Remember that strange interstellar object that made news this fall when it was spotted in our solar system?

Now scientists plan to use a powerful radiotelescope to scan for radio transmissions emanating from it, which would be a sign of alien life.

The chairman of Harvard’s astronomy department said it’s worth a listen. “I’m not a particular fan of science fiction novels, but I think we just need to check,’’ Avi Loeb said. “This object is sufficiently unusual to merit attention.’’

The object from another star is called ‘Oumuamua — a Hawaiian word meaning “a messenger from the distant past,’’ — as it was first picked up by telescopes at the University of Hawaii’s Haleakalā Observatory.

‘Oumuamua is not the first interstellar object to reach our solar system, or the last. NASA estimates that one flies by per year. But it is the first to ever be spotted and confirmed to be of interstellar origin.

The plan called for the supersensitive Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia to turn toward the object on Wednesday to begin its scan.

The effort is being sponsored by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner as part of his Breakthrough Listen project, which is using the world’s most powerful radiotelescopes to scan the skies for evidence of extraterrestrial life, Loeb said. Loeb chairs the advisory board for another Milner project called Breakthrough Starshot, which hopes to send a tiny probe to a nearby star at very high speeds so the results can be returned within our lifetimes.

In the process of designing the probe, Loeb said, “We were talking about something that is very elongated, needle-like, so it minimizes the friction’’ from interstellar gas and dust. When Loeb saw the shape of ‘Oumuamua, which is very elongated — it’s 10 times longer than it is wide — “It led me to ask the question, could its origin be artificial?’’ he said.

Loeb suggested the asteroid scan to Milner in an e-mail around 10 days ago and later met with him about it. “I told him how peculiar it is,’’ Loeb said. Milner, whose Breakthrough Listen essentially pays for radiotelescope time at major facilities, agreed to the scan.

The Green Bank telescope will be able to detect whether there is a device with the strength of a cellphone emitting radio waves aboard the object, even though it is twice as far away from earth now as the sun is, Loeb said.

Globe correspondent Ben Thompson contributed to this report.