Engagement with Oumuamua: is our first interstellar visitor an alien spacecraft?

It's often said that fact follows fiction but there are times when some such instances appear to be uncanny beyond belief.  One relatively well-known example comes from the American writer Morgan Robertson, whose 1898 novella The Wreck of the Titan (originally entitled Futility) eerily prefigured the 1912 loss of the Titanic. The resemblances between the fictional precursor and the infamous passenger liner are remarkable, including the month of the sinking, the impact location, and similarities of size, speed and passenger capacity. I was first introduced to this series of quirky coincidences via Arthur C. Clarke's 1990 novel The Ghost from the Grand Banks, which not incidentally is about attempts to raise the Titanic. The reason for including the latter reference is that there may have just been an occurrence that involves another of Clarke's own works.

Clarke's 1973 award-winning novel Rendezvous with Rama tells of a 22nd century expedition to a giant interstellar object that is approaching the inner solar system. The fifty-four kilometre long cylinder, dubbed Rama, is discovered by an Earthbound asteroid detection system called Project Spaceguard, a name which since the 1990s has been adopted by real life surveys aiming to provide early warning for Earth-crossing asteroids. Rama is revealed to be a dormant alien spacecraft, whose trajectory confirms its origin outside of our solar system. After a journey of hundreds of thousands of years, Rama appears to be on a collision course with the Sun, only for it to scoop up solar material as a fuel source before heading back into interstellar space (sorry for the spoiler, but if you haven't yet read it, why not?)

In October last year astronomer Robert Weryk at the Haleakala Observatory in Hawaii found an unusual object forty days after its closest encounter with the Sun. Initially catalogued as 1I/2017 U1, the object was at first thought to be a comet, but after no sign of a tail or coma it was reclassified as an asteroid. After another week's examination 1I/2017 U1 was put into a class all by itself and this is when observers began to get excited, as its trajectory appeared to proclaim an interstellar origin.

As it was not spotted until about thirty-three million kilometres from the Earth, the object was far too small to be photographed in any detail; all that appears to telescope-mounted digital cameras is a single pixel. Therefore its shape was inferred from the light curve, which implied a longest-to-shortest axis ratio of 5:1 or even larger, with the longest dimension being between two hundred and four hundred metres. As this data became public, requests were made for a more familiar name than just 1I/2017; perhaps unsurprisingly, Rama became a leading contender. However, the Hawaiian observatory's Pan-STARRS team finally opted for the common name Oumuamua, which in the local language means 'scout'.

Various hypotheses have been raised as to exactly what type of object Oumuamua is, from a planetary fragment to a Kuiper belt object similar - although far smaller than - Pluto.  However, the lack of off-gassing even at perihelion (closest approach to the Sun) implies that any icy material must lie below a thick crust and the light curve suggests a denser material such as metal-rich rock. This sounds most unlike any known Kuiper belt object.

These unusual properties attracted the attention of senior figures in the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence. Project Breakthrough Listen, whose leadership includes SETI luminaries Frank Drake, Ann Druyan and Astronomer Royal Martin Rees, directed the world's largest manoeuvrable radio telescope towards Oumuamua. It failed to find any radio emissions, although the lack of a signal is tempered with the knowledge that SETI astronomers are now considering lasers as a potentially superior form of interstellar communication to radio.

The more that Oumuamua has been studied, the more surprising it appears. Travelling at over eighty kilometres per second relative to the Sun, its path shows that it has not originated from any of the twenty neighbouring solar systems. Yet it homed in on our star, getting seventeen percent nearer to the Sun than Mercury does at its closest. This seems to be almost impossible to have occurred simply by chance - space is just too vast for an interstellar object to have achieved such proximity. So how likely is it that Oumuamua is a real-life Rama? Let's consider the facts:

1. Trajectory. The area of a solar system with potentially habitable planets is nicknamed the 'Goldilocks zone', which for our system includes the Earth. It's such a small percentage of the system, extremely close to the parent star, that for a fast-moving interstellar object to approach at random seems almost impossible. Instead, Oumuamua's trajectory was perfectly placed to obtain a gravity assist from the Sun, allowing it to both gain speed and change course, with it now heading in the direction of the constellation Pegasus.
2. Motion. Dr Jason Wright, an associate professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State University, likened the apparent tumbling motion to that of a derelict spacecraft, only to retract his ideas when criticised for sensationalism.
3. Shape. All known asteroids and Kuiper belt objects are much less elongated than Oumuamua, even though most are far too small to settle into spherical shape due to gravitational attraction (the minimum diameter being around six hundred kilometres for predominantly rocky objects). The exact appearance is unknown, with the ubiquitous crater-covered asteroid artwork being merely an artist's impression. Astronautical experts have agreed that Oumuamua's shape is eminently suitable for minimising damage from particles.
4. Composition. One definitive piece of data is that Oumuamua doesn't emit clouds of gas or dust that are usually associated with objects of a similar size. In addition, according to a report by the American Astronomical Society, it has an 'implausibly high density'. Somehow, it has survived a relatively close encounter with the Sun while remaining in one piece - at a maximum velocity of almost eighty-eight kilometres per second relative to our star!
5. Colour. There appears to be a red region on the surface, rather than a uniform colour expected for an object that has been bombarded with radiation on all sides whilst in deep space for an extremely long period.

So where does this leave us? There is an enormous amount of nonsense written about alien encounters, conspiracy theories and the like, with various governments and the military seeking to hide their strategies in deliberate misinformation. For example, last year the hacker collective Anonymous stated that NASA would soon be releasing confirmation of contact with extraterrestrials; to date, in case you were wondering, there's been no such announcement. Besides which, wouldn't it more likely to come from a SETI research organisation such as the Planetary Society or Project Breakthrough Listen?

Is there any evidence to imply cover-up regarding Oumuamua? Here's some suggestions:

1. The name Rama - already familiar to many from Arthur C. Clarke's novel and therefore evocative of an artificial object - was abandoned for a far less expressive and more obscure common name. Was this an attempt to distance Oumuamua from anything out of the ordinary?
2. Dr Wright's proposals were luridly overstated in the tabloid media, forcing him to abandon further investigation. Was this a deliberate attempt by the authorities to make light of his ideas, so as to prevent too much analysis while the object was still observable?
3. Limited attempts at listening for radio signals have been made, even though laser signalling is now thought to be a far superior method. So why have these efforts been so half-hearted for such a unique object?
4. The only images available in the media are a few very samey artist's impressions of an elongated asteroid, some pock-marked with craters, others, especially animations, with striations (the latter reminding me more of fossilised wood). Not only are these pure speculation but none feature the red area reported from the light curve data. It's almost as if the intention was to show a totally standard asteroid, albeit of unusual proportions. But this appearance is complete guesswork: Oumuamua has been shoe-horned into a conventional natural object, despite its idiosyncrasies.

Thanks to Hollywood, most people's ideas of aliens are as implacable invaders. If - and when - the public receive confirmation of intelligent alien life will there be widespread panic and disorder? After all, the Orson Welles' 1938 radio version of H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds led some listeners to flee their homes, believing a Martian invasion had begun. Would people today be any different? The current following of dangerous fads such as paleo diets and raw water, never mind the paranoid conspiracy theories that fill the World Wide Web, lead me to expect little change from our credulous forbears.

The issue of course, comes down to one of security. Again, science fiction movies tend to overshadow real life space exploration, but the fact is that we have no spacecraft capable of matching orbits with the likes of Oumuamua. In Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama, colonists on 22nd century Mercury become paranoid with the giant spacecraft's approach and attempt to destroy it with a nuclear missile (oops, another spoiler there). There is no 21st century technology that could match this feat, so if Oumuamua did turn out to be an alien craft, we would have to hope for the best. Therefore if, for example, the U.S. Government gained some data that even implied the possibility of artifice about Oumuamua, wouldn't it be in their best interest to keep it quiet, at least until it is long gone?

In which case, promoting disinformation and encouraging wild speculation in the media would be the perfect way to disguise the truth. Far from being an advanced - if dead or dormant - starship, our leaders would rather we believed it to be a simple rocky asteroid, despite the evidence to the contrary. Less one entry for the Captain's log, and more a case of 'to boulderly go' - geddit?

Smart phone, dumb people: is technology really reducing our intelligence?

IQ testing is one of those areas that always seems to polarise opinion, with many considering it useful for children as long as it is understood to be related to specific areas of intelligence rather than a person's entire intellectual capabilities. However, many organisations, including some employers, use IQ tests as a primary filter, so unfortunately it cannot be ignored as either irrelevant or outdated. Just as much of the education system is still geared towards passing exams, IQ tests are seen as a valid method to sort potential candidates. They may not be completely valid, but are used as a short-cut tool that serves a limited purpose.

James Flynn of the University of Otago in New Zealand has undertaken long-term research into intelligence, so much so that the 'Flynn Effect' is the name given to the worldwide increase in intelligence since IQ tests were developed over a century ago. The reasons behind this increase are not fully understood, but are probably due to the complex interaction of numerous environmental factors such as enriched audio-visual stimulation, better - and more interactive - education methods, even good artificial lighting for longer hours of reading and writing. It is interesting that as developing nations rapidly gain these improvements to society and infrastructure, their average IQ shows a correspondingly rapid increase when compared to the already developed West and its more staid advancement.

Research suggests that while young children's IQ continues to increase in developed nations, albeit at a reduced rate, the intelligence of teenagers in these countries has been in slow decline over the past thirty years. What is more, the higher the income decile, the larger the decrease. This hints that the causes are more predominant in middle-class lifestyles; basically, family wealth equates to loss of IQ! Data for the UK and Scandinavian countries indicates that a key factor may be the development of consumer electronics, starting with VCRs, games consoles and home computers and now complemented by smart phones, tablets and social media. This would align with the statistics, since the drop is highest among children likely to have greatest access to the devices. So could it be true that our digital distractions are dumbing us down?

1) Time

By spending more time on electronic devices, children live in a narrower world, where audio-visual stimulation aims for maximum enjoyment with minimal effort, the information and imagery flying by at dizzying speed. This isn't just the AV presentation of course: digital content itself closely aligns to pop cultural cornerstones, being glamorous, gimmicky, transient and expendable. As such, the infinitesimally small gradations of social status and friendship that exist amongst children and teenagers requires enormous effort on their part to maintain a constant online presence, both pro-actively and reactively responding to their peers' (and role models') endless inanities.

The amount of effort it would take to filter this is mind-boggling and presumably takes away a lot of time that could be much better spent on other activities. This doesn't have to be something as constructive as reading or traditional studying: going outdoors has been shown to have all sorts of positive effects, as described in Richard Louv's 2005 best-seller Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder.

Studies around the world have shown that there are all sorts of positive effects, including on mood, by mere immersion in nature, not just strenuous physical activity. Whether humans have an innate need for observing the intricate fractal patterns of vegetation (grass lawns and playing fields have been found to be ineffective) or whether it's noticing the seemingly unorganised behaviour of non-human life forms, the Japanese government have promoted Shinrin-yoku or 'forest air bathing' as a counterbalance to the stresses of urbanised existence. It sounds a bit New Age, but there is enough research to back up the idea that time spent in the natural environment can profoundly affect us.

Meanwhile, other nations appear to have given in, as if admitting that their citizens have turned into digitally-preoccupied zombies. Last year, the Dutch town of Bodegraven decided to reduce accidents to mobile-distracted pedestrians by installing red and green LED strips at a busy road junction, so that phone users could tell if it was safe to cross without having to look up!

2) Speed

One obvious change in the past four decades has been in the increased pace of life in developed nations. As we have communication and information retrieval tools that are relatively instantaneous, so employers expect their workforce to respond in tune with the speed of these machines. This act-now approach hardly encourages in-depth cogitation but relies upon seat-of-the-pants thinking, which no doubt requires a regular input of caffeine and adrenaline. The emphasis on rapid turnaround, when coupled with lack of patience, has led to an extremely heavy reliance on the first page of online search results: being smart at sifting through other people's data is fast becoming a replacement for original thought, as lazy students have discovered and no doubt as many school teachers and university lecturers could testify.

Having a convenient source of information means that it is easier for anyone to find a solution to almost anything rather than working something out for themselves. This can lead to a decline in initiative, something which separates thought leaders from everyone else. There is a joy to figuring out something, which after all is a key motivation for many STEM professionals. Some scientists and engineers have explained that being able to understand the inner workings of common objects was a key component of their childhood, leading to an obvious career choice. For example, New Zealand-based scientist and science communicator Michelle Dickinson (A.K.A. Nanogirl) spent her childhood dismantling and repairing such disparate household items as home computers and toasters, echoing Ellie Arroway, the heroine in Carl Sagan's novel Contact, who as a child repaired a defective valve radio before going on to become a radio astronomer.

Of course, these days it would be more difficult to repair contemporary versions of these items, since they are often built so that they cannot even be opened except in a machine shop. Laptops and tablets are prime examples and I've known cases where the likes of Microsoft simply replace rather than repair a screen-damaged device. When I had a desktop computer I frequently installed video and memory cards, but then how-to videos are ubiquitous on YouTube. The latest generation of technology doesn't allow for such do-it-yourself upgrades, to the manufacturer's advantage and the consumer's detriment. As an aside, it's worrying that so many core skills such as basic repairs or map navigation are being lost; in the event of a massive power and/or network outage due to the likes of a solar flare, there could be a lot of people stuck in headless chicken mode. Squawk!

3) Quality

While the World Wide Web covers every subject imaginable (if being of immensely variable quality), that once fairly reliable source of information, television, has largely downgraded the sometimes staid but usually authoritative documentaries of yesteryear into music promo-style pieces of infotainment. Frequently unnecessary computer graphics and overly-dramatic reconstructions and voice overs are interwoven between miniscule sound bites from the experts, the amount of actual information being conveyed reduced to a bare minimum.

In many cases, the likes of the Discovery Channel are even disguising pure fiction as fact, meaning that children - and frequently adults - are hard-placed to differentiate nonsense from reality. This blurring of demarcation does little to encourage critical or even sustained thinking; knowledge in the media and online has been reduced to a consumer-led circus with an emphasis on marketing and hype. Arguably, radio provides the last media format where the majority of content maintains a semblance of sustained, informative discussion on STEM issues.

4) Quantity

The brave new world of technology that surrounds us is primarily geared towards consumerism; after all, even social media is fundamentally a tool for targeted marketing. If there's one thing that manufacturers do not want it is inquisitive customers, since the buzzwords and hype often hide a lack of quality underneath. Unfortunately, the ubiquity of social media and online news in general means that ridiculous ideas rapidly become must-have fads.

Even such commodities as food and drink have become mired with trendy products like charcoal-infused juice, unpasteurised milk and now raw water, attracting the same sort of uncritical punters who think that nutrition gurus know what really constituted human diets in the Palaeolithic. The fact that some of Silicon Valley's smartest have failed to consider the numerous dangers of raw water shows that again, analytical thinking is taking a back seat to whatever is the latest 'awesome' and 'cool' lifestyle choice.

Perhaps then certain types of thinking are becoming difficult to inculcate and sustain in our mentally vulnerable teenagers due to the constant demands of consumerism and its oh-so-seductive delivery channels. Whether today's youth will fall into the viewing habits of older generations, such as the myriad of 'food porn' shows remains to be seen; with so much on offer, is it any wonder people spend entire weekends binge watching series, oblivious to the wider world?

The desire to fit into a peer group and not be left behind by lack of knowledge about some trivia or other, for example about the latest series on Netflix, means that so much time is wasted on activities that only require a limited number of thought processes. Even a good memory isn't required anymore, with electronic calendars and calculators among the simplest of tools available to replace brain power. Besides which, the transience in popular culture means there's little need to remember most of what happened last week!

Ultimately, western nations are falling prey to the insular decadence well known from history as great civilisations pass their prime. Technology and the pace of contemporary life dictated by it must certainly play a part in any decline in IQ, although the human brain being what it is - after all, the most complex object in the known universe - I wouldn't dare guess how much is due to them.

There are probably other causes that are so familiar as to be practically invisible. Take for instance background noise, both visual and aural, which permeates man-made environments. My commute yesterday offers a typical example of the latter sort, with schoolchildren on my train playing loud music on their phones that could be heard some metres away to the two building sites I walked by, plus a main road packed with vehicles up to the size of construction trucks. As a final bonus, I passed ten shops and cafes that were all playing loud if inane pop music that could be heard on the street, through open doors. Gone are the days of tedious elevator muzak: even fairly expensive restaurants play material so fast and loud it barely constitutes the term 'background music'. If such sensory pollution is everywhere, when do we get to enjoy quality cogitation time?

If you think that consumerism isn't as all-encompassing as I state, then consider that the USA spends more per year on pet grooming than it does on nuclear fusion research. I mean, do you honestly really need a knee-high wall-mounted video phone to keep in touch with your dog or cat while you're at work? Talking of which, did you know that in 2015 the Kickstarter crowdfunding platform's Exploding Kittens card game raised almost US$9 million in less than a month? Let's be frank, we've got some work to do if we are to save subsequent generations from declining into trivia-obsessed sheeple. Baa!