Could Solar Radiation Pressure Explain Oumuamua’s Peculiar Acceleration?

90 36 8 years ago

David Brin is sticking to the solar radiation causing outgassing after a delay hypothesis. Go figure - it was his thesis

ridgeguy• 8 years ago

Seems at least plausible.

Comet Rosetta's perihelion was August 13, 2015 [1] and there was a big outgassing event February 2016 [2]. Takes time for heat to propagate through stuff.

But yeah, I'd rather it was due to radiation pressure on an alien solar sail.

[1] https://www.space.com/30237-rosetta-spacecraft-comet-closest...

[2] http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2016/08/25/rosetta-captures-com...

vijaybritto2• 8 years ago

I hope it's an alien probe sent by a mother ship. They should come and just destroy us before we slowly destroy ourselves!

dgzl• 8 years ago

Speak for yourself, there's still plenty of things I want to do on this planet.

point78• 8 years ago

Damn right!

radisb• 8 years ago

To be fair, he is speaking for himself.

vijaybritto2• 8 years ago

That was a joke

toasterlovin• 8 years ago

They should come and just destroy us before we slowly destroy ourselves!

Your misanthropy doesn’t even make sense. We should be destroyed because we are going to destroy ourselves? As in, we’re going to fall off a cliff, so why not just push us off pre-emptively?

samspenc• 8 years ago

We discuss the possible origins of such an object including the possibility that it might be a lightsail of artificial origin. Our general results apply to any light probes designed for interstellar travel.

Could someone clarify whether it means what I think it is saying - that an Arxiv paper is trying to prove that this is an object sent by an alien civilization to peek at our solar system?

grondilu• 8 years ago

Yes, it means what you think it means, though "discussing the possibility" does not mean "trying to prove".

Weirder Arxiv papers exist, it's not that odd.

naikrovek• 8 years ago

Anyone can publish to Arxiv; one doesn't need to be credible to publish there. I am not saying these authors are untrustworthy, by the way, or that the object in question is or is not of alien & artificial origin; I am saying that anyone can publish a paper to Arxiv.

paulpauper• 8 years ago

nope. from personal experience trying, you need two endorsements.

empath75• 8 years ago

They are attached to an institution however.

tree_of_item• 8 years ago

No, you read it wrong. They are not trying to prove anything, they are discussing the possible origins of the object.

mindfulplay2• 8 years ago

Before we jump to artificial/alien origins, let's at least consider the basic science before jumping to fantastical conclusions....

yantrams2• 8 years ago

I always found it quite interesting to see the parallels between arguments for God and aliens -- X can't be explained by science so I'm going to jump to the conclusion I want to believe. I thought I was immune to this kind of reasoning but even I fell for it with Oumuamua.

The initial paper and comments by some experts convinced me that there is a strong chance that this is a probe. It seemed plausible based on my limited understanding of Physics. (Moment of Inertia, Stresses etc.)

But then a paper[1] was released claiming this to be a comet. I so wanted my original belief to be true(because it was more exciting!) I considered the possibility that their [2]model wasn't accurate. I was even willing to entertain the idea of cover-up just because it didn't align with what I wanted to be true!

[1] https://www.space.com/41015-interstellar-visitor-oumuamua-co...

[2]A recent study claims that it was indeed the case and the probe is more likely to not be a comet. https://www.quantamagazine.org/interstellar-comet-oumuamua-m...

Edit: Formatting

rdtsc• 8 years ago

I always found it quite interesting to see the parallels between arguments for God and aliens -- X can't be explained by science so I'm going to jump to the conclusion I want to believe.

In general I think it is because of baggage associated with "God". Which God(s)? Was/is there persecution, torture, killing, suppression of human rights happening or happened using the belief or lack of believe in said God(s) as a pretext.

Aliens are a cute curiosity. That is, it is pretty safe to say we believe in them or hope that they visited us without getting too many people upset. Which is kind of what they did here. "Assuming this body can't outgas, and that the acceleration came from the solar wind, then it might have these other properties, including being an alien solar sail"

vertline32• 8 years ago

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence - Carl Sagan

Keyframe• 8 years ago

I'm sure "they" have used science to accelerate their ship/engine. I love when things like this happen and show just how much we still don't know, even about things we consider "basic".

TheOtherHobbes• 8 years ago

This paper is the basic science.

mindfulplay2• 8 years ago

It is not. The last sentence is utter speculation. I would look into the measurement errors, interference, multiple data points collected by independent monitoring systems, and check for errors against an unbiased/known body of similar mass etcetc. None of this has been done.

It's similar to "my camera spotted this amazing illusory effect and I think it's an artificial body"...

sunstone• 8 years ago

When you look at the trajectory that this object took through the solar system, coming within .14 AU of earth, you really have to wonder; what are the chances that it was a random flyby?

vertline32• 8 years ago

Well, I think there could be lots of rocks but they are hard to see.

InclinedPlane• 8 years ago

You have to consider instead the probability of detecting such objects that don't come very close to Earth. And that probability is actually pretty low (currently), so the proximity tells us very little beyond some general estimate of how common such objects are.

jnicholasp• 8 years ago

And in a similar vein, we have only very recently become able to detect (some) objects such as this one, and shortly after we gained the ability to spot things like this, we spotted this one. It at least allows the possibility that events like this are not incredibly rare, and we just haven't been able to perceive them until now.

Afforess• 8 years ago

what are the chances that it was a random flyby?

~99.9̅% chance of being random. Absent any sort of evidence, it was a rare, meaningless event. The law of large numbers, however, suggests that rare events occur more frequently than you'd expect. E.g 1 in 1000 year floods could occur 3 times in a decade, since each event is statistically independent from others.

adwn• 8 years ago

~99.9̅% chance of being random.

Where did you get that number from? Because it looks like you made it up.

lifeformed2• 8 years ago

99.9̅% == 100%

jwfxpr• 8 years ago

The HN title needs to be corrected. The correct name is ʻOumuamua, including the first punctuation character (an ʻokina, representing a glottal stop).

okket• 8 years ago

Previous discussion from 4 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18338927 (100 comments)

Could Solar Radiation Pressure Explain Oumuamua’s Peculiar Acceleration?

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