CAPA CANAVERAL, Florida (AP): The first known interstellar visitor to our solar system is neither a comet nor an asteroid as first suspected and bears no resemblance to a cigar.
A new study says the mysterious object is probably a remnant of a Pluto-like world and is shaped like a cookie.
Astronomers at Arizona State University reported this week that the strange 45-meter (45-meter) object appears to be composed of frozen nitrogen, as is the surface of Pluto and Neptune’s largest newt.
The study’s authors, Alan Jackson and Steven Desch, think that an impact dropped a piece of an icy planet covered in nitrogen 500 million years ago and sent the falling piece from its own star system to to ours.
The reddish remnant is believed to be a bit of its original self, its outer layers evaporated by cosmic radiation, and, more recently, the sun. It is called Oumuamua, Hawaiian Listening, in honor of the Hawaii Observatory that discovered it in 2017.
Visible only as a point of light millions of miles away at its nearest point, it was determined to have originated beyond our solar system because its speed and trajectory suggested that it did not orbit the sun or nothing more.
The only other object that has been confirmed to have deviated from another star system in ours is Comet 21 / Borisov, discovered in 2019.
But what is Oumuamua? It did not fit into known categories: it looked like an asteroid, but it accelerated like a comet. Unlike a comet, however, it had no visible tail. Speculation shifted between the comet and the asteroid, and it was even suggested that it could be an alien artifact.
“Everyone is interested in aliens and it was inevitable that this first object outside the solar system would make people think of aliens,” Desch said in a statement. “But it’s important in science not to come to conclusions.”
Using its brightness, size, and shape, which was driven by escaping substances that did not produce a visible tail, Jackson and Desch devised computer models to help them determine that Oumuamua was probably a piece of nitrogen ice that was gradually eroding. . a bar of soap thins with use.
His two papers were published Tuesday by the American Geophysical Union and were also presented at the lunar and planetary science conference, which is usually held in Houston but virtual this year.
Not all scientists understand the new explanation. Harvard University’s Avi Loeb discusses the findings and maintains his premise that the object looks more artificial than natural, that is, something of an alien civilization, perhaps a light sail. His recently published book, “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth,” deals with the subject.
Given that Oumuamua is different from comets and asteroids (and something that hadn’t been seen before), “we can’t assume the“ normal, ”as many scientists argue,” Loeb wrote in an email Wednesday. “If we contemplate ‘something we had not seen before,’ we must leave on the table the hypothesis of artificial origin and collect more evidence on objects of the same class.”
When Oumuamua was at the closest point to Earth, it appeared to be six times as wide as its thickness. These are the approximate proportions of a wafer from an Oreo cookie, Desch noted.
It has now been a long time, beyond the orbit of Uranus, more than 3.2 billion miles away, and too small to be seen, even by the Hubble Space Telescope. As a result, astronomers will have to rely on the original observations and hopefully continue to refine their analyzes, Jackson said.
When the object begins to leave our solar system by 2040, the width-to-thickness ratio will have dropped to 10-to-1, according to Desch.
“So maybe Oumuamua was consistent with a cookie when we saw it, but it will soon be literally as flat as a pancake,” Desch said in an email.
This is how the cosmic cookie collapses (this one anyway).
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