8 ms·

Interstellar object ‘Oumuamua covered in 'thick crust of carbon-rich gunk'

97 points by secfirstmd 9y ago

gumby 9y ago
Undoubtably the accumulated corpses of explorers from the sundry solar systems it has passed through during the past several billion years.
notacoward 9y ago
To a certain kind of alien, "thick crust of carbon-rich gunk" could describe Earth as well.
- RepressedEmu 9y ago
  Maybe the aliens ARE the "carbon-rich gunk"?
  - hinkley 9y ago
    You’re carbon-rich gunk.
    - gebeeson 9y ago
      A co-worker of mine, upon reading this, opined that my face was carbon-rich gunk. He's not wrong.
  - Joeri 9y ago
    Or maybe it is its skin, and we’re looking at the equivalent of a dead beached whale. One might imagine the funeral rite of interplanetary life forms would be to send their deceased on a deep space trajectory.
- danidiaz 9y ago
  Reminds me of Terry Bisson's "They're made out of meat" http://www.terrybisson.com/page6/page6.html http://www.terrybisson.com/page6/page6.html
Avshalom 9y ago
Which is completely normal.
- nerdponx 9y ago
  Sorry you're being downvoted. I thought this was pretty cool, too. How often do we find interstellar "carbon-rich gunk"?
avian 9y ago
Personally, I'm strangely happy that this is turning out to be "just" an ordinary piece of space rock. Imagine if it looked more like a spent booster or a probe from remote observations. We would have no realistic way of intercepting it to learn more about it. It would forever remain an open question whether it was just a strange rock or a once-in-a-life-time missed opportunity to explore an artifact from an alien civilization.
- InclinedPlane 9y ago
  People keep saying this, it's wrong. We absolutely, 100%, will flyby this object, and likely do a rendezvous mission as well. It may be going fast, but partly that's because it sped up a lot through the inner solar system, as it climbs out of the Sun's gravity well it will slow down a great deal. And the solar system is big. It won't be light-years away in a few decades, of course, it's not going nearly that fast, it'll take nearly two centuries to get 1000 AU from the Sun. So we have all of that time to go out and do a flyby mission. We could put one together today that would reach the asteroid within the next 30-40 years if we really wanted to (at a modest cost of a few billion dollars). If we went wild and spent tens of billions on a mission we could do a rendezvous mission in 20 years. Meanwhile, launch systems are getting better and cheaper so almost certainly we'll get to a point where a realistic 10-20 year cruise timeframe mission is not just feasible but affordable, and then we'll go take a look at it.
  - planteen 9y ago
    > We absolutely, 100%, will flyby this object, and likely do a rendezvous mission as well That's a lot of confidence. This is the first interstellar object passing through imaged. However, we believe several of these objects pass through the solar system per year. Why haven't they been detected until now? We didn't have sensitive telescopes doing whole sky surveys like Pan-STARRS until recently. As more projects like LSST come online, we will undoubtedly discover more interstellar objects. And we will learn a lot more about them from Earth-based observations. Perhaps we will get to the point with telescope sensitivity where we can detect them years away so they intercept is simpler. But I do not share your confidence that we will send our first probe to explore interstellar objects to Oumuamua just because it was the first one discovered.
Parcissons 9y ago
Self repairing nano-bot hull?
CalChris 9y ago
> organic ices – such as frozen carbon dioxide I'm pretty sure that CO2 isn't classified as organic.
- paol 9y ago
  Organic has a specific meaning in chemistry: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_chemistry https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_chemistry
  - a-priori 9y ago
    Yes but in some cases, astronomy uses slightly different definitions of key scientific terms: "metal", for example, means anything other than hydrogen or helium.
    - nkoren 9y ago
      Nonsense. Nickel-iron asteroids are called "metallic," because they're largely made out of, well, metal. Stony asteroids are called "carbonaceous" because they've got a lot of carbon. They're very definitely not called "metal". And astronomers believe that the core of Jupiter is both hydrogen and metallic -- hydrogen compressed to the point where it acquires the property of a metal. So: there are many things that are neither hydrogen nor helium nor metal, and a few things which are both hydrogen and metal.
      - aexaey 9y ago
        I think GP meant "metallicity" as a property of stellar objects: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallicity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallicity
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
- kbutler 9y ago
  "Organic" as chiefly of biological origin? Yeah. "Organic" as occurs in nature and beneficial for plants? Sure. "Organic" as compound containing carbon? Yes. "Organic" as compound with at least one carbon-hydrogen bond? Nope. "Organic" as a compound with a significant number of carbon atoms? Nope.
jdonaldson 9y ago
This sounds like my cast iron pan. It takes so long to build up the perfect seasoning. I hope the owner is reunited with it.
rishav_sharan 9y ago
I am just happy that it doesn't have a reflective mercury like surface

97 points by secfirstmd 9y ago

Undoubtably the accumulated corpses of explorers from the sundry solar systems it has passed through during the past several billion years.

notacoward 9y ago

To a certain kind of alien, "thick crust of carbon-rich gunk" could describe Earth as well.

RepressedEmu 9y ago
Maybe the aliens ARE the "carbon-rich gunk"?
- hinkley 9y ago
  You’re carbon-rich gunk.
  - gebeeson 9y ago
    A co-worker of mine, upon reading this, opined that my face was carbon-rich gunk. He's not wrong.
- Joeri 9y ago
  Or maybe it is its skin, and we’re looking at the equivalent of a dead beached whale. One might imagine the funeral rite of interplanetary life forms would be to send their deceased on a deep space trajectory.
danidiaz 9y ago
Reminds me of Terry Bisson's "They're made out of meat" http://www.terrybisson.com/page6/page6.html http://www.terrybisson.com/page6/page6.html

Avshalom 9y ago

Which is completely normal.

nerdponx 9y ago
Sorry you're being downvoted. I thought this was pretty cool, too. How often do we find interstellar "carbon-rich gunk"?

avian 9y ago

Personally, I'm strangely happy that this is turning out to be "just" an ordinary piece of space rock. Imagine if it looked more like a spent booster or a probe from remote observations. We would have no realistic way of intercepting it to learn more about it. It would forever remain an open question whether it was just a strange rock or a once-in-a-life-time missed opportunity to explore an artifact from an alien civilization.

InclinedPlane 9y ago
People keep saying this, it's wrong. We absolutely, 100%, will flyby this object, and likely do a rendezvous mission as well. It may be going fast, but partly that's because it sped up a lot through the inner solar system, as it climbs out of the Sun's gravity well it will slow down a great deal. And the solar system is big. It won't be light-years away in a few decades, of course, it's not going nearly that fast, it'll take nearly two centuries to get 1000 AU from the Sun. So we have all of that time to go out and do a flyby mission. We could put one together today that would reach the asteroid within the next 30-40 years if we really wanted to (at a modest cost of a few billion dollars). If we went wild and spent tens of billions on a mission we could do a rendezvous mission in 20 years. Meanwhile, launch systems are getting better and cheaper so almost certainly we'll get to a point where a realistic 10-20 year cruise timeframe mission is not just feasible but affordable, and then we'll go take a look at it.
- planteen 9y ago
  > We absolutely, 100%, will flyby this object, and likely do a rendezvous mission as well That's a lot of confidence. This is the first interstellar object passing through imaged. However, we believe several of these objects pass through the solar system per year. Why haven't they been detected until now? We didn't have sensitive telescopes doing whole sky surveys like Pan-STARRS until recently. As more projects like LSST come online, we will undoubtedly discover more interstellar objects. And we will learn a lot more about them from Earth-based observations. Perhaps we will get to the point with telescope sensitivity where we can detect them years away so they intercept is simpler. But I do not share your confidence that we will send our first probe to explore interstellar objects to Oumuamua just because it was the first one discovered.

Parcissons 9y ago

Self repairing nano-bot hull?

CalChris 9y ago

> organic ices – such as frozen carbon dioxide I'm pretty sure that CO2 isn't classified as organic.

paol 9y ago
Organic has a specific meaning in chemistry: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_chemistry https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_chemistry
- a-priori 9y ago
  Yes but in some cases, astronomy uses slightly different definitions of key scientific terms: "metal", for example, means anything other than hydrogen or helium.
  - nkoren 9y ago
    Nonsense. Nickel-iron asteroids are called "metallic," because they're largely made out of, well, metal. Stony asteroids are called "carbonaceous" because they've got a lot of carbon. They're very definitely not called "metal". And astronomers believe that the core of Jupiter is both hydrogen and metallic -- hydrogen compressed to the point where it acquires the property of a metal. So: there are many things that are neither hydrogen nor helium nor metal, and a few things which are both hydrogen and metal.
    - aexaey 9y ago
      I think GP meant "metallicity" as a property of stellar objects: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallicity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallicity
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
kbutler 9y ago
"Organic" as chiefly of biological origin? Yeah. "Organic" as occurs in nature and beneficial for plants? Sure. "Organic" as compound containing carbon? Yes. "Organic" as compound with at least one carbon-hydrogen bond? Nope. "Organic" as a compound with a significant number of carbon atoms? Nope.

jdonaldson 9y ago

This sounds like my cast iron pan. It takes so long to build up the perfect seasoning. I hope the owner is reunited with it.

rishav_sharan 9y ago

I am just happy that it doesn't have a reflective mercury like surface