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Is 1I/’Oumuamua an Alien Spacecraft?
- rbanffy 9y agoWhy would anyone want to do an almost full 180 on an interstellar spacecraft? There is very little delta-v to be gained from that. It's not like the gravity assist from the Sun would compensate for the extra couple hundred thousand years from the detour.
- eesmith 9y agoIt's an "angle of 66° from the direction of its approach" says https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CA%BBOumuamua#Trajectory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CA%BBOumuamua#Trajectory . Not "almost full 180". It's not an interstellar spacecraft. I started to think of examples, but none make sense with what we know. It'll still be within our Oort cloud for the next 20,000 years, and it doesn't seem lined up with anything previous or next.
- rbanffy 9y agoOK, it's a 130 degree turn. Still, it's quite a detour if you are trying to get from A to B. And sure, it's not likely to be an interstellar spacecraft, but a very weird object still. And even if it were an interstellar craft, it'd be a seriously lame one using a gravity assist ;-)
- strongai 9y agoMaybe it was scanning us?