4 ms·
Passing at great speed very close to a star? Outer shell or entire thing becomes superheated and malleable. Extreme tidal forces as the object passes the star a
by knome 9y ago
Passing at great speed very close to a star? Outer shell or entire thing becomes superheated and malleable. Extreme tidal forces as the object passes the star and gets churned through the high gravity stretch it out. What if it passed close to something super dense, like a black hole, allowing the stresses of tidal force as it whipped around it to melt the rock on their own leaving it to fly away, pulled long and cooling in the cold of dead space.
I don't know how likely such things are, but I don't imagine it takes intelligence to make a long space rock.
- garmaine 9y agoTo make a long one without breaking it into multiple objects is very unlikely. This thing isn't composed of silly putty -- rocks and metals tend to be brittle and break rather than "stretch out".
- sitkack 9y agoNot if they are melted, or softened. It might have taken millions of close orbits around a hot body for that shape to form.
- sitkack 9y agoWhich also might be why it was ejected and made it to our solar system. The energy in its orbit might have been really high on a close approach to a star and a slight deviation flung it out of that system. A highly eccentric orbit would have a close approach around a star, and then have it rapidly cool as it traveled away from the star. Repeat millions of times. Would make for a nice orbital, thermal and materials science simulation.
- Simon_says 9y agoTrue, but on astronomical scales, unlikely events happen all the time.