Oumuamua - means scout and comes from a Hawaiian language. In science, the term Oumuamua circulates as a term for an object observed in the sky flying away from Earth, which has been worrying astronomers since 2017 because it shows various anomalies.
Its shape, for example, looks strange and its orbit seems rather confusing, making it difficult to see the cosmic flying object as a natural object that has come from the depths of space into our vicinity. Above all, the ice cloud that a moving object such as a comet trails behind it is missing. Gradually, astrophysicists have taken courage in the idea that the interstellar traveler is an extraterrestrial intelligence that wants to obtain information. We are dealing with an Oumuamua. What was previously discussed behind closed doors can now be read in a pointed and stimulating way in the book Extraterrestrial, which talks about the first signs of intelligent life beyond Earth. The author Avi Loeb, a professor at Harvard University, heads the Department of Astronomy. So Loeb is not just anyone. On the contrary, he is a celestial observer admired by his colleagues, who does not want to scare anyone with his book and proclaim that intelligent life from outer space is preparing to take over the Earth. What could be more exciting for humans than encountering alien beings that are apparently as curious and technically adept as we are? Of course, Loeb knows that many colleagues consider his hypothesis that humans registered the first signal from aliens in 2017 to be unbalanced and premature. But he doesn't think thinking about it is the biggest mistake. Loeb believes that the stupidest thing that could be done at the moment is not to take the possibility of the approach of an extraterrestrial intelligence seriously enough, and he cites examples of this. In the 1950s, for example, physicists declared all efforts to produce laser light, which is now widely used in operations, to be useless. Science does not make progress when it moves along familiar paths, but on the contrary, when it keeps itself open to unusual ideas. It can hit the wall. But it can also open itself up to strangers. Perhaps we should think about how we welcome them.
