I need to make a clarification to my statement that some people think 2010 AL30 may be an alien Bracewell probe. This was not the object I thought had been suggested could be an alien probe although there is mixed opinion on whether the NEO is an asteroid, a spent rocket booster or indeed an alien artefact.
Let me make it quite clear, I am not suggestting this object or the one I meant to refer to, 1991 VG, is an indication of an alien probe is in our vacinity or that an ETI created it. This all being my attempt to 'have it both ways' as one poster claimed!
Im merely notifying the fact that some people think either one or both these objects
could be alien probes. If either could be proved beyond doubt to be alien artefacts then, clearly they would confirm the presence of at least one other intelligent civilisation in our galaxy.
This is an interesting link regarding 1991 VG from a site by Duncan Steel Phd
http://wanderling.tripod.com/1991_vg.htmlAbstract: A 10-metre object on a heliocentric orbit, now catalogued as 1991 VG, made a close approach to the Earth in 1991 December, and was discovered a month before perigee with the Spacewatch telescope at Kitt Peak. Its very Earth-like orbit and observations of rapid brightness fluctuations argued for it being an artificial body rather than an asteroid. None of the handful of man-made rocket bodies left in heliocentric orbits during the space age have purely gravitational orbits returning to the Earth at that time. In addition, the small perigee distance observed might be interpreted as an indicator of a controlled rather than a random encounter with the Earth, and thus it might be argued that 1991 VG is a candidate as an alien probe observed in the vicinity of our planet.
The approach taken in this paper is to investigate the different probabilities regarding the nature of the near-earth pass of the object designated 1991 VG.
Three distinct possibilities are apparent. The first is that it was a natural asteroid, to which we assign a probability P(n), that is, Probability natural. The second is that it was a man-made spacecraft, probability P(s), or Probability spacecraft. The third is that it was an alien artifact, probability P(a), Probability artifact. If we assume that there are no other possible explanations then the three taken together and written in formula P(n) + P(s) + P(a) = 1. The scepticism of a scientist (myself included) leads one to assume that P(a) = 0, but that assumption, it will be seen, is not supported by our knowledge of 1991 VG and its discovery circumstances. I show below that these indicate both P(n) and P(s) to be small, implying that P(a) , Probability artifact, is significant.
Chapman-Rietschi 1 has noted, following Arkhipov2, that much work and discussion of SETI tends to overlook the possibility of discovering alien artifacts within the Solar System. Such a pursuit is normally known as SETA (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Artifacts3,4). Over the past two decades various authors have debated whether the best place to look for such artifacts is in the asteroid belt5, in the outer Solar System6 on planetary surfaces7, or as extraterrestrial probes in the inner Solar System8-10, whereas the famous Fermi Paradox argument is based upon the understanding that such probes have not been detected, and thus extraterrestrial intelligent beings do not exist11,12. The aim of this communication is to point out (very tentativeIy) that an extraterrestrial spaceprobe may have been detected in late 1991 in near-Earth space.