When the interstellar asteroid Oumuamua flew into our solar system and circled the Sun in 2017, Harvard theoretical physicist Avi Loeb noticed some abnormalities that raised his interest, Complex reports via Yahoo News.
The cigar shape of the asteroid doesn’t meet hypothetical models of interstellar bodies that are tumbling through space, which would likely be more spheroidal. But the issue that triggered his suspicions that it was an intelligently piloted craft was how it navigated around the Sun.
The object seemed to defy physics by bouncing away from the Sun and slow down, thereby somehow avoiding the pull of the Sun’s gravity which would typically cause the body to speed up heading toward the Sun.
“The excess push away from the sun, that was the thing that broke the camel’s back,” he said.
Oumuamua didn’t just pull away from the Sun; it accelerated as it went away, as though it was intentionally working to get away from the Sun’s gravitational grasp.