scientist have foundno evidencefor artificial signals coming from the interstellar object ‘ Oumuamua . That mean it ’s probably not an alien spaceship , we ’re afraid .
The Breakthrough Listen labor announced earlier this week that they would be using the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia to study the objective for signboard ofalien life .
These observations were lead on Wednesday , December 13 . Breakthrough Listen is designed to take care for exotic signals elsewhere in the universe , but the scientist on the undertaking decided to call on their attention to ‘ Oumuamua briefly as it is such a unequaled object .
It was spotted in our Solar System inOctober 2017 . Owing to its speed and flight , we were able to function out that it was probably an asteroid from another planetary organisation .
However unlikely , scientist in this project also wanted to check whether there was a chance it was artificial in nature . Just in case .
“ Overall , it ’s a very singular object indeed , ” Avi Loeb from Harvard University , one of the scientists on the undertaking , recount IFLScience . “ Which made me wonder – could it be an unnaturally produced interstellar probe ? ”
In this subject field , the telescope was used to look for any signal coming from the object . About 90 terabytes of raw data were gathered over two hours of observations .
No grounds of artificial signals have been found so far . However , the squad pointed out that monitoring and analysis would continue , as all the data point had not been look through yet .
“ It is great to see data stream in from observations of this novel and interesting reference , ” say Andrew Siemion , director of Berkeley SETI Research Center , in astatement . “ Our team is excited to see what additional observation and analyses will reveal . ”
‘ Oumuamua is making its way out of the Solar System , never to return . It ’s hoped that we might discover more interstellar objects like this in the hereafter though , giving us a large chance to study them .
There are a batch of unanswered questions at the moment , including the origin of the objective itself . It ’s quite odd in that it is very elongate , about 10 clip longer at 400 metre ( 1,300 feet ) than it is wide . One hypothesis suggest it may be theshard of a crushed planet . For now , though , it ’s not extraterrestrial .
