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Scientists rushed to observe the object before it vanished, moving at 196,000 miles per hour, and their observations prompted more questions than answers about the “weird,” as the scientists dubbed it. .
Now the latest research suggests it is a fragment of a Pluto-like planet from another solar system.
After its discovery, the object was nicknamed “Oumuamua, Hawaiian for” a messenger who comes from the distant past “. At first, astronomers expected it to be a comet.
But the cigar-shaped object, dry, rocky, and elongated, reddish, thick as a three-story building and half the length of a block, had no comet tail, and its tumbling motion did not. could not be explained. And a debate has emerged as to whether it is an interstellar asteroid or a comet.
And, of course, there was speculation that “Oumuamua was a type of alien probe.
“In many ways, Oumuamua looked like a comet, but it was quite strange in several ways that the mystery surrounded his nature, and speculation raged over who he was,” said Desch, who is also a professor at the ‘ASU, in a statement.
Rocket effect clues
“Oumuamua differed from comets in several ways, including the fact that it had a slower speed when it entered our solar system. If he had traversed interstellar space for over a billion years as a comet, it would have had a higher speed.
Its shape was flattened like a pancake, unlike comets which are like cosmic snowballs. The object also received a boost, known as the “rocket effect,” greater than what comets feel when their ice sheets vaporize when they encounter the sun.
The researchers wondered if “ Oumuamua was made of ice creams of different composition, which allowed them to calculate how quickly the ice creams would turn into gas when the object zipped by the sun. It also allowed Desch and Jackson to determine rocket mass, shape and effect, and to assess the degree of reflection of ice.
“We realized that a piece of ice would be much more reflective than people thought, which meant it could be smaller. The same rocket effect would then give ‘Oumuamua a bigger push, bigger than that of comets usually, ”Desch said.
In our solar system, Pluto and Saturn’s moon Titan are mostly covered with nitrogenous ice. If the object is largely composed of nitrogenous ice, it’s possible that a solid piece of it was dislodged from a Pluto-like planet after being impacted in another planetary system.
The same event has happened in our own solar system, including Pluto and objects in the Kuiper Ice Belt. This distant belt of objects at the edge of our solar system once had more mass than it does today.
When Neptune migrated to the outer solar system billions of years ago, it disrupted the orbits of those objects that were leftovers from the formation of the solar system. Thousands of Pluto-like objects covered in nitrogen ice collided.
If this could happen in our own solar system, it is highly likely that the same event would occur in another solar system, meaning that “‘Oumuamua could be the first sample of an exoplanet born around another star , brought to Earth, ”the authors wrote in the study.
“It was probably knocked down by an impact about half a billion years ago and thrown out of its parent system,” Jackson, also a research scientist and ASU researcher, said in a statement.
“Being made of frozen nitrogen also explains the unusual shape of ‘Oumuamua. As the outer layers of nitrogenous ice evaporated, the body shape would have gradually flattened out, as does one. bar soap when the outer layers are erased by use. “
Researchers estimated that Oumuamua’s encounter with our sun caused it to lose 95% of its mass.
Extraterrestrial speculation
Theories that ‘Oumuamua is an alien object or technological element have circulated since the appearance of the object, and this is the basis of the new book “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” by Avi Loeb, professor of science at Harvard University.
There is no evidence to prove that “Oumuamua is alien technology, said the researchers of this study, although it is natural that the first object observed from outside our solar system evokes aliens.
“But it’s important in science not to jump to conclusions,” Desch said. “It took two or three years to find a natural explanation – a piece of nitrogenous ice – that matches everything we know about ‘Oumuamua. It’s not that long in science, and far too early to say that we have exhausted all natural explanations. “
However, “Oumuamua has been a unique way for scientists to study an object outside of our solar system. Learning more about ‘Oumuamua, who disappeared from view in December 2017, may further shed light on the formation and composition of other planetary systems.
“Until now, we had no way of knowing if other solar systems had Pluto-like planets, but now we’ve seen a piece of an Earth pass,” Desch said.
Future telescopes, like the Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile, will regularly monitor the entire sky visible from the southern hemisphere, increasing our ability to spot more interstellar objects entering our solar system. The observatory will be operational from 2022.
“It is hoped that in ten years or so, we can acquire statistics on the types of objects that pass through the solar system and whether the pieces of nitrogenous ice are rare or as common as we have calculated,” Jackson said. . “Either way, we should be able to learn a lot about other solar systems and whether they have suffered the same types of collision stories as ours.
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