3 ms·

This reminds me of Rendevous with Rama, which I’m currently reading with my daughter.

• divbzero 8y ago
  ’Oumuamua’s “mysterious thrust” [1][2] is obviously from rocket thrusters which undoubtedly come in threes. 1: [’Oumuamua] was being slightly accelerated by an unseen force, which they argued could only be attributed to comet “outgassing” acting like a thruster. 2: Now in a new study that is currently under peer review, Roman Rafikov, an astrophysicist at the University of Cambridge, argues that the same forces that appeared to have accelerated ’Oumuamua — the same forces that should have also produced a tail — would have also affected its spin. In particular, the acceleration would have torqued ’Oumuamua to such a degree that it would have spun apart, breaking up into smaller pieces. If ’Oumuamua were a comet, he argues, it would not have survived.