Interstellar Object 'Oumuamua' is 'Unexpectedly' Speeding Up

a reply to: LoneCloudHopper2

(even speeding up slightly)

Nope. Not slowing down quite as much as it should have as your source quite explicitly states:

`Oumuamua is still slowing down because of the pull of the Sun -- just not as fast as predicted by celestial mechanics.

Seems like confusion over semantics is getting more attention than the actual observations, so why not double down and ominously proclaim...

Oumuamua came from the Center of the Universe!!!

And now it's headed home...

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: LoneCloudHopper2

Nope. Not slowing down quite as much as it should have as your source quite explicitly states:

`Oumuamua is still slowing down because of the pull of the Sun -- just not as fast as predicted by celestial mechanics.

This a thousand times.

No matter what shortened and clickable headline you see, Oumuamua is not increasing in velocity. For all intents and purposes it is experiencing thrust due to out-gassing and this is acting against the gravitational/mass pull of the sun.

The sun is pumping the brakes but Oumuamua hasn't taken it's foot off the gas.

Maybe you're right. Apologies if that is the case. It's too late now for me to look into this now. The scientist on CBC radio clearly stated that it was "speeding up." Perhaps it was speeding up at some point and then slowed down and this stuff had not been properly communicated to the public by the media?

a reply to: LoneCloudHopper2

I listened to the interview, there's a link to it on the CBC website.

She says what I quoted. She does not say the comet was "speeding up."

a reply to: Phage

Thanks Phage, now I don't have to listen to it.

On a related note though, it is always "speeding up" or "slowing down" based on your relative reference point.

Speculation in either direction doesn't really give us any progress on the mystery.

Hopefully we'll see the next one much earlier, while we still have time to plan a mission to it.

If we knew Oumuamua was coming, in 1990, we probably would have had at least one probe mission ready to be it's best friend, and piggy back out of the solar system, by the time it got here.