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- A new study by Queen’s University Belfast, has revealed that Oumuamua, the first asteroid from outside our solar system, came tumbling towards us at 156,428km/h after smashing into another cosmic body billions of years ago. On this basis scientists are saying that it has a violent history.
- Oumuamua is a cigar-shaped asteroid that was spotted by a telescope in Hawaii on 19 October 2017 first time. After that it was observed 34 separate times in the following week. It sailed past Earth at 97,200mph (156,428km/h) in October 2017.
- It is 400 meters long and highly-elongated – perhaps 10 times as long as it is wide.
- It is named after the Hawaiian term for ‘scout’ or ‘messenger’ and passed the Earth at about 85 times the distance to the moon.
- It is believed to be the first interstellar object seen in the solar system.
- Its discovery marked the first observation of a planetesimal – that is, a small body like an asteroid or comet – born in an entirely different planetary system entering our solar system.
- Initially, it was considered a comet but hardly displayed the classic behaviour expected of comets, such as a dusty, water-ice particle tail.
- SETI (the Search for Extra-terrestrial Intelligence based at Berkeley University, California) termed it ‘an alien artefact’ but no such evidence was found. The scientists from Breakthrough Listen project, which is on a mission to find alien life beyond our planet earth, also didn’t find any alien life sign.
