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The mysterious interstellar object Oumuamua of our solar system could actually be an extraterrestrial solar sail taken adrift, according to two scientists.
It has been a little less than a year since the astronomers announced the discovery of the very first object of detection of an interstellar object and were baptized 'Oumuamua, the Hawaiian word to illuminate.
According to Universe Today, a recently published article could show that his name would have been more appropriate than we would have ever imagined, since it suggests that it could be a drifting solar sail. in a space of extraterrestrial origin. The explosive claim was made by Shmuel Bialy and Professor Abraham Loeb, the latter being director of the Harvard Institute of Theory and Computing.
As we have seen in the past year, trying to clbadify "Oumuamua is a delicate task, to say the least. to have a meaning.
Last June, it was revealed that the object was gaining speed at the exit of the solar system, instead of slowing down as expected. At the time, it had been suggested that icy Oumuamua was heated by the sun, releasing the material, which gave it an extra boost.
The established theory does not make sense
However, Bialy and Loeb question this story by asking why, if Oumuamua was a comet, did he not clear gas when he was closer to the sun earlier when he was observed in a previous survey? If this phenomenon – called "degbading" occurred – it should also have caused a rapid change in its rotation that was not observed.
The pair rather suggests that for acceleration to occur, the object must be extremely thin – a few millimeters thick – and at a scale of several tens of meters. This would suggest a solar sail design similar to that proposed by the Breakthrough Starshot team during his trip to Alpha Centauri.
"Its origin could be natural (on the interstellar or proto-planet disk) or artificial (as probe sent for a reconnaissance mission in the inner region of the solar system)," the researchers wrote.
By calculating the dimensions necessary for the survival of a sail to cope with the perils of an interstellar journey, the researchers indicated that it would only need a maximum thickness of 0.9 mm and that it should be able to withstand collisions with grains of dust and other small particles. could get in touch with.
How could he have arrived here?
So, if it's a solar sail, how did it get here? Bialy and Loeb proposed that it be a real extraterrestrial junk drifting across the cosmos, explaining why no radio signal came from 'Oumuamua.
Written recently in American scientist In September, Loeb said: "This opportunity is a potential basis for a new frontier of space archeology, namely the study of vestiges of past civilizations of space.
"Finding evidence of space debris of artificial origin 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 meaning of human activity. "
While they even go so far as to suggest that this could have been an extraterrestrial reconnaissance mission in our solar system, Bialy and Loeb admit that there are still too many unknowns to prove categorically that he is of extraterrestrial origin. Even if it is still only pieces of natural debris, it could still change our understanding of the cosmos and what could have created such an object.
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