NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has captured one of the longest asteroids ever found. The oddly shaped object is as big as Empire State Building and to get a sense of its scale, scientists have estimated the object is about 1,600-by-500 feet, roughly comparable to that of the world-famous landmark that looms over 100 stories above New York.
The supposed asteroid, which recently sped past Earth, has caught the attention of NASA astronomers for its bizarre long shape. The space object is more than three times as long as it is wide and it is as dark as charcoal when viewed by the human eye, it appears to be scooped on one side and is spinning around every nine hours.
"Of the 1,040 near-Earth objects observed by planetary radar to date, this is one of the most elongated we’ve seen," said Lance Benner, principal scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in a statement.
The strange space object reminds us the infamous object called Oumuamua which was the first interstellar object, detected by the Pan-STARRS telescope at Haleakalā Observatory, Hawaii, on 19 October 2017, passing through the Solar System.
Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb suggested that Oumuamua could be an alien spacecraft, and given the equality of the new discovered elongated shaped object to Oumuamua we should at least be open to the possibility that it could be evidence of another interstellar alien spacecraft.