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‘Oumuamua, Thin Films and Lightsails
11–20 of 112 posts
Re: ‘Oumuamua, Thin Films and Lightsails
#12No
This is a law, I think, maybe with the capital L and maybe with very few exceptions: every headline that states a yes or no question can be truthfully answered with 'no'.
Re: ‘Oumuamua, Thin Films and Lightsails
#13No
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Re: ‘Oumuamua, Thin Films and Lightsails
#14Re: ‘Oumuamua, Thin Films and Lightsails
#15No
This is a law, I think, maybe with the capital L and maybe with very few exceptions: every headline that states a yes or no question can be truthfully answered with 'no'.
Betteridge's law of headlines
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...
Re: ‘Oumuamua, Thin Films and Lightsails
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a law, I think, maybe with the capital L and maybe with very few exceptions: every headline that states a yes or no question can be truthfully answered with 'no'.
Betteridge's law of headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...
Thanks!
Re: ‘Oumuamua, Thin Films and Lightsails
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a law, I think, maybe with the capital L and maybe with very few exceptions: every headline that states a yes or no question can be truthfully answered with 'no'.
Betteridge's law of headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...
Re: ‘Oumuamua, Thin Films and Lightsails
#18Given Oumuamua's well documented non-gravitational acceleration, what was the cause? That's the key question this article – and the paper it cites – are investigating.
Comet-like off-gassing has been mostly ruled out due to the lack of observed dust or gas around the object, as well as lack of effect on spin. The paper suggests that a highly reflective 0.3mm-thick film 20m in diameter could be consistent with the observed acceleration. This also happens to be similar in dimensions to lightsails that we've proposed (and in a few cases deployed) here on/around Earth.
Of course, it's just one hypothesis. Could the acceleration be due to some other effect, like the Pioneer anomaly? Sure. Unfortunately, there's no way to ever confirm it given that the object is beyond our ability to observe or catch. But it's still very interesting speculation.
Re: ‘Oumuamua, Thin Films and Lightsails
#19While I find it highly unlikely, it does raise an interesting point about Fermi's Paradox, which is that even if there were enough alien life out there for its discarded light sails to go hurtling through our solar system every once in a while, we might not get any more evidence of it than this article demonstrates. So, it's almost certainly not a light sail, but even if it were, we would never know.
Re: ‘Oumuamua, Thin Films and Lightsails
#20As another comment pointed out, the actual title of this article is ‘Oumuamua, Thin Films and Lightsails. While the question "Could ‘Oumuamua be debris from a technological civilization, a discarded lightsail?" occurs in the article, this title does the article a clickbaiting disservice.
("Is the interstellar object Oumuamua a lightsail from an alien civilization? " at the time of this comment)