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Is the mark "first interstellar visitor" universally agreed upon (as far as we know)? That alone is kinda cool.
by whycome 4y ago
Is the mark "first interstellar visitor" universally agreed upon (as far as we know)? That alone is kinda cool.
- Rastonbury 4y agoI believe so, so far we only know of two
- edfletcher_t137 4y agoApparently (TIL!) it's three now, with a meteor that burned up in 2014 having been confirmed in just April 2022 as interstellar! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNEOS_2014-01-08 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNEOS_2014-01-08 And who was part of the team that first reported its existence? "CNEOS 2014-01-08 is an interstellar object reported in June 2019 by astronomers Amir Siraj and Abraham Loeb"
- pengaru 4y agoNot only is it kinda cool, it's also why it's particularly annoying we didn't get better data while it was near enough to do so. We missed what may have been quite an exceptional opportunity.
- rwmj 4y agoProbably. But also it was detected within the first 10 years of operation of the Pan STARRS 1 telescope so perhaps similar things should be expected every decade or so?
- chongli 4y agoFirst confirmed interstellar visitor. Who knows how much interstellar dust and other small stuff we’ve run into over the eons.
- di456 4y agoPretty much every element from lithium and up came from another star's death. The fusion reaction of a star goes from H -> He -> and on up the periodic table until the star implodes and/or goes supernova, creating gold and other heavier elements. Most of the matter on our current planet has interstellar origins, including humans. We are all made of star dust!
- PM_me_your_math 4y agoIt is wild to consider that all the gold mined on earth can fit in a block measuring 22 cubic meters, and all of that gold has an origin in a supernova that pre-dates our sun.
- BenjiWiebe 4y ago12,600 cubic meters is what some quick googling and math suggests. Did you mean a 22-meter cube?
- moloch-hai 4y agoI think they attribute gold to neutron star collisions nowadays. All the gold ever mined arrived by meteorite; whatever was here at the start sank to the core. We are terribly lucky that gold sort-of dissolves in water and then is deposited in cracked quartz rock the water filters through. Sometimes it bonds with tellurium instead.
- filoleg 4y ago> 22 cubic meters This doesn't sound right. 22 cubic meters could be represented as a cube with an edge length of roughly 2.8 meters. There is no way there is less gold on the entire Earth than there is in every single bank heist movie that features gold bars.
- vecter 4y agoI think a mean a cube with a side of 22 meters.
- 4y ago