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That's my point. If you turn on several telescopes particularly good at seeing these things and see three objects in fairly quick succession, the implication is
by grues-dinner 1y ago
That's my point. If you turn on several telescopes particularly good at seeing these things and see three objects in fairly quick succession, the implication is probably (not certainly) that there are lots of interstellar objects hammering in all the time, not that the first ones you see are particularly special, even if one of them seems to be making a statistically unlikely near approach to Mars.
- ceejayoz 1y agoYeah, like exoplanets. When I was in middle school there were none. Now there’s 6,000 confirmed ones.
- onion2k 1y agoSurely no one was actually thinking there weren't exoplanets though. We didn't need experimental proof that they exist to be reasonably sure that they do.
- dhosek 1y agoThe existence of exoplanets was an open question still in the 80s. They were pretty sure that they existed, but no one had any evidence of it. It fell kind of in the same category of whether the Riemann conjecture is true. Mathematicians are pretty sure it is, but they don’t know for sure.
- baggy_trough 1y agoI’m curious how unlikely it is. Seems very, very unlikely to pass by 2 major planets.
- ceejayoz 1y agoIt is. It’s similarly unlikely that I win the lottery. But someone always does!
- baggy_trough 1y agoThe situations are in no way analogous.
- ceejayoz 1y agoSure they are. There are likely trillions of these things. We are likely gonna see them everywhere. Like scratch-off lottery cards.
- baggy_trough 1y agoWe have seen 3.
- ceejayoz 1y agoYes. In very quick succession, right after we put the tech in place to find them. In the mid 1990s we’d only seen a handful of exoplanets. That they were basically everywhere we looked early on clued us in to their prevalence.
- baggy_trough 1y agoWe have seen 3 and one of them makes a very close pass to 2 major planets. Seems very unlikely.
- ceejayoz 1y agoIf you are unaware of gravity, sure. It is accelerating towards the sun, which also happens to be where the planets are.
- baggy_trough 1y agoI urge you to take a look at how much empty space there is around the Sun.
- PoorlyNamed 1y agoAny path it could possibly take is equally unlikely.