• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

'Oumuamua: Interstellar Object: Rendezvous With Rama?

FTMB posts concerning 'Oumuamua's pass through our solar system have now been consolidated into this dedicated thread.
 
Here's the latest news on 'Oumuamua's probable starting location. Based on new and revised data, 4 candidate star systems were nominated as the object's likely source.

Interstellar object 'Oumuamua traced to four possible stellar homes
The interstellar object 'Oumuamua came from somewhere outside the solar system, but where has remained a mystery.

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, however, have identified four stellar candidates from which the object may have originated.

Astronomers first spotted 'Oumuamua in 2017. Unfortunately, by the time scientists noticed the oblong visitor, it was already moving away from their telescopes, headed back to interstellar space.

Despite the brief visit, scientists were able to gather enough data related to 'Oumuamua's trajectory to retrace its journey through the Milky Way. ...

Previous attempts to retrace 'Oumuamua's path failed to account for the object's outgassing. Analysis of the interstellar object suggests 'Oumuamua features characteristics of both an asteroid and a comet. And like a comet, 'Oumuamua's ice was sublimated -- heated and turned to gas -- as it passed by the sun.

The outgassing process caused 'Oumuamua to accelerate slightly. The newest attempts to retrace the object's path were the first to account for this outgassing acceleration.

To determine where 'Oumuamua might have come from, astronomers also turned to stellar data collected by the Gaia mission. Scientists modeled the paths of both 'Oumuamua and thousands of stars, looking for crisscrossing trajectories. ...

Astronomers identified four stellar candidates moving at slow enough speeds. Fast-moving stars don't usually lose orbital control of large objects.

While all of the stars are plausible homes for 'Oumuamua, astronomers acknowledged they have yet to identify a smoking gun. They may be able to identify more candidates after Gaia's third data release, scheduled for 2021, which will feature a wealth of new data on stellar velocities.

Scientists have previously suggested the interstellar object was ejected from a binary star system, while others have argued 'Oumuamua was slung into interstellar space by interactions between giant planets. ...

"Ejection of 'Oumuamua by scattering from a giant planet in one of the systems is plausible, but requires a rather unlikely configuration to achieve the high velocities found," researchers wrote in their paper. "A binary star system is more likely to produce the observed velocities. None of the four home candidates have published exoplanets or are known to be binaries."
Click to expand...

SOURCE: https://www.upi.com/Science_News/20...ur-possible-stellar-homes/9951537885927/?sl=7
 
Oumuamua fascinates me. I don't know where I sit on whether it's artificial or not, but if I had to make a decision I'd be inclined to go with the idea that it's an old spaceship that perhaps once contained beings of some description, and is perhaps now drifting somewhat out-of-control (hence the occasional tumbling that has been described).

That's what I'd like to think it is, anyway. :)
 
A new theory about Oumuamua

Could 'Oumuamua be an extraterrestrial solar sail?
November 1, 2018 by Matt Williams, Universe Today

Artist’s impression of the first interstellar asteroid/comet, “Oumuamua”. This unique object was discovered on 19 October 2017 by the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope in Hawaii. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser
On October 19th, 2017, the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System-1 (Pan-STARRS-1) in Hawaii announced the first-ever detection of an interstellar asteroid, named 1I/2017 U1 (aka, "Oumuamua). In the months that followed, multiple follow-up observations were conducted that allowed astronomers to get a better idea of its size and shape, while also revealing that it had the characteristics of both a comet and an asteroid.

Interestingly enough, there has also been some speculation that based on its shape, 'Oumuamua might actually be an interstellar spacecraft (Breakthrough Listen even monitored it for signs of radio signals!). A new study by a pair of astronomers from the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) has taken it a step further, suggesting that 'Oumuamua may actually be a light sail of extra-terrestrial origin.

etc
Click to expand...

https://phys.org/news/2018-11-oumuamua-extraterrestrial-solar.html
 
Schrodinger's Zebra said:
Oumuamua fascinates me. I don't know where I sit on whether it's artificial or not, but if I had to make a decision I'd be inclined to go with the idea that it's an old spaceship that perhaps once contained beings of some description, and is perhaps now drifting somewhat out-of-control (hence the occasional tumbling that has been described).

That's what I'd like to think it is, anyway. :)
Click to expand...

I know what you mean.

It is frustrating in the extreme about the timing of this visitor. In just a few decades from now it is likely that humans will have the ability to send a spacecraft to study a visitor like this at short notice. As it is now, all we could manage were remote observations. What would we have seen if we could get closer? Who can truly tell.

Its high speed and shape are seemingly consistent with ideas for a flyby research mission. The tumbling is further consistent with a mission gone wrong. On the other hand, they are also consistent with it being an unusual asteroid. Only a close study would have told us more for sure.
 
the echoes with planned/proposed technology in some of those theories are interesting ...
 
aliens.png
 
did i imagine the harvard post ?

again the mention of similarities to plans and designs we already have "in flight" are interesting ... will we send such a structure through a wormhole at some point in the future ?
 
henry said:
did i imagine the harvard post ?

again the mention of similarities to plans and designs we already have "in flight" are interesting ... will we send such a structure through a wormhole at some point in the future ?
Click to expand...
I posted it then deleted it because I saw the content had already been covered in the video above
 
Bigphoot2 said:
A new theory about Oumuamua
https://phys.org/news/2018-11-oumuamua-extraterrestrial-solar.html
Click to expand...

I'm having trouble reconciling prevailing interpretations of Oumuamua's configuration and composition with the notion of a light sail - at least to the extent we humans have conceptualized a light sail to date.

A light sail (in 20th century human terms) would exhibit two key characteristics:

- It would be relatively symmetrical around a center point (e.g. a circle or square, rather than an elongated rectangle) so as to maximize surface area and simplify light source targeting in an artificially boosted initial launch phase.

- It would be relatively lightweight to facilitate getting 'pushed' to speed by light alone.

Oumuamua's shape was theorized to be quite elongated, with a length-to-breadth ratio of up to 10:1.

Analyses of Oumuamua's reflected light and trajectory shift, combined with a lack of detectable outgassing, suggest it was solid, dense, and quite possibly composed of metallic compounds of the sort associated with planetary crust.
 
EnolaGaia said:
I'm having trouble reconciling prevailing interpretations of Oumuamua's configuration and composition with the notion of a light sail - at least to the extent we humans have conceptualized a light sail to date.

A light sail (in 20th century human terms) would exhibit two key characteristics:

- It would be relatively symmetrical around a center point (e.g. a circle or square, rather than an elongated rectangle) so as to maximize surface area and simplify light source targeting in an artificially boosted initial launch phase.

- It would be relatively lightweight to facilitate getting 'pushed' to speed by light alone.

Oumuamua's shape was theorized to be quite elongated, with a length-to-breadth ratio of up to 10:1.

Analyses of Oumuamua's reflected light and trajectory shift, combined with a lack of detectable outgassing, suggest it was solid, dense, and quite possibly composed of metallic compounds of the sort associated with planetary crust.
Click to expand...

There's an article here, Could ‘Oumuamua be an alien lightsail? which I think puts the lightsail theory in context versus our presuppositions about the shape of the object.

I think many of us have perhaps too literally or too easily taken the previous possible interpretations of its dimensions as an accurate representation of the object when there are no direct sightings which would confirm them. Other interpretations can also be valid based upon the available observations.

The possibilities raised by the article leave me wishing even more than before that this close pass had happened in just a few decades (and that I was alive by then!) so that we would have had the technological ability to send off a probe at short notice to take a close look.
 
Last edited:
markrkingston1 said:
I think many of us have perhaps too literally or too easily taken the previous possible interpretations of its dimensions as an accurate representation of the object when there are no direct sightings which would confirm them. Other interpretations can also be valid.
Click to expand...
All we have are artistic interpretations, yes.
 
I read somewhere that there is discussion, tentative I'd suggest, about sending a probe to Oumuamua. If I recall, there was a suggestion that it could theoretically be done in window of the next ten years, beyond that it'd be too far away.
 
Oumuamua is the only such extrasolar object we've definitely / directly detected, and then only because it passed relatively close to the earth.

Somewhere I read it's theorized as many as 10,000 extrasolar objects visit our solar system, passing within the orbit of Neptune, each year.
 
It is surprisingly easy to produce a light sail. Most people are unaware that you can literally paint the surface of a body in space white and it will become a light sail. Every body in space is being bombarded by photons, and these do have a measurable effect on the trajectory of objects in a vacuum, normally in excess of gravity (which is an amazingly weak force, for example, despite having a whole planet's gravity to hold us in place we humans can still jump). Of course while light sails work well within close proximity to a star such as our Sun, the further out you go, the less effective the light sail becomes.
 
Seattle21 said:
I read somewhere that there is discussion, tentative I'd suggest, about sending a probe to Oumuamua. If I recall, there was a suggestion that it could theoretically be done in window of the next ten years, beyond that it'd be too far away.
Click to expand...

I'd like this to happen very much indeed.
 
markrkingston1 said:
Wow, this is an especially thought-provoking article. I'd go so far as to say that this is a brave article for a professional astronomer to write. For the "chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University" to write it and stand behind it is actually quite promising from a Fortean perspective.
Click to expand...

I agree with your sentiment. In my experience, most scientists are eager to find that genuine anomaly in the data that changes the whole game (for that way lies Nobel Prizes). Of course they have to wade through a lot of guys in ape suits making crop circles and spontaneously igniting swamp gas to get there.
 
The unusual shape and velocity of the object are both significant, but more telling is the fact that it appears statistically unlikely. From that article:
In a paper published a decade ago, we predicted an abundance of interstellar asteroids that is smaller by many (two to eight) orders of magnitude than needed to explain the discovery of ‘Oumuamua, assuming it’s a member of a random population of objects. Put another way, ‘Oumuamua implies that the population of interstellar objects is far greater than expected.
Click to expand...
This would be an extremely lucky encounter, if the number of asteroids in interstellar space can be explained by the mechanisms operating in our solar system. Something's not right.
 
eburacum said:
The unusual shape and velocity of the object are both significant, but more telling is the fact that it appears statistically unlikely. From that article: This would be an extremely lucky encounter, if the number of asteroids in interstellar space can be explained by the mechanisms operating in our solar system. Something's not right.
Click to expand...

There is every chance that there have been similar objects that have gone undetected passing through our solar system in the past. The shape is somewhat unusual, as items of reasonable size and gravity will generally become more bulbous as they accrue matter over time. As to the velocity, I can't see what would be odd about it, as mass in a vacuum can go very fast indeed. For example, the Earth itself is travelling at 67,000 mph but it feels like we are standing still. As to the operations of our Solar System, we don't have much information even about the Kuiper Belt at the limit of our System. We have some ability to detect bodies in space via perturbations in orbits caused by their gravity. It is a shame we didn't have a rocket ready to go and investigate Oumuamua.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top