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Old 12-13-2017, 06:08 PM
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blackshire blackshire is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by astronwolf
It does excite the imagination, but lack of cometary out-gassing and a red color are IMHO not possible clues that this may be a spaceship. Deep space objects seem to get coated with a red-colored goo that is composed of a class of compounds called tholins. And there is no reason a priori that an object flying past us on a hyperbolic trajectory through the solar system should out-gas.

It's a fairly small object with a low albedo. Amazing that they even saw it last October.
I agree that the starprobe/starship hypothesis is quite unlikely (all of the scientists who are conducting the radio and optical observations of Oumuamua also think that), but--as Carl Sagan would say--we should beware of Earth chauvinisms and human chauvinisms. The "default mental image" of an interstellar vehicle--in human minds--is that of a manufactured craft, but alien minds might, perhaps based on their own space-faring experience, conceive of an asteroid outfitted (or even re-configured) as a starprobe or a starship instead, and:

Even a few human beings--scientists and engineers, as well as science fiction writers--who have contemplated and studied the problems posed by interstellar space flight have suggested using (and even re-shaping) asteroids for use as starships, particularly slow (sub-relativistic velocity) ones. The "walls" of such asteroids would provide shielding against radiation (including galactic cosmic rays) and interstellar particle impacts, as well as help to maintain an even interior temperature for equipment and occupants (if any). Also:

While it is unlikely that Oumuamua is an interstellar vehicle of any kind (it probably *is* a tholins-coated asteroid--or a thickly-coated comet nucleus, perhaps--that was ejected from its stellar system of origin by a Jovian planet [and or companion star] gravitational encounter), it doesn't hurt to give it another, more detailed look. Whether it is natural or artificial (or a modified natural celestial body), any new--or even confirmatory, or dis-confirmatory--data that can be gleaned from Oumuamua is worthwhile to obtain.
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