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Interstellar Object 'Oumuamua' Appears To Be Wrapped In An Organic Insulation Layer (theguardian.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the carbon-rich dept.

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.

33 of 242 comments (clear)

  1. Could it have hung out in the oort cloud? by allaunjsilverfox2 · · Score: 2

    It would be interesting if it picked up the "gunk" while hanging out there.

    --
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    1. Re:Could it have hung out in the oort cloud? by CrimsonAvenger · · Score: 2

      Well, it passed through there to get here.

      But, as I understand it, it is moving at greater than solar escape speed, so it didn't come from there originally.

      Caveat: if there are two very large (gas giant sized) planets in the Oort Cloud, it's conceivable that its speed could be a result of near approaches to both of them in a (relatively) short period (less than one orbit)....

      --

      "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
    2. Re: Could it have hung out in the oort cloud? by hackertourist · · Score: 3, Insightful

      AIU the Oort cloud is spherical. The Kuyper belt is an actual belt (although with large deviations from the average inclination).

    3. Re:Could it have hung out in the oort cloud? by Rei · · Score: 4, Informative

      There's no need to "pick up" tholins; they seem to naturally form everywhere we look in the distant solar system, from simple carbon and nitrogen compounds. Kuiper belt objects are a mix of red (tholins) and white (ices); where you see ices, that's generally young terrain. Actually, to be fair, tholins are more of a rust brown than "red", but that's picking at straws ;) Tholins are an extremely broad range of chemical compounds (some very long), and probably differ significantly in ratios from place to place, but form a family of common celestial organic "gunk".

      --
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    4. Re:Could it have hung out in the oort cloud? by kilfarsnar · · Score: 2

      Does anyone remember the author, and name, of a science fiction story about an asteroid named "Pomona Negra", or "Black Apple", which had inexplicably turned red, and was found to be coated with a form of life that kept growing, and spread to the boots of the crew sent to investigate and eventually to the lunar base they returned to?

      The Red Stuff by John Wyndham

      --
      "What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
    5. Re: Could it have hung out in the oort cloud? by dryeo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Slingshotting can add velocity (by stealing it from the planet it is passing) or even reduce velocity. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      In orbital mechanics and aerospace engineering, a gravitational slingshot, gravity assist maneuver, or swing-by is the use of the relative movement (e.g. orbit around the Sun) and gravity of a planet or other astronomical object to alter the path and speed of a spacecraft, typically to save propellant and reduce expense. Gravity assistance can be used to accelerate a spacecraft, that is, to increase or decrease its speed or redirect its path. The "assist" is provided by the motion of the gravitating body as it pulls on the spacecraft.[1] The gravity assist maneuver was first used in 1959 when the Soviet probe Luna 3 photographed the far side of Earth's Moon, and it was used by interplanetary probes from Mariner 10 onwards, including the two Voyager probes' notable flybys of Jupiter and Saturn.

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    6. Re:Could it have hung out in the oort cloud? by DigiShaman · · Score: 2

      I'm going with - It's one of many turds that Galactus leaves behind.

      --
      Life is not for the lazy.
    7. Re:Could it have hung out in the oort cloud? by careysub · · Score: 2

      Well, it passed through there to get here.

      But, as I understand it, it is moving at greater than solar escape speed, so it didn't come from there originally.

      Depends on what you mean by "there". It came from interstellar space and has thus been passing on a trajectory on its own, orbiting the galaxy very likely for billions of years, passing through all kinds of environments. It would be interesting to see someone do a study on probabilities of exposure to various environments over such a long time. How many stars does it make a pass around? How long in giant molecular gas clouds, and in dust clouds?

      --
      Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
  2. Rendezvous with Rama by Camembert · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Rendezvous with Rama by surfdaddy · · Score: 2

      Well you know these things happen in THREES.

    2. Re:Rendezvous with Rama by RubberDogBone · · Score: 4, Informative

      Impossible for now. If we manage to survive long enough, we may eventually come up with a really fast method of space travel and chasing down this thing would be a good use for it, as it will probably be closer than the nearest stars for a very long time to come.

      Even if it takes 100 years, it will still be "only" 0.02 light years away if it maintains its speed of 210,000kph. It will take around 400 years to reach the inner edge of the Oort cloud.

      This thing is going to be in the Sol system for a long time. We can go see it. Well, probably not we. But descendants of ours could.

      --
      Sig for hire.
    3. Re: Rendezvous with Rama by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Ars technica covered this https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/11/so-you-want-to-send-a-probe-to-catch-up-to-oumuamua/
      Best bet is those tiny starshot space probes that are still in development.

    4. Re:Rendezvous with Rama by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 3, Informative

      We could *already* get to it, if we really wanted. Dawn has reached a 10 km/s delta-v even with primitive ion thrusters and simple solar panels. With the DS4G thrusters currently in development, you could do twenty times as much.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    5. Re:Rendezvous with Rama by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 2

      You could finish the development of the thruster before you'd finish the development of everything else you'd need, so it's not on your critical path. The thrusters are really not your limiting factor here. A nuclear reactor is.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    6. Re:Rendezvous with Rama by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 4, Informative

      Sample return would be somewhat more complicated, but since the object's velocity at infinity is around 26 km/s, anything over 100 km/s is going to catch up fairly quickly and even ~50 km/s could be usable. In fact, your egress speed could even limited by your ability to decelerate in deep space quickly enough not to , although I'd have to do some calculations for that. Anyway, given this object's trajectory, your best bet with what we have available (or will have available in the next fifteen years or so) is a Ulysses-like maneuver to change your orbital plane inclination in a Jupiter flyby, then using the Oberth effect as close to the Sun as possible to maximize the benefits of high-thrust propulsion, then a period of electric thruster acceleration and deceleration. Note that on its own, a 6 km/s Oberth maneuver close to the Sun from parabolic velocity could give you about 40 km/s at infinity even at a reasonably survivable distance from the Sun. The other variables are much more variable. I'd have to write a numerical model for that.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    7. Re:Rendezvous with Rama by Maritz · · Score: 2

      Never saw someone use the term 'space nutter' who wasn't a complete twat. I imagine you're no exception.

      --
      I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
  3. Alieums? by Spilt_Blood · · Score: 5, Insightful

    By "extraterrestrial watchers" they mean crack-pots right? Look I'm all for the idea that we cannot be alone in this universe. In fact I think that the idea that we are alone is down right blasphemous/preposterous, but considering the sheer size of the universe, and the "Special" conditions that would be needed(as far as we know) to propagate sentient life, seeing an "Alien" spacecraft would near impossible. There could be aliens out there now, but what interest would they have in us? We are down right barbaric, not to mention that our own space program(USA) has almost taken a giant leap backwards, with all of the budget cuts! Unless we are to become slaves/food/resources, they would likely have zero interest in us IMHO.

    --
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    1. Re:Alieums? by rtb61 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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
    2. Re: Alieums? by AvitarX · · Score: 2

      Except then you never get to come home.

      Unless your whole life was the ship, it doesn't make sense.

      Sure, maybe some species has a life span in the thousands of years, and making the journey only costs a relative month back home, but that seems unlikely, as a lifespan that long would make evolution (both genes and memes) very slow, reducing the likely hood of becoming so advanced.

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    3. Re:Alieums? by OneSmartFellow · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Buried somewhere deep in all those words is a thought trying desperately to get out.

    4. Re: Alieums? by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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
    5. Re:Alieums? by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 2

      By "extraterrestrial watchers" they mean crack-pots right?

      People are capable of some pretty impressive belief's and disbelief's. I know one guy who denies that humans ever reached the moon at the same time insists that this rock is a spaceship filled with aliens. We somehow cannot get 250 K miles away with proven technology, but aliens scoot around in goo covered rocks. Sounds legit.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    6. Re: Alieums? by Zocalo · · Score: 2

      I agree it's highly speculative and constrained by our non-existant experience with alien life which is why I didn't even try and quantify it. Still, at the very minimum you're going to need a capacity to actually construct the thing and understand the maths, science, etc. required for to do so which implies a minimum brain (or equivalent) capacity, plus a the necessary stature and dexterity to physically manipulate the construction materials and withstand the rigours of the trip. Learning simple tricks is completely different than having a sufficient grasp of STEM and the levels of manual dexterity for such a project, so while I think more/less compact frames than a human is certainly possible for a space-faring species, there are almost certainly size limits in both directions, regardless of the precise physiology.

      The more significant variable might be personal space - most humans seem to need quite a bit of it except for relatively short periods of time, but there's no reason why another species wouldn't be perfectly OK with next to none. However that's another trade off; even if they don't move around much or need much spare space, they still need to supply energy to keep the crew alive; food and/or power which requires at least some space, no matter how efficient the recycling systems and power generators are. The larger the crew, the larger the life-support systems required. On the otherhand, if you shrink the crew count too much on a multi-generational ship you are potentially going to have issues with genetic diversity and susceptibility to diseases - assuming either of those is relevant to our hypothetical aliens, of course.

      --
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    7. Re: Alieums? by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 2

      On the otherhand, if you shrink the crew count too much on a multi-generational ship you are potentially going to have issues with genetic diversity and susceptibility to diseases - assuming either of those is relevant to our hypothetical aliens, of course.

      That is certainly true of humans, and definitely for any terrestrial complex life we know. However, with technology though (and who knows how advanced such a species could be)- you could artificially provide for genetic diversity. Even in humans, if an embryo's DNA was initially printed by a computer somehow (rather than relying on mating for genetic selection), you could have certain genes appear in the population with a predictable occurrence.

      If we, as a species, ever had a generational ship; I think, at least for the journey whilst the population were low, we would be unwise to leave procreation purely to mating individuals. I'd trust a computer to get a better balance of population genetics that cupid's dart. Have a computer "print" off the chromosomes for individuals and add that material to the eggs. Put the men on birthcontrol, and let the computer get the women pregnant with computer-designed eggs. We're not able to do that yet; but we're also not able to create a reliable generation ship- I suspect, true designer babies will be technically feasible before a generation ship is.

      If the computer contained a huge database of human DNA, once we got where we were going, you could print off a huge variation of new individuals- and have that 1st generation go about getting pregnant the old-fashioned way.

      --
      "That's the way to do it" - Punch
    8. Re: Alieums? by nut · · Score: 2

      A cockroach has the same mental capacity as a rodent

      Citation please.

      --
      Never trust a man in a blue trench coat, Never drive a car when you're dead
  4. It's just a big shit by dUb · · Score: 5, Funny

    We don't know where it came from but it seems to be a huge shit from some kind of alien. Really big alien.
    Just think like when you're flying between Europe and Americas and need to go to toilet. And when you flush it gets out because of cabin pressure and get frozen. Just like Oumuamua is flying on space. And even the shape is almost same.
    There can be some kind of bacteria to be investigated but it's not same life form like where it came out from.

  5. Explaining the Elongated Shape of Oumuamua by little1973 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Explaining the Elongated Shape of Oumuamua by the Eikonal Abrasion Model

    http://iopscience.iop.org/arti...

    --
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  6. Has already been solved years ago by future+assassin · · Score: 2

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

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  7. Interstellar Object 'Om nom nom' by SeaFox · · Score: 2

    Eat too much this holiday season, and you too will find yourself wrapped In an organic insulation layer when spring comes.

  8. Darned sequel truthers... by itsdapead · · Score: 2

    Well you know these things happen in THREES.

    Everybody knows that is false. Next, you'll be claiming that there were two sequels to The Matrix, too.

    :-)

    --
    In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
  9. We're in touch with aliens? by omnichad · · Score: 4, Funny

    Oumuamua has also got extraterrestrial watchers excited.

    How do we know that???

  10. Re:Im not saying its aliens... by omnichad · · Score: 2

    I'm not saying it's unicode, but it's unicode.

  11. Re:Impressionable people watching bad SciFi? by Deadstick · · Score: 2

    Is there any reason that an interstellar vehicle would or should be "rocket" shaped?

    Yes: structural considerations. A columnar shape with thrust applied at one end (assuming it ever needs to maneuver) gives the most benign stress distribution and requires the least structural mass.