Oumuamua is the first object scientists have discovered passing through our solar system that came from another star system similar to our own.
Oumuamua was spotted moving between the Sun and the planet Mercury in November 2017. Now, one year later, there is still a lot of mystery surrounding this celestial rock. Although scientists are still thrilled by its discovery, there is a disagreement about what it is and how it got here.
Harvard University has written a new research paper which suggests that an alien life form may have sent Oumuamua. The article has not yet been published.
However, based on what many scientists are saying, and what astronomers know about space rocks, Oumuamua appears to be behaving like other space rocks.
Scientists do know that Oumuamua moved very quickly, at a speed of approximately 136,000 kilometres per hour.
Michele Bannister, an astrophysicist at Queen’s University Belfast in Northern Ireland, told VOA that scientists only had around three weeks to observe Oumuamua before it moved out of sight.
It has a reddish colour, and it measures around 400 meters long. What’s more, it is ten times longer than it is wide. In comparison to other space objects, 400 meters is actually quite small. Thus, spotting Oumuamua was a significant success for astronomers.
Thomas Zurbuchen, an official with NASA, America’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration said that for a long time NASA has believed interstellar objects were out there, but this marks the first time they have direct evidence they exist.
As Oumuamua travels through space, it has been changing speed and direction by itself. Bannister explained that this behaviour is called non-gravitational acceleration.
Yet there is nothing unusual about this kind of behaviour. Bannister stated that the space rock is most likely filled with the things that comets and asteroids usually have a lot of, like carbon monoxide and the highly poisonous chemical cyanide.
When objects of this kind get close to the sun, they release gases at high speeds, which is known as “sublimation.” This may be why Oumuamua looked like it was moving under its own power.
However, experts will never really know
Although that is one possible explanation, Harvard scientists Shmuel Bialy and Abraham Loeb gave a few other possible reasons for the space rock.
With their mathematical estimate, the rock is less than one millimetre thin and very wide. One of their explanations proposes that Oumuamua is sort of like a sail on a sailboat. They think it may use energy from the sun to move through space.
The Harvard scientists suggested this since other studies proposed that Oumuamua is not a comet or releasing any gas. And Bialy and Loeb have done the math as a way to support their claims with evidence.
Another possibility suggested by the Harvard scientists is that Oumuamua is a probe sent to our solar system by an alien nation.
Oumuamua was spotted moving between the Sun and the planet Mercury in November 2017. Now, one year later, there is still a lot of mystery surrounding this celestial rock. Although scientists are still thrilled by its discovery, there is a disagreement about what it is and how it got here.
Harvard University has written a new research paper which suggests that an alien life form may have sent Oumuamua. The article has not yet been published.
However, based on what many scientists are saying, and what astronomers know about space rocks, Oumuamua appears to be behaving like other space rocks.
Scientists do know that Oumuamua moved very quickly, at a speed of approximately 136,000 kilometres per hour.
Michele Bannister, an astrophysicist at Queen’s University Belfast in Northern Ireland, told VOA that scientists only had around three weeks to observe Oumuamua before it moved out of sight.
It has a reddish colour, and it measures around 400 meters long. What’s more, it is ten times longer than it is wide. In comparison to other space objects, 400 meters is actually quite small. Thus, spotting Oumuamua was a significant success for astronomers.
Thomas Zurbuchen, an official with NASA, America’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration said that for a long time NASA has believed interstellar objects were out there, but this marks the first time they have direct evidence they exist.
As Oumuamua travels through space, it has been changing speed and direction by itself. Bannister explained that this behaviour is called non-gravitational acceleration.
Yet there is nothing unusual about this kind of behaviour. Bannister stated that the space rock is most likely filled with the things that comets and asteroids usually have a lot of, like carbon monoxide and the highly poisonous chemical cyanide.
When objects of this kind get close to the sun, they release gases at high speeds, which is known as “sublimation.” This may be why Oumuamua looked like it was moving under its own power.
However, experts will never really know
Although that is one possible explanation, Harvard scientists Shmuel Bialy and Abraham Loeb gave a few other possible reasons for the space rock.
With their mathematical estimate, the rock is less than one millimetre thin and very wide. One of their explanations proposes that Oumuamua is sort of like a sail on a sailboat. They think it may use energy from the sun to move through space.
The Harvard scientists suggested this since other studies proposed that Oumuamua is not a comet or releasing any gas. And Bialy and Loeb have done the math as a way to support their claims with evidence.
Another possibility suggested by the Harvard scientists is that Oumuamua is a probe sent to our solar system by an alien nation.
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