The Visitors Before

On October 19, 2017, a Hawaiian observatory detected something that had never been seen before. An object was tumbling through our solar system on a trajectory that defied explanation. It had come from interstellar space.

They named it 'Oumuamua. The Hawaiian word for "scout" or "messenger sent from the distant past."

The object was strange. Elongated like a cigar, perhaps 400 meters long and only 40 meters wide. It reflected light in unusual patterns. It accelerated as it left the solar system, as if pushed by an invisible force.

Scientists proposed solar radiation pressure. Critics pointed out the acceleration didn't match the models. The debate raged in academic journals while the object disappeared into the void.

Two years later, in 2019, astronomers spotted another interstellar traveler. This one was different. Comet 2I/Borisov behaved like a normal comet. It had a coma. It had a tail. It was reassuringly ordinary.

The scientific community breathed easier. 'Oumuamua had been an anomaly. Borisov proved that most interstellar objects were probably just regular comets knocked loose from distant solar systems.

Case closed.

Or so they thought.

For years, Avi Loeb had been asking uncomfortable questions. The Harvard astrophysicist couldn't shake the feeling that 'Oumuamua deserved more scrutiny. The acceleration. The shape. The silence.

He wrote papers. He gave interviews. He was criticized by colleagues who preferred conventional explanations. But Loeb persisted.

"The scientific method," he argued, "requires us to consider all possibilities, including the ones that make us uncomfortable."

He developed something he called the Loeb Scale. A framework for ranking interstellar objects based on how likely they were to be artificial. Natural comets scored low. Objects with unexplained properties scored higher.

It was controversial. Many dismissed it as sensationalism. But Loeb wasn't trying to prove aliens existed. He was trying to ensure that if evidence ever appeared, science wouldn't ignore it out of habit.

The stage was set. The next visitor would be watched more carefully than any object in history.

Nobody expected it to arrive so soon.