A few months back amateur astronomer Gennady Borisov discovered an interstellar comet in our solar system. Even though identified as a comet, a section of scientists believed that more studies should be done on the space rock to determine whether it holds any technosignatures that could give clues about hypothesized extraterrestrial life that might be thriving in the dark nooks of the universe.
Does 2I/Borisov have any alien connection?
During the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), scientists at SETI who are involved in the Breakthrough Listen project revealed that scans of the comet did not show any signs of technosignatures that could be evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence.
"If interstellar travel is possible, which we don't know, and if other civilizations are out there, which we don't know, and if they are motivated to build an interstellar probe, then some fraction greater than zero of the objects that are out there are artificial interstellar devices," said Steve Croft, an astronomer at Berkely's SETI Research Center, in a recently issued statement.
Even though the possibility of alien presence on interstellar comets might seem similar to the premise of a Hollywood sci-fi flick, scientists are extremely open-minded when it comes to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
Controversies surrounding Oumuamua
It was in 2017 that researchers discovered Oumuamua, touted to be the first known interstellar object that arrived at the solar system. After the discovery of Oumuamua, Avi Loeb, a Harvard University researcher, had suggested that the interstellar visitor could be an alien probe.
Loeb suggested that the weird trajectory of Oumuamua could be an indication that it has an artificial origin. Even after receiving a huge backlash from several space scientists, Loeb affirmed his theory and made it clear that Oumuamua's weird shape and trajectory showed its extraterrestrial origin.
