Oumuamua

In the Oumuamua project I examine the issues and relationships
related to imaginary themes which have found their place in art and
popular culture, but also actual past events that are compellingly
associated with them. As the central example I singled out the case of
the Oumuamua, the first known interstellar asteroid to enter the Solar
System and find itself in the immediate vicinity of our planet. Although it
would be quite enough to know that this was the first known interstellar
object to visit the Solar System, the Oumuamua resulted even more
unusual for an interstellar object travelling through space for thousands
of years. According to the laws of physics, the speed of the asteroid
when leaving the Solar System was supposed to be either constant
or decreased, and yet Oumuamua began to accelerate. In addition to
this speed anomaly, the shape of the asteroid was also interesting – it
was highly elongated, cylinder-like – quite unusual for an object of a
natural origin. Its organically red colour also contributed to the overall
impression, and astronomers began to have unusual associations.
Although, in space research observatories, hypotheses and theories are
arrived at empirically, a radio check of the asteroid was first performed
in order to determine if it had been emitting radio signals (this would
ascertain whether the “asteroid” had been of an artificial origin or not).
No radio emissions were detected on the asteroid, but in spite of that,
bold and fanciful assumptions started to emerge...
The event itself is exceptionally reminiscent of the book by
the famous scientist and science fiction writer Sir Arthur Clarke, who
describes in almost identical terms an event concerning an unusual
asteroid in the introduction to his book"Rendezvous with Rama".. Astronomers
initially wanted to call this asteroid Rama, but found the allusion too
obvious. Finally they consulted a team of Hawaiian linguists who gave
the asteroid an appropriate name – the Oumuamua, which in Hawaiian
means “messenger who comes first from afar.” It was precisely this
the point in which the imaginary and the real came together. And like
in the many examples we had the chance to witness before, when
the imaginary, presented through a certain medium, finally sees itself
materialized, it acquires the status of visionary, prophetic. Are we able
to see our future in movies and books – in works of art that we see or
read every day? Has our future already been created and manifested in
works of art (where we find guidelines as to what it may look like)? Let
me offer some more interesting examples that have caught my attention
and made me think in this direction. Arthur Clark has also authored
the screenplay for 2001: A Space Odyssey, which presents innovations

unimaginable at the time – video communication, interplanetary travel,
artificial intelligence... Today we see that most of these technological
inventions (which at the time seemed unattainable) already exist or are
being implemented right now.
Let us go back to a time when certain technological advances
appeared like an unattainable dream; today we take them for granted
and they are part of our everyday life. There is an interesting story about
Robert Oppenheimer, the creator of the atomic bomb and the leader
of the Manhattan Project. Immediately after the first successful atomic
bomb testing, he recited verses from the Bhagavad-Gita, a Vedic text
over five thousand years old, which vividly describes something that
recalls the explosion of a nuclear bomb. Another essential example is
the longest-running TV show The Simpsons, which has always been a
source of most diverse predictions that came true. Recently, during the
coronavirus quarantine, almost everyone felt like they were living in a
parallel dimension – just remember that one status that went viral: “I don’t
like this episode of Black Mirror.” Did Leonardo da Vinci, Hieronymus
Bosch, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Stanisław Lem (and many others)
believe that their creative imagination would materialize in the future? I
honestly believe that these artists’ only aim was to express themselves
creatively, and that they had no conscious intention to inconspicuously
prepare people for the upcoming events. In their creative work, at the
peak of their inspiration, could it be that they managed to build upon
the collective unconscious (of which Jung speaks, and in which the
center of collective unconscious creativity is located)? And from that
place in which the concept of linear time does not apply, did they
manage to draw ideas that had basically always existed and been part
of Humanity’s evolutionary code? Are we able, as individuals, to invent
something new, or is it all just an adaptation of archetypal ideas and
events that we interpret in a modern take?
These examples leave a lot of room for thought. The name
Oumuamua, it seems, announces a new understanding of the reality
that has already been born and living in the future.

Nikola Radonjić