroid, before better scans confirmed that the object looks nothing like that. Predictably, almost every article about Oumuamua since then has prominently displayed NASA’s fake picture, with the mainstream media leading the way. The “artist’s concept” was created on 20 Nov, before observations were made revealing its smooth geometric shape. The picture was by Martin Kornmesser, an Austrian graphic designer employed by NASA’s propaganda wing (the ESA/NASA Hubble European Space Agency Information Centre). We contacted Kornmesser to ask why he made it look like a rock, but hasn’t responded yet.

NASA’s ubiquitous fake image depicting Oumuamua as a space rock, combined with mainstream media headlines falsely claiming that scans prove it isn’t an alien artefact, have given skeptics and debunkers an almost limitless supply of ammunition. Coverage was so misleading that some readers assumed the fake picture was an official photograph. On social media we’ve even seen magnified versions of NASA’s fake image designed to show how much it looks like a rock!

Real images, and the latest data from scans, confirm that Oumuamua is a smooth, featureless, cylindrical, classic cigar-shaped UFO.

Impact danger

If Oumuamua had been on a collision course with Earth, we would have had no warning. It had already passed us when it was discovered on 19 Oct. We’ve published a report estimating the devastation that it would have unleashed by Oumuamua, and comparing this with Apophis which Nasa fears could hit in 2029 or 2036.

Although Oumuamua its self did not stop, it could have released probes when it was closest to Earth on 8 Oct. We lack the technology to track smaller objects at that distance, and even if we could see it we would have missed it, because any probes would  have been released a week before we first detected the main vessel. Releasing small probes would be considerably more efficient than stopping the main mothership. Nasa themselves employ similar strategies, from rockets to satellites and orbital rendezvous craft. In fact, everything humans send into space involves sub vehicles that separate from the main vehicle. If we tracked the main launch vessel from any of our own rocket launches, we would see the abandoned husk tumbling through space in a fashion strikingly similar to Oumuamua.

Updates

19 Dec: mainstream media uses organic shell theory to try to explain why Oumuamua had no tail.

Every major news outlet reported that scientists have explained why Oumuamua had no tail of dust or vapour like every other comet and asteroid observed passing by the Sun.  The media was citing a scientific paper that proposed a theory to try to explain this anomaly.

However, is in fact pure science-fiction to speculate that the reason why Oumuamua doesn’t behave like a comet or asteroid is because it protected by a naturally-formed crust.

Furthermore, if one actually reads the scientific paper, in the final paragraph the authors admit that their “devolatilized carbon-rich mantle” theory is fatally flawed — because other objects exposed to the same conditions, such as Oort cloud objects, would have a similar crust, yet we know these do behave like normal comets, and they do emit a tail of matter.

The actual research paper very clearly acknowledges that their theory does not solve the mystery of why Oumuamua does not have a tail like a comet or asteroid: “We recognize one obvious problem with this model — that Oort cloud comets should have undergone similar mantling due to cos-mic-ray exposure over 4.6 Gyr, yet many show significant activity via sublimation of near-surface ice during their first perihelion passage.”

There are other reasons why the “crust” theory is flawed. We do not yet know the composition of the object, so any theory that assumes the presence of organic matter is based on speculation. The surface of Oumuamua was heated to at least 300°C as it passed the Sun. All known organic compounds vaporise or melt at that temperature. Of all organic compounds known to man, none has a melting point higher than 300°C, or a boiling point higher than 380°C. Indeed, most organic compounds vaporise at much lower temperatures, the lowest boiling point of all known organic compounds being about -162°C. Some organic compounds melt at temperatures almost as low as -190°C. On average, organic compounds vaporise before they reach 150°C, and the median boiling point of all known organic compounds is just over 140°C.

Further research

 

 

 

 

 

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