If its origins are confirmed as lying beyond our solar system, it will be the first space rock known to come from elsewhere in the galaxy. “So it is coming from interstellar space and it is going to interstellar space.”The object’s orbit. Early results, he said, suggest that the object might be similar in make-up to many of those of the Kuiper belt – a region past Neptune in our solar system that contains myriad small bodies. And Fitzsimmons added that there was another possibility – that the object had been thrown out during the planet-forming period of another solar system. “This object itself could have been between the stars for millions or billions of years before we spotted it as it plunged into our solar system,” he said.

Source: The Guardian October 27, 2017 14:27 UTC