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VLT observations of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS II
- briffid 1y agoSo is it a spaceship or not?
- JPLeRouzic 1y agoThis is a report about the volatile composition of interstellar objects (ISOs) passing through the Solar System.
- rdtsc 1y agoWhy would do think it would be a spaceship?
- codezero 1y agoA lot of quacks online are saying it could be, or by proxy that “it’s like nothing we’ve ever seen” Looking at you Angry Astronaut.
- lucky_cloud 1y agoI doubt they're serious but some wackos thought Oumuamua was an alien probe due to its unusual shape, and since this new interstellar object is arriving shortly after Oumuamua has left it must be the mothership. I feel like it's more of a meme than a serious thing for most people.
- andyjohnson0 1y agoThe Ramans do everything in threes.
- exe34 1y agoI'm looking forward to the braking!
- chatmasta 1y agoIt wasn’t a wacko theory at first. The wackos are the people who still believed it even after evidence emerged to the contrary.
- rbanffy 1y agoThere are many more rocks in our own solar system than there are interstellar spacecraft. Assuming similar proportions elsewhere makes us conclude it’s never aliens.
- Bjartr 1y agoHeuristcs that almost always work are right up until they're not. https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/heuristics-that-almost-always-work https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/heuristics-that-almost-alwa...
- chatmasta 1y agoThat’s why they’re called heuristics and not deterministics
- Tadpole9181 1y agoI mean, sure, but no one I've invited in my home is a vampire so far and I think that heuristic is solid.
- rbanffy 1y agoYou wouldn’t know unless they told you. They could have had a snack someplace else.
- holoduke 1y agoI am getting bombarded with yt videos about this object being half the size of the sun passing our system with the planets aligned in a 0.01% chance perfect geometry etc etc. millions of views. It's incredible what people believe these days. Not a grain of skepticism.
- rbanffy 1y agoScience teachers have failed their students.
- marshray 1y agoLet's put science teachers in charge of the youtube boost juice and see if the situation improves.
- dylan604 1y agoDo all of the views necessarily translate 1:1 to the number of people that believe it? Some people watch just to see what kooky nonsense people are falling for.
- ojosilva 1y agoI think the number of wacky believers hasn't changed that much. It's just that now the countless outlets and algorithms venting this nonsense have ballooned to galactic proportions! My dad used to buy these 70/80s UFO magazines back in the day and they were just as nutty.
- iJohnDoe 1y agoThey are asking if it is or not. They didn’t say they think it’s a spaceship. In any case, assumptions shouldn’t be made either either way what it might be, which is the reason to gather more data.
- rdtsc 1y agoSure but it's also not a pink elephant and not a flower pot. It's none of those things. We have just as much evidence of those objects flying through space as we have of alien spaceships so far. So it's odd asking "So is it a spaceship or not?" just like it's odd asking "so is it a flower pot?".
- briffid 1y agoIs Musk's red car a spaceship btw? Because if we are able to send such stuff to space, other intelligent beings would most probably do the same. Or they are more intelligent?
- rdtsc 1y agoThat's my point! Anything could be in space, elephants, flower pots, EVs. But they picked a particular thing out of the possible universe of objects so was curious why they picked that. It's an asteroid emitting Ni atoms based on the paper. Do we have any evidence of alien spaceships doing that that?
- LeoPanthera 1y agoIt is never aliens.
- rbanffy 1y agoUntil it is. ;-)
- tiahura 1y agoSo telescopes can see nickel being spread at .125g/mile from 200M miles away?
- JPLeRouzic 1y agoI have a 135-year-old book by Camille Flammarion that explains how astronomers were able to analyze the content of stars with spectroscopy.
- dylan604 1y agoTo further the reading... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectroscopy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectroscopy
- StableAlkyne 1y agoIn the same sense that a weather radar can "see" mist dozens of miles away, yes There is so much more information available in the electromagnetic spectrum than just the narrow range a human eye can see
- exe34 1y agomy favourite today was this one: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022407320309535 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00224... measuring pressure with line broadening!?!
- gus_massa 1y agoAn easy home experiment is to get a gas flame, like in the stovetop that is blue and sprink a little of table salt. The important part is the sodium that gives the flame a very strong yellow color. Salts without sodium give other colors. IIRC cooper gives a green color. This is used by firecrackers makers to get nice colors, and also in the chemistry lab to detect the composition of some salts. After studding this king of stuff for a few centuries, we have a very good idea of how each element changes the color of the flame, or absorbs some colors of the light that pass trough the mist.
- reenorap 1y agoAn article said this is the 3rd interstellar object detected. Are we detecting more interstellar visitors because they are getting more common, or have our techniques improved over the last few years?
- aardvark179 1y agoOur techniques have improved.
- gus_massa 1y agoWe launched a new telescope, in 2017 IIRC, that can detect them.
- synapsomorphy 1y agoEntirely the second. When Vera Rubin starts reporting its regular scans this will be made very clear because we'll probably find 10+ interstellar objects per year at minimum.
- hnuser123456 1y agoThese things are only a mile or two wide and at the distance of Jupiter. They require extremely sensitive and high-resolution telescopes to detect. There are probably many more of them that are smaller and further.
- rbanffy 1y agoWe really need to be able to launch a sample return mission to interstellar objects. There’s much unique chemistry to be uncovered.
- metalman 1y agothe ∆v makes a sample return mission from an interstellar object currently impossible. 3l atlas is doing 63kilometers/second and anything even going whatever the minimum speed to qualify as interstellar will be goiing to fast to catch up to, and then have enough fuel to brake for a gravitational capture by the sun. our best chance to learn about interstellar objects is to blast them with ultra high powered laser beams and use telescopes to do remote spectrographic and visual analysis , this could likely be cobbled together right now.
- ccgreg 1y agoYou can leave off the laser beams and just look at them with telescopes. The paper we're discussing is exactly that.
- metalman 1y agowe can do much more with direct laser strikes, a laser will be able to blast through the dust and gass corona, if there was radar directed at the same time for precise timing and targeting. size, velocity, shape, and details of its shape, and composition in many areas and reach below the imediate surface we cant catch it, but we can certainly get a much better look
- galacticaactual 1y agoSo how is it that nickel is present on this thing with zero corresponding iron?
- ccgreg 1y ago> We report detection of CN emission and also detect numerous Ni I lines while Fe I remains undetected, potentially implying efficiently released gas-phase Ni. Where does it say there is zero iron? This is an upper bound, not zero.
- galacticaactual 1y ago"FE I remains undetected" Remains Undetected. Pretty crystal clear.
- ccgreg 1y agoNo. Undetected iron and zero iron are different. Source: astronomer.
- galacticaactual 1y ago"Undetected" is not an "upper bound." Source: computer scientist.
- ccgreg 1y agoUndetected means you can compute an upper bound, based on the performance of your instrument. Again, these are undergraduate level concepts.
- galacticaactual 1y agoAgain, you’re being obtuse but well leave it there. Good day.