Avi Loeb, the chairman of the university’s Astronomy Department, made his sensational claims in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. Oumuamua, the first interstellar object ever spotted passing through our solar system, was discovered by Robert Weryk using telescope at the Haleakala Observatory in Hawaii on October 19, 2017, and was named after a Hawaiian word meaning “messenger sent from the distant past to reach out to us”. Since then, it has been the subject of intense speculation, especially as it so closely resembles an alien object which is the subject of science fiction writer Arthur C Clarke’s classic novel Rendezvous with Rama.
Dr Loeb said: “We have no way of knowing whether it’s active technology, or a spaceship that is no longer operative and is continuing to float in space.
“But if Oumuamua was created together with a whole population of similar objects that were launched randomly, the fact that we discovered it means that its creators launched a quadrillion probes like it to every star in the Milky Way.”
Dr Loeb also suggested the universe could be awash with alien societies, stressing his belief that it was the job of Earth’s scientists to locate evidence of them.
He said: “Our approach should be an archaeological one.
“In the same way we dig in the ground to find cultures that no longer exist, we must dig in space in order to discover civilisations that existed outside the planet Earth.”
Dr Loeb also insisted the likelihood of life on other planets was a lot more probable than the alternative.
He explained: “The search for extraterrestrial life is not speculation.
“It’s a lot less speculative than the assumption that there is dark matter — invisible matter that constitutes 85 percent of the material in the universe.”
“As soon as we leave the solar system, I believe we will see a great deal of traffic out there.
“Possibly we’ll get a message that says, ‘Welcome to the interstellar club.’
“Or we’ll discover multiple dead civilisations — that is, we’ll find their remains.”
After the announcement of Oumuamua’s discovery, Dr Loeb immediately suggested its strange trajectory could be the result of a hypothetical propulsion device known as a solar sail.
Scientists were also puzzled when they realised the object’s brightness from reflected sunlight changed by a factor of ten as it spun.
This implied it was a cigar or pancake-shaped object falling through space, which would be extremely unusual for a naturally-occurring asteroid.
However, no radio signals were detected coming from Oumuamua, with most scientists concluding it is not the result of intelligent design.
Nevertheless, the late Stephen Hawking was also involved in investigations in a bid to discover the nature of the strange object.
Rendezvous with Rama, which was published in 1973, is set in the year 2077, with mankind having colonised much of the Solar System.
A team of astronauts is successful sent to intercept the vast probe, and the novel tells the story of what they discover inside it.