The Mystery of Alleged Alien Object 'Oumuamua Has Been Solved, Scientists Say

[Jilly_in_VA]

The first interstellar object ever discovered in our solar system, known as ‘Oumuamua, has attracted immense interest and controversy since it was spotted in October 2017. Though this weird object is long gone, having since sped back into the interstellar wilds, a raucous debate over its origin has persisted here on Earth, driven in part by speculation among some scientists that the object could have been an alien artifact instead of a natural entity.

Now, a pair of scientists have presented a robust natural explanation that accounts for ‘Oumuamua’s strangest behaviors, including its puzzling speed boost as it hurtled through the solar system. The new research suggests that the object’s many years in interstellar space left it with an abundance of molecular hydrogen, which was transformed into gas in the presence of the Sun.

This specific mechanism could finally thread the needle between the acceleration of ‘Oumuamua and the lack of hallmark signs of so-called “outgassing” events that are associated with similar speed bursts observed in solar system objects. To that end, the “mechanism can explain many of ‘Oumuamua’s peculiar properties without fine-tuning” and “provides further support that ‘Oumuamua originated as a planetesimal relic broadly similar to Solar System comets,” according to a study published on Wednesday in Nature.

“Given the information that we have, I think that this is our best hope of explaining ‘Oumuamua without having to resort to more sensational ideas, or, as we might say in the science community, ‘fine-tuned’ ideas,” said Jennfer Bergner, an assistant professor of chemistry at the University of Berkeley who led the study, in a call with Motherboard. “We're excited about this idea because it seems very generic, and a natural explanation for a process that should be happening anyways.”

https://www.vice.com/en/article/3akzjk/oumuamua-aliens-mystery-solved

"You say yes, I say no...."

[dchill]

1. "...an abundance of molecular hydrogen..." indeed.

[ChazInAz]

2. Okay.

But I'm still waiting for two more.
They come in threes, after all.

[intrepidity]

3. Here's Avi Loeb's thoughts

Seems the mystery remains for him.

https://avi-loeb.medium.com/is-oumuamua-a-hydrogen-water-iceberg-a5d815f61c86

Given that `Oumuamua was the size of a football field, it is unclear how a third of its total hydrogen mass can escape from a depth of tens of meters to its surface without pushing out water molecules along the way. Indeed, familiar comets show water vapor with dust. `Oumuamua cannot be a typical comet because it did not look like a typical comet.

As I summarized in a paper published in 2021, `Oumuamua showed other anomalies beyond its acceleration. The variation by a factor of ten in the brightness of reflected sunlight as it was tumbling every 8 hours, implied that it had an extreme shape, most likely disk-like and not cigar-like, according to a detailed analysis of `Oumuamua’s light curve in a 2019 paper by Sergey Mashchenko. This disk-like shape, favored at the 91% confidence level by Mashchenko’s analysis, is consistent with the flat membrane interpretation.

Altogether, it is fantastic to see the continuing interest within the mainstream of astronomy to explain the anomalous acceleration of `Oumuamua, more than 5 years after its discovery. It is good to have alternative models at hand as we search for the next `Oumuamua with the forthcoming Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) on the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.

The fundamental question that I am curious about, is whether `Oumuamua was natural or artificial in origin. If the next `Oumuamua appears artificial, then we might feel like home owners who identified all objects in their back yard as rocks, including those tennis balls which originated from the cosmic street and were thrown by our neighbors.

Sometimes, I feel like the kid in Hans-Christian Andersen folktale who suggested that “the emperor has no clothes”, while the “adults” watching the procession insisted that the emperor is dressed with fancy clothing. In my case, the emperor is `Oumuamua and the clothes are its invisible cometary tail.

[Irish_Dem]

4. A new version of the swamp gas excuses.

[Midnight Writer]

5. In the vacuum of space, how would "outgassing" cause acceleration?

Wouldn't the escaping gas need something to push against to cause acceleration?

Honest question.

[mike_c]

6. for every action...

...there is an equal but opposite reaction. Gasses squirt out in one direction and the outgassing body scoots in the other.

[Midnight Writer]

7. Thanks.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

8. Oh, for chrissakes.

My Son The Astronomer explained to me when it was first within our solar system that it was simply an anomalous out of the solar system object, and NOT something manufactured by some aliens out there.

It's astonishing how fast people are to go, OMG! I don't know what that is so it MUST be aliens!

Show me genuine proof of aliens. Not speculation.

Real scientists understand that we don't know everything, that we learn new stuff all the time. Oumuamua was something new, and we learned from it.