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Interstellar Visitor Found to Be Unlike a Comet or an Asteroid

quantamagazine.org

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Re: Interstellar Visitor Found to Be Unlike a Comet or an Asteroid

#81

Post by rbanffy »

mrfusion wrote: post #55
p2detar wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has always fascinated me. We can actually build giant spaceships (space stations) inside asteroids and use them for interstellar travel. All the resources we need, including ice would be at our disposal. Like traveling with your own mini-planet. Dirk Schulze had taken that as a subject into his sci-fiction book - Alien Encounter.

They’d make great protection from high speed space debris.

You'd still be better off by restructuring all the mass of the asteroid around your spaceship instead of building your ship inside the asteroid.

Re: Interstellar Visitor Found to Be Unlike a Comet or an Asteroid

#82

Post by rbanffy »

pilsetnieks wrote: post #11
sjclemmy wrote: post #3

I'm still convinced this is an alien probe. I mean look at that trajectory. 0.163 AU from Earth - what are the odds? The spinning is irrelevant surely - I mean, it's all relative, so as far as ’Oumuamua is concerned, we're spinning. Maybe it was spinning that way to stay aligned with a distant companion for communication.

If one were so inclined, they could argue that the spinning is in fact very relevant, as it would allow a static camera or other observation device a full 360° view along all axes.

Any civilization capable of building an interstellar craft would certainly have mastered the ability to move a camera by then ;-)

Re: Interstellar Visitor Found to Be Unlike a Comet or an Asteroid

#83

Post by tazjin »

checkyoursudo wrote: post #67
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's maybe worth pointing out the tumbling is a hypothesis used to explain variable brightness measurements and not something that was observed directly. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1712.00437.pdf For all anyone knows the intrinsic brightness was variable. (This is probably not very likely without some supporting spectroscopic anomalies. But still.) As for thrusters - that's the same problem as the comet and outgassing hyp…

If aliens could do this to make the object look inconspicuous, then why not make it look not suspicious as well? Someone just f'ed up the config files?

Who knows what kinds of things are flying through "their" systems? Maybe this thing is the most not suspicious object they could imagine ;-)

Re: Interstellar Visitor Found to Be Unlike a Comet or an Asteroid

#84

Post by rbanffy »

neuronic wrote: post #56
tomp wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From an energy perspective, it's likely better to build your own station (from an asteroid - or alternative, remove all the mass from the asteroid that you don't need) - that way, you're only accelerating exactly the mass that you need, not wasting any energy accelerating the rest of an asteroid.

I think he is talking about chilling on the asteroid while it follows its known trajectory undisturbed, simply because they are packed with useful resources we can gobble up while waiting. Asteroid are per definition not interstellar though (until Oumuamua?).

An interesting approach would be to send an automated ship builder robot fleet to dismantle an asteroid and board the fully furnished ship when it makes another close approach, and then boosting it to its final destination.

I'd love to see a scenario where we'd build robot terraforming fleets that'd land on an uninhabited planet, make it habitable, complete with spaceports, cities, factories, crops (all permanently tended for robots), build a couple extra fleets and launch to their next most promising targets.

And then, for some reason, humans lose interest in all that and someone else wakes up to find a universe full of 60's futuristic utopian planets nobody ever lived in.

Re: Interstellar Visitor Found to Be Unlike a Comet or an Asteroid

#85

Post by rbanffy »

inevitable2 wrote: post #10
szilardboy wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s special about 0.163 AU? Does it have a mathematical significance?

AU stands for Astronomical unit, and it's used for measuring distances in space smaller than light-years. 1 AU is the distance between the Earth and the Sun. 0.163 AU tells you how close it came to earth.

I'd prefer to use light seconds/minutes for that. Not only it's easier to grasp (0.163 AU seems awfully close, but 81 light seconds sounds reassuringly far) but it'll probably be more helpful when we have to communicate across these distances.

Re: Interstellar Visitor Found to Be Unlike a Comet or an Asteroid

#86

Post by krapp »

jimijazz wrote: post #62
yitchelle wrote: post #37

I am truly surprise that we don't get more interstellar visitors into our solar system. It kind shows how small our solar system is, or other way, how big the universe is.

I wouldn't be so sure we don't... Just because we don't see them with our 5 senses doesn't mean they are not here yet.

You do realize we're not limited to "our 5 senses" when studying the universe, right?

Re: Interstellar Visitor Found to Be Unlike a Comet or an Asteroid

#87

Post by p2detar »

rbanffy wrote: post #84
neuronic wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he is talking about chilling on the asteroid while it follows its known trajectory undisturbed, simply because they are packed with useful resources we can gobble up while waiting. Asteroid are per definition not interstellar though (until Oumuamua?).

An interesting approach would be to send an automated ship builder robot fleet to dismantle an asteroid and board the fully furnished ship when it makes another close approach, and then boosting it to its final destination. I'd love to see a scenario where we'd build robot terraforming fleets that'd land on an uninhabited planet, make it habitable, complete with spaceports, cities, factories, crops (all permanently t…

someone else wakes up to find a universe full of 60's futuristic utopian planets nobody ever lived in

Reminds me of the paperclips game [1]. Would be horrid to find those people wake up and find the universe transformed into nothing but paperclips. [1]

[1] http://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/index2.html

Re: Interstellar Visitor Found to Be Unlike a Comet or an Asteroid

#88

Post by krapp »

interfixus wrote: post #43
turbo_fart_box wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great series of books! Every time I see a thread about this big rock I think of Rama.

Beg to differ. Great book. Awful cheap hacks posing as sequels. I regret reading them - they've nearly ruined the original for me.

IIRC, the only reason the sequels exist is that fans (or maybe his editors) pointed out out that if the Ramans "do everything in threes" then there needed to be two more parts to the story. It was never planned as such, though.

Re: Interstellar Visitor Found to Be Unlike a Comet or an Asteroid

#89

Post by drewrv »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #38
xrayzerone wrote: post #4

I'll ask what everyone is thinking but won't say. If the acceleration is in fact being caused by artificial thrusters, what kind of thruster configuration can produce prograde acceleration while maintaining the observed tumble? And why would someone engineer this configuration?

It's maybe worth pointing out the tumbling is a hypothesis used to explain variable brightness measurements and not something that was observed directly. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1712.00437.pdf For all anyone knows the intrinsic brightness was variable. (This is probably not very likely without some supporting spectroscopic anomalies. But still.) As for thrusters - that's the same problem as the comet and outgassing hyp…

The odds that the first extra-solar object found is close to earth is really high, because they're easier to see if they're close.

Re: Interstellar Visitor Found to Be Unlike a Comet or an Asteroid

#90

Post by notsofastbuddy »

rbanffy wrote: post #79
interfixus wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beg to differ. Great book. Awful cheap hacks posing as sequels. I regret reading them - they've nearly ruined the original for me.

My personal theory is that Clarke's writing partners sedated and tied him inside a closet until the book was finished. That's the only way to explain how awful some of his last books were. Having said that, I liked Richter 10. Too bad the co-author died before they could write another one.

My heuristic is that anything co-written by Gentry Lee is not worth my time.
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