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First possible interstellar object detected in our solar system
- QAPereo 9y agoThe object approached our solar system from almost directly "above" the ecliptic, the approximate plane in space where the planets and most asteroids orbit the Sun, so it did not have any close encounters with the eight major planets during its plunge toward the Sun. On Sept. 2, the small body crossed under the ecliptic plane just inside of Mercury's orbit and then made its closest approach to the Sun on Sept. 9. Pulled by the Sun's gravity, the object made a hairpin turn under our solar system, passing under Earth's orbit on Oct. 14 at a distance of about 15 million miles (24 million kilometers) -- about 60 times the distance to the Moon. It has now shot back up above the plane of the planets and, travelling at 27 miles per second (44 kilometers per second) with respect to the Sun, the object is speeding toward the constellation Pegasus. Sooooo cool! I wonder if the system of origin will eventually be determined?
- nawgszy 9y agoI doubt that's possible, although it would be very interesting.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ccozan 9y ago"The CNEOS team plotted the object's current trajectory and even looked into its future. A/2017 U1 came from the direction of the constellation Lyra, cruising through interstellar space at a brisk clip of 15.8 miles (25.5 kilometers) per second." So we have an origin. However they don't give the error margin so is probably not possible to pin point the exact origin without further calculations.
- Jach 9y agoHas anyone done the calculation yet for what would have happened if it collided with Earth?
- Yetanfou 9y agoA probe sent out by some remote civilisation, it is on its way through our part of the Milky Way galaxy. It used Sol as a source of gravity to slingshot itself on its way in the direction of Pegasus. It also did some measurements while it was at it, even though this system is not its final destination. Yes, totally made up but in theory it would be possible.
- pavlov 9y agoAt 44 km/s, the object is travelling slightly faster than Pioneer 10. Seems too slow for an interstellar probe?
- kabdib 9y agoIf you're not made of meat, just put yourself into a sleep state for a few hundred thousand years. This could just be the Krang looking for a good place to have a summer holiday ("Hmmm, too much oxygen. Let's try the next exit, dear.")
- QAPereo 9y agoA probe should show signs of acceleration, not freefall... unless you wanted the probe to be stealthy. That is a disturbing thought.
- codingdave 9y agoRendezvous with Rama?
- cryptonector 9y agoRecall, those guys do everything in threes. Perhaps they'll even send three probes through our solar system.
- okket 9y agoA remote civilisation that has no problem waiting hundred thousand years or longer for a probe to reach its destiny.
- 9y ago
- itg 9y agoMight not be interstellar https://mobile.twitter.com/AscendingNode/status/923223634386206720 https://mobile.twitter.com/AscendingNode/status/923223634386...
- snowwrestler 9y agoRead the whole thread; seems like no one else can reproduce this.
- okket 9y agoPlease also read https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/mpml/conversations/messages/33145 https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/mpml/conversations/messa... > AscendingNode's tweet is in error: It's using the basic find_orb fit (which tries to fit the object's observations to a parabolic orbit) without taking into account the fact that it COULD be interstellar. > You'll notice quite clearly, that in the follow-up tweets they make, that they give residuals in the orbit on the order of 6-9 whole arcseconds. It's quite bothersome that everyone I've been talking to has been re-quoting the tweet all day.
- banku_brougham 9y agoMy Twitter feed didn’t become something amazing like this one seems to have, I’m envious and wondering if it was a lack of discipline on my part.
- arbuge 9y agoTechnically, it would be the second. First in solar system was Voyager I: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_program
- misnome 9y agoIt’s an interstellar object, but not in the solar system (it used to be, but wasn’t interstellar until it left)...
- arnaudsm 9y agoPrepare for thousands of clickbaity articles on mainstream media in the next few days.
- mongol 9y agoThat it passes the ecliptic from that angle, that close to the sun, feels "deliberate". Like aiming for bull's eye on the solar system, from above. Iss
- mkl 9y agoIt's not deliberate, it's gravity. The sun has been pulling this object towards itself, because that's how gravity works.
- ant6n 9y agoIn space, the gravity well we more likely create big orbits. Since there's no air slowing objects down, they won't all fall down to the sun. For example, it's very energy intensive to go visit Mercury.
- mkl 9y agoRight, but that's for objects travelling more tangentially. An object travelling kind of towards the sun will get redirected more towards the sun, when the sun is the largest nearby mass. It's unlikely that an object would be pulled right into the sun though, just redirected by its close encounter so it flies off again in another direction.
- mxuribe 9y agoThis surprised me at first, because i thought Halley's Comet was also interstellar...then looked it up, and sure enough its not...So, yeah for new things!
- IIAOPSW 9y agoI like to imagine some alien civilizations version of Voyager 1. Perhaps they sent us their own golden record with difficult to decipher pictographs and samples of pictures and music.
- justinjlynn 9y agoIf it is, given its trajectory, it's probably not meant for us. I would be nice to keep an eye on it though -- it'd be fun to get a complete scan and hope it's doing the same in return. It's too bad it's likely too late to rendezvous with it and get some samples.
- open_bear 9y agoSome tabloid is already writing an article "First alien nudes from outer space discovered".
- Cyphase 9y agoThe Wikipedia article for this object: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A/2017_U1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A/2017_U1
- mustacheemperor 9y agoAnyone else thinking of Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C Clarke right now?
- grzm 9y ago'codingdave is :) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15564244 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15564244
- mustacheemperor 9y agoShoot,next time I need to ctrl-f my bright idea...
- sizzzzlerz 9y agoOnly if it starts to deaccelerate.
- Grangar 9y agoAnd changes trajectory towards the sun.
- jboggan 9y agoI'm thinking more like The Expanse.
- odammit 9y agoGood thing it didn’t covertly park itself on Phoebe.
- mcgarnagle 9y agoIt's an amazing series. Highly recommend it.
- thriftwy 9y agoThe series is awful. Original Rama is awesome but then some co-author takes over and it becomes a mess. The dude definitely had problems.
- sizzzzlerz 9y agoPerhaps it's a starseed, wandering between the rim of the galaxy and the galactic core. To be closely followed by an Outsider ship.
- rakkhi 9y agoGood luck commander
- rbanffy 9y agoIt'd be great if we had some general-purpose probes that could be redirected to, at least, do a flyby.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Grangar 9y agoWould it be possible at all to intercept it for analysis?
- TeMPOraL 9y agoProbably not; we won't be able to scramble a mission fast enough. That said, this was literally my first thought when I saw the headline on HN - that I can't wait until we have a space presence good enough that, the next time this happens, we'll be able to quickly send a probe to such an object.
- throwanem 9y agoIt's doing ~40km/s almost directly away from us. We could launch yesterday and still never catch up. Best we could have done would be a flyby as it passed beneath the ecliptic - not nothing, to be sure, but not nearly close enough for sample return, either.
- throwanem 9y agoIt's moving far too fast in the worst possible direction, and it's already far too far away. If we'd known it was coming, we could in principle have gotten something out to its point of closest Earth approach, but the object's velocity means even that would've been a flyby with no possibility of rendezvous outside possibly an impactor. As the matter stands today, anything we'd send after it would have to overcome a velocity disadvantage of something like 40 kilometers per second - in other words, traversing the diameter of our planet three or four times every second - on a vector pointed near as nevermind to straight away from us. That's not something our propulsion technology is so far even close to being able to do.
- b0bdog 9y agoThat doesn't make sense. If the Earth is 12,000km in diameter, surely it will take a few minutes to traverse and not multiple times per second? Edit: Oh never mind, you meant the velocity needed to catch up with it.
- _jdams 9y agoOff topic but can someone answer this for me? Are the stars in our night sky part of our galaxy or no? It seems such a stupid question to ask, but when I look online it says we have one star, our Sun, whereas other galaxies have one or multiple - for instance a galaxy with two stars would be called a Binary System. So where are the stars in our night sky? Are they even further away than Uranus, Neptune.., but so bright we see them anyway? EDIT: Thanks, all! Makes sense.
- piker 9y ago> So where are the stars in our night sky? Are they even further away than Uranus, Neptune.., but so bright we see them anyway? Yes.
- Totallyboss4 9y ago>Are the stars in our night sky part of our galaxy or no Every star you see in the night sky with the naked eye is part of our galaxy. >for instance a galaxy with two stars would be called a Binary System. A galaxy usually has billions or trillion of stars. Our solar system has one star, which is our sun ( a sun is a star with planets around it). Our solar system is inside of a galaxy, which is made up of billions and billions of stars. >So where are the stars in our night sky? Are they even further away than Uranus, Neptune.., but so bright we see them anyway? All stars are outside of our solar system by definition. They are light-years away ( the time it takes to get there at the speed of light is years), but most planets are light-minutes away.
- dhimes 9y agoYou can see other galaxies in the night sky. Stars in our galaxy lie primarily in the part of the sky with the most starts, the so-called 'milky way.' Yes, they are outside of our solar system. They are ridiculously far away. Take a peek here: https://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/features/cosmic/farthest_info.html https://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/features/cosmic/farthest_info....
- freax4evar 9y agoWhat you are calling a 'galaxy' is actually just our solar system, one of millions in the Milky Way Galaxy. The stars you see are located in our galaxy.
- gpvos 9y agoOur asteroid detection system is still very pitiful if a 400m large object is only detected four days after its closest approach.
- retSava 9y ago"closest approach" is very unquantified, and 400 meter is a very small object in a large space. It's a hard problem, probably not very prioritized either.
- danieldrehmer 9y agoFalse. Any piece of gold in our planet is an interstellar object.
- alvern 9y ago91800 kmh per hour incoming, 158400 kmh outgoing. This space puppy just gained 66600 kmh from passing through our solar gravity well. Not particularly relevant, but very interesting!
- petraeus 9y agoThe is the best way to disguise a probe and the fact it came from above the elliptic might mean the aliens wanted to make sure it wouldnt collide with any natural bodies