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I mean, rationally, I realize that the weirdo asteroid that observatories have been tracking for the last month or so is NOT A SPACESHIP.
Almost certainly.
But.
... it's just so spaceship-like. I mean:
• It's literally the first extrasolar object we have EVER detected, that is, the first comet/asteroid/etc that is known for certain (because of its trajectory) to have originated beyond the solar system.
• It's shaped like nothing else we've ever found. It is shaped, not to put too fine a point on it, like a spaceship. (That is, it's spindle-shaped -- much longer than it is wide. We've never found any other space rock shaped like that.)
• All we really know about its composition is that it's metallic or rocky, and, unusually for an object of its type, appears not to be icy.
• It slingshotted around our sun before heading out of the solar system ... like one might expect a spaceship to do (even if it's long since defunct and is just continuing on a course that was set long ago).
Wikipedia article | Article from Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy
Realistically I know that the odds are vanishingly, microscopically low that it's a spaceship and not some oddball natural space phenomenon we've never encountered before (since space is absolutely FULL of the latter). But. Still. It's such a weird/creepy/cool feeling to think that it actually could be?? It's not likely that we just had our first extraterrestrial encounter, but we can't prove that we didn't.
Almost certainly.
But.
... it's just so spaceship-like. I mean:
• It's literally the first extrasolar object we have EVER detected, that is, the first comet/asteroid/etc that is known for certain (because of its trajectory) to have originated beyond the solar system.
• It's shaped like nothing else we've ever found. It is shaped, not to put too fine a point on it, like a spaceship. (That is, it's spindle-shaped -- much longer than it is wide. We've never found any other space rock shaped like that.)
• All we really know about its composition is that it's metallic or rocky, and, unusually for an object of its type, appears not to be icy.
• It slingshotted around our sun before heading out of the solar system ... like one might expect a spaceship to do (even if it's long since defunct and is just continuing on a course that was set long ago).
Wikipedia article | Article from Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy
Realistically I know that the odds are vanishingly, microscopically low that it's a spaceship and not some oddball natural space phenomenon we've never encountered before (since space is absolutely FULL of the latter). But. Still. It's such a weird/creepy/cool feeling to think that it actually could be?? It's not likely that we just had our first extraterrestrial encounter, but we can't prove that we didn't.
