Sorry, E.T. fans: Interstellar visitor 'Oumuamua isn’t an alien spacecraft, it’s just passing gas

[Admin]

Since its arrival in the solar system in 2017, interstellar object 'Oumuamua has puzzled scientists. Two American astronomers now think they have solved one of the space rock's biggest mysteries.

Sorry, E.T. fans: Interstellar visitor 'Oumuamua isn’t an alien spacecraft, it’s just passing gas : Read more

 

[PSH]

Logically speaking Oumuamua could be an intelligent rock. How do we know how alien life would appear to us. Now if you remember back in 1975 one of the most popular novelty items marketed in the U.S. was the Pet Rock. That was over 45 years ago. If our TV and radio stations broadcasted commercials for the Pet Rock then after 24 years of traveling at the speed of light these broadcasts would have reached dozens of star systems. What if one of these star systems had smart rocks monitoring our broadcasts. They might think we were imprisoning small slow moving helpless rocks to be our pets. They may also have monitored for even a longer period of time our rock music, and liked it. Now if they had advanced technologies that could defy all principles of modern physics (our physics not rock physics) and and they could move mass at the speed of light (requiring an infinite amount of energy), they could be here by 2017 which is when Oumuamua arrived in our Solar System. They probably wanted to visit, hang out and go to a few rock concerts but when we gave their vehicle that ridiculous name, they said these people just are not cool, Oumuamua is just not pronounceable for a rock, and they skipped town. If we called it Crick Crack Bonk we might be rock'n on with it now to some real heavy metal rock like nickel and iron meteors. If you ask me that is irrefutable evidence for smart rocks.

 

[billslugg]

The hydrogen produced by cosmic rays will solidify if the temperature is below 10 K.
Oxygen will solidify at 55 K. Maybe it outgassed too.

This new theory explains why it had no tail.

 

[Pogo]

Occam’s razor . . . Sort of . . . the simplest explanation is frequently the correct one; in reference to the article’s statement that after reviewing exotic explanations for the acceleration, they settled on the simple one.

 

[Mars Tafts]

I don't believe for a minute that they didn't get at least a radar image of this object much less some good quality optical images from DoD satellites. If they didn't someone was sitting down on the job.

 

[mod]

I'm no scientist, but, sorry, I don't buy it. If this is the SIMPLEST answer, why wasn't it hypothesized right off the bat six years ago? It just doesn't make sense. I'm not saying it's DEFINITELY aliens like our friend on a certain History Channel TV show, but something with this thing is up if there was such a rush by the community to see if RADIO SIGNALS were being emanated by the object? Is this standard practice for all comets? C'mon people.

 

[billslugg]

Yes, it is the simplest answer but not the most obvious.
We looked for radio signals because it was on a hyberbolic orbit and had an unusually large difference in brightness as it rotated.

 

[PSH]

Logically speaking Oumuamua could be an intelligent rock. How do we know how alien life would appear to us. Now if you remember back in 1975 one of the most popular novelty items marketed in the U.S. was the Pet Rock. That was over 45 years ago. If our TV and radio stations broadcasted commercials for the Pet Rock then after 24 years of traveling at the speed of light these broadcasts would have reached dozens of star systems. What if one of these star systems had smart rocks monitoring our broadcasts. They might think we were imprisoning small slow moving helpless rocks to be our pets. They may also have monitored for even a longer period of time our rock music, and liked it. Now if they had advanced technologies that could defy all principles of modern physics (our physics not rock physics) and and they could move mass at the speed of light (requiring an infinite amount of energy), they could be here by 2017 which is when Oumuamua arrived in our Solar System. They probably wanted to visit, hang out and go to a few rock concerts but when we gave their vehicle that ridiculous name, they said these people just are not cool, Oumuamua is just not pronounceable for a rock, and they skipped town. If we called it Crick Crack Bonk we might be rock'n on with it now to some real heavy metal rock like nickel and iron meteors. If you ask me that is irrefutable evidence for smart rocks.

I just wanted to mention if this alien spacecrafts a rock'n don't come a knock'n.

 

[Pogo]

What I was referring to was that they hypothesized (is that a word?) some more exotic chemistry to produced the excess acceleration before settling on the more simple hydrogen gas from irradiated water.

 

[Pogo]

This was a body length of a few hundred meters or a thousand at the most. The close approach was about 33m km. Trig that and you get something like 0.0006 seconds of arc image, lucky if it’s a pixel on an imager. Just no way of an image more than a dot.

 

[Pogo]

SETI threw their antennas at it and said that any radio emissions would have to be less than 0.08 watts