Interstellar Interloper (A/2017 U1)

[DAL59]

 

[regex]

I found it impossible to laugh at any of that guy's jokes, the delivery was that bad. Very informative though.

[PakledHostage]

3 hours ago, regex said:

I found it impossible to laugh at any of that guy's jokes, the delivery was that bad. Very informative though.

That's PBS SpaceTime. He does a good series on astrophysics topics but sometimes his delivery is a bit tedious. Worthwhile subscribing, though, if you like that sort of thing.

[_Augustus_]

I was reading an update on astrobiology.com about the Breakthrough Listen data coming out. One commenter made this excellent point:

"The most suspicious aspect is that it did a near perfect gravity assist. So, the easiest way to confirm or deny intelligent design is to answer the question: IS IT HEADED TO ANOTHER STAR? A perfect gravity assist is one that maximizes the gain in velocity, which is done at a deflection angle of 60 degrees. Oumuamua had a deflection angle of 66 degrees relative to the sun's direction of motion. By my estimates, approximating a periapsis distance just inside Mercury's orbit, Oumuamua picked up 28 km/s relative to the galactic core."

If it is somehow an alien object, it's definitely some sort of probe headed for somewhere else, not really meant for us.

[DAL59]

90 TB of data!  

[regex]

50 minutes ago, _Augustus_ said:

If it is somehow an alien object, it's definitely some sort of probe headed for somewhere else, not really meant for us.

Or it could be doing a general survey of several stars. Maybe it's swinging by Sol to adjust its trajectory to the next target.

[DAL59]

Quote

"Its never aliens."

 

[DAL59]

 

[DAL59]

Oh no so many predictable, misleading, clickbait articles.  

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/oumuamua-interstellar-visitor-alien-object-breakthrough-listen-latest-discovery-proof-a8116756.html

I hope we find another interstellar rock quick so we can stop all the hype and bad reporting.  

[kerbiloid]

We were too late to watch its perihelion burn.

Like 'Oumuamua says: Oh, Mua-ha-ha!

[Diche Bach]

We have been sending vessels into space for what? 60 some odd years. We anticipated that something like this was a possibility and yet, how prepared were we to (a) detect it in the first place or (b) respond quickly in order to maximize learning?

Not very prepared it seems. I hope this lesson sinks in for enough of us that we stop messing around and get our act together.

[DAL59]

1 hour ago, Diche Bach said:

We have been sending vessels into space for what? 60 some odd years. We anticipated that something like this was a possibility and yet, how prepared were we to (a) detect it in the first place or (b) respond quickly in order to maximize learning?

Not very prepared it seems. I hope this lesson sinks in for enough of us that we stop messing around and get our act together.

So we need to have a probe standing by to launch and intercept the next one.- named the Newton, hopefully(from Rama II)  The problem is, could we do it?  With slingshots and ion drives, we could have enough delta vee, but you would intercept it very far from the sun, so how would you power the ion drives?  

[kerbiloid]

We can count this all as a defeat 0:1.
They've sent an asteroid-sized projectile. We were(n't ?) ready neither to intercept it, nor just to recognize it in time.
The humankind should think about this.

Edited December 20, 2017 by kerbiloid

[Diche Bach]

On 12/19/2017 at 3:24 PM, DAL59 said:

So we need to have a probe standing by to launch and intercept the next one.- named the Newton, hopefully(from Rama II)  The problem is, could we do it?  With slingshots and ion drives, we could have enough delta vee, but you would intercept it very far from the sun, so how would you power the ion drives?  

I'm not an engineer, so I cannot answer the technicalities of how we do it. I am a behavioral/biological scientist and I can tell you: "we" as a species really need to appreciate the missed opportunity here. Even if that thing is a completely unremarkable hunk of rock, the details which might be gleaned from it based on an up close observation might well spark revolutions in multiple fields of science. But we will likely never know.

We can recognize that we are behooved for our own sake to be properly prepared in case another one is detected and do our best both to detect it earlier, and if possible intercept it, maybe even capture it?

 

[Green Baron]

Don't worry, we'll see more of these things (and others) as our telescopes and detection techniques get better.

We are just in the middle of the current telescope generation in terms of precision and resolution. Adaptive optics are being attached and calibrated to the telescopes, and so on. Every month a new discovery of something is published.

Moar data !

:-)

[Gkirmathal]

What I am still wondering, what also has been mentioned on astrobiology.com, have astronomers already figured it's outbound heading, or are investigating this aspect of Oumuamua.

Everything that is published about it does not go into that, or what it's inbound heading was. I think these two pieces of information would be rather interesting to investigate and could give insight in to solar formation. As it might well be a planetary shard from a collision in some pro-solar system out there..

[Green Baron]

The trajectory relative to the sun and a rough galactic course is in the wikipedia article ...

Moar detail:

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1711.09397.pdf

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1710.11364.pdf

astrobiology.com might not be the best source for hard facts ;-)

Edited December 21, 2017 by Green Baron

[Diche Bach]

@Green Baron: I hope you are correct and these things have actually been whizzing through for eons and we just didn't realize it.

[Green Baron]

Well, to be honest, it is not exactly my idea (i'm not that clever :-)), but some of the papers on that thing begin with a sentence like that. But if you look at it closer, since when do we muster the sky, and since when do we have things like the VLT. Pan Starrs, which produced the initial announcement, began mustering 2010 an finished the first batch in 2014.

But, yeah, i think that with for example the LSST, a big telescope dedicated to wide field surveys alone, data will explode.

Edited December 22, 2017 by Green Baron

[magnemoe]

20 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

Well, to be honest, it is not exactly my idea (i'm not that clever :-)), but some of the papers on that thing begin with a sentence like that. But if you look at it closer, since when do we muster the sky, and since when do we have things like the VLT. Pan Starrs, which produced the initial announcement, began mustering 2010 an finished the first batch in 2014.

But, yeah, i think that with for example the LSST, a big telescope dedicated to wide field surveys alone, data will explode.

It was expected, however all expected an comet. Comets will get thrown out of a solar system all the time 
We spotted one who got away earlier, as I understand it was also on an outgoing trajectory but slower and had passed Jupiter.
We got an weird asteroid, probably an impact fragment. 

[PakledHostage]

6 hours ago, Green Baron said:

Well, to be honest, it is not exactly my idea (i'm not that clever :-)), but some of the papers on that thing begin with a sentence like that. But if you look at it closer, since when do we muster the sky, and since when do we have things like the VLT. Pan Starrs, which produced the initial announcement, began mustering 2010 an finished the first batch in 2014.

The PBS SpaceTime video linked above by @DAL59 quotes a scientific paper that estimates a density of 700 trillion such objects per cubic parsec. The estimate was made taking into account the length of time that we have been looking and the amount of sky that we have been searching.

[FreeThinker]

On 27-10-2017 at 5:44 PM, kerbiloid said:

The interstellar medium average density is ~1000 atoms/cm³, so very unlikely.

source?

[kerbiloid]

5 minutes ago, FreeThinker said:

source?

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Межзвёздная_среда

Quote

Основная особенность МЗС — её крайне низкая плотность, в среднем 1000 атомов в кубическом сантиметре.

Quote

"A specific feature of the interstellar medium is its extremely low density, about 1000 atoms per cubic centimeter.

 

[Green Baron]

28 minutes ago, PakledHostage said:

The PBS SpaceTime video linked above by @DAL59 quotes a scientific paper that estimates a density of 700 trillion such objects per cubic parsec. The estimate was made taking into account the length of time that we have been looking and the amount of sky that we have been searching.

Without offending anybody, but really, how relevant are such guesses ? Do we have standard-density-parsecs now :-) ? It is, to say it clear, not serious to deduct any rule from a single observation. Those guys can't have much knowledge of how statistics work.

Our ability to detect such objects outside earth's orbit isn't that old enough. So, this was the first one observed long enough to allow for trajectory calculation. It may be that others are still hiding in the heap of yet unreviewed data and of course future observation with current and better equipment may reveal new ones.

[FreeThinker]

28 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Межзвёздная_среда

 

Quote

Основная особенность МЗС — её крайне низкая плотность, в среднем 1000 атомов в кубическом сантиметре.

Quote

"A specific feature of the interstellar medium is its extremely low density, about 1000 atoms per cubic centimeter.

 

Weird, according to atomic rockets, interstellar density is more like 1 molecule / cm3

Quote

The Sun has the misfortune to be located near the center of a huge region about 330 to 490 light-years in diameter called "The Local Bubble". The interstellar medium within the Local Bubble has a density of about 0.07 atoms/cm³, which is about ten times lower than in the rest of the galaxy. This makes a thin fuel source for a Bussard ramjet. The Local Bubble is thought to have been caused when the star Geminga went supernova about 300,000 years ago.

 

 

Edited December 22, 2017 by FreeThinker