Posted on 06/28/2018 10:33:05 AM PDT by BenLurkin
`Oumuamua, pronounced oh-MOO-ah-MOO-ah – is moving away from the sun faster than expected. The Hubble Space Telescope made the discovery, in cooperation with ground-based telescopes...
The measured gain in ‘Oumuamua’s speed is tiny, these astronomers said. Plus, our sun is still trying to drag `Oumuamua back; that is, the sun’s gravity is still slowing down the object, though not as fast as predicted by celestial mechanics.
Marco Micheli of the European Space Agency led the team that explored several scenarios to explain ‘Oumuamua’s faster-than-predicted speed. The most likely explanation is that `Oumuamua is venting material from its surface due to solar heating – a behavior known as outgassing. The thrust from this ejected material is thought to provide the small but steady push that is sending `Oumuamua hurtling out of the solar system faster than expected – as of June 1, it is traveling about 114,000 kilometers [70,000 miles] per hour.
These scientists explained that, usually, when comets are warmed by the sun they eject dust and gas. This material forms a cloud of material — called a coma — around them, as well as the characteristic comet tail....
'We did not see any dust, coma or tail, which is unusual. We think that ‘Oumuamua may vent unusually large, coarse dust grains.'
`Oumuamua is a highly mysterious object. Astronomers would love to know where it originated and originally performed the new observations to determine its path more precisely, in hopes they could trace the object back to its parent star system. They weren’t able to make that backwards trace, and, in fact, the recently-detected gain in speed make ‘Oumuamua’s movement more complex, and thus finding its home solar system even more unlikely...
"The true nature of this enigmatic interstellar nomad may remain a mystery."
(Excerpt) Read more at earthsky.org ...
Hahah. BTW, this was the funniest scene from the Austin Powers series, somewhat reminiscent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpiP_jN1Pv4
Yeah, she really is a space cadet.
Speaking of which, did you see this?
The Space Between Stars Is Full of Greasy, Possibly Toxic Carbon
https://gizmodo.com/the-space-between-stars-is-full-of-greasy-possibly-tox-1827192823
I surprised Woody Harrelson wasn’t in that exchange.
Even more curious is that it has a twin in a different orbit, but little has been reported about it other than it exists.
Interstellar robotic survey craft like those postulated in Gregory Benford’s “In The Ocean of Night”, sent by the machine civilization at the galaxy’s core.
Brought back memories - first heard that song in my Grandmother’s kitchen, on her pink radio that sat on a metal stand, back when it first came out- I was 6......hope the clear memory of 60 years ago doesn’t herald oncoming senility.....
If you want on or off the Electric Universe Ping List, Freepmail me.
If you were another intelligent life form, and wished to camouflage the ship, what exactly would you disguise it as?
Sirius is just waiting for someone to throw that thing.
WHY would you do that to me????
No more beans for Oumuamua!
I gotta get me one of those!
8^).......................
The star system it came from is its father, Papa Oumuamua, pronounced “Papa OOM-MOW MOW, Papa OOM-MOW MOW-MOW”
“Relative to what?”
Its ex-wife.
Relative to what? It would be just as accurate to say that it is standing still and the solar system is moving (which it is).
I would love to have a plate like that for my car.
HA! That's the same thing I initially thought about.
Measured against interstellar space, each of us are moving at least 1,300,000 mph, just sitting at our desktops.
Where did you get that number? I actually tried some back-of-the-envelope calculations the other day, and could only really give approximations about rotation speed (approximately 1000 mph), and orbital speed, which was quite a bit more. My numbers on the galactic orbital speed was really too fuzzy to use.
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