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Re:Interstellar Visitor Found to Be Unlike a Comet or an Ast... by jobigoud on Friday October 12, 2018 @05:55AM (#18200358)
The odds we expect depend on our detection ability. Maybe there are thousands of these objects but we saw this one only because it passed so close to Earth.
Re:Interstellar Visitor Found to Be Unlike a Comet or an Ast... by walrus01 on Friday October 12, 2018 @06:00AM (#18200373)
There is fairly strong consensus in the astronomy community that possibly hundreds of Sednoid class objects exist, and those are in relatively normal orbits compared to things which are beyond solar escape velocity. But so far we've only found 3 or 4 Sednoids.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sednoid

Re:Interstellar Visitor Found to Be Unlike a Comet or an Ast... by hannasanarion on Friday October 12, 2018 @08:14AM (#18200865)
Sednoids orbiting in the kuiper belt are totally different from extrasolar objects on hyperbolic trajectories. Oamuamua passed inside Mercury's orbit.
Re:Interstellar Visitor Found to Be Unlike a Comet or an Ast... by walrus01 on Friday October 12, 2018 @04:30PM (#18204480)
Yes, but both classes of objects are very dificult to detect, due to distance, size and lack of brightness. We only detected the extrasolar object once it had already passed perihelion and was on its way out.
Re:Interstellar Visitor Found to Be Unlike a Comet or an Ast... by mbel on Friday October 12, 2018 @07:59AM (#18200799)
"Such an intrinsically faint body could be discovered only thanks to the close Earth flyby in October 2017, which created a tremendous opportunity for the first detailed characterization of a minor object of exosolar origin."

https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1712/1712.00437.pdf