Finding the origin of 'alien spy ship'

Oumuamua , an object once described by Harvard University scientist Avi Loeb as an "alien spy ship" , has revealed its origin through the absence of a "tail".

Research from Oxford University (UK), recently presented at the UK National Astronomy Conference, suggests that the reason Oumuamua passed close to the Sun without "growing a tail" like other comets and asteroids is due to its chemical properties, not because it is a spacecraft.

That revealed the "homeland" of this object once suspected to be a product of aliens: Quite close to us.

Oumuamua - (Image: NASA/ESO).

Oumuamua comes from another star system , as evidenced by its orbit and other anomalies. But what it is remains a big mystery, especially given its cigar-shaped, tailless form , which has given rise to the 'alien spy ship' theory.

According to Space, Oxford scientists believe that the lack of a tail is due to it having too many heavy elements and too little water.

The dusty tails of comets are caused by water ice and some lighter elements vaporizing as they approach our hot parent star.

So it must come from the thin disk of the Milky Way - the galaxy that contains our Milky Way Earth.

The thin disk is the bright, glowing disk that we see in every galaxy. Earth is also located on this thin disk, which is rich in heavy elements, but luckily we are in a place with more water.

The protoplanetary disk of a thin-disk star would be rich in elements like carbon, iron, magnesium, silicon, sulfur, etc. and would be good at sucking up free oxygen atoms to form carbon dioxide instead of letting them combine with oxygen and form water.

Meanwhile, the thick, nearly invisible disk, with few heavy elements, is much larger and covers a huge area of ​​space around the disk of light that many people mistake for the entire galaxy.

In addition to Oumuamua, scientists also considered Borisov, another interstellar object with a tail, which also came from a thin disk but in a place with more water, possibly a star system similar to the one where Earth resides.

Scientists are still looking for more evidence and hope to find it when other interstellar objects pass close to us. There is still a small risk that they did not come from water-starved worlds but lost their water en route, for example by cosmic rays.