UFO isn’t a theory supported by IfA) Astronomer Karen Meech, who led an international research team’s analysis of ʻOumuamua immediately after its discovery in 2017. Meech and fellow researchers initially investigated the object’s origin and found no evidence it is linked to alien life. “It’s certainly intriguing to creatively speculate what the physical nature of something is when it is the first of its kind—this is part of exploration and discovery,” said Meech. “However, one has to follow scientific principles. Everything we have seen with ʻOumuamua is entirely consistent with it being a comet. We can’t prove it, because we had too little time and it was too faint to get all the data we would like, but that is a poor reason to declare it is alien technology.”