The bizarre object shook the scientific community when it was found in 2017, not just because of its distant origin and strange shape but also its inexplicable speed.
Avi Loeb, the chair of Harvard’s astronomy department, has previously said he believed humans were not alone in space and theorised Oumuamua was an alien “light sail”.
And now research by Loeb and an associate sheds doubt on Oumuamua’s big boast of being the first-ever interstellar space rock detected.
Working with undergraduate student Amir Siraj, Loeb scoured a huge NASA catalogue of meteors for strange, Oumuamua-like trajectories.