Oumuamua interstellar interloper is speeding up

Normally in a science fiction movie when an object like an asteroid begins to speed up its time to assume it’s an alien spacecraft sent to destroy the Earth. Not so much in real life. While the Oumuamua object has begun to speed up compared to its speed before the debate is one of asteroid or comet. Scientists say that something other than the gravity of the Sun and planets in our solar system is causing the acceleration.

Scientists say that the speed boost is consistent with the behavior of a comet suggesting perhaps Oumuamua isn’t a rocky asteroid as originally thought. Researcher Davide Farnocchia from the NASA JPL says that the subtle additional force on Oumuamua is likely caused by “jets of gaseous material expelled from its surface.”

He goes on to point out that this sort of outgassing impacts the motion of many comets in our solar system. Comets let off lots of dust and gas when warmed by the sun. The confusion about Oumuamua and if it is an asteroid or a comet comes in that there were no “unmistakable indications of outgassing” so the acceleration wasn’t anticipated.

The reason could be because the outgassing on Oumuamua produced very small amounts of dust essentially allowing them to go unseen. This sort of thing is what has scientists excited about Oumuamua, the more they study the object the more excited the scientific community gets.

Observations so far suggest that other star systems regularly throw out small comet-like objects of the sort Oumuamua represents. This means there should be more of them drifting in the universe and in the future, more effort will be put into finding and studying those entering our solar system. The team thinks with a larger sample size they can learn more about this sort of interstellar object.

[via TechExplorist]