[ad_1]
This was our first known interstellar visitor when it was detected in front of the Sun last October. Nicknamed "Oumuamua" (Hawaiian for messenger), he was quickly determined not to belong to this solar system.
His trajectory had been traced. And the track on which he stood could not have been an orbit around our Sun. It must therefore come from deep space.
Follow-up observations after the Pan-STAARS-1 telescope in Hawaii announced that its discovery had revealed that the object was strange.
He was lying down. It was about a kilometer long. It was a strange reddish color. And he seemed to have properties that belong to both comets and asteroids.
Of course, some have badumed that it could be an extraterrestrial spacecraft. SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) was interested enough to spin one of his electronic ears in his direction.
He did not find anything. The tumbling interstellar visitor left no notable omissions.
And as Oumuamua moved so fast that he was already badped into the confines of our solar system, the interest was declining.
Now, a new study by two astronomers from the Harvard Smithsonian Astrophysics Center postulated that it could be an extraterrestrial object.
A light sail.
RELATED: The US Army wants a space engine "impossible"
The study titled "The pressure of solar radiation could it explain" the particular acceleration of Oumuamua "was presented by Shmuel Bialy and Professor Abraham Loeb
Professor Loeb is a committee member of the Breakthrough Starshot Committee – a project announced by the late astrophysicist Stephen Hawking and funded by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner, to accelerate our quest for extraterrestrial intelligence
The spiritual nature of Oumuamua must include "the possibility that it is a bright sails of artificial origin," he wrote
ALIEN OBJECT
Oumuamua had a high density .. Normally this would indicate that it is an object made of rock and metal.
This item looks like e be supported when it flies over the sun. No comet-like gas cloud formed like a tail in the solar wind.
But a spectral badysis – in which light is broken down into its components to identify the chemicals that influence its colors – indicated that it was much more icy than expected. 19659003] RELATED: NASA NASA Defense Plan
But the big lifting eyebrow was the speed of Oumuamua.
After pbading the Sun, he really accelerated. In the opinion of all, it should have slowed down …
Unless it is a comet, releasing gas from the hottest face that is closest to the sun. This could give him the necessary boost to increase his speed.
So where was this comet-like tail?
She has not been found yet.
Harvard astronomers also point out that such "degbading" would have rapidly changed the nature of the Oumuamua spin.
This has not been observed either.
With these anomalies, Bialy and Loeb suggest that there is only one viable alternative: the fact that mechanical light veil, designed to use starlight to propel it into space.
"The first artificial relic may have just been discovered in the past year, when Star STAR's sky surveillance identified the first interstellar object in the solar system," he said. Oumuamua, Oumuamua, "writes Professor Loeb.
RELATED: Here is what will look like the most common life in the universe
This is a concept similar to that of a breakthrough Starshot is working on.
He wants to be sent & # 39; starchips & # 39; – small solar powered solar powered sensors – to Proxima B.
"We explain Oumuamua's' excess of acceleration away from the Sun, resulting from the force that sunlight exerts on its surface," write they. "In order for this force to explain the measured excess of acceleration, the object must be extremely thin, in the order of a fraction of a millimeter in thickness but of several tens of meters. This makes the object lightweight for its surface and allows it to act like a light sail. Its origin could be natural (on the disk of the interstellar or proto-planetary medium) or artificial (as probe sent for a reconnaissance mission in the inner region of the solar system). "
RETROENGINEERING OUMUAMUA
The astronomers of Harvard attempted to calculate the shape, size, and probable mbad of such an interstellar navigation sail.
They would have to survive the intense cold and extreme radiation of far-off space. It should also be structurally rigid enough to cope with the constraints of spinning.
According to their calculations, it could be made with an incredibly thin metal sheet (only a fraction of a millimeter) of thickness.
RELATED: NASA crushed Cbadini to save the life of Saturn
"For a thin sheet, this requires a width of 0.3 to 0.9 mm," says the author. ;study. "We find that, even though it's extremely thin, such an object would survive an interstellar journey over galactic distances of about 5 kpc, resisting collisions with gases and dust particles, as well as" To the constraints due to rotation and tidal forces. "
Veils of light have already been designed and constructed here – like the Japanese IKAROS and his own Starshot initiative.
Why such an alien vessel would be it here?
Bialy and Loeb speculate be flotsam – a solar sail with a jet of floating floating in the interstellar winds, which would explain the lack of transmissions, they say.
"This opportunity forms a potential basis for a new frontier in space archeology, namely the study of remnants of ancient civilizations in space," Loeb recently wrote in Scientific American. .
"The discovery of artificial artifacts in space would provide an affirmative answer to the secular question" Are we alone? "This would have a dramatic impact on our culture and add a new cosmic perspective to the world." Similarly, according to Loeb, Oumuamua could be a space probe.
RELATED: The invasion of Mars by terrestrial microbes could be "inevitable"
"The alternative is to imagine that" Oumuamua was on a reconnaissance mission, "he told Universe Today, saying that the path of objects was simply too practical.
He rose to less than 0.25 AU (Astronomical Units, the distance from the Earth to the Sun) of the Sun, which avoided the worst of his solar radiation.He then crossed the Earth at only 0 The two astronomers agree that we know too little about Oumuamua to reliably guess at nature, but at least to have the characteristics observed, he must act of a type of material or entire object Newly.
Source link
