Posted on 12/20/2017 6:44:36 AM PST by blam
Observations of the oblong interstellar traveler Oumuamua have revealed an unidentified organic coating on it, igniting scientific and public curiosity alike. After “Oumuamua” was initially spotted by a telescope in Hawaii by the Pan-STARRS project on October 19, experts raced to gather all possible information on it before it passed beyond humanity’s collective reach. But, while they expected to find a comet-like chunk of ice passing by our sun, the object mysteriously failed to leave behind a vapor trail as it grazed our home star. Instead, the still-unidentified chunk of ancient space debris hurtling at 60,000 MPH through our solar system left us with a host of new questions.
First, Oumuamua is exceptionally long and narrow — roughly 400 by about 40 meters. The shape is unlike any asteroids in our own solar system. Paul Chodas, Manager of NASA’s Centre for Near Earth Orbit Studies, called it “a strange visitor from a faraway star system, shaped like nothing we’ve ever seen in our own solar system neighborhood.”
Second, the lack of a comet-like tail of vaporized ice — despite passing even within Mercury’s orbit — seems to be the result of unknown organic matter which shields its internal ice from the sun’s immense heat. Also, it’s red. And while some observations tagged it as similar to the shades we see from minerals present in our own system, others suggest that it is significantly darker.
Queen’s University Belfast’s Dr. Michele Bannister of the Outer Solar System Origins Survey called Oumuamua “the opposite” of what she was “expecting we might see.” To her, it is the familiar aspects of the object that intrigue. “It’s travelled for millions or billions of years – it could be older than our solar system. …It’s come from a very long way away
(snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Nearly everything in our solar system is covered in polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.
My dog’s turds get “shells” on the them after being outside for awhile - this just might be an ancient intergalactic turd that’s been floating around the toilet bowl.
Atom Heart Mother.....................
The LSD was strong with album...
Waiting to see something from a verified science site.
I don’t remember........................much..................
could have been ejected from a black hole,
.... what?
Exactly........................
It pronounced "Moya". Ive seen this episode, nothing big happens.
That is exactly what I thought of first too
Instead of wasting money by launching an interstellar spacecraft with our current technology, we can wait for the next piece of interstellar material to come to us.
Not a monolith it’s an I phone!
From Wiki:
Hypothetical space missions
‘Oumuamua is traveling too fast for any existing spacecraft to reach. The Initiative for Interstellar Studies (i4is) has launched Project Lyra for assessing the feasibility of a mission to ‘Oumuamua. Several options for sending a spacecraft to ‘Oumuamua within a time-frame of 5 to 10 years were suggested. One option is using first a Jupiter flyby followed by a close solar flyby at 3 solar radii (2.1×106 km; 1.3×106 mi) in order to take advantage of the Oberth effect. More advanced options of using solar, laser electric, and laser sail propulsion, based on Breakthrough Starshot technology, have also been considered. The challenge is to get to the asteroid in a reasonable amount of time (and so at a reasonable distance from Earth), and yet be able to gain useful scientific information. To do this, decelerating the spacecraft at ‘Oumuamua would be “highly desirable, due to the minimal science return from a hyper-velocity encounter”. If the investigative craft goes too fast, it would not be able to get into orbit or land on the asteroid and would fly past it, moving at many asteroid diameters per second. The authors conclude that, although challenging, an encounter mission would be feasible using near-term technology. Astronomers estimate that several interstellar objects similar to ‘Oumuamua pass inside the orbit of Earth each year. If true, this provides possible opportunities for future studies of interstellar objects, although with the current space technology, close visits and orbital missions are impossible due to their high speeds.
Ah, but speculation is so much fun.
And speculation about anomalous interstellar objects is especially fun.
The First Known Interstellar Interloper
For an example of the prophetic powers of science, check out the February 1997 issue of Astronomy. In the article “Seeking Rogue Comets,” planetary scientist "Alan Stern confidently predicted that astronomers would someday discover an interstellar comet — an object that was unceremoniously flung out of another planetary system during a close encounter with a giant planet, and was found whizzing through our solar system at high speed on an open-ended, hyperbolic trajectory."
“We had a pretty good idea this was coming,” says Stern, who is now the principal investigator of NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt."
Thanks blam.
"I, for one, am not so immensely impressed by the success we are making of our civilization here that I am prepared to think we are the only spot in this immense universe which contains living, thinking creatures, or that we are the highest type of mental and physical development which has ever appeared in the vast compass of space and time." [Long-hidden Winston Churchill essay on aliens surfaces | Posted on 02/19/2017 4:12:06 PM PST by RoosterRedux]
Set the controls for the heart of the sun.
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