MOSCOW, March 28, Vladislav Strekopytov.The interstellar asteroid Oumuamua, which flew through the solar system in 2017, may have been a «giant mother station of aliens.» This was stated by specialists from the Department of Defense of the United States, engaged in the study of UFOs. Scientists have other versions of the object's unusual properties.
Breaking the laws of gravity
It is possible that the solar system is periodically visited by starships sending out reconnaissance probes to the planets, Abraham Loeb, director of the Institute for Theory and Computing at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, former head of the Department of Astronomy at Harvard University, and Sean Kirkpatrick, head of the Pentagon's department of unidentified aerial phenomena, write in a report. One such «mothership», in their opinion, could be the interstellar object 1I/Oumuamua, discovered on October 19, 2017 by the Pan-STARRS telescope in Hawaii.
At first, 'Oumuamua (Hawaiian for «scout») was considered a comet that had flown in from interstellar space. The object was moving with non-gravitational acceleration. But clouds of dust and gas — a cometary coma, which, when approaching the Sun under the pressure of light, stretches out, forming a characteristic tail — Oumuamua did not have.
Therefore, it was reclassified as an asteroid. However, the unusual trajectory, low reflectivity and flat cigar-shaped shape (about 200 meters long and no more than 20 meters wide) are absolutely unusual for asteroids. media-type=»photo» data-crop-ratio=»0.624847374847375″ data-crop-width=»600″ data-crop-height=»375″ data-source-sid=»» class=»lazyload» lazy=» 1″ />
The object moved along an open hyperbolic orbit — the «trajectory of a slingshot» — at a speed unattainable for terrestrial spacecraft: about 26 kilometers per second. Calculations showed that he came from the vicinity of the star Vega in the constellation Lyra — this is 25 light years from us. Passing close to the Sun, 'Oumuamua suddenly turned around, accelerated to 92 kilometers per second and quickly left the solar system. No signals were picked up from him.
Astronomers had only a few weeks to study 'Oumuamua before it disappeared from telescopes forever. And now, more than five years later, there is no clear explanation for what they saw. Particularly intriguing is the extra acceleration that defies the laws of gravity. The authors of the report admit the operation of an ion engine in combination with a solar sail. Such unmanned autonomous systems are able to travel through the Galaxy, accelerating near the stars.
Interestingly, in the Solar System, 'Oumuamua has passed atmospheric rocky planets in the habitable zone. Especially close to the Earth. Far and cold gas and ice giants — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune — bypassed. data-crop-ratio=»0.896666666666667″ data-crop-width=»600″ data-crop-height=»538″ data-source-sid=»rian_infographics» class=»lazyload» lazy=»1″ />
Distraction
Recently, the Pentagon has been actively promoting the topic of UFOs, which, at the suggestion of the military department, is no longer perceived as purely conspiratorial. Astronomers, physicists and engineers seriously discuss it at scientific conferences, monographs and articles are published in top-rated journals.
In March 2022, a special paragraph was introduced into Section 50 of the US Code, requiring the Pentagon to prepare secret reports to Congress on a quarterly basis. In May, for the first time in half a century, hearings on the UFO problem were held. And in July, the Working Group on Unidentified Air Phenomena (UAPTF) was transformed into AARO (All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office), dealing with any anomalous observations in the air, at sea and in space. Since then, more than 360 investigations have been initiated. About half are «balloon-like objects».
It is noteworthy that 'Oumuamua as a potential alien ship is being talked about right now, although no new data has appeared. The draft report was hastily published immediately after the news about the «Chinese balls». Seems very much like an attempt to divert attention from more important international issues and at the same time demonstrate US leadership in global security. photo» data-crop-ratio=»0.567567567567568″ data-crop-width=»600″ data-crop-height=»341″ data-source-sid=»rian_collage» class=»lazyload» width=»1920″ height= «1090» decoding=»async» />
Hydrohydrogen «iceberg»
In a recent paper, UC Berkeley astrochemist Jennifer Bergner and Cornell University astronomer Darryl Seligman proposed a fairly simple natural explanation for the asteroid's unusual properties.
Oumuamua could have originated in the early stages of planet formation near one of the neighboring stars as an icy planetesimal. Gravity threw him out of his system, and he began to travel like a «breakaway space iceberg».
In interstellar space, H2O molecules partially dissociated under the action of ionized cosmic rays, forming hydrogen gas, which remained trapped in ice. As it approached the Sun, the ice melted and hydrogen was released, giving the object an anomalous acceleration.
«Oumuamua corresponds to a standard interstellar comet that has undergone intensive processing,» Jennifer Bergner said in a press release.
The experiments confirmed the simulation results: when a certain temperature was reached, gaseous hydrogen was released like an avalanche from the water-hydrogen ice matrix. Previous theoretical constructions did not match the observations due to the fact that the object was presented as consisting entirely of ice, pure hydrogen, nitrogen, or carbon monoxide.
that gaseous hydrogen is invisible to optical telescopes, and dust, if any, remained inside the ice matrix. The release of molecular hydrogen does not require complete melting — just a structural rearrangement of the ice.
In addition, simulations have shown that if the asteroid received non-gravitational acceleration from the evaporation of water ice, this would explain only half of the increase in speed, while molecular hydrogen emissions fit perfectly into its real trajectory.
Questions remain
Since 2017, Bergner and her colleagues have identified six more similar objects within the solar system — without an observable coma and with non-gravitational accelerations. They were called «dark comets». In 2031, one of them, 1998 KY26, should be reached by the Japanese mission Hayabusa-2, which recently collected samples from the asteroid Ryugu. Until recently, 1998 KY26 was also considered an asteroid, but in December 2022 it was reclassified as a comet.
Bergner and Seligman argue that all icy bodies exposed to interstellar cosmic rays should look the same. However, 2I/Borisov, which came to us from interstellar space and was discovered in 2019 by Russian amateur astronomer Gennady Borisov, has a giant gas and dust tail and looks much more like a typical solar system comet than 1I/Oumuamua.
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«In fact, long-period Oort cloud comets are affected by the same cosmic rays as interstellar objects, because they are outside the heliosphere and the solar wind does not protect them. However, all Oort cloud comets have tails,” writes Abraham Loeb, a supporter of the artificial origin of Oumuamua.
And as another argument, he cites a curious fact. In September 2020, the same Pan-STARRS telescope that discovered 'Oumuamua observed an object without a cometary tail, showing a noticeable effect of solar radiation pressure on its orbit. This object, named 2020 SO, turned out to be part of the Centaurus upper stage of the Surveyor 2 spacecraft launched by NASA in 1966. Spectroscopic analysis has shown that it consists of stainless steel coated with titanium dioxide paint.