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Alien Comet May Have Infiltrated the Solar System
New Scientist has a piece about Comet Machholz 1, whose uncommon molecular composition suggests, but does not prove, that it may be an interloper from another star system. "Comet Machholz 1 isn't like other comets. David Schleicher of the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, measured the chemical makeup of 150 comets, and found that they all had similar levels of the chemical cyanogen (CN) except for Machholz 1, which has less than 1.5% of the normal level. Along with some other comets, it is also low on the molecules carbon-2 and carbon-3."
Nuke it in orbit, it's the only way to be sure
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
Me thinks this news smells a bit like trying to get some funding...
Lets face it, even if we retrieved a sample and analysed it in a lab, we wouldn't be able to say with any real certainty where it came from. We could probably rule out a lot of places it didn't come from, but without sampling a variety of comets from a variety of local star systems, we won't have anything but speculation to compare it to.
Besides, its only speculation that suggests it didn't come from our own Kuiper belt in the first place - we don't know enough about that to be sure.
well, given that comets inhabit the outer reaches of our solar system already, it wouldn't take too much effort. Add in the vastness of space and the fact that gravitational attraction exists I'd conjecture that any body heading in our general direction would be captured by our gravitational pull. It wouldn't have to aim straight at us, just in the general vicinity.
I'm fairly certain that isotopes of carbon with those masses is impossible unless this comet also contains some neat subatomic particles with anti-mass as well.
The original article has it correct with the 2 and 3 as subscripts. Leave isotopic notation to isotopes.
Alas, I am becoming a god.
It's hardly surprising that we actually can get objects that originates from outside our solar system. There isn't much of a fence around the solar system.
What could be really interesting is to pick samples from this comet to check for more complex molecules. It's not really that we have seen our "own" comets all the way through yet, so we don't know much about possible variations.
We don't even know much about how the comets were created, and that means that there is a lot of uncertainty involved. A possible scenario is that the comets originates from a larger object that has cracked up, which may explain why most of them are similar in composition and that this new comet is from another source. Just compare the variations in composition of the planets we have in the solar system.
There is still so much to learn about the universe.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
There are no fences, but to a significant gravitational barrier to overcome when leaving the original star system. Also, to fall into orbit around or sun would require a third body to take away the excess energy. I guess this could be one of our planets, but on overall I'm suspecting more "boring" origins, such as a cold spot in our own solar system.
escape is really not a problem. Much of the "stuff" in our solar system was ejected into space as it foormed. Planets that were to close were either ejected or landed in the Sun. Today all that is left are the bits that were in stable orbits the rest is long gone. The fact that this could have been ejected from it's home is not a big deal but (1) the chance that it got here and (2) that it went into orbit around the sun are a (maybe) one in a billion chance. But then with a few billion commets a one in a billion chance might happen a few times