Here comes the science bit

[Alberon]

No, not an appreciation of Jennifer Aniston shampoo comercials, but a general thread for science and space stuff.

To start off with, how about 'Oumuamua? It's an asteroid which was discovered last month looping around the sun at high speed.



The asteroid's formal classification is 1I/2017 U1 and it is the first such object to have an 'I' at the front. Normally, a 'C' would stand for comet and an 'A' would mean asteroid. In this case 'I' means Interstellar. 'Oumuamua is the first object detected passing through our solar system from another star.

It also has an unusual shape in that it is ten times longer than it is wide. Here's an artist's impression.

Using observations from the Very Large Telescope in Chile, Karen Meech, from the Institute for Astronomy in Honolulu, Hawaii, and colleagues determined that the object was at least 400m long, rapidly rotating and subject to dramatic changes in brightness.

These changes in brightness were the clue to 'Oumuamua's bizarre shape.

"Looking at the asteroid light curve database, there are five objects (out of 20,000) that have light curves that would suggest a shape up to an axis ratio of about 7-8 to 1," Dr Meech told BBC News.

"Our errors are very small, so we are confident this is really elongated. Also, one has to realise we don't know where the rotation pole is pointed. We assumed that it was perpendicular to the line of sight. If it were tipped over at all, then there are projection effects and the 10:1 is a minimum. It could be more elongated!"

"We also found that it had a reddish colour, similar to objects in the outer Solar System, and confirmed that it is completely inert, without the faintest hint of dust around it," Dr Meech said.

These properties suggest that 'Oumuamua is dense, comprised of rock and possibly metals, has no water or ice, and that its surface was reddened due to the effects of irradiation from cosmic rays over long periods of time.

Although 'Oumuamua formed around another star, scientists think it could have been wandering through the Milky Way, unattached to any star system, for hundreds of millions of years before its chance encounter with our Solar System.

Though it's almost certainly just a lump of rock it's hard not to think of Arthur C. Clarke's vast cylindrical alien sublight spaceship that loops around the sun in his novel 'Rendevous With Rama'.

Been too long since I've done a space post.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Oumuamua?

What's my name?

[Mister Six]

Not only does this sound like the start of Grant Morrison's "Lovecraftian asteroid threatens the world" comic Nameless, but "Oumuamua" sounds exactly like a nonsense word Morrison would make up.

[MoonDust]

Love your space posts Alberon! I've not read much on Oumuamua other than the scraps of news on it. Only realised until now how mad it is that's from another solar system. I knew that already, but it's just "dawned" to the "wow, shit" phase.

Really fucking weird. Why is it even that shape? Perhaps a fragment from a bigger comet/asteroid? Guess we'll never find out. Unless this is the first of such fragments from the same object on the same trajectory.

Do they know exactly where it came from? I'm assuming by its trajectory path you posted they can extrapolate - with errors of course - to some possible starting point.

[Dex Sawash]

Very Large Telescope

favorite thing today

[Bum Flaps]

favorite thing today

Just wait until you hear about the new Extremely Large Telescope!
https://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/elt/

Spoiler alert

Extremely is better than Very

[close]

[touchingcloth]

favorite thing today

There's a peculiar tendency in astronomy to give bland and matter-of-fact names to otherwise impressive bits of hardware. Just look at some of the names on this size comparison of some of the largest telescopes ever made:



If you liked Very Large, how's an Overwhelmingly Large one working for you?

That's not the first time I've said that tonight lol amiright haha lads for the incredibly ribald bants.

[Bum Flaps]

I think it's admirable that although the Multi Mirror Telescope had its multiple small mirrors replaced with a single big mirror in 1999, they still decided to stick with the old awkward and not very snappy name. Maybe they still had a load of the old headed notepaper to get through.

[Sexton Brackets Drugbust]

"I don't think I can stand Oumuamua, I'll choose death."

[Gwen Taylor on ITV]

But surely there is no greater gas giant than uranus

[Zetetic]

"The first character is a Hawaiian ʻokina, not an apostrophe, and is represented by a single quotation mark and pronounced as a glottal stop."

It's probably racist, and certainly historically insensitive, to think that some people's orthography is really stupid.

[Black Ship]

Anyone else getting a Star Trek 4 Probe vibe?

[mothman]

Anyone else getting a Star Trek 4 Probe vibe?

[tag]Rule 34[/tag]

[Uncle TechTip]

I saw some suggestion in comments that we should launch a ship to catch up with it. Some effort, it's traveling at 25km/s or something. For comparison, the last space rock we caught up with, comet 67A, was traveling at 1km/s. To reach it we needed more than one planetary slingshot.

[MoonDust]

I saw some suggestion in comments that we should launch a ship to catch up with it. Some effort, it's traveling at 25km/s or something. For comparison, the last space rock we caught up with, comet 67A, was traveling at 1km/s. To reach it we needed more than one planetary slingshot.

Yeah, it's a shame it's all happened so fast. On the OP picture:



Assuming Mars' position is to the left of the picture - i.e. in the direction Oumuamua is heading - if we had a well-established colony on Mars with its own space port we could have radioed Mars and be like "Oi, Martians! Scramble a ship! We missed it." Then Mars will be like "Alright, cool." Then muttering behind our backs how stupid us Terrans are for being too slow.


If only...

[Emma Raducanu]

it's traveling at 25km/s or something.

I just did some serious, vewy clever research and read the fastest moving thing in space is travelling 299,800 kilometers per second.

Space eh? Makes you think..

[MoonDust]

I just did some serious, vewy clever research and read the fastest moving thing in space is travelling 299,800 kilometers per second.

Space eh? Makes you think..

That's insane. What is it? Another lump of rock or ice? Imagine going that fast. You could get to the moon in less than two seconds! Apollo 11 took three days! Genuinely nearly impossible to imagine such a speed, considering Apollo itself was going at a phenomenal velocity - 39,897 km/h in fact - which itself is hard to imagine. The fastest thing I've seen, and therefore the fastest thing I can easily imagine, is a jet aircraft at an airshow breaking the sound barrier, which by comparison is merely a pathetic 1234 km/h.

My brain...

Edit: Just realised you're talking about the speed of light. You cunt.

[Spoon of Ploff]

I don't know space science very well but I think it must have been shat out by this:

[MoonDust]

I don't know space science very well but I think it must have been shat out by this:

Sometimes I miss giving karma. Made me chuckle, Spoony.

[steve98]

Assuming Mars' position is to the left of the picture...".

I think it more likely that Mars is where the word "Mars" is (like all the other planets in the pic) and therefore The Monolith has missed it and is now heading for Jupiter. If Arthur C Clarke was correct this should turn it(Jupiter) into a second sun... unless it's already gone.

[Howj Begg]

That's insane. What is it? Another lump of rock or ice? Imagine going that fast. You could get to the moon in less than two seconds! Apollo 11 took three days! Genuinely nearly impossible to imagine such a speed, considering Apollo itself was going at a phenomenal velocity - 39,897 km/h in fact - which itself is hard to imagine. The fastest thing I've seen, and therefore the fastest thing I can easily imagine, is a jet aircraft at an airshow breaking the sound barrier, which by comparison is merely a pathetic 1234 km/h.

My brain...

Edit: Just realised you're talking about the speed of light. You cunt.

Looool. +24 Karma Dolphinface.

[Keebleman]

I'm writing this fast because my already tenuous understanding of it is slipping away even as I type, but I have been fascinated by the recent discovery of gravitational waves and how they represent a whole new sense by which we can observe the universe outside our solar system: everything we have learned up to now has come via electromagnetic radiation, ie light, but this is a brand new category.  It's like suddenly acquiring hearing (or smell, or taste, or touch)

Anyway, I've just been listening to the latest Big Picture Science podcast and they interview a guy who has theorised that such events - the collision of black holes - not only create millions of cubic miles of brand new space but also create brand new time! Seconds, months, centuries that didn't exist before!  (Actually he says it will be just a brand new thousandth of a second, and this new sliver of time will exist only local to the event.) He says he believes this theory is testable with the data that is being collected.

http://radio.seti.org/episodes/time-travel-agents

[MoonDust]

I think it more likely that Mars is where the word "Mars" is (like all the other planets in the pic)

Wrong! If it was where the word is there'd be a green dot like all the other planets, but there isn't. You'll also notice "Mars" is the only label in parentheses. This is a label for the white line, which is the orbital path of Mars. But Mars itself isn't in the diagram.

Details, mate. Details.

[steve98]

I stand corrected.

[Emma Raducanu]

Without lowering the tone and in the words of Rio Ferdinand, you just got merked mate. Me too.

[MoonDust]

Without lowering the tone and in the words of Rio Ferdinand, you just got merked mate. Me too.

That's genuine karma, right there.

Bloody speed of light...

[MoonDust]

Astronomers now listening to this object for artificial radio signals.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/dec/11/astronomers-to-check-interstellar-body-for-signs-of-alien-technology

There's also a nice animation in the article showing its trajectory whilst the other planets are moving.

[Alberon]

Since they worked out it was elongated by the light changes as it rotated it seems very unlikely it's artificial. But there's no harm in looking

[MoonDust]

So it's not actually elongated?

[RedRevolver]

Did someone lose a turtle? I think it might have lost a turtle.