That the interstellar object 1I/2017 U1 (‘Oumuamua) could be an extraterrestrial artefact is an unorthodox hypothesis. From a philosophical perspective, however, the structure of the underlying argument for the hypothesis is flawed.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Access Nature and 54 other Nature Portfolio journals
Get Nature+, our best-value online-access subscription
$29.99 / 30 days
cancel any time
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 12 digital issues and online access to articles
$119.00 per year
only $9.92 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on SpringerLink
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
References
Bialy, S. & Loeb, A. Astrophys. J. Lett. 868, L1 (2018).
Loeb, A. Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth (John Murray, 2021).
Micheli, M. et al. Nature 559, 223–226 (2018).
Do, A., Tucker, M. A. & Tonry, J. Astrophys. J. Lett. 855, L10 (2018).
Mashchenko, S. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 489, 3003–3021 (2019).
Stanford, P. K. Exceeding Our Grasp: Science, History and the Problem of Unconceived Alternatives (Oxford Univ. Press, 2006).
The ‘Oumuamua ISSI Team Nat. Astron. 3, 594–602 (2019).
Seligman, D., Laughlin, G. & Batygin, K. Astrophys. J. Lett. 876, L26 (2019).
Sandberg, A., Drexler, E. & Ord, T. Preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404 (2018).
Lingam, M. & Loeb, A. Astrobiology 19, 28–39 (2019).
Acknowledgements
I thank A. Loeb, P. Vickers, T. Ord and S. McMahon for helpful comments.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The author declares no competing interests.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Cowie, C. The ‘Oumuamua controversy. Nat Astron 5, 526–527 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-021-01387-z
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-021-01387-z
This article is cited by
-
‘Oumuamua and meta-empirical confirmation
Foundations of Physics (2022)