Matthew J. Hopkins

When telescopes spotted the interstellar object 1I/‘Oumuamua in 2017, astronomers touched for the first time matter born around an alien star. But an uneasy question immediately arose: what if some of these visitors are not strangers at all, but ghosts from our own past?

Remember the sensational comet 1I/‘Oumuamua — the first object to come to us from another star? Its hyperbolic trajectory left no doubt: it was a wanderer from the interstellar void. But astronomers wondered: could some of these visitors not be strangers at all, but our own, escaped from the Solar System millions of years ago?