Discoveries using the telescopes on Mauna Kea

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

Oumuamua, the extraterrestrial object discovered by Pan-STARRS on Haleakala is back in the news. Two researchers have suggested the object might in fact be a solar sail, possibly - - on a reconnaissance mission. This is not the hair brained babbling of a couple of crackpots:

A new study by a pair of astronomers from the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) has taken it a step further, suggesting that 'Oumuamua may actually be a light sail of extra-terrestrial origin. The study was conducted by Shmuel Bialy and Prof. Abraham Loeb. Whereas Bialy is a postdoctoral researcher at the CfA's Institute for Theory and Computation (ITC), Prof. Loeb is the director of the ITC, the Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science at Harvard University, and the head chair of the Breakthrough Starshot Advisory Committee.
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-11-oumuamua-e...solar.html

Alternately, he states that it is possible that hundreds of such probes could be sent so that one of them got close enough to Earth to study it. The fact that the Pan STARRS-1 survey barely detected 'Oumuamua at its closest approach could be seen as an indication that there are many other such objects that were not detected, bolstering the case for 'Oumuamua being one of many such probes.