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Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory have stated that an interstellar asteroid Ouumaum was perhaps a fragmentation of an interstellar comet that had split up into pieces before To reach the Sun. The pre-print article of the researchers has been published on the arXiv website.
Previous studies have shown that when the object began to leave the solar system, its speed suddenly increased. This has led scientists to hypothesize that Ouumauia is actually an interstellar sailboat. In their new work, the researchers propose a new hypothesis on its origin.
According to them, Ouamuama is an interstellar comet fragment in parabolic orbit that should approach the Sun at an astronomical unit (distance from Earth to the star). However, such celestial bodies decompose very often before reaching perihelion, leaving porous fragments free of volatile substances.
Similar fragments also often turn chaotically around their axis, which can be observed in the case of Ouumauia. The acceleration of the same celestial body may be due to the action of solar radiation.
An asteroid was discovered in the solar system in October 2017 . The celestial body has an unusual cigar shape and its length is about 400 meters, or 10 times its width.
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