Is Oumuamua an asteroid? An explanation weirder than aliens

The space object named Oumuamua (Hawaiian for "scout" or "messenger") got lots of overheated attention this week after a multiple Harvard scientist co-authored a paper suggesting the interstellar visitor could have been an alien spacecraft powered by solar radiation pressure.

In fact, the new paper by Abraham Loeb and postdoctoral researcher Shmuel Bialy, who is still working through the peer review and publication process, seems to have more attention than the original solar system from beyond.

But the truth is no-one knows exactly what it is, and the idea that it might be strangest theory put forward.

Earlier, research teams suggests Oumuamua might be a probe and used radio telescopes to scan for signals of artificial signals. Those observations all cam back negative. Sadly we'll probably be able to investigate Loeb and Bialy 's hypothesis fully as Oumuamua has been traveling around the world.

Astrophysicist and cosmologist Katie Mack (no relation) suspects the fact it's difficult to disprove the "it might be aliens" theory might be part of the calculation behind publishing the paper.

IF TRUE, "the chance that it will be backfire is small, and the low-probability high-reward payoff might be tempting to make it Looking at the eyerolls of your colleagues, "

So if you come with something in the category of "not * obviously * wrong and also HUGE IF TRUE," the chance that it will be backfire is small, and the low-probability high-reward payoff might be tempting enough to make it worth looking at the eye-rolls of your colleagues.

– Katie Mack (@AstroKatie) November 6, 2018

In other words, anytime something mysterious happens that is difficult or impossible to perform follow-up studies on, you can not completely rule out aliens as a plausible explanation. Furthermore, anytime aliens could be a plausible explanation for something, someone is sure to step in and fill that vacuum. This time a big-deal Harvard astrophysicist and cosmologist that void, which caused the internet to convulse.

There is no hard evidence Oumuamua is an alien spacecraft – Loeb just happened to a so-called "light sail" craft, like the one the Breakthrough Starshot initiative is working on. (Breakthrough Starshot's advisory committee.)

Loeb and Bialy's paper is just one of literally dozens about Oumuamua out there. It is not the first to be proposed and it is proposed that the origin of the invention is to come up with something else.

Here's a brief rundown of the other theories for where Oumuamua came from.

The invisible universe made visible?

Oumuamua could actually be a big hunk of "macroscopic dark matter." Dark matter is the unseen material thought to make up much of the universe.

"Contrary to widely held misconceptions," "Case Study," University of Perimeter Institute and Stanford .

The researchers said that their hypothesis was true, and that it was possible for them to go to Mercury, Earth and the moon. No one has yet confirmed any changes to those planetary paths.

Crumbs from another solar system

One of the most popular explanations for Oumuamua's origin in the literature is the idea that it's left over from the planetary training process around another distant star. Basically an interstellar asteroid from across the cosmos.

It is thought the early days of any solar system is turbulent and chaotic. With pieces of debris all over the place some might even get knocked out of the system altogether.

One recent study used new data to try narrow down exactly which star systems the vagabond object may have been exiled from.

Another theory suggests Oumuamua may come from the scraps of planetary formation, but from the leftovers of a planet's destruction.

"I conclude that the origin of Oumuamua as a fragment of a planet was tidally disrupted and then ejected by a dense member of a binary system could explain its peculiarities," the SETI Institute's Matija Cuk writes in an article in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The idea here: a run-in with a dense red dwarf star may have ripped a planet apart, flinging at least one cigar-shaped piece in our direction.

A comet out of a coma

Another early explanation was that we were not sure of any other type of comedy we had ever seen and lacking an obvious tail. It did, but accelerates on its way out of the solar system like a comet.

Various researchers have been suggested to be dead comet nucleus, a comet that has been fragmented in a manner similar to the above mentioned explanation or just a comet-like uh … thing.

Not that alien after all

There have been some suggestions that Oumuamua might not even be that alien. Some of the most recent research explores the idea of ​​a solar system. One paper went so far as to suggest its odd behavior and trajectory could be explained by a "scattered" by a "yet unknown" planet in our solar system.

Yes, that's a reference to what's sometimes called Planet 9 or Planet X, another oft-confused and conflated concept that tends to drive the internet wild.

A follow-up paper by noted Jason Wright astronomer from Penn State throws water on the idea that an unseen planet might have flung.

As long as it stays on its current path, the mystery of humanity's first interstellar fly-by will remain. Well, unless' Oumuamua suddenly makes a U-turn.

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