In October of 2017, an unidentifiable space object was seen flying away from the sun at 50 miles per second, mystifying the astronomy community. This week, scientists suggested that the object, named Oumuamua, “was a chip off a far away planet belonging to a star,” according to The New York Times. Arizona State University researcher Dr. Steven Desch added, “We can reasonably identify it as a chunk of an ‘exo-Pluto,’ a Pluto-like planet in another solar system.”

Oumuamua was first seen by astronomers in Hawaii, hence its name, meaning “scout,” or “messenger,” in Hawaiian. In 2018, when researchers were still working to identify the mysterious object, Harvard astronomer, Avi Loeb, wrote in his book that Oumuamua suggested the existence of aliens, and urged other scientists to explore the possibility of extraterrestrial life. This was quickly refuted by an international group of researchers who had concluded that Oumuamua had a “purely natural origin.” Researchers have described it as being “small, about half as long as a city block and only as thick as a three-story building, but it was very shiny.”