Astronomers to Check Mysterious Interstellar Object for Signs of Technology

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Winston

Winston

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Astronomers to Check Mysterious Interstellar Object for Signs of Technology
Russian billionaire Yuri Milner says if the space rock 'Oumuamua is giving off radio signals, his team will be able to detect them—and they may get the results within days.
11 Dec 2017

https://www.theatlantic.com/science...milner-oumuamua-interstellar-asteroid/547985/

The email about “a most peculiar object” in the solar system arrived in Yuri Milner’s inbox last week.

Milner, the Russian billionaire behind Breakthrough Listen, a $100 million search for intelligent extraterrestrial life, had already heard about the peculiar object. ‘Oumuamua barreled into view in October, the first interstellar object seen in our solar system.

“The more I study this object, the more unusual it appears, making me wonder whether it might be an artificially made probe which was sent by an alien civilization,” Avi Loeb, the chair of Harvard’s astronomy department and one of Milner’s advisers on Breakthrough Listen, wrote in the email to Milner.

Previous thread on the object:

https://www.rocketryforum.com/showt...pot-Pass-of-First-Known-Interstellar-Asteroid

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I doubt that even a functional interstellar probe would use any comm method we could detect. We are cave men or lower by comparison with any civilization that could send interstellar probes here.

No alien 'signals' from cigar-shaped asteroid: researchers
December 14, 2017

https://phys.org/news/2017-12-alien-cigar-shaped-asteroid.html

After its discovery was announced last month, a project called Breakthrough Listen, dedicated to finding signs of extraterrestrial intelligence, said it would study the rock for artificial signals.

"No such signals have been detected" by its network of telescopes, the project said Thursday, adding: "the analysis is not yet complete".

Prior to its discovery, none of the 750,000-odd known asteroids and comets in the Solar System were thought to have originated elsewhere.

"Oumuamua is most likely an asteroid (an extremely weirdly shaped one with a red tint - W), ejected from its host star in some chaotic event billions of years ago, and finding its way to our Solar System by chance," Andrew Siemion of the University of California Berkeley told AFP. He heads the Breakthrough Listen laboratory.

According to NASA, the object is travelling at about 38.3 kilometres per second relative to the Sun. It is about 200 million kilometres (125 million miles) from Earth.

It passed Mars' orbit in November, and will pass by that of Jupiter in May next year, before exiting beyond Saturn's orbit in January 2019.

Even Stephen Hawking thinks mysterious cigar-shaped asteroid 'Oumuamua' could be an alien spaceship

https://www.mirror.co.uk/science/even-stephen-hawking-thinks-mysterious-11695166

The cigar-shaped asteroid ‘Oumuamua could be an alien probe with broken engines, top astronomer suggests

https://metro.co.uk/2017/12/13/ciga...roken-engines-top-astronomer-suggests-7155528

But Jason Wright, an associate professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State, said the motion of the strange object could be key to discovering whether it is a piece of alien technology or just a weirdly-shaped asteroid.

Astronomers believe it could be ‘tumbling’ through space, rather than speeding through space like a rocket or aeroplane. This claim is remarkable in itself because ‘Oumuamua would have to be far more rigid than most asteroids to survive this kind of motion for a long time without breaking apart.

Jason Wright's analysis:

https://sites.psu.edu/astrowright/
 
Such dummies. Comet. Pffft! The acceleration is OBVIOUSLY from the aliens' quantum drive thrusters.

Comet or asteroid? Scientists ID interstellar visitor
June 27, 2018

https://phys.org/news/2018-06-comet-asteroid-scientists-id-interstellar.html

Telescopes first spotted the mysterious red-tinged object named Oumuamua last October as it zipped through the inner solar system. Since then, astronomers have flip-flopped between comet and asteroid for our first confirmed interstellar guest.
Neither a coma nor tail was spotted, hallmarks of an icy comet. But Italian astronomer Marco Micheli and his team reported that the object's path and acceleration are best explained not just by gravity, but also gases shedding from a comet.

The release of what's believed to be gaseous carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and water applied only a tiny force on the object known as Oumuamua—about 1,000 times smaller than the effect of the sun's gravity—and barely altered its path, the researchers said.

But the team's measurements "were so precise that we could actually see the change in position caused by the outgassing," said co-author Paul Chodas, manager of NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

Micheli said computer models suggest objects typically are ejected during the formation of planetary systems, and that most of these castaways should be comets given their location on the frigid outskirts of their systems. Only a tiny fraction should be asteroids, by scientists' best calculations.

Had it been an asteroid, it would have been "extremely lucky to beat these odds"—or it would have underscored scientists' misunderstanding of the early solar system, Micheli said.

 
Man I wish I had that kind of F-you money to fund silly endeavors like this.
 
Flyfalcons said:
Man I wish I had that kind of F-you money to fund silly endeavors like this.
Click to expand...
They were using existing equipment. The only cost was their time which was already paid for anyway via their salary. And to determine what the first object ever to be confirmed to be from outside our solar system actually is is only what an even slightly curious person would want to know.
 
The interstellar object 'Oumuamua perplexed scientists in October 2017 as it whipped past Earth at an unusually high speed. This mysterious visitor is the first object ever seen in our solar system that is known to have originated elsewhere.

What we know
-It came from outside the solar system
Click to expand...

And there's your drive-in B-movie title right there,

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/chasing-oumuamua
 
Very interesting latest info - "Accumulating weirdness." A great channel, BTW.

 
Winston said:
I doubt that even a functional interstellar probe would use any comm method we could detect. We are cave men or lower by comparison with any civilization that could send interstellar probes here.
Click to expand...
Physics is physics, and radio waves work really well. If the makers of some interstellar probe have any interest at all in being noticed by aliens (us) then radio signals would be a very good way to do it. Even for sending data back home, unless they've got subspace or some other FTL radio, good old RF is probably as good as anything else. Along with lots of patience.

As in Sagan's Contact, if an alien signal is ever going to be detected, one day's chance is as good as any other's. Unless that day has an extrasolar object in view, in which case it's rather better. If it's ten times better then it's still pretty damn slim, but why not look?
 

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