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C/2019 Q4 (Borisov) this summer provided renewed opportunities to study material left by outgassing. Using data gathered by the William Herschel Telescope (WHT), an international team of astronomers found that 2I/Borisov contains cyanide. Since comets and asteroids are essentially material left over from the formation of a planetary system, these studies will allow scientists to place constraints on the physical and chemical processes involved in the formation of extrasolar planets. Basically, it's like being able to study extrasolar planets without having to go there physically. Prof. Fitzsimmons told Universe Today, materials from other planetary systems, delivered to our doorstep—or at...

A comet first spotted by a Ukrainian amateur astronomer looks to be just the second known object to visit our cosmic neighborhood from beyond the solar system. What could be an even bigger deal is that this one was discovered as it's still approaching us. The comet was found by Gennady Borisov of Crimea on Aug. 30, and went by the temporary name GB00234 until very recently. After being watched by several other observatories over the past few weeks, it was given the official name of C/2019 Q4 (Borisov) by the Minor Planet Center on Wednesday. It appeared to follow...

Russia Admits It Isn’t Ready to Fight Space Aliens Fortunately America’s got a plan Russia Admits It Isn’t Ready to Fight Space Aliens UNCATEGORIZED October 2, 2013 David Axe Fortunately America’s got a plan by DAVID AXE A Russian space official just admitted that Moscow has no strategy for combating an invasion by galactic marauders. Lucky for Planet Earth, the United States does have a plan. And it counts on Russia and America fighting together. Sergei Berezhnoy, on the staff of the Titov Space Control Center near Moscow, said that Russian air-defense officers “have not been tasked with preparing for...

It is the first known object to pass through the solar system from outside, but experts have failed to explain where the object, called 'Oumuamua' came from. The mysterious cigar-shaped projectile - formally named the object 1I/2017 U1 - defies description with characteristics resembling both a comet and an asteroid. Oumuamua...spins like a coke bottle and accelerates like a comet, but without the gas jets often seen trailing them. The study’s co-author, Dr. Matthew Knight, an associate research scientist in the University of Maryland Department of Astronomy, said: “The alien spacecraft hypothesis is a fun idea, but … our preference...

A scientific paper led by two researchers at Harvard University made a splash this week by claiming that a cigar-shaped rock zooming through our solar system may have been sent by aliens. The researchers noted in a pre-print of the article that it was an “exotic scenario,” but that “Oumuamua may be a fully operational probe sent intentionally to Earth vicinity by an alien civilization.” Oumuamua, the first interstellar object known to enter our solar system, accelerated faster away from the Sun than expected, hence the notion that some kind of artificial sail that runs on sunlight — known as...

Interstellar Trade Is Possible In this post, we will detail a method for developing interstellar trade using near-future technologies and commercially realistic requirements. We will then look at the various outcomes, challenges and development models that will follow the first interstellar operation. There is now a Summary at the end of the post. A tough taskTravel between stars is hard. The distances are measured in trillions of kilometers and the space between destinations is not really empty. Attempting the crossing at interplanetary speeds is ludicrously slow; the only way is to reach velocities measured in percentages of the speed of...

Oumuamua appeared to have been dropped in on our solar system from some great interstellar height, picking up even more speed on a slingshot-like loop around the sun before soaring away for parts unknown. It is now already halfway to Jupiter, too far for a rendezvous mission and rapidly fading from the view of Earth’s most powerful telescopes. Astronomers scrambling to glimpse the fading object have revealed additional oddities. ‘Oumuamua was never seen to sprout a comet-like tail after getting close to the sun, hinting it is not a relatively fresh bit of icy flotsam from the outskirts of a...

To recap, when `Oumuamua was first observed on October 19th, 2017, by astronomers using the University of Hawaii’s Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS), the object (then known as C/2017 U1) was initially believed to be a comet. However, subsequent observations revealed that it was actually an asteroid and it was renamed 1I/2017 U1 (or 1I/`Oumuamua). Follow-up observations made using the ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) were able to place constraints on the asteroid’s size, brightness, composition, color and orbit. These revealed that `Oumuamua measured some 400 meters (1312 feet) long, is very elongated, and spins on its axis...

"... It appears to be a dark, reddish, highly-elongated rocky..." "varies dramatically in brightness by a factor of ten as it spins on its axis every 7.3 hours."

Full title: ESO observations show first interstellar asteroid is like nothing seen before. For the first time ever astronomers have studied an asteroid that has entered the Solar System from interstellar space. Observations from ESO's Very Large Telescope in Chile and other observatories around the world show that this unique object was traveling through space for millions of years before its chance encounter with our star system. It appears to be a dark, reddish, highly-elongated rocky or high-metal-content object. The new results appear in the journal Nature on 20 November 2017.

Astronomers are set to scan an 'alien' comet for signs of extraterrestrial signals The cigar-shaped object, named 'Oumuamua, sailed past Earth last month The mysterious comet is the first interstellar object seen in the solar system Now a team of alien-hunting scientists led by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner is scanning the object for radio signals Astronomers are set to scan an 'alien' comet for signs of extraterrestrial technology. The cigar-shaped asteroid, named 'Oumuamua by its discoverers, sailed past Earth last month and is the first interstellar object seen in the solar system. A team of alien-hunting scientists, led by Russian...

Now, new data reveal the interstellar interloper to be a rocky, cigar-shaped object with a somewhat reddish hue. The asteroid, named ‘Oumuamua by its discoverers, is up to one-quarter mile (400 meters) long and highly-elongated—perhaps 10 times as long as it is wide. That aspect ratio is greater than that of any asteroid or comet observed in our solar system to date. While its elongated shape is quite surprising, and unlike asteroids seen in our solar system, it may provide new clues into how other solar systems formed. The observations and analyses were funded in part by NASA and appear...

Astronomers around the world are trying to track down a small, fast-moving object that is zipping through our solar system. Is a comet? An asteroid? NASA's not sure. The space agency doesn't even know where it came from, but it's not behaving like the local space rocks and that means it may not be from our solar system. If that's confirmed, NASA says "it would be the first interstellar object to be observed and confirmed by astronomers." NASA says astronomers are pointing telescopes on the ground and in space at the object to get that data. For now, the object...

The IAU also approved an official scientific designation for 'Oumuamua: 1I/2017 U1. This is a first-of-its-kind moniker; the "I" stands for "interstellar." Previously, small objects like 'Oumuamua have received standard comet or asteroid designations, which sport a "C" or "A," respectively, in place of the "I." 'Oumuamua was first spotted on Oct. 19, by astronomers using the Pan-STARRS1 telescope in Hawaii. The smallish object was first classified as a comet but then regarded as an asteroid, after further observations revealed no evidence of a coma (the fuzzy cloud of gas and dust that surrounds a comet's core). Analysis of 'Oumuamua's trajectory soon...

To date, every comet humanity has seen inside the Solar System has come from the Solar System, whether it's the Kuiper Belt or the billions of comets believed to make up the Oort Cloud. Now, however, it looks like astronomers might have found a comet of interstellar origin. They've used Hawaii's Pan-STARRS 1 telescope to track C/2017 U1, an object with a very eccentric, hyperbolic orbit (that is, moving quickly enough to escape gravitational pull) that wasn't connected to the Sun. The trajectory suggests that it's a comet which escaped from a nearby star, rather than something knocked out a...

Incentive Trap 2: Minimizing the Wait Time by Paul Gilster on May 9, 2017 When to launch a starship, given that improvements in technology could lead to a much faster ship passing yours enroute? As we saw yesterday, the problem has been attacked anew by René Heller (Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research), who re-examined a 2006 paper from Andrew Kennedy on the matter. Heller defines what he calls ‘the incentive trap’ this way: The time to reach interstellar targets is potentially larger than a human lifetime, and so the question arises of whether it is currently reasonable to...

Stephen Hawking is backing a project to send tiny spacecraft to another star system within a generation. They would travel trillions of miles; far further than any previous craft. A $100m (£70m) research programme to develop the computer chip-sized "starships" was launched by the billionaire Yuri Milner, supported by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Interstellar travel has long been a dream for many, but significant technological hurdles remain. But Prof Hawking told BBC News that fantasy could be realised sooner than we might think. Media captionThe spacecraft would be propelled from earth by a giant laser, as Pallab Ghosh reports "If...

Figure 9 from “A Roadmap to Interstellar Flight”Guest essay by Eric WorrallAn American scientist has made a remarkable conceptual breakthrough, a design for a non nuclear relativistic launcher, capable of accelerating thousands of deep space probes per year to 0.25C; fast enough to reach the nearest stars in 15 years. The system is extremely scalable – you could start with a small, low cost proof of concept launcher, and work up to bigger devices, capable of launching substantial probes into interstellar space. The system also has a practical alternative use – the full size version is powerful enough to deflect...

Could TARS From ‘Interstellar’ Actually Exist? We Asked Science A robotics expert breaks down TARS. by Shaunna Murphy 15 hours ago Apologies to Matthew McConaughey, but the real, breakout star of “Interstellar” was clearly TARS the sarcastic space robot (voiced by Bill Irwin). A former marine companion bot with angular limbs and acerbic wit, director Christopher Nolan somehow made TARS (and his sister robot, CASE) one of the most fully-formed, anthropomorphized robots in film history — without even giving him a face. “I wanted a more realistic approach to what a robot would be,” Nolan told the Associated Press. “I...