On the Possibility of an Artificial Origin for 'Oumuamua

The first large interstellar object discovered near Earth by the Pan STARRS telescope, 'Oumuamua, showed half a dozen anomalies relative to comets or asteroids in the solar system. All natural-origin interpretations of 'Oumuamua's anomalies contemplated objects of a type never seen before, such as a porous cloud of dust particles, a tidal disruption fragment or exotic icebergs made of pure hydrogen or pure nitrogen. Each of these natural-origin models has major quantitative shortcomings, and so the possibility of an artificial origin for 'Oumuamua must be considered. 'Oumuamua's anomalies suggest that it might have been a thin craft-with a large area per unit mass-pushed by the reflection of sunlight; sharing qualities with the thin artifact 2020 SO-launched by NASA in 1966 and discovered by Pan STARRS in 2020 to exhibit a push away from the Sun with no cometary tail. The Galileo Project aims to collect new data that will identify the nature of 'Oumuamua-like objects in the coming years.