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The unnamed asteroid shares Jupiter's orbital space while moving in the opposite direction as the planet, which looks like a recipe for a collision, astronomers said. Yet somehow, the asteroid has managed to safely dodge Jupiter for at least tens of thousands of laps around the sun, a new study showed. It was given the provisional designation 2015 BZ509 with the nickname "BZ." Scientists noticed that the asteroid moves in the opposite direction of every planet and 99.99 percent of asteroids orbiting the sun, in a state known as retrograde motion. ... BZ may seem like a lucky asteroid, narrowly...

Harvard astronomer Abraham "Avi" Loeb and undergraduate student Amir Siraj have drafted a new paper identifying the second cosmic object to visit the inner solar system from beyond (Oumuamua being the first). The paper has been submitted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, but has yet to be peer reviewed. "The reported meteor entered the solar system with a speed of 60 km/s (134,216 mph) relative to the local standard of rest (obtained by averaging the motion of all stars in the vicinity of the Sun)," Loeb wrote in an email. "Such a high ejection speed can only be...

‘Oumuamua appeared to hit the gas on its way out of the inner solar system. The body went a tiny bit faster than it should have if the only effect on its motion was the Sun’s gravity dragging on it. The best guess... was that ices vaporized from ‘Oumuamua’s surface by the Sun’s stark glare had given the body an extra kick. However, no observations had detected such outgassing. ...The team revisited all the observations made during ‘Oumuamua’s whiplash visit and have concluded that outgassing could indeed be to blame. The researchers looked at what would happen if incident sunlight...

1. We have absolutely no idea where it came from 2. We don't really know what it looks like ...tumbling through space and appears to be, more or less, cigar-shaped.... about 10 times longer than its width. ..object's brightness (or amount of reflected sunlight) varied by a factor of 10 every eight hours or so. This strongly implies that 'Oumuamua has an extremely elongated shape. 3. 'Oumuamua got a little speed boost as it approached us Observations from the Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based observatories noticed that its acceleration increased which slightly changed its course from what was initially predicted....

Following its discovery in October 2017, ‘Oumuamua was the subject of popular speculation about a possible non-natural origin. Its highly elongated shape and the fact that no coma was observed strengthened this hypothesis for some, as these are uncharacteristic of asteroids and comets.A recent paper by Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics researchers Dr. Shmuel Bialy and Professor Abraham Loeb has also suggested the possibility that ‘Oumuamua is a deliberate construction.The scientists argued that the slight, unexpected acceleration observed for this object could be caused by pressure from sunlight as ‘Oumumua swung around the Sun. Their hypothesis is that the object...

The mystery of Oumuamua, the first interstellar object ever spotted in our solar system, has taken a new, unexpected twist and it's from someone you might not expect – NASA. ..." Because of the varying degrees of brightness emanating from Oumuamua's surface, NASA suggests it is "highly elongated and probably less than half a mile (2,600 feet, or 800 meters) in its longest dimension."The intrigue of what Oumuamua is or isn't has picked up a considerably over the past few weeks, especially as some researchers have theorized that it could be an object from an extraterrestrial civilization.A study from the Harvard...

‘Oumuamua was first detected by the University of Hawaii’s Pan-STARRS 1 telescope on Haleakala, Hawaii, in October 2017 while the telescope was surveying for near-Earth asteroids.Subsequent detailed observations conducted by multiple ground-based telescopes and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope detected the sunlight reflected off ‘Oumuamua’s surface.Large variations in the object’s brightness suggested that ‘Oumuamua is highly elongated and probably less than 2,600 feet (800 m) in its longest dimension.But NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope tracks asteroids and comets using the infrared energy, or heat, that they radiate, which can provide more specific information about an object’s size than optical observations of...

Harvard scientists reexamined the bizarre, interstellar space object known as “Oumuamua,” which rocketed through our solar system late last year, resurrecting the possibility that it may be an alien probe. Academics and scientists were quick to write off the cigar-shaped object as a previously unknown type of bolide – a comet or asteroid – propelled in a highly unusual manner, but their observations are once again, being challenged. Oumuamua, which means “a messenger sent to reach out in advance,” was first observed by Robert Weryk at the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope in Hawaii. He measured the object to be several hundred...

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...

NASA may have ruled that Oumuamua, the first interstellar object ever spotted in our system is a "metallic or rocky object" approximately 400 meters (1,312 feet) in length and 40 meters (131 feet) wide, but a new study from the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics says it could be something much more exciting – it could be "a lightsail of artificial origin" sent from another civilization. The study, which was posted online earlier this month, suggests that Oumuamua's strange "excess acceleration" could be artificial in nature, as it has been implied that it is not an active comet.

Scientists have uncovered the truth about a mysterious space rock called Oumuamua which has been hurtling through Earth’s solar system and was spotted last year.A group of acclaimed astronomers, including members from NASA, the European Space Agency and the German Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, released a report this week on the origins of the cigar-shaped asteroid which was first observed in October 2017. The name Oumuamua is Hawaiian for “messenger from afar arriving first” and was named by the site who first spotted it. According to the report, “a fast moving object on an unbound orbit was discovered close...

`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...

A group of astronomers from the US, Europe, Chile and South Africa have determined that 70,000 years ago a recently discovered dim star is likely to have passed through the solar system's distant cloud of comets, the Oort Cloud. No other star is known to have ever approached our solar system this close - five times closer than the current closest star, Proxima Centauri. In a paper published in Astrophysical Journal Letters, lead author Eric Mamajek from the University of Rochester and his collaborators analyzed the velocity and trajectory of a low-mass star system nicknamed "Scholz's star." The star's trajectory...

Highlighted by astronomers at the University of Rochester and the European Southern Observatory, the star — nicknamed “Scholz’s star” — has a very low tangential velocity in the sky, but it has been clocked traveling at a breakneck speed away from us. In other words, from our perspective, Scholz’s star is fleeing the scene of a collision with us. “Most stars this nearby show much larger tangential motion,” said Eric Mamajek, of the University of Rochester. “The small tangential motion and proximity initially indicated that the star was most likely either moving towards a future close encounter with the solar...

Scholz's star -- named after the German astronomer who discovered it -- approached less than a light-year from the Sun. Nowadays it is almost 20 light-years away, but 70,000 years ago it entered the Oort cloud, a reservoir of trans-Neptunian objects located at the confines of the solar system. ... Now two astronomers from the Complutense University of Madrid, the brothers Carlos and Raúl de la Fuente Marcos, together with the researcher Sverre J. Aarseth of the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom), have analyzed for the first time the nearly 340 objects of the solar system with hyperbolic orbits (very...

Our solar system's first known interstellar visitor is likely even more alien than previously imagined, a new study suggests. The mysterious, needle-shaped object 'Oumuamua, which was spotted zooming through Earth's neighborhood last October, probably originated in a two-star system, according to the study. 'Oumuamua means "scout" in Hawaiian; the object was discovered by researchers using the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS), at Haleakala Observatory on the island of Maui. ... "It's really odd that the first object we would see from outside our system would be an asteroid, because a comet would be a lot easier to...

A new analysis of the data obtained when the interstellar object Oumuamua flew through the solar system in October 2016 suggests that it is tumbling in a chaotic manner, and that the surface is spotty....Dr Fraser explains: “Our modelling of this body suggests the tumbling will last for many billions of years to hundreds of billions of years before internal stresses cause it to rotate normally again."

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...

A leading astronomer studying the origins of the space object known as Oumuamua has come out declaring it’s an alien probe with broken engines. Dr. Jason Wright claims that Oumuamua’s movement is that of a craft that has lost power to its engines. Right now, leading scientists are studying the odd “cigar-shaped” object which originated outside of our solar system. Teams lead by renowned physicist, Stephen Hawking, are attempting to discover whether or not Oumuamua is alien or natural. If a radio signal is detected later today, scientists will “proceed with caution.” Professor Avi Loeb, Professor of Astronomy at Harvard...

"... 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."