Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman and you're listening to Science Verses from Gimlet.

This is the show that pits facts against flying sources.

On today's show, UFOs.

And you might think this idea of aliens visiting Earth or UFOs is kind of ridiculous.

Perhaps the stuff of people in tinfoil hats or conspiracy theorists.

But governments around the world have been tracking unidentified flying objects on and off

for decades.

In fact, just a few years ago, it was reported that the US Department of Defence was recently

running one of these programs.

And now, we're hearing a lot of hoopla about the cosmic visitor Muamua.

It's a funky space object that whipped past the sun in 2017.

Astronomers have been watching a mysterious object passing our sun.

Tumbling past the sun at 196,000 miles per hour.

Muamua came from outside our solar system and made a stir because it looked kind of weird.

NASA said it was unlike any asteroid or comet we'd seen in our solar system before.

The first observed object to come from outside of our solar system.

Then, just this year, a Harvard Buffon wrote a book about it, saying,

this might be an alien probe.

Sent intentionally to Earth vicinity by an alien civilization.

We got a ton of attention, but very quickly, scientists jumped on board and said,

all science here suggests it's just a lifeless space rock.

With all this hot and butter over Muamua though, we thought it was the perfect time to

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