{"id":178528,"date":"2018-11-04T18:59:00","date_gmt":"2018-11-04T23:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/11\/04\/fascinating-3\/"},"modified":"2018-11-04T18:59:00","modified_gmt":"2018-11-04T23:59:00","slug":"fascinating-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/11\/04\/fascinating-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Fascinating"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a>Some professors at Harvard are suggesting that the ‘Oumuamua interstellar object might be some form of space craft<\/a>:<\/div>\n

On October 19th, 2017<\/a>, the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System<\/a>-1 (Pan-STARRS-1) in Hawaii announced the first-ever detection of an interstellar asteroid, named 1I\/2017 U1 (AKA ‘Oumuamua). <\/p>\n

In the months that followed, multiple follow-up observations were conducted that allowed astronomers to get a better idea of its size and shape<\/a>, while also revealing that it had the characteristics of both a comet and an asteroid<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Interestingly enough, there has also been some speculation that based on its shape, ‘Oumuamua might actually be an interstellar spacecraft (Breakthrough Listen<\/a> even monitored it for signs of radio signals!).<\/p>\n

A new study<\/a> by a pair of astronomers from the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) has taken it a step further, suggesting that ‘Oumuamua may actually be a light sail of extra-terrestrial origin.<\/p>\n

The study \u2013 “Could Solar Radiation Pressure Explain ‘Oumuamua’s Peculiar Acceleration?”, which recently appeared online \u2013 was conducted by Shmuel Bialy and Prof. Abraham Loeb. Whereas Bialy is a postdoctoral researcher at the CfA’s Institute for Theory and Computation<\/a> (ITC), Prof. Loeb is the director of the ITC, the Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science at Harvard University, and the head chair of the Breakthrough Starshot<\/a> Advisory Committee.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The object has been accelerating away from the sun, which might be caused by out-gassing, but there was no out-gassing on the way in, and the object’s rotation has not changed, which would normally happen with out-gassing.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, we will never know for sure. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some professors at Harvard are suggesting that the ‘Oumuamua interstellar object might be some form of space craft: On October 19th, 2017, the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System-1 (Pan-STARRS-1) in Hawaii announced the first-ever detection of an interstellar asteroid, named 1I\/2017 U1 (AKA ‘Oumuamua). In the months that followed, multiple follow-up observations were …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[565,427,419],"class_list":["post-178528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-astronomy","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178528"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178528\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}