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Scientists quickly observed the object before it disappeared, moving at 196,000 miles per hour, and their observations prompted more questions than answers about the “strange ball,” as the scientists called it.
Now the latest research indicates that it is part of a Pluto-like planet from another solar system.
After the discovery, the creature was named “Oumuamua, Hawaii” for a messenger from the distant past. Initially, astronomers predicted it would be a comet.
But the dry, rocky and reddish thing stretching out in the shape of a cigar, and as thick as a three-and-a-half-high city building, had no comet tail, and its swaying motion could not be explained. . The debate has arisen as to whether it is an interstellar asteroid or a comet.
Of course, there has been speculation that Oumuamua was a type of alien probe.
“Oumuamua looked like a comet in many ways, but in many ways it was quite strange that mystery surrounded its nature, and speculation raged about what it was,” said Dish, who is also a professor at Arizona State University, in a statement.
Missile impact indices
Oumuamua differed from comets in several ways, including the fact that they had a slower speed when they entered our solar system. If he had traveled in interstellar space for over a billion years as a comet, it would have had a higher speed.
It was flattened like a pie, unlike comets which looked like cosmic snowballs. The object also received a bigger boost, known as a “rocket impact,” than what comets feel when their ice evaporates when they encounter the sun.
The researchers wondered if “Oumuamua” was made of ice in various combinations, which allowed them to calculate how quickly ice turned into gas when the sun pressed against the object. It also allowed Desch and Jackson to determine the mass, shape and impact of the missile and to assess the extent of reflection from the ice.
“We realized that a piece of ice was going to be a lot more reflective than people had thought, which means it could be smaller,” Dish said. The same missile effect would give “Oumuamua a bigger boost, bigger than comets usually pass.”
In our solar system, most of Pluto’s and Saturn’s moon, Titan, are covered in nitrogen ice. If the object is largely composed of nitrogenous ice, a solid part of it could have been ejected from a Pluto-like planet after colliding with another planetary system.
The same has happened in our solar system, including Pluto and the objects in the Kuiper Ice Belt. This distant belt of objects at the edge of our solar system had a greater mass than it is today.
When Neptune migrated to the outer solar system billions of years ago, it disrupted the orbits of those bodies which were a holdover from the formation of the solar system. Thousands of Pluto-like bodies covered in nitrogen ice collided.
If this could happen in our solar system, then it is very likely that the same event will occur in another solar system, which means that “Oumuamua could be the first sample of an exoplanet born around another star, brought on Earth, ”the authors write while studying.
Jackson, who is also a research scientist and researcher at Arizona State University, said in a statement: “It is likely that he came out of the surface in a collision about a half ago. – billion years old and kicked out of its original system. ”
“Being made of frozen nitrogen also explains the unusual shape of ‘Oumuamua. As the outer layers of nitrogen ice evaporated, the body shape gradually flattened out, just like a bar of soap would when the outer layers were rubbed in during use.
Researchers estimate that Oumuamua’s encounter with our Sun caused it to lose 95% of its mass.
Strange speculation
Theories that “Oumuamua is an alien object or piece of alien technology” have circulated since the advent of the body and are the basis of the new book “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Extraterrestrial” by Avi Loeb, professor of science at Harvard.
The researchers said in this study that there was no evidence to prove that “Oumuamua is a strange technology”, although it is natural that the first object observed from outside our solar system reminds of aliens.
“But it’s important in science not to jump to conclusions,” Desh said. “It took two or three years to find a natural explanation – a fraction of nitrogenous ice – that matches everything we know about Oumuamua. It has not been long in science and it is too early to say that we have exhausted all natural explanations.
However, the Oumuamua method was a unique way for scientists to study an object outside of our solar system. Learning more about Oumuamua, which disappeared from public view in December 2017, may further shed light on the formation and formation of other planetary systems.
“Until now, we had no way of knowing if other solar systems had planets similar to Pluto, but now we have seen part of one of them pass close to Earth,” said Desh.
Future telescopes, such as the Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile, will regularly scan the sky visible from the southern hemisphere, increasing our ability to detect more interstellar objects entering our solar system. The observatory will be operational from 2022.
“Hopefully within a decade or so we’ll be able to get statistics on the types of objects passing through the solar system, and whether masses of nitrogenous ice are as rare or 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 that have happened in our history.
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