I don't remember this cropping up in the regular news back in
October - guess it wasn't awesome enough back then
- or I just missed it!
It's shape, while insofar a bit thinner than most, is not particularly unique in and of itself. As per the
Asteroid Radio Research galleries, you can see that similarly shaped (though not as long) asteroids aren't particularly uncommon (though I particularly like the "binary asteroids" - that's just cool
).
Likewise, it's average speed of 26.3 km/s (58 kilo-miles per hour
just to make the imperial and metric fanboys cringe) isn't
that fast in the scheme of things - though it does have the fasted inbound velocity at 200AU compared to other Oort cloud objects.
A lot of the cranks out there seem to be under the impression that it's rotating along it's longest axis; except it's not - it's turmbling headlong and spinning on every axis. Even it's colour (again, described by the cranks as "red") is actually "very red" under the trans-neptunian (I love that term") spectra classifications - it's about the same colour as
Sedna - it's not an uncommon colour for objects in the outer solar system.
The biggest scientific contention just now seems to be whether it is an asteroid or a comet (though "asteroid" seems to have won out, they've actually gone as far as to define a new category of classification ("I") being created, with the comet-cum-asteroid C/2017 U1 transforming into A/2017 U1 once it was classified as an asteroid - and is now classified as 1I/2017 U1; and that is the only really interesting reason why it's vaguely important.
PS - Arthur C. Clarke's "Rendezvous with Rama" seems to have been the inspiration behind it's comparisons with "Rama" because of its interstellar/extrasolar origin.
Shortly afterwards, somebody in the press (who should have known better) described it as an "alien object" referencing it's extrasolar origin... of course, numerous cranks immediately equivocated with
actual aliens - which the less reputable news sources were quite happy to repeat; which, amazingly, has worked its way back into the more reputable news sources. I find it of particular interest that SETI looked at it and shrugged their shoulders - while the cranks worldwide were emphasising how interested SETI were in it.
To summarise...EDIT: Added a little extra info about the relative velocity
Clarification: "Not unusual" does not mean "not interesting"
More of a "plenty of perfectly natural explanations" sort of story!