Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth

by Avi Loeb

Most of the evidence this book wrestles with was collected over eleven days, starting on October 19, 2017. That was the length of time we had to observe the first known interstellar visitor. Analysis of this data in combination with additional observations establishes our inferences about this peculiar object. Eleven days doesn’t sound like much, and there isn’t a scientist who doesn’t wish we had managed to collect more evidence, but the data we have is substantial and from it we can infer many things, all of which I detail in the pages of this book. But one inference is agreed to by everyone who has studied the data: this visitor, when compared to every other object that astronomers have ever studied, was exotic. And the hypotheses offered up to account for all of the object’s observed peculiarities are likewise exotic. I submit that the simplest explanation for these peculiarities is that the object was created by an intelligent civilization not of this Earth.