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 ...
It's 20 minutes, but the relevant to this discussion stuff is 17-19 minutes in. But, the whole thing is well done, and sets up the question at hand, IMHO.
It's funky, but your speed varies, as the earth spins each day, from like 1,299,500 MPH to 1,300,500 MPH!
Right, because of the rotation of the earth. Your speed will also vary on an annual basis based upon the point in the earth's orbit around the sun.
Here ya go:
HA! I already found it on etsy. :-) Thanks though.
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