Was mysterious object spotted in space an alien probe?

NEW YORK (FOX5NY) - Some Harvard astronomers claim an object spotted in the solar system could have been an alien spacecraft that was investigating our part of the galaxy.

What scientists dubbed Oumuamua was an interstellar asteroid that was spotted in October 2017.  The measurements of its trajectory made it clear that it was coming from outside of our solar system.

The object is cigar-shaped and was moving very quickly, up to 196,000 miles per hour.

In a draft paper that has not been published in a journal yet, the Harvard researchers say that Oumuamua "shows no signs of any cometary activity, no cometary tail, nor gas emission/absorption lines were observed."

The scientists speculate that, "considering an artificial origin, one possibility is that Oumuamua is a light sail, floating in interstellar space as a debris from an advanced technological equipment."

They go on to state, "a more exotic scenario is that Oumuamua may be a fully operational probe sent intentionally to Earth vicinity by an alien civilization."

Oumuamua is the first object of interstellar origin observed in the Solar System.