We've Received Our First Visitor From Another Solar System

Well, when I say we, I mean "our solar system", and when I say visitor, I mean "cigar shaped asteroid". But the point stands! Sort of. Alright, so this isn't the most exciting thing to have as our first official interstellar visitor, but it's still interesting.

Credit: M. Kornmesser/ESO

Meet 1I/2017 U1, or if you want to be a normal person, 'Oumuamua. Yes, that apostrophe is part of the name. It's about 1,300 feet long, made of rock with some metal, is a dark reddish color (that's an artist's rendition above), and has absolutely no coma around it. It's not a weird looking comet.

How do we know it's from another solar system? Well, the whole 'not a comet' thing helps. 'Oumuamua is moving very fast, much faster than any asteroid from our solar system can. Comets from the Oort Cloud can move that fast, but as we've established, this isn't a comet. And in case you were wondering, yes, 'Oumuamua does mean "messenger from afar traveling fast" in Hawaiian. It's very literal.

Unfortunately, 'Oumuamua was detected too late and is moving far too fast for us to learn anything more about it. No spacecraft we have right now could catch up to it. We'll just have to wait for the universe to lob us another cosmic cigar. So for now, we'll have to settle for simply knowing that we've received a visitor from interstellar space.