In October 2017, astronomers at the Haleakalā Observatory in Hawaii spotted something that had never been seen before. The Oumuamua interstellar object — the first confirmed visitor from outside our solar system — was already leaving by the time they noticed it. They had a few weeks to observe it. And in those weeks, it managed to violate nearly every assumption planetary scientists had about what an object moving through space should look like and how it should behave. It has not been explained. Not really. Not satisfactorily. And the more carefully scientists look at the data, the stranger it gets. What the Oumuamua Interstellar Object Actually Was The name comes from Hawaiian: ʻOumuamua roughly translates to “scout” or “first distant messenger.” It was discovered on 19 October 2017 by astronomer Robert Weryk using the Pan-STARRS telescope, and it was already on its way out of the solar system —…