Wish Carl Sagan were still alive.
The first known object to enter our solar system from deep space
81–90 of 114 posts
Re: The first known object to enter our solar system from deep space
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would it still be travelling too fast to be captured if it hit the sun directly?
Is something technically captured by a gravity well if it just happens to hit the object at the center? I assume not.
At the very least, I'd say that... after collision, assuming complete coalescence into the object, they will share identical orbital parameters
Re: The first known object to enter our solar system from deep space
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
- strange aspect ratio - tensile strength (it should be cartwheeling, there is a physics theorem which means everything tends to this configuration) - large flat or concave sections. - others are reporting it's mostly metallic. I'll say it: did anyone consider an alien spaceship? The paper seems to deduce "asteroidal" by ruling out other things, rather than by a positive measurement of rock spectra, unless I've misre…
Co-author here. We obtained spectroscopic measurements of 'Oumuamua, and its surface closely matches D-type asteroids and comet nuclei, which are dark, reddish and organic-rich.
" its surface closely matches D-type asteroids and comet nuclei"
That's what they want you to think!
Re: The first known object to enter our solar system from deep space
#84I think it's a shame that this story hasn't gotten more attention. True, it doesn't tell us as much about the nature of the universe as the discovery of the Higgs boson, and it doesn't represent a major advance in engineering like gravitational wave detection. But it is the only chance we have ever had to directly view a largeish piece of another solar system, just millions of miles away. The next time probably won't…
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Re: The first known object to enter our solar system from deep space
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
If there is one within 1 AU of the Sun at any given time, then there are ~10^16 of them within a sphere out to the nearest star. I'll leave it to you to decide whether that's teeming or not.
Surely they're more dense near the sun? Not sure you can assume a uniform spacing and not account for the gravitational attraction. But I'm sure you know more about this than I do.
If they're not being captured, they're just being perturbed by the sun a bit, not collected.
Re: The first known object to enter our solar system from deep space
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
For comparison, the Earth's radius is 0.00004 AU. This is like a mosquito passing your car at a closest distance of 2 miles.
...but I still have mosquitos hitting my windshield. Hopefully there are not many more objects like that asteroid inbound...
If you want to worry about asteroids impacting the Earth, it's very inefficient to worry about it one interstellar object at a time. Here's a nicely organized list for you with some history, to let you efficiently worry at scale: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torino_scale#Objects_with_non-...
Re: The first known object to enter our solar system from deep space
#87Re: The first known object to enter our solar system from deep space
#88Could we ever use a net to stick a probe to one and get a free trip out of the solar system?
Re: The first known object to enter our solar system from deep space
#89I think it's a shame that this story hasn't gotten more attention. True, it doesn't tell us as much about the nature of the universe as the discovery of the Higgs boson, and it doesn't represent a major advance in engineering like gravitational wave detection. But it is the only chance we have ever had to directly view a largeish piece of another solar system, just millions of miles away. The next time probably won't…
it's a shame that this story hasn't gotten more attention. I am the average person when it comes to this subject. It is just that we (the avg people) do not understand what this means.
What it means is that we are a tiny speck of dust floating on a tiny rock in space and an object that has come from a distance that is so far away numbers wouldn't do it justice has just flew by earth closer than the distance between the earth and sun (1 AU). Some quick facts (from wikipedia), 100 years ago it was 561 AU away (Neptune is ~30 AU), its max speed was 196,000mph and when discovered it was going 'only' 100,000mph. Space/Astronomy is a beautiful thing when it comes to relative perspective to us humans.
Re: The first known object to enter our solar system from deep space
#90I recommend anyone interested read the paper which is available as a preprint from Nature (for the moment): goo.gl/cSsHoj (link shortened due to having an embedded access token). Some tantalizing points from the paper: - They constrained the aspect ratio in two dimensions to be 10:1:C, but the third dimension is unconstrained. Depending on which axis the object is rotating around, C could either be 1, or 20. Either o…
- strange aspect ratio - tensile strength (it should be cartwheeling, there is a physics theorem which means everything tends to this configuration) - large flat or concave sections. - others are reporting it's mostly metallic. I'll say it: did anyone consider an alien spaceship? The paper seems to deduce "asteroidal" by ruling out other things, rather than by a positive measurement of rock spectra, unless I've misre…
> I'll say it: did anyone consider an alien spaceship?
See some interesting back-and-forth on this here: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/7ealls/solar_systems...