Associate Professor Of Astronomy And Astrophysics: Oumuamua Could Be An Alien "Von Neumann" Probe

a reply to: TrueBrit


Spoilsport.

It's still an awesomely important discovery.

www.scientificamerican.com...

originally posted by: 38181
Does anyone have a theory on how this object got its speed? That's incredibly fast. What's the speed of Voyager 1 and 2?

Going on a limb here, but IF it is a probe, maybe the designers make it shut down during travel (tumbles because who cares or to keep it camouflaged as a asteroid) then wakes up when it nears planets of interest?

I don't know but I find this object pretty interesting.

If it has traveled through the galaxy, then it could have been accelerated by the gravitational pull of stars. Perhaps it was ejected during a collision between two planets or when a star went supernova. Imagine a blob of metal being ejected by a exploding stellar core, then cooling down when in contact by surrounding gas clouds.

According to theorists:

It has been hopping from one solar system to another for millions of years.

Which might mean it is traveling too fast to be trapped by a typical solar system gravity well.

Waiting for more clues, you would think they would have done an analysis of the density that might hint at its origin.
They believe the Earths moon was the result of an early collision, the moon being too massive to reach escape velocity.
All I've heard so far is that this asteroid does not reflect more than 6% of the probing radiation.

originally posted by: Cauliflower
According to theorists:

It has been hopping from one solar system to another for millions of years.

Which might mean it is traveling too fast to be trapped by a typical solar system gravity well.

Waiting for more clues, you would think they would have done an analysis of the density that might hint at its origin.
They believe the Earths moon was the result of an early collision, the moon being too massive to reach escape velocity.
All I've heard so far is that this asteroid does not reflect more than 6% of the probing radiation.

Density requires knowledge of mass and volume, neither of which is even remotely known.

Its discovery wasn't an accident. new search programs were recently established for potential Earth-threat objects, and statistically about one of these non-local objects ought to be spotted every year.

Note that the discovery was quickly announced and speculations soared openly. That's the real non-conspiratorial world.

a reply to: JimOberg

The object only reflects 4% of radiation in the sunlight spectral range.
Some estimates seem to indicate a half mile long squirt with only an 80 meter cross section.
If the orbital path was tracked with sufficient accuracy the mass should be known.
I don't see anything conspiracy worthy yet unless there is something hidden in the observational statistics.
Reports vary so much it would be difficult for anyone to form much of a scientific opinion.

originally posted by: Cauliflower
a reply to: JimOberg


If the orbital path was tracked with sufficient accuracy the mass should be known.

How?

originally posted by: JimOberg

originally posted by: Cauliflower
a reply to: JimOberg


If the orbital path was tracked with sufficient accuracy the mass should be known.

How?

By measuring the deflection from a straight-line path (caused by the Sun's gravity) as it passed.

Harte

Any "probe" will likely be nano in size. It's just more efficient. It's important to segregate the drama-based themes of TV shows from a practical reality, though it's compelling to suspend disbelief and go with the "Independence Day" tropes.

As one poster said, Astronomers are almost compelled to share findings.

No tricks, I think this story -- if true -- is amazing.
The interstellar object Oumuamua appears to have a slight course disturbance that the astronomers attribute to comet-like gas release that they can't see, because 'what else could it be'. This has really piqued my interest because the tracking arc is so small that the disturbance ought to be pretty powerful to be noticeable. I'm going to check this out, but I wanted to share right away. THIS is the sort of thing you look for in unnatural objects as well. As I said -- trust me! -- this is no trap, this is really intriguing. And it may turn out to be an almost-but-not-entirely burnt out comet... maybe.

www.space.com...

The fact that Oumuamua appeared to have no tail or coma when it was nearest the Sun, when these should have been the most conspicuous, argues against it being a comet. A change in course, now, when it much farther out, is a little puzzling. Just how much has the orbit of the object changed? How reasonable is it that this degree of change is due to low level comet activity?

a reply to: Ross 54

What if the mixture of chemicals causing the out gas situation are of a sort which are more active when NOT heated? What if it is the cooling that causes the out gas of the particular chemicals concerned? If that is even possible, which gases do you suppose would fit the bill?

Hey Osiris, missing something?

originally posted by: Maverick7
Any "probe" will likely be nano in size. It's just more efficient.

Like a bacteria. Drop it onto a planet, let stew for a few billion years until it evolves into intelligent creatures and they start "contaminating" other potentially life-supporting planets. Something that small you might even be able to shunt through a tiny wormhole all over the universe.

Or better yet, blast it into the past so it lands on Earth and evolves into us. Time loop!

It's playing the long game.

a reply to: TrueBrit

The characteristic of that gas would likely be something, that under normal atmosphere would be very close to the transition point between liquid or gas. As it loses that heat, it would have to transition from liquid to gas, which is counter intuitive to our current chemistry understanding. (In terms of Boyle's laws)

In theory, I would guess your postulation could be correct if aided by a catalyst or a third chemical force.

My favorite thought on this:
Maybe the face of Oumuamua that is facing away from the sun has gas transitioning back to liquid.
So, as the gas on that side collapses back into Oumuamua, it pulls Oumuamua forward, at a faster rate than the back face of Oumuamua transitions.
That differential would definitely need to be considered, because if the face IS away from the sun, it would (100% assuredly) transition faster than the side that is facing the sun. This would create a runaway feedback.
(Oumuamua should be accelerating right now.)
As it pulls away from the sun, the face that is facing away from the sun would freeze/cool faster and faster.
There will be a plateau for this, and Oumuamua will decelerate after that plateau.

Or there may be a third reagent or catalyst.

So, as the gas solidifies back to liquid state, there would need to be other elements there that react only with that liquid form, converting at least part of it back to gas. This would apply observed propulsion, and should not be 100% efficiency.

If we could determine the complete chemical makeup of the object, we could test that theory.

IE if Oumuamua has some other chemical present that interacts with that liquid, and we can model for what "should" occur in that reaction. If we know the third reagent.

If what we observe does not match up under that scrutiny, and has an efficiency significantly higher or lower than predictions.

That implication would be very convincing for artificial craft.



(In fact, every object that moves away from the sun, which has any gas, SHOULD have this exact same behavior. Astrophysics/Mathematical idea here. There may be a coefficient, which can be mathematically determined to predict the rate of this interaction.)

Nature is actually sharing the paper for free.

Non-gravitational acceleration in the trajectory of 1I/2017 U1 (‘Oumuamua)

The resulting dataset provides dense coverage from discovery to 2018 January 2, when the object became fainter than V≈27 at a heliocentric distance of 2.9 au.

So, their calculations are based on observational data from October 19, 2017 to January 2, 2018.

-dex

a reply to: Archivalist

Interesting...

I should have thought of Boyle's Law myself though, what a dolt. Forgive me, the weather is warm, and air conditioning is... rare here to say the least, so I may not have been in full possession of reason at the time of posting!

a reply to: JimOberg

yep, now i am 100% convinced its a spaceship
weird that they dint see any heat emmisions from it, that means that its using exotic heat radiating techiniques that we don't know

a reply to: DexterRiley

I'd like to break this paper down into simplistics here. Anyone that wants to have a good rudimentary grasp of what these findings indicate I'm about to bring this down to about a 4th grade level.

1. When we initially observed Oumuamua it did not have a typical ice tail (coma) like our commonly known comets. We didn't think it was a comet, based on this.
2. Based on it's observed acceleration and motion, they determined it is unlikely to be an asteroid. (It is not dense enough.)
3. Asteroids are more dense than comets. (Less density, implies more empty space within the object.)
4. Friction, drag, etc... were ruled out.
5. It's "tumbling rotation" could apply something called the Yarkovsky effect. This has to do with rotating bodies in space, having some sort of acceleration effect due to the spin. (Yarkovsky effect would not apply enough force to account for the observations.)
4. The findings would fit perfectly with a binary object system. AKA, if there were two separate objects, or if Oumuamua was in two pieces.
5. The downside to that, is that they used equipment capable of seeing objects magnitudes fainter than Oumuamua AND able to observe objects up to 100 times smaller than Oumuamua.
6. Even with that sensitivity, they have not found a second object.
7. Solar magnetic interactions were ruled out, they would not be able to account for this motion and acceleration. (Too small by a factor of about 10^5, 100,000 times too weak.)
8. Solar wind and solar pressure effects are also too small to account for it, by a few magnitudes.
9. They even tried to factor in the possibility that Oumuamua has some kind of surface composition that would distort optical observation. (It does not, as far as they can tell, and even if it did, still too small.)

So, even though we couldn't optically see a coma, ice tail, dust, or gas when initially observing Oumuamua... Our most likely guess is that the dust is so tiny, we can't see it.
So, comet is back on the board for explanation, but it has one major detractor. I wish we had an idea of how sensitive the equipment that looked for the coma was...

If that equipment was highly sensitive and we were confident that there is no gas or dust, etc... present...
Then that would mean it's accelerating due to, what may potentially(could, no guarantee) be, a completely unknown mechanism.

They seemed confident that the object was an asteroid, not a comet, even though it was thought much more likely that interstellar intruders should be comets. This level of confidence seems to indicate that the object was examined with sufficient sensitivity to know whether or not it had a tail or coma.

If the object was not visibly outgassing when nearest the Sun, it seems unlikely that outgassing when it was much further from the Sun would be strong enough to change its course. In any case, since the object was seen to be rotating chaotically, around all three axes.This would seem to dilute the effect of thrust, in any one direction, even further.