WOW! Recent extra-solar passerby -- a 'highly-elongated', maybe 'high-metal-content' object.

originally posted by: Lurker1

What cosmic forces would be required to form an asteroid of this shape?

Jesus?

ok i'm guessing.

originally posted by: Lurker1
Has anyone noticed the irony?

In the film "Contact", the first-ever alien communication came from Vega in Lyra.

Question for Mr. Oberg -

What cosmic forces would be required to form an asteroid of this shape?

All you're justified is asking is about an asteroid with this light curve. The shape remains a deduction from the observation, not a direct observation.

a reply to: JimOberg

I was just reading this thread and wondering that myself.

If this asteroid came out of nowhere and is headed back out to nowhere, ...

it had to come from somewhere,
like perhaps a planet or moon somewhere that exploded or was torn apart with enough force to send it zooming off into space.

If that is the case, then it would reason, at least in my mind, that there SHOULD be more pieces following along almost the same path. Kind of like buckshot from a shotgun.
The asteroid is long and skinny, like a splinter off of something that exploded.

originally posted by: JimOberg

originally posted by: Lurker1
Has anyone noticed the irony?

In the film "Contact", the first-ever alien communication came from Vega in Lyra.

Question for Mr. Oberg -

What cosmic forces would be required to form an asteroid of this shape?

All you're justified is asking is about an asteroid with this light curve. The shape remains a deduction from the observation, not a direct observation.

I'm not a scientist. I don't understand what you mean. Can you explain what this light curve is and what causes it?

a reply to: thepixelpusher

Bellus and Zaira - When Worlds Collide

Classic Sci Fi

www.dailymotion.com...

I Wiki'd it, so I sort of have an idea about it.

Linky - en.m.wikipedia.org...

originally posted by: Lurker1

originally posted by: JimOberg

originally posted by: Lurker1
Has anyone noticed the irony?

In the film "Contact", the first-ever alien communication came from Vega in Lyra.

Question for Mr. Oberg -

What cosmic forces would be required to form an asteroid of this shape?

All you're justified is asking is about an asteroid with this light curve. The shape remains a deduction from the observation, not a direct observation.

I'm not a scientist. I don't understand what you mean. Can you explain what this light curve is and what causes it?

Light curve is just the brightness of the object plotted over time. It's much too small to see the actual shape.

This chart shows whence and whither on the celestial sphere the object is moving.



Since it takes millions of years to move from star to star, the stars that are NOW in the direction it came from -- Vega and others -- were NOT in that direction when it began its journey.

a reply to: Darkblade71 The above post was in response to your good question.

a reply to: Lurker1

The shape is the LEAST of the puzzles.

What origin could have stripped it of ALL volatiles so that its pass closer to the sun than Mercury -- probably its first stellar flyby since its origin -- shows NO TRACE of any cometary outgassing. None. The birthing event must have been VERY hot, molten rock hot. The shape may be a consequence of THAT condition.

This entire discovery is unf**king AWESOME,
and this forum is the best venue I can imagine for speculating on it.

a reply to: JimOberg

I'm going to be turkey-distracted in coming days so may not be able to rapidly respond. We're only now emerging from significant home damage and repairs from flooding during Hurricane Harvey.

So they did a spectrograph image of this but released no elemental information? That is interesting.

originally posted by: JimOberg
a reply to: Lurker1

The shape is the LEAST of the puzzles.

What origin could have stripped it of ALL volatiles so that its pass closer to the sun than Mercury -- probably its first stellar flyby since its origin -- shows NO TRACE of any cometary outgassing. None. The birthing event must have been VERY hot, molten rock hot. The shape may be a consequence of THAT condition.

This entire discovery is unf**king AWESOME,
and this forum is the best venue I can imagine for speculating on it.

I respect your professional opinion. ALL of those things are interesting, but what caused its shape is particularly interesting to me.

Thanks, Mr. O.

Rendezvous with Rama...for reals 😮

originally posted by: Baddogma
a reply to: Phage

What size batteries does THAT take?

*points for "Flesh Gordan" reference ... I DID pass the old fart meme test, right?

I think those batteries from Stargate Atlantis would be the only thing...

a reply to: Chronon

Except it didn't slow down.

eso1737

Preliminary orbital calculations suggested that the object had come from the approximate direction of the bright star Vega, in the northern constellation of Lyra. However, even travelling at a breakneck speed of about 95 000 kilometres/hour, it took so long for the interstellar object to make the journey to our Solar System that Vega was not near that position when the asteroid was there about 300 000 years ago. `Oumuamua may well have been wandering through the Milky Way, unattached to any star system, for hundreds of millions of years before its chance encounter with the Solar System."

Something that caught my eye......

Where have I heard this before, Betty and Barney Hill?

Hmmmmm...also the tag for the report is most significant as well, for me ....

Eso 1737

a reply to: Komodo
Did you miss the part where is says that Vega wasn't there when the thing was.

originally posted by: JimOberg
a reply to: Lurker1

The shape is the LEAST of the puzzles.

What origin could have stripped it of ALL volatiles so that its pass closer to the sun than Mercury -- probably its first stellar flyby since its origin -- shows NO TRACE of any cometary outgassing. None. The birthing event must have been VERY hot, molten rock hot. The shape may be a consequence of THAT condition.

This entire discovery is unf**king AWESOME,
and this forum is the best venue I can imagine for speculating on it.

It is odd---core ejecta from a very large scale planetary collision? How rare would that be, and why are we seeing it? What happens when a solar system with a rocky planet happens to go supernova? Has anybody simulated this? You'd obviously get massive ablation on the planet on the hot side (and not the other), and that could impart a significant momentum, and stresses might break it apart.

There remains the other mystery---where are the ordinary interstellar comets from other solar system's Oort clouds? Many of our current Oort cloud comets are ejected on hyperbolic orbits after interacting with Jupiter & Sun. Should happen in other solar systems too. We should have seen one of those ejected comets by now on a hyperbolic orbit, but we haven't.

a reply to: mbkennel

Space is big. Really, really big. As the saying goes.

Odd though, it seems that we have seen no rogue comets. At least since we've had the ability to backtrack their orbits.