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Interstellar Object 'Oumuamua' Appears To Be Wrapped In An Organic Insulation Layer (theguardian.com)
dryriver writes: Oumuamua is the cigar-shaped object -- about 400 meters long and only 40 meters in the other dimensions -- that originated from somewhere else in the Galaxy and visited our Solar system while moving at nearly 130,000 miles per hour. Scientists do not know where Oumuamua came from or what it is made of -- it is not shaped like commonly seen asteroids, and unlike comets, it does not leave a trail behind it, not even when it flew past the Sun. Oumuamua seems to be wrapped in a strange organic coat made of carbon-rich gunk that it likely picked up on its long travels through space. The coat, which gives Oumuamua a dark red appearance according to scientists, was examined by using spectroscopy, which looks at the light being reflected from its surface and splits it down into its wavelengths. By looking at those measurements, scientists can work out what the object might be composed of. Scientists regard it as likely that Oumuamua may be of icy composition on the inside, but that the ice doesn't come off the object due to the thick organic crust that is wrapped around it. Oumuamua has also got extraterrestrial watchers excited. Some believe that its strange, long shape suggests that it is a spaceship of some sort passing through our Solar system. Whatever Oumuamua turns out to be, it certainly has researchers and space watchers around the world fascinated and puzzled at the same time.
When the news about the object broke, I immediately thought about Rendezvous with Rama. Probably many others here as well. Pity that it is impossible to do an intercept mission for closer study.
Apart from one logical thing, why would you think more advanced aliens would be stupider than us. We have spent fuck all time looking for them, but they have spent millions even billions of years looking for us. How to find us very early in our transitional state from primitive to modern. The simplest infra red satellite dotted around the galaxy in their billions, in orbit around suitable planets, looking for the first clump of camp fires. Why the hell would advanced societies not look for primitive societies in the earliest stages of development so that this generation of aliens, this living generation can live through what their distant (keep in mind your own numbers, millions even billions of years distant) ancestor went through experience that moment of birth from planetary species to galactic species, a show that many generations of aliens would get to watch for tens of thousands of years, not that long considering their possible life times.
You want the really weird stuff, say there is a huge welcome to the galaxy party for us, so that we are less chicken shit about exploring and colonising our part of the galaxy, how big an event would that be for them, some might have waited for the entire lives for that once in a million year party. Would they cheat, accelerate our development so they would be alive for that event, and would there be a mass die off there after for those who extended their life well beyond desirability just to experience what would be a galaxy wide event. As societies probably not, as individuals they would probably try to cheat the system, just numbers.
It is not even logical that advanced societies would be composed entirely of advanced aliens, they could retain planets with primitive versions of themselves, those who did not want to advance and just wanted to retain that pre-galactic life style, especially their own home world, for them not much more advanced than us, our show or virtually countless versions there off, to suit different societies and different groupings within those societies and different individuals beyond count, would be particular entertaining, particularly addictive. Does galactic society go through psychological trauma experiencing out trials and tribulation, that impact upon very old, very stable and very boring societies. Once you really start fucking with numbers and probability over time outcomes, a lot of very interesting things become probable and logical.
What would we see, as little as they could possibly achieve, apart from approved experiments, approved by the greater galaxy, can not fuck up what happens every say million years, there would likely be galactic chaos should we be 'extinctified' by accident or even be allowed to do it too ourselves and absolutely not on purpose, a million years for the next event and many generations of long dead aliens before it happens again. The rarer, the more possessive the rest of the galaxy would be. The most suspicious example of this logic, the lack of major impacts for many tens of thousands of years.
Consider the driving force for intellectual development, is mental adaptability providing a significant evolutionary advantage of physical evolution due to sustained major climatic variations (fire, skinning other animals for their furs etc),in our case ice ages over the past couple of million years.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Explaining the Elongated Shape of Oumuamua by the Eikonal Abrasion Model
http://iopscience.iop.org/arti...
Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer. - Ludwig von Mises
Buried somewhere deep in all those words is a thought trying desperately to get out.
it not only seems awfully small for a multi-generational ship (assuming a reasonable minimum size for any lifeforms that might crew it)
How does one determine a reasonable size?
A cockroach has the same mental capacity as a rodent, its "brain" is miniscule but highly efficient and advanced for such a small creature. Spiders have similarly complex "brains" and can learn, remember, understand cause and effect be taught tricks... etc.
If you took a brain with the sheer efficiency and complexity of a spider/cockroach and scaled it up to a cat sized organism you could potentially have an organism far more intelligent than us.
Then there is the matter of how much space do they need? If the species is advanced enough, do they need to actually physically move around? Can they be "wired-in" to a central computer and have the perception of a lot of space? Not as glamorous as the roomy ships of the Star Trek federation and other sci-fi, but much more efficient and probably more likely for interstellar travel than roomy space ships would be.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch