Unlike most of these fora, this one seems to be visited by some fairly reasonable and well-informed people.
Some posters make the case that even though the object is probably interstellar, it is by no means established without doubt. For example, it might have been an Oort Cloud Object perturbed out of its orbit by a passing star millions of years ago. Likewise, it could be a Kuiper Belt object which gained additional kinetic energy from an encounter with Planet X. (The latter is a hypothetical dark object orbiting past Pluto which has been proposed to explain some dynamical anomalies in other objects at the edge of the solar system.
I too, would prefer this object to be a visitor from the Great Black Yonder, but the Solar System still has not lost its ability to occasionally surprise us.
Space/Science » in reply to Our first visitor from the stars
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- Our first visitor from the stars