The visitors from deep space baffling scientists

The visitors from deep space baffling scientists Alamy Astronomers spent decades looking for objects from outside our own solar system. One idea was that perhaps the object was a "hydrogen iceberg" – a giant lump of frozen hydrogen, which could have formed a tail that wouldn't be visible from Earth. "We had expected that we would eventually see interstellar objects, because we know that comets in our own solar system are ejected on a reasonably regular basis," says Jackson. Meanwhile, more recent research – made after the discovery of 2I/Borisov – suggests that there are around 50 interstellar objects spanning at least 50m accross in our solar system at any given time. "When we think about any sort of spacecraft going to something in our own solar system, we have a checklist of things we want to get at, and this would be the same," he says, listing off some of the most important items, such as whether it contains amino acids – hinting at possible organic life – and determining if it contains water or carbon monoxide.