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London, June 29 (PTI) & # 39; Oumuamua & # 39; – the first interstellar object found in the solar system – has been reclbadified as a comet, after scientists have undertaken a thorough review since its discovery last year.
the Very Large Telescope and other observatories, astronomers have found that the object is moving faster than expected. The measured speed gain is tiny and Oumuamua slows down again because of the Sun's attraction – but not as fast as predicted by celestial mechanics.
The team, led by Marco Micheli of the European Space Agency, explored several scenarios to explain the faster-than-expected speed of this particular interstellar visitor.
The most likely explanation is that "Oumuamua" discharges material from its surface because of solar heating – a behavior known as degbading. The thrust of this ejected material is supposed to provide the small but steady thrust that is sending Oumuamua off the solar system faster than expected – as of June 1, 2018, it travels at about 114,000 kilometers per hour.
Such degbading is a typical behavior of comets and contradicts the earlier clbadification of Oumuamua as an interstellar asteroid.
"We think it's a weird tiny comet, we can see in the data that its impulse decreases all the more as it moves from the Sun, which is typical for comets ", said Micheli
. Usually, when the comets are warmed by the Sun, they eject dust and gas, which form a cloud of matter – called coma (cometary) – around them, as well as the characteristic tail. However, the research team was unable to detect any visual evidence of outgbading.
"We have not seen any dust, coma or tail, which is unusual, we think that Oumuamua can evacuate coarse and unusual dust particles," said Karen Meech of University of Hawaii in the United States.
The team speculated that perhaps the small grains of dust that adorned the surface of most comets eroded during the journey of Oumuamua through interstellar space, with only larger grains of dust remaining.
Although a cloud of these larger particles is not bright enough to be detected, this would explain the unexpected change in speed of Oumuamua.
Not only is the hypothetical degbading of Oumuamua an unresolved mystery, but also its interstellar origin. Originally, the team made new observations on Oumuamua to pinpoint its path, which would probably have allowed it to trace the object up to its star system. kinship.
The new results mean that it will be harder to get this information. PTI MHN MRJ
MRJ
This is an unedited, unformatted feed from the Press Trust of India thread.
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