Oumuamua (officially "1I/2017 U1") is a cigar-shaped mysterious object that an Hawaiian telescope had spotted in 2017 already (when leaving the solar system).

Since then speculation never stopped. Is it neither a comet nor an asteroid but an alien spacecraft?

Its slingshotting trajectory around the sun tells astronomers that Oumuamua is not from around here. Comets tend to come from the Oort Cloud, distant but still orbiting the sun, and asteroids mostly come from a belt between Mars and Jupiter. ‘Oumuamua couldn’t have come from either place. It is the first interstellar object humans have seen so close to home! If it is an asteroid, why is it in a weird, comet-like orbit? If it’s a comet, why doesn’t it have a tail—why isn’t it outgassing like comets do?

It´s shape indeed resembles some science fiction-concepts.

And even scientists are open to the spaceship theory: > “One possibility is that ‘Oumuamua is a lightsail, floating in interstellar space as debris from an advanced technological equipment,” (Harvard astrophysicists Shmuel Bialy and Abraham Loeb for the journal Astrophysical Review Letters)

By the way, Oumuamua translated from Hawaiian means “messenger sent from the distant past”.

more info: https://www.wired.com/story/is-oumuamua-an-alien-spaceship-sure-except-no/?BottomRelatedStories_Sections_2 https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-new-yorker-interview/have-aliens-found-us-a-harvard-astronomer-on-the-mysterious-interstellar-object-oumuamua

---

I have no clue (44.44%) 4 / 9 It is a spaceship (22.22%) 2 / 9 I want to believe! (22.22%) 2 / 9 Other (11.11%) 1 / 9