Unexplained interstellar visitor Oumuamua could be a piece of lost exoplanet

Since we received the visit of Oumuamua, the first interstellar object we found roaming our solar system, scientists were won over by it. He’s a confusing cosmic wanderer – so strange that some scientists have even postulated that it could be a piece of alien tech (although there is no real evidence for this.)

A new theory, which appears in two papers published Tuesday in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, postulates that the strange object could be a piece ejected from a Pluto-like planet that was kicked out of its home solar system there. about 400 million years ago. .

“This research is exciting in that we have probably solved the mystery of what Oumuamua is,” said Steven Desch, astrophysicist at Arizona State University and co-author of the new studies. “We can reasonably identify it as a piece of an ‘exo-Pluto’, a Pluto-like planet in another solar system.”

Oumuamua (Hawaiian for “scout” or “messenger”) was discovered in 2017 as it rounded the sun on its way out of our solar system. It was observed in October and November 2017 before disappearing into the dark.

And it was weird.

He exhibited strange behavior. Observations suggested it was cigar-shaped, and as it rounded the sun it picked up a lot of speed – more than expected – without showing any sign of gas leaking, a telltale marker of a comet.

Read more: Harvard’s Avi Loeb safer than ever that we’ve been visited by an alien spaceship

Desch and co-author Alan Jackson believe that in another planetary system, somewhere in space half a billion years ago, a collision between two cosmic bodies caused an explosive ejection of nitrogen ice. A pancake-shaped block was thrown out of his house and into the space between the planetary systems.

In the icy depths of the cosmos, this solid block of nitrogen would roam, slowly scaled by the radiation. As it entered our solar system and approached the sun, the nitrogen warmed up, giving it a bit of speed, while producing the cigar shape that Earth observers have noticed. Jackson says the heater would have flattened the object, as did the way the outer layers of a bar of soap are erased during use.

This is a neat explanation, which explains all the weirdness of Oumuamua, and it is an exciting hypothesis because it suggests that Oumuamua is the first piece of an exoplanet that visited our solar system.

Oumuamua’s reflectivity also matched what astronomers observed on Pluto and on Neptune’s moon Triton, which are rich in nitrogen. In a young, remote solar system, where bodies were constantly bumping into each other, it’s reasonable to assume that pieces were thrown for a mad race in space and we just saw one go by.

“We thought it was possible that there were plutos in other solar systems with nitrogen ice on their surfaces and that a piece of it could have entered our solar system and explained everything. what we saw, ”Desch said.

And that, he said, puts a damper on the theory of alien spaceships.

“Everyone is interested in aliens, and it was inevitable that this first object outside the solar system would make you think of aliens,” Desch said. “But it’s important in science not to jump to conclusions.”

So far, scientists have only discovered two interstellar objects. The second, 2I / Borisov, was found at the end of 2019 and was quite ordinary in comparison. It was almost certainly a comet, but it surprised scientists with unique characteristics.

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