Re:Have Aliens Found Us? (2019)
by nick_ on Friday January 03, 2020 @02:06PM
(#21949181)
The explanation I've seen is that Oumuamua is made of a "frozen cloud" and has lower mass than that used in the expected trajectory model, and was possibly pushed by solar wind into that observed trajectory.
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Re:Have Aliens Found Us? (2019)
by aruggirello on Friday January 03, 2020 @03:09PM
(#21949812)
If you had read the article you'd know that's not possible, as solar wind would have had a negligible effect - unless the object was in practice a light sail. OTOH that hypothesis also doesn't sound correct IMHO - why would it appear to be tumbling with a fixed period?
The article does not talk about the possibility of an ultralight frozen cloud. It only mentions one kind of "solar sail" structure.
Re:Have Aliens Found Us? (2019)
by TheOtherHobbes on Friday January 03, 2020 @03:56PM
(#21950263)
The tumbling was a reasonable interpretation of light curve data. But the data was limited, and something else may have been happening.