A HARVARD professor claims an odd space object to enter the solar system is not another rock formation but rather, evidence of intelligent life outside the earth.
Avi Loeb, Harvard’s Department of Astronomy chair, believes aliens dropped some space garbage over earth's atmosphere in 2017, and it's proof that life beyond humans exists.
A Harvard professor believes this rendering of a space object is alien junkCredit: AFP
Avi Loeb said the object moved too fast to be naturally occurringCredit: Getty Images - Getty
Loeb's upcoming book, "Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth," lays out a case for why a recent object that flew into our solar system might be proof that life outside exists.
On September 6, 2017, an object from the star Vega - a close star about 25 light-years away - entered our atmosphere only to move closer to the sun on September 9. By the end of the month, it flew by Venus at a rate of 58,900 miles per hour.
It then came close to earth on October 7 before it began "moving swiftly toward the constellation Pegasus and the blackness beyond," Loeb wrote in his book.
The Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) in a Hawaiian observatory first spotted the object using the Pan-STARRS most well-defined telescope on earth.
His book discussed how astronomers and scientists have tried tracking down the object since it entered the solar system in 2017Credit: Getty Images - Getty
Loeb said no naturally occurring object is five to 10 times longer than it is widerCredit: Getty - Contributor
There, the object was monikered "Oumuamua," which is Hawaiian for "scout." The pronunciation is "oh-moo-ah-moo-ah."
Although the object was just a small 100-yard-long object, those in the scientific community looked to it as a learning point.
It was the the first interstellar object ever detected inside our solar system, and given its trajectory, some astronomers have declared it was not bound by the sun's gravitational pull.
Although no clear photos of the object were taken, observatories trained their telescopes on the object for almost two weeks, allowing data to be collected that denied a simple explanation of just another comet.
"What would happen if a caveman saw a cellphone?" Loeb asked. "He’s seen rocks all his life, and he would have thought it was just a shiny rock."
Loeb took fault with some astronomers claiming the object was a comet, saying it was akin to letting "the familiar to define what we might discover."
Loeb said astronomers began looking at the object's dimensions, and the fact that it reflected sunlight at a similar brightness every eight hours, suggesting that was how long it needed to complete a full rotation.
Astronomers said the object was about five to ten times longer than it was wide, relating it to a sort of cigar shape.
Loeb says no natural space object looks like that.
Scientists found it entered the solar system in September 2017Credit: NASA/ESA/STScl
The object moved faster as it went away from the sun, the opposite of what naturally occurring comets do Credit: PA:Press Association
"This would make ‘Oumuamua’s geometry more extreme by at least a few times in aspect ratio - or its width to its height - than the most extreme asteroids or comets that we have ever seen," Loeb wrote.
"Oumuamua was unusually bright. It was at least 'ten times more reflective than typical solar system [stony] asteroids or comets,'" Loeb continued.
Relating it to a shiny space metal, Loeb's assertions that it was evident of extraterrestrial life is because of how it moved.
"The excess push away from the sun," Loeb wrote, "that was the thing that broke the camel’s back."
Normally, an object would move faster the closer it gets towards the sun, only to be pushed back and get slower the further it goes.
However, the object instead accelerated "slightly, but to a highly statistically significant extent," Loeb wrote.
Given that it would mean the object had some other force pulling it along outside of the sun's pull, Loeb believes it might just be something extraterrestrial life had dropped.
However, the notion that life outside earth exists is seen as a taboo in the scientific community.
"Some people do not want to discuss the possibility that there are other civilizations out there," he ended.
Video captured by SpaceX Dragon craft shows UFO flying past ISS
SpaceX sent NASA astronauts to space from US soil in 2020 for the first time in nearly a decade.
NASA
Life on the surface of planet Earth in 2020 was troubling, to say the least, but above and beyond this rock lies a whole lot of outer space where quite a few interesting and exciting things took place.
While humanity hunkered down to wait out the COVID-19 pandemic and endured a steady stream of economic, political, environmental and social strife, SpaceX, NASA and a host of others were sending all kinds of stuff to space, including astronauts.
In late May, NASA's Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken became the first humans to lift off to orbit from US soil in almost a decade when they rode a SpaceX Crew Dragon to the International Space Station as part of the Demo-2 mission. The fully modern spacecraft, complete with touchscreens, was also the first new vehicle certified by NASA for transporting astronauts since the space shuttle was introduced almost four decades ago.
The mission was technically a demonstration, but its success was followed in November by the first operational Crew Dragon flight
, carrying four astronauts to the ISS.
Robotic space explorers also had a busy year. July represented the best time to set a course for Mars for the next few years, so NASA took advantage of the opportunity, sending the Perseverance rover on its way to the red planet, where it will look for signs of potential life and also deploy a tiny helicopter to explore a little further afield. The UAE launched its Hope probe toward Mars, and China's Tianwen-1 is carrying an orbiter, lander and rover in the same direction.
In addition to new missions heading to space as emissaries from a world in lockdown, a few older ones brought samples to us from beyond Earth. Japan's Hayabusa2 air-dropped bits it had collected after shooting a special copper bullet at the asteroid Ryugu. A capsule carrying the resulting dust and pebbles landed in Australia in December, after which the sample was transported to Japan.
NASA accosted an asteroid as well this year when the Osiris-Rex spacecraft performed a sort of cosmic pickpocketing of the potentially hazardous asteroid Bennu. That sample is expected to make it to Earth in 2023.
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China's Chang'e 5 mission snagged its own space swag by launching, landing on the moon, collecting a sample and returning some lunar rocks and soil, all over the course of less than a month in November and December.
These missions were all set in motion years ago and saw success in 2020. Others were stymied by the pandemic.
OneWeb, which aims to provide broadband access from low Earth orbit, felt the bite of the economic recession and filed for bankruptcy as the pandemic was going global. The company emerged in the second half of the year with the British government as new part owner and resumed launching satellites to catch up to SpaceX, which has already started beta testing its broadband constellation, Starlink.
SpaceX and Elon Musk set more milestones in 2020 beyond achieving human spaceflight and deploying hundreds of orbiting routers. The company launched 26 Falcon 9 rockets, a few of which have now made seven flights each. On the side, its latest Starship prototype finally made a high-altitude flight, which ended with a spectacular and explosive hard landing.
A Starship prototype comes in for a hard landing.
SpaceX video capture
Not to be forgotten, Starman, the dummy piloting Musk's red Telsa since being blasted off atop Falcon Heavy in early 2018, this year finally made a close pass by Mars.
Eyes on the skies
When humans and our robots weren't actually traveling to space, we were plenty busy keeping an eye on it with far more fervor than we could muster for yet another Zoom meeting or webinar.
It's hard to believe that at the start of 2020, the unusual behavior of the giant star Betelgeuse and the possibility it might go supernova made our list of things to be concerned about. It later turned out that Betelgeuse is doing just fine -- and was easily forgotten as we turned our attention to sanitizing groceries and searching the planet for toilet paper.
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But while our dreaded and much derided new normal dragged on, the heavens became a popular distraction as multiple new comets were discovered and promised to put on a show. A few fizzled, but Comet Neowise delivered the goods
in July, making itself visible even to naked-eye skywatchers in a display that was the best in decades. Annual meteor showers such as the Perseids, Taurids and Leonids also impressed in 2020. Lucky folks in parts of Africa and Asia had the opportunity to take in a "ring of fire" solar eclipse in June, and others, in a relatively small slice of South America, got a glimpse of a total solar eclipse in December.
2020 Perseid meteor shower photos shine bright in a dark year
But perhaps the biggest display was the winter solstice Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn that made itself easily visible for the first time in eight centuries to close out the year. The two largest planets in the solar system appeared as nearly conjoined twins for a night, and even amateurs with basic backyard telescopes could make out Saturn's rings and several moons of the gas giants.
Peeping at planets
Professional astronomers peered into deep space as they always do, and made more exciting discoveries. They spotted evidence of water in new locations on Mars, and our other next-door neighbor, Venus, made a surprising move up in the rankings of worlds worth searching for signs of life.
In true 2020 style, however, it wasn't all charismatic comets and newfound Earth cousins. In an awesome but sort of disturbing reminder of the violence present in the universe, scientists captured the process of a distant black hole absolutely eviscerating a star
that got too close through a slightly comic but mostly terrifying process called spaghettification.
Yes, Virginia, this universe has no problem turning you into pasta and eating you for lunch.
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And on a truly sad note, December began with some wild footage of Puerto Rico's iconic Arecibo radio observatory collapsing. For decades, the huge dish in the jungle helped us better understand and explore the universe.
Sorry to end on a downer. It just seems appropriate for the year we've had. But space as seen through the eyes of astronauts, scientists and just plain fans like me remains one of the brightest silver linings of a year that most would otherwise hope to forget.
I wouldn't dare tempt fate by saying 2021 will be even better, but I will note that the next meteor shower is already here, with the Quadrantids set to peak on Jan. 2, while February will see Perseverance make its landing on Mars.
Keep looking forward and skyward, and Happy New Year.
A distant galaxy cluster was expected to have a supermassive black hole at its centre, but it appears to be missing as researchers attempt to uncover the mystery.
We’ve all been confused when something isn’t where it should be, but missing something that has a mass of between three and 100 billion times that of the sun is an odd issue. This unique situation is something that NASA has discussed, and that scientists are attempting to answer.
According to observations made between 1999 and 2004, the black hole was expected to be in the galaxy cluster Abell 2261, which is about 2.7 billion light-years from Earth, but it seems something unusual has happened in distant space. Recently, astronomers have not been able to detect the black hole that’s supposed to be at the core of the galaxy.
Astronomers from West Virginia University used NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and Hubble Space Telescope to find the black hole. However, it’s gone missing. It is believed that almost all large galaxies have a supermassive black hole within them, and the one that astronomers were searching for was thought to be one of the largest on record.
As a result of the disappearing black hole, scientists have begun theorising what may have happened. The black hole may have been forced out of the galaxy during the merging with another galaxy. This is known as a ‘recoiling black hole’, and it would have left a giant galaxy in its wake. There are also theories that the black hole merged with another entity.
Scientists believe it is possible that, as two galaxies merged, two supermassive black holes could have absorbed each other and created an even bigger supermassive black hole that is now the core of an even bigger galaxy. This process has been seen between much smaller black holes previously.
A third theory has been presented by West Virginia University team leader Sarah Burke-Spolaor in a paper that is set to be published in the journal American Astronomical Society. Burke-Spolaor believes there are two possible options; either there simply isn’t a black hole where scientists previously expected, or the black hole is present but it is not producing enough X-ray radiation to show up in Chandra observations.
While the final theory isn’t as exciting as black holes and galaxies merging, it is still a reasonable conclusion to a strange find. Whether we will ever find out what has happened to the supermassive black hole remains to be seen.
With many in-person New Year’s Eve celebrations and fireworks displays either scaled back or canceled altogether this week, fans of flashy events taking place in the night sky may have been disappointed. But all is not lost. In fact, nature has its own lights display for us to enjoy as we ease into 2021. It comes in the form of the annual Quadrantids meteor shower, which peaks tonight. Here’s how to see it.
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What are the Quadrantids?
Technically, the Quadrantids meteor shower began last year—December 28, 2020, to be specific—but they peak tonight. And what’s so special about these meteors? In addition to being the first of the year, they’re also some of the best, according to NASA, thanks to coming in swiftly (at a rate of 60 to 200 meteors per hour), and because they are bright fireballs that often come colorful trails.
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How to watch the Quadrantids at their peak
Like most astronomical events, catching the Quadrantids at their peak takes some planning. While many meteor showers have a peak that lasts a day or two, this one is over in a matter of a few hours—so it’s important to get your timing right.
There’s also the challenge of the waning gibbous moon, which will be 84% full tonight, making it harder to spot the less-prominent meteors. (Though the fact that the Quadrantids involve bright fireballs means some should be visible even with the bright moon.)
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There is no set timetable for the peak tonight, though experts estimate that it will likely be between 2 a.m. and dawn on the early morning of January 3rd. The Quadrantids will be most visible in the Northern Hemisphere, specifically from the western United States. To learn more about the Quadrantids—including what’s going on with them this year and how they’ll be affected by tonight’s weather—EarthSky has you covered.
Over the past 20 years, some of the best pictures of Earth have been taken from the International Space Station, as it loops around the world at a height of around 250 miles. But with a new crew of Expedition 64 now having been on board for over a month, there is a new name to add to the list of astronaut photographers who have been showing us distinctive aerial shots of Earth. ISS Flight Engineer Soichi Noguchi is a space veteran - having first done a stint on the space station back in 2009. But now it appears one of his main duties is to take pictures of the world beneath him.
He has already shared a large number of beautiful images on his Twitter feed, and on the official NASA image log. And we have been particularly taken with some of this shots of the world's major cities, including New York, San Francisco and Sydney (as you can see below).
But what is Soichi Noguchi's weapon of choice for taking pictures from Cupola observatory module on the ISS? Turns out that NASA have not yet turned mirrorless, and are sticking with the Nikon D5 DSLRs that it bought a batch of back in 2017. And an astronaut's lens of choice for photographing the world beneath his feet? Well that turns out to be a Nikkor 400mm f/2.8 – a lens more usually seen around the touchlines of the world's sports stadia.
