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First Interstellar Asteroid Observed


Outrider

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The Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) in Hawaii has discovered a visitor from afar. Pan-STARRS primary mission is to detect near earth objects that pose an impact threat but sometimes they get to do fun science like this.

The asteroid seems to come from the constellation Lyra, but the exact origin is still unknown. It has been named Oumuamua, Hawaiian for “a messenger from afar arriving first” and they think it has traveled millions of years to visit us.

https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/20/16679890/interstellar-asteroid-oumuamua-pan-starrs-solar-system

http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1737/

From the second link:

Quote

 

Karen Meech explains the significance: “This unusually large variation in brightness means that the object is highly elongated: about ten times as long as it is wide, with a complex, convoluted shape. We also found that it has a dark red colour, similar to objects in the outer Solar System, and confirmed that it is completely inert, without the faintest hint of dust around it.”

These properties suggest that `Oumuamua is dense, possibly rocky or with high metal content, lacks significant amounts of water or ice, and that its surface is now dark and reddened due to the effects of irradiation from cosmic rays over millions of years. It is estimated to be at least 400 metres long.

Preliminary orbital calculations suggested that the object had come from the approximate direction of the bright star Vega, in the northern constellation of Lyra. However, even travelling at a breakneck speed of about 95 000 kilometres/hour, it took so long for the interstellar object to make the journey to our Solar System that Vega was not near that position when the asteroid was there about 300 000 years ago. `Oumuamua may well have been wandering through the Milky Way, unattached to any star system, for hundreds of millions of years before its chance encounter with the Solar System.

 

 

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8 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

This post looks like a joke and if so, it's way over my head, I googled it and found nothing, please explain.

The death knell of any joke: being explained.

Nothing sophisticated about it, just a cheap poke at xenophobia. If it doesn't make sense it's because xenophobia rarely does so. 

4 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

Do we have a system immigration protocol? At the least we should find out where it's been, and what's been influencing it.

Obviously the Kuiper belt is too porous, we need to build it higher.

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18 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

This post looks like a joke and if so, it's way over my head, I googled it and found nothing, please explain.

To add to what Prometheus said the prefix xeno means foreign. 

8 minutes ago, Prometheus said:

Obviously the Kuiper belt is too porous, we need to build it higher.

And make the moon pay for it.

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On 11/21/2017 at 1:04 PM, Moontanman said:

Did anyone else think "Rendezvous with Rama" when they first saw this?  

Not me but...

On 11/22/2017 at 7:00 PM, Moontanman said:

What! I am the only one who reads classic Arthur C. Clarke? 

...somebody did:)

http://www.astronomy.com/news/2017/11/interstellar-asteroid-is-a-quarter-mile-long-red-beast

Quote

 

Corey S. Powell, an editor at OMNI and Aeon, compared that shape to Rama from Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendevouz with Rama, while Eric Betz of our sister publication Discover magazine likened it to the alien probe from Star Trek IV: oblong and rocky. (`Oumuamua probably wasn’t an alien probe, though, and it definitely wasn’t looking for whales.)  
 

New illustrations of interstellar asteroid Oumuamua are not going to do anything to dissuade those who think it should have been named 'Rama' instead. https://t.co/6fexQcMGHkpic.twitter.com/vekr57Y88K

— Corey S. Powell (@coreyspowell) November 20, 2017

 

 
BTW if you go to the link there are some cool visuals from Kitt Peak and Gemini Observatory. 
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Very cool. Thanks Strange!

I shall now attempt to embed a youtube video. It has some animations of Oumuamua plus a few words from Paul Choda who is manager for NASA's center for NEO studies and Kelly Fast (nice name for an astrophysicist) who is program manager. Paul says "we have been waiting for the discovery of an interstellar object for decades."

 

 

Ok that was a lot easier than I thought it would be. 

Edited by Outrider
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Obviously it is the shot up, shot out hulk of a Draconian Battle Cruiser.  The remaining interior hull core.  This explains how it got all that velocity.  It was running from something and did not completely escape.   This also explains why the thing came so close to Earth.  It was coming our way.  Somebody or something is protecting mankind.  That is all.  :)

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The Initiative for Interstellar Studies (i4is) is planning to build a probe to chase down Oumuamua and make some closeup observations. According to the i4is website they are a dedicated team of volunteers, committed to the vision of seeing interstellar flight achieved in the very near future.

Sounds impossible to me. The fastest thing ever built by man is the Voyager 1 and it is travelling at 17 km/s. Oumuamua is moving at 44 km/s and it already has a large head start. 

https://i4is.org/i4is-announces-project-lyra-mission-a2017-u1-interstellar-asteroid/

Quote

i4is is happy to announce a new project: Project Lyra. Lyra is the star constellation from which the interstellar asteroid  A/2017 U1 came from. According to current information, the object is smaller than 400m  in diameter and is currently travelling at 44km/s with respect to the sun, much faster than any human-made object to date. What can be more exciting than chasing this object with a spacecraft and making observations from a close distance? What secrets are hidden on this visitor from our galaxy? The velocity of the object makes it challenging to reach but this challenge might lead to new, innovative mission concepts.

 

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  • 1 month later...

We may now have an orgin for Oumuamua and its not as far away as first thought. Postdoctoral fellow Fabo Feng of the University of Hertfordshire claims that Oumuamua comes from a loose Stellar Association  known as the Local Association which is part of Pleiades. 

https://theconversation.com/how-i-discovered-the-origins-of-the-cigar-shaped-alien-asteroid-oumuamua-89577

Quote

We also have evidence for 'Oumuamua’s relatively young age from the colour of its surface. Outside of the protection of a star’s magnetic field, objects in space are bombarded with cosmic rays and interstellar dust and gas that gradually alter their surfaces and turn them very red in colour. But 'Oumuamua has a more neutral colour, suggesting it has only been impacted by cosmic rays for, at most, hundreds of million years rather than for the billions of years that our solar system has existed.

Also consensus has been building that Oumuamua is a comet with a cosmic ray baked on shell of hard rock with an icy core.

 

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  • 10 months later...
On 11/21/2017 at 10:58 AM, Outrider said:

The Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) in Hawaii has discovered a visitor from afar. Pan-STARRS primary mission is to detect near earth objects that pose an impact threat but sometimes they get to do fun science like this.

The asteroid seems to come from the constellation Lyra, but the exact origin is still unknown. It has been named Oumuamua, Hawaiian for “a messenger from afar arriving first” and they think it has traveled millions of years to visit us.

https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/20/16679890/interstellar-asteroid-oumuamua-pan-starrs-solar-system

http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1737/

From the second link:

 

There is speculation that the object is artificial because it was less than a milimetre thick, and accelerating for unknown reason after it rounded the sun.  If, as some are saying,  it was sent by a civilization as a probe is possible that the speed at which it was travelling through our solar system could be far less than what it had been travelling between the stars, perhaps it slowed down from a fantastic speed to look at us.  A NASA simulation shows it curving around the sun in time to look closely at earth.  Reports say there were no 'signals' from Oumuamua, but would earth science recognize those signals anyway?  Earth's space probes store data and then send them out at an opportune time, perhaps Oumuamua did the same?  Our scientists need to expand the way they think to include all possibilities, not just the known.  I've noticed this deficit in thought processes on many topics, we find it next to impossible to think beyond our own experience.  Another thought, while 1 milimetre is very thin to us, it might be very thick to another intelligent life form.     

On 1/7/2018 at 1:19 PM, Outrider said:

We may now have an orgin for Oumuamua and its not as far away as first thought. Postdoctoral fellow Fabo Feng of the University of Hertfordshire claims that Oumuamua comes from a loose Stellar Association  known as the Local Association which is part of Pleiades. 

https://theconversation.com/how-i-discovered-the-origins-of-the-cigar-shaped-alien-asteroid-oumuamua-89577

Also consensus has been building that Oumuamua is a comet with a cosmic ray baked on shell of hard rock with an icy core.

 

If Oumuamua is, as even some scientists are speculating because of its -1mm thickness, a probe sent by an intelligent civilization the 'aging' of the surface might not be a factor.   Ocean going vessels on earth have hull surfaces protected from natural aging like rust and barnacles by special coatings.  On earth the metal aluminum is said to heal itself of scratches by migrations of atoms.  Surely an advanced intelligence would anticipate the process of aging, even of damage from small particles, and found ways to for the material to heal itself as our skin does.  In fact, we seem to have it now on earth.  http://taberextrusions.com/self-healing-aluminum-coatings-now-a-reality/

Edited by coffeesippin
To add another thought.
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1 hour ago, coffeesippin said:

There is speculation that the object is artificial because it was less than a milimetre thick

There is no measurement or observation that indicates that it is that thin.  While that would be a requirement for the solar sail hypothesis to valid, this does not mean that it actually is that that thin.   There nothing about the measurements we have made of it that indicates that it is made from so thin a material.    You got the argument backwards.   It is "IF the probe were a light sail then it would need to be very thin", not "It is very thin, so it could be a light sail".

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14 hours ago, Janus said:

There is no measurement or observation that indicates that it is that thin.  While that would be a requirement for the solar sail hypothesis to valid, this does not mean that it actually is that that thin.   There nothing about the measurements we have made of it that indicates that it is made from so thin a material.    You got the argument backwards.   It is "IF the probe were a light sail then it would need to be very thin", not "It is very thin, so it could be a light sail".

Oumuamau has been exhibiting some anomalous accelerations that are of unknown cause. Outgassing is a possibility but such outgassing should be visible but none has been observed.  

db8f3c918b805dcd2ee1cf91aaceb5c6--aliens

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8 minutes ago, Moontanman said:

Oumuamau has been exhibiting some anomalous accelerations that are of unknown cause. Outgassing is a possibility but such outgassing should be visible but none has been observed.  

db8f3c918b805dcd2ee1cf91aaceb5c6--aliens

I'm aware of that.   I was addressing the fact that coffesippin seemed to think that we had actually determined that the object was only 1mm thick and from that hypothesized that it could be an alien craft. Whereas the reasoning goes " If we assume that the accelerations are due to it being some type of light sail, then the object would need to be very thin for that assumption to hold." 

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On 11/11/2018 at 11:48 PM, coffeesippin said:

There is speculation that the object is artificial because it was less than a milimetre thick

FTFY: There is speculation that it is artificial and would, in that case, be less than a millimetre thick. 

But there is no evidence nor measurement of this.

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10 hours ago, Strange said:

FTFY: There is speculation that it is artificial and would, in that case, be less than a millimetre thick. 

But there is no evidence nor measurement of this.

The speculation that Oumuamua is less than a mm thick comes from the fact that it was accelerating away from the sun as if it may be a 'light sail.'  However, what if it is NOT a light sail but is self powered, or gathers power from Dark Matter or Dark Energy?  Regarding the tumbing .. how much artificial gravity in the form of centrifugal force would be created at the ends where perhaps some small beings might be housed?  Some people want to discount 'imagination,' but without it science would still be in the dark ages.

On 11/11/2018 at 8:17 PM, Janus said:

There is no measurement or observation that indicates that it is that thin.  While that would be a requirement for the solar sail hypothesis to valid, this does not mean that it actually is that that thin.   There nothing about the measurements we have made of it that indicates that it is made from so thin a material.    You got the argument backwards.   It is "IF the probe were a light sail then it would need to be very thin", not "It is very thin, so it could be a light sail".

Yup you're right and thanks for correcting me.     I've had another thought about the acceleration and tumble, that if Oumuamua is artificial and under power (dark energy dark matter perhaps collected on the way) how much artificial gravity in the form of centrifugal force would be created in the ends by the tumble.  If beings are housed in the ends the 'gravity' might be created to make them more comfortable.   What if Omuamua slowed down radically to observe Earth in passing, and is speeding up to speeds we can't account for that would make interstellar travel for living beings possible?  

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