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'Oumuamua: Interstellar Object: Rendezvous With Rama?

Just a little fortean note... I've been reading Jacques Vallee's book 'The Invisible College' and there's a crazy chapter about the bizarre UMMO affair (which you can read about here https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2019/02/speak-louder-asked-the-aliens-from-planet-ummo/ )
where Aliens were apparently communicating with people in Spain, sending them letters in the post (no doubt written down by helpful human beings) - you know, the usual thing about galactic federations and so on, and strangely, misusing the term 'light year' as a measurement of time (maybe the aliens failed their exams).

Anyway, mad stuff, but I can't help noticing that UMMO sounds remarkably like Oumuamua, and I wondered whether it was a strange fortean coincidence or whether the namers of the object knew about it and thought it would be funny to allude to that...
 
EnolaGaia said:
Newly published research results claim 'Oumuamua wasn't an asteroid, comet or alien probe. Its observed characteristics are more consistent with its being a shard of nitrogen ice knocked off an exoplanet, probably due to a collision or impact event. ...
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Newly published research papers dispute the 'nitrogen iceberg' explanation proposed for 'Oumuamua ...
Interstellar visitor 'Oumuamua wasn't a nitrogen iceberg, Harvard astrophysicists say

The first-known interstellar object in our solar system, known as 'Oumuamua, continues to defy scientific explanation. Now, one of the latest explanations for what the cigar-shaped interloper is made of — a "nitrogen iceberg" — has also been shot down.

In a recent attempt to explain 'Oumuamua, researchers described it as a nitrogen iceberg. But astrophysicists at Harvard say that's impossible, and explain why in a new paper published Nov. 5 in the journal New Astronomy. ...

As the flat, wonky-shaped object passed the sun, tumbling end-over-end, it accelerated at a pace that couldn't be explained by the gravitational pull of the sun. ...

Not only are scientists unsure what propelled 'Oumuamua on its slingshot visit into and out of our solar system, they also don't know what it is made of.

But in March, Arizona State University astrophysicists Alan Jackson and Steven Desch said they had figured it out. The team published two papers announcing that 'Oumuamua was most likely a chunk of nitrogen ice that popped off a Pluto-like planet somewhere outside our solar system ...

The theory would solve the invisible propellant mystery, because as 'Oumuamua approached the sun, evaporating nitrogen gas would have pushed the object and been invisible to telescopes. ...

But not everyone agrees with this conclusion.

"The moment I saw those papers, I knew that there was no physical mechanism for it to work. And not even the error budget for it to work," said Amir Siraj ...

According to Siraj and his co-author, Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb, Jackson and Desch's conclusion that 'Oumuamua is a nitrogen iceberg is flawed because there isn't enough nitrogen in the universe to make an object like 'Oumuamua, which is somewhere between 1,300 and 2,600 feet (400 and 800 meters) long and between 115 and 548 feet (35 and 167 m) wide. ...
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FULL STORY: https://www.livescience.com/oumuamua-not-nitrogen-iceberg
 
Of course there is enough nitrogen in the universe to make an object of that size. There is easily enough nitrogen in the Earth's atmosphere (and in Pluto's crust) to make such an object.

What is unlikely is the formation of a pure nitrogen iceberg. No known mechanism could explain this, nor any realistic speculative process. So I agree, the azotic iceberg theory is dead in the water.
 
Watch out Oumuamua, we're coming for you... maybe.

Scientists Develop Plan to Chase and Catch Up To Interstellar Oject ’Oumuamua’​

Paul SeaburnJanuary 23, 2022
Like one those mysterious people who shows up uninvited at a party, proceeds to blow everyone away with their karaoke singing, and then disappears before anyone can get their name or learn where they came from, the interstellar object ‘Oumuamua blasted through our solar system in 2017, surprising astronomers with its origin, strange oblong shape, weird behavior and hasty exit. No one got a good look at it, prompting many to speculate it may have been a spacecraft that may or may not have been occupied. Fortunately, astronomers collected enough data on ‘Oumuamua that they believe a craft from Earth could track it and even catch up to it. Recently, one such group of scientists laid out a plan and a schedule to do just that.
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https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2022...-and-catch-up-to-interstellar-oject-oumuamua/
 
The solar system probably has thousands of captured interstellar asteroids
By Matt Williams

While ‘Oumuamua is the first known example of an interstellar asteroid reaching our Solar System, scientists have long suspected that such visitors are a regular occurrence. Aiming to determine just how common, a team of researchers from Harvard University conducted a study to measure the capture rate of interstellar asteroids and comets, and what role they may play in the spread of life throughout the Universe.

In the end, they determined that a few thousands captured objects might be found within the Solar system at any time – the largest of which would be tens of km in radius. For the Alpha Centauri system, the results were even more interesting. Based on the likely rate of capture, and the maximum size of a captured object, they determined that even Earth-sized objects could have been captured in the course of the system’s history.

https://www.universal-sci.com/headl...-thousands-of-captured-interstellar-asteroids

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1801.10254.pdf

The calibrated number density of interstellar objects,
based on the detection of ‘Oumuamua, allowed us to
estimate the capture rate of such bodies by means of
three-body interactions for both our Solar system and
stellar binaries such as the nearby α-Centauri. We have
found that a few thousand captured interstellar objects
might be found within the Solar system at any time.
The largest of these would be an object with radius tens
of km. For the α-Centauri A&B system, we have found
that even Earth-sized objects could have been captured
through this process and that Moon-sized objects may
currently exist in circumstellar orbits. Our results depend to the power-law index for the size distribution of
interstellar objects, which is currently unknown.
 
On the one occasion I messaged Avi Loeb, he made a similar comment. If ‘Oumuamua was not an extreme statistical anomaly but a typical event, we might expect to see many, many similar objects passing through the region of the solar system (just because of random chance). Some of these objects would be captured by interaction with planets in our system and remain here for us to examine.

Hyperion might be one - it is weird enough.
l33rg70nbbr81.jpg
 
eburacum said:
On the one occasion I messaged Avi Loeb, he made a similar comment. If ‘Oumuamua was not an extreme statistical anomaly but a typical event, we might expect to see many, many similar objects passing through the region of the solar system (just because of random chance). Some of these objects would be captured by interaction with planets in our system and remain here for us to examine.

Hyperion might be one - it is weird enough.
l33rg70nbbr81.jpg
Click to expand...
This seems a sound assumption. However, what was unique about Oumuamua is not that it was an interstellar visitor but rather its shape, unknown composition and acceleration without evidence of a 'tail'. That shouldn't get lost amidst the noise.
 
Is there a wholly satisfactory theory for the equatorial mountain ridge on Iapetus? It's orbit suggests a capture as well I believe, as does Triton's; but that resembles Edgeworth Kuiper objects.

And could something with a lot of velocity explain Uranus' odd axial tilt?

Just thinking that it would be cool if Hyperion turned out to be one huge fossil.
 
A suggested natural explanation.

An interstellar object that is currently on its long journey back out of our Solar System has a completely natural explanation, in spite of its odd quirks.

The peculiar acceleration of 'Oumuamua, new research confirms, can be fully attributed to the release of molecular hydrogen gas.

This, according to astrochemist Jennifer Bergner of the University of California, Berkeley and astrophysicist Darryl Seligman of Cornell University, is further evidence that the cigar-shaped chunk of rock started off as a planet seed before being booted off to wander the galaxy untethered to a star.

It's an elegant solution, one that, the researchers write, "can explain many of 'Oumuamua's peculiar properties without fine-tuning" – or resorting to extraordinary claims about the object's nature. ...

https://www.sciencealert.com/strang...erious-interstellar-visitor-finally-explained
 
ramonmercado said:
A suggested natural explanation.

An interstellar object that is currently on its long journey back out of our Solar System has a completely natural explanation, in spite of its odd quirks.

The peculiar acceleration of 'Oumuamua, new research confirms, can be fully attributed to the release of molecular hydrogen gas.

This, according to astrochemist Jennifer Bergner of the University of California, Berkeley and astrophysicist Darryl Seligman of Cornell University, is further evidence that the cigar-shaped chunk of rock started off as a planet seed before being booted off to wander the galaxy untethered to a star.

It's an elegant solution, one that, the researchers write, "can explain many of 'Oumuamua's peculiar properties without fine-tuning" – or resorting to extraordinary claims about the object's nature. ...

https://www.sciencealert.com/strange-acceleration-of-mysterious-interstellar-visitor-finally-explainet Avi Loeb has to sau=y about it...
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Not sure Avi Loeb is going to take this lying down...
 
Paul_Exeter said:
Not sure Avi Loeb is going to take this lying down...
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Yep!

Anyway, today I thought I’d briefly mention the recent paper that once again debunked Galileo Project director Avi Loeb’s claim that the interstellar object ‘Oumuamua was an alien spaceship. The article, published two days ago in the journal Nature, argued that ‘Oumuamua was an icy planetesimal that experienced irradiation by cosmic rays and was therefore “broadly similar to Solar System comets.” In short, it was likely a comet and not an alien spacecraft.

Only a few weeks ago, Avi Loeb teamed up with Jay Stratton, the defense contractor employee who once headed up—and bungled—the Pentagon’s hunt for UFOs (he couldn’t tell stars from spaceships), to put out a paper alleging that interstellar objects “may” be extraterrestrial spaceships that emit UFOs as probes for exploring the Earth. Loeb immediately contacted Earth Sky, a science publication, to “suggest” he be given space to rebut the Nature article ahead of a paper he dashed off for publication. He argued that the Nature authors miscalculated the surface temperature of ‘Oumuamua and it therefore could not be a comet.

I don’t have the physics background to evaluate these claims, but I think it’s worth noting that Loeb attacked the Nature paper very quickly at a time when he is ramping up to start promoting his next book, due out in August from HarperCollins, owned by Rupert Murdoch, who also runs the parent of UFO-obsessed Fox News and played patron to ufologists on his NatGeo channel. Its topic? Oh, right: interstellar objects as alien spacecraft. ...

https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/...ng-oumuamua-natural-ahead-of-new-book-release
 
ramonmercado said:
...at a time when he is ramping up to start promoting his next book, due out in August from HarperCollins, owned by Rupert Murdoch, who also runs the parent of UFO-obsessed Fox News and played patron to ufologists on his NatGeo channel. Its topic? Oh, right: interstellar objects as alien spacecraft. ...

https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/...ng-oumuamua-natural-ahead-of-new-book-release
Click to expand...
At least, he's saying it's about interstellar objects as alien spacecraft but I'm not falling for that one again... Last time I fell for his BS, I ended up buying a book that was puffed out with a tedious egotistical autobiography - a book that I never finished so I have no idea if he ever got around to discussing 'Oumuamua in detail.
 
In an article about Bill Ackerman's feud with Harvard, Avi Loeb's belief in an Alien Messiah.

That night, Ackman and Oxman hosted a dinner at their Upper West Side apartment, a gathering of World Minds, an “invitation-only community” funded by the media conglomerate Axel Springer that is a kind of rotating series of Davos-lite dinner parties — the kind of places where VIPs discuss the world’s problems over cocktails (Oxman is a member of the group’s advisory board). The featured guests were two members of the World Minds network: David Petraeus, former CIA director and current partner at the private-equity firm KKR, and Avi Loeb, an Israeli astrophysicist at Harvard. The war in Gaza had been raging for a month, and Petraeus gave a dispiriting talk about the broader geopolitical fallout. Later in the evening, in a call for dialogue among different tribes, Paola Antonelli, a curator at MoMA, offered a thought. “Love the aliens!” she said.

Loeb took the idea and suggested looking for hope from above. “My personal belief is that the Messiah will arrive, not necessarily from Brooklyn, as some Orthodox Jews believe, but rather from outer space,” Loeb told the group. The extraterrestrial Messiah’s message, he said, would be to stop fighting over territory here “because there is much more real estate available throughout the universe.” Back on Earth, Loeb listened while Ackman said he was hopeful that Gay would respond to his letter. “I’m a theoretical physicist, so I get paid to make predictions, and I said to him, ‘I don’t think you will,’” Loeb told me. “The last thing Harvard would do is admit their mistakes.” ...

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/bill-ackman-war-harvard-mit-dei-claudine-gay.html
 
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