The Object

by Henry Lewi

  end of the world cocktail

They first tracked the Extra-Terrestrial Object when it was 35 million miles out from Earth. Contrary to expected observations its rate of acceleration appeared to slow, and its projected path would take it very near to Earth about 12 million miles out, in astronomical terms “a close flyby.”  It was now classified by NASA as a ‘Near Earth Object’. As it slowed The Object appeared to emit a repetitive Fast Radio Burst lasting 2 milliseconds and repeated every two hours for two days then went silent only to recur at 8-day intervals. Until that point The Object had been classified as a comet, but the pattern of acceleration, the Fast Radio Bursts and the projected course ruled it out as being any form of cometary body, and its origin was most clearly from outside of the solar system.

The teams at Cornell and McGill Universities both confirmed that the radio burst from the object exactly matched a signal they’d been tracking for the last fifteen years. The team at Cornell had backtracked the signal to a group of stars in the Auriga constellation in the northern spiral arm of the Milky Way.

At a meeting of NASA’s Near Earth Object Observation Team, they confirmed that The Object was on a trajectory that would swing past earth and subsequently leave the Solar System 20 degrees above its plane, and as it passed through the orbits of Mars and Saturn it would head out in the direction of the Auriga constellation.

  Both the NASA and European Telescopes in Hawaii and Chile confirmed that The Object was  cylindrical in shape, approximately half a kilometre in length, with no visible propulsion systems but spun along its long axis every eight hours. Over the next three months the observatory teams confirmed that as it passed its the nearest point to Earth (the perigee), it had now begun to accelerate out of the Solar system despite the gravitational pull of the Sun and the other planets. Throughout this time the Fast Radio Bursts had continued, but by day 120 after reaching its perigee and with The Object’s now accelerating rate of departure, they suddenly ceased. Calculations by the Near-Earth Object team showed it would leave the Solar System by year ten after its closest approach to Earth, if it continued at its current rate of acceleration.  

 The questions the NASA Team  asked were;  how was it accelerating? Where did it originate from? Where was it headed? Both MIT in Massachusetts and Caltech in Pasadena proposed a light or magnetic sail as a possible means of obtaining thrust. As for its origin that would be unknown, but the preliminary orbital calculations showed that it came from the approximate direction of the bright star Capella (or alpha Auriga) in the constellation Auriga. A probable orbital plot adjusting for changes in star positions concluded that the orbit of The Object may have previously passed close to Earth some 65 million years earlier.  The NASA team now named The Object - “Kaitiro” (the Observer).

A Palaeontologist at Caltech, later pointed out that if it had travelled near Earth some 65 million years earlier then it would have coincided with the last Mass Extinction Event…...