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intrepidity

(7,988 posts)
3. Here's Avi Loeb's thoughts
Thu Mar 23, 2023, 11:36 AM
Mar 2023

Seems the mystery remains for him.

https://avi-loeb.medium.com/is-oumuamua-a-hydrogen-water-iceberg-a5d815f61c86

Given that `Oumuamua was the size of a football field, it is unclear how a third of its total hydrogen mass can escape from a depth of tens of meters to its surface without pushing out water molecules along the way. Indeed, familiar comets show water vapor with dust. `Oumuamua cannot be a typical comet because it did not look like a typical comet.

As I summarized in a paper published in 2021, `Oumuamua showed other anomalies beyond its acceleration. The variation by a factor of ten in the brightness of reflected sunlight as it was tumbling every 8 hours, implied that it had an extreme shape, most likely disk-like and not cigar-like, according to a detailed analysis of `Oumuamua’s light curve in a 2019 paper by Sergey Mashchenko. This disk-like shape, favored at the 91% confidence level by Mashchenko’s analysis, is consistent with the flat membrane interpretation.


Altogether, it is fantastic to see the continuing interest within the mainstream of astronomy to explain the anomalous acceleration of `Oumuamua, more than 5 years after its discovery. It is good to have alternative models at hand as we search for the next `Oumuamua with the forthcoming Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) on the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.

The fundamental question that I am curious about, is whether `Oumuamua was natural or artificial in origin. If the next `Oumuamua appears artificial, then we might feel like home owners who identified all objects in their back yard as rocks, including those tennis balls which originated from the cosmic street and were thrown by our neighbors.

Sometimes, I feel like the kid in Hans-Christian Andersen folktale who suggested that “the emperor has no clothes”, while the “adults” watching the procession insisted that the emperor is dressed with fancy clothing. In my case, the emperor is `Oumuamua and the clothes are its invisible cometary tail.


Recommendations

0 members have recommended this reply (displayed in chronological order):

"...an abundance of molecular hydrogen..." indeed. dchill Mar 2023 #1
Okay. ChazInAz Mar 2023 #2
Here's Avi Loeb's thoughts intrepidity Mar 2023 #3
A new version of the swamp gas excuses. Irish_Dem Mar 2023 #4
In the vacuum of space, how would "outgassing" cause acceleration? Midnight Writer Mar 2023 #5
for every action... mike_c Mar 2023 #6
Thanks. Midnight Writer Mar 2023 #7
Oh, for chrissakes. PoindexterOglethorpe Mar 2023 #8
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