✓ By |Admin| date |02/07/2019|
The interstellar Alien object 'Oumuamua - a strange cigar-shaped chunk of a place very far outside the Solar System - is, new research concludes, of course, positively not an alien spacecraft.
OK, well, maybe not. We cannot be sure without examining the object carefully, and it has exceeded our reach now. However, after carefully reviewing all of our observations of the Alien object, the international team of Oumuamua scientists has concluded that everything we know about the object is consistent with the origin of nature.
We've mostly known this. But a paper last year from Harvard astrophysics that made Avi Loeb terrible, briefly suggested the possibility that the rock was an alien vehicle. It's like a spark to dry beer, honest, and other scientists have been wandering around with buckets ever since.
New research published in Nature Astronomy, to expand the metaphor, must be considered a fire hose.
"We've never seen anything like 'Oumuamua in our solar system. It's really still a Alien mystery,'' said astronomer Matthew Knight of the University of Maryland.
"But our preference is to keep using analogues that we know, except or until we find something unique. The hypothesis of an alien spacecraft is a fun idea, but our analysis shows there are a number of natural phenomena that can explain it."
'Oumuamua, which was seen in October 2017, a month after he approached the closest to the Sun and traveled back from the Solar System, was actually very strange - even in spite of the fact that he had traveled for hundreds of millions of years in the vastness of space.
The only thing that really has something in common with other objects in the Solar System is a reddish color, which shows a solid composition, rich in metals baked by cosmic radiation.
Everything about that is weird. Long and thin like a cigar, reaching 400 meters (0.25 miles) in length. No other comet or asteroid has this form.
'Oumuamua is kind of spinning while walking, too, like a bottle by its side. And, even though it doesn't seem to contain ice and doesn't emit gas, like a comet, its trajectory cannot be explained by gravity alone, like an asteroid does. Which shows it somehow like comets and asteroids.
But despite all this oddity, there is no assumption that 'Oumuamua is a spaceship, the researchers said.
"This Alien object is strange and indeed difficult to explain, but it does not exclude other natural phenomena that can explain it," Knight said.
This might start as a planetesimal, or planetesimal fragments (a planet that is still in the process of forming in a distant star system) that is ejected into space. This is quite common, according to our understanding of planet formation; gravitational interactions with stars and other planets can boot planetesimal into interstellar space.
Because of how general this is, it is possible that these interstellar planetesimal pieces float through the Solar System all the time - we just don't see it because it's usually below our detection threshold.
And although 'Oumuamua's observations do not detect comet outgassing that will explain its trajectory, the lack of detection does not mean there is no activity - especially because observations are not carried out in several wavelengths that can reveal it.
But while 'Oumuamua has come and gone, it may not be long before we can learn more about it indirectly. Among other upcoming telescopes, the National Science Foundation (LSST) Large Telescope Survey of the US, which will see the first light in 2022, promises to find more interstellar Alien objects.
"We might start seeing new objects every year," Knight said. "That's when we will begin to know whether 'Oumuamua is strange, or public. If we find 10-20 of these things and' Oumuamua still looks unusual, we must re-examine our explanation."
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