Oumuamua
An artist’s conception shows what the interstellar asteroid ‘Oumuamua might look like. (ESO Illustration / M. Kornmesser)

Is that cigar-shaped, fast-moving interstellar object a spaceship? Almost certainly not, but Breakthrough Listen will check just to make sure.

The Breakthrough Listen campaign, which checks celestial targets for radio signals from intelligent civilizations, will turn the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia toward the object, known as ‘Oumuamua, starting Wednesday.

Scientists will check for emissions across four radio bands from 1 to 12 GHz. The first phase of observations will take up 10 hours, divided into four key time periods based on ‘Oumuamua’s period of rotation.

” ‘Oumuamua’s presence within our solar system affords Breakthrough Listen an opportunity to reach unprecedented sensitivities to possible artificial transmitters and demonstrate our ability to track nearby, fast-moving objects,” Andrew Siemion, director of the Berkeley SETI Research Center, said today in a news release. “Whether this object turns out to be artificial or natural, it’s a great target for Listen.”

‘Oumuamua was spotted in October by the Pan-STARRS telescope project in Hawaii, sweeping through the solar system at a peak speed of 196,000 mph. Astronomers analyzed its trajectory and determined that it came from a point far beyond the solar system, in the direction of the star Vega in the constellation Lyra.

The patterns of changes in the object’s brightness and its spectral characteristics suggest that it’s an asteroid, possibly with high metal content, as much as 10 times as long as it is wide.

Those proportions led some to think of space vessels such as Battlestar Galactica’s starships or the elongated alien cylinder from “Rendezvous With Rama,” Arthur C. Clarke’s classic science-fiction tale.

‘Oumuamua is now about 200 million miles from Earth and heading back out of the solar system. Despite the distance, if there’s a radio transmitter on board with the signal strength of a cellphone, the Green Bank Telescope could detect it.

And even if there’s no sign of extraterrestrial broadcasts, Breakthrough Listen says its observations could provide important information about whether ‘Oumuamua contains water ice, or about the composition of any gaseous envelope that surrounds the object.

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