The Mistery of Oumuamua Finally Explained
A cigar-shaped asteroid. That's what scientists, using so-called Pan Starrs - which was a fast
response telescope used to detect certain objects like comets and asteroids – detected
in 2017. It is known today as “Oumuamua”.
In the Hawaiian language, 'Oumuamua means “a messenger from afar arriving first”, a reference
to its scout-like nature. Years later, we’re still trying to figure
out what exactly this was. A lot of people claim that Oumuamua was something
belonging to an alien civilization, maybe a sort of...alien spaceship. Well, we think...this
is not the case!
Follow me in this video to get to know more about the mystery of Oumuamua explained, the
weird interstellar object!
Today we might actually finally have a solution, a very sound scientific solution that does
not involve aliens, but before we, we wanted to mention the fact that we had some controversy
about the origins of this object and without going into details about the object itself.
The only reasonable explanation to all of this is well, unfortunately, for the lack
of better words, scientific ego. Of course, everybody loves the idea of wanting
to be that one scientist discovering something absolutely extraordinary somewhere out there
and being that first person to mention it to provide proof for it - and to then basically
be in a spotlight because of this. Now, unfortunately, in science this happens
quite a lot and also, unfortunately in science, because of this, there are some problems.
One of the main problems is that this causes the public to lose fate and to lose any kind
of confidence in scientific discoveries in the scientific community, and in scientists
in general. Second of all, the problem with this mentality
is that this creates a kind of a race to try to be that one person to discover something
incredible so that you can be in the spotlight. (i.e. you make discoveries, you make money!)
This also often ends up in people making a lot of mistakes in the process, and then basically
becoming a kind of pariah, or just losing their job completely.
Now that’s not exactly what we wanted to focus on, but it’s really important to understand
one thing: when trying to figure out what we’re looking at, it’s super important
in science not to jump to conclusions, especially when those conclusions can be explained by
any other reasonable means. We all really want to believe in extraterrestrial
intelligence and a lot of us actually are convinced.
The aliens are probably somewhere out there, but trying to explain a phenomenon that can
be explained in different ways by basically implying that it’s probably alien intelligence
is actually a somewhat irresponsible thing to do, at least for scientists.
It is totally okay if you’re not a scientist, but if you are in a scientific community it
is extremely important to be very prudent in investigating your claims, and in trying
to avoid turning a hypothesis into an actual fact because that’s what’s been happening
with a lot of new discoveries in the last few decades.
But anyway, despite all of this, we still wanted to talk about this object, because
a new paper in some sense is kind of brilliant and it’s actually extremely interesting
to read what the scientists had to say. But first of all, let’s actually talk about
the Oumuamua and its shape, because what papers have been showing you so far is this really
unusual cigar-like shape, but a lot of scientists do not believe this was the shape at all.
So what's its shape? Well, I'm sorry if you're watching this video just before lunch, but...it
has the form of a pancake. In fact, a lot of new studies - including the study we talked
about a few years ago - determined that the shape probably looks something similar to
a kind of a flat pancake in shape. But if you are fighting with your stomach
right now, you can think of it like a bar of soap after you use it for a very long time,
which is actually an important analogy, because we’re going to come back to this in a few
minutes. So we know that this object came into the
solar system, moving at a velocity slightly lower than would be expected. What this implies,
according to the scientists, is that this object probably wasn’t really travelling
for a very long time across interstellar space. The suggestion here is that it’s maybe about
500 million years, possibly even less than that.
We also believe that it originally entered the outer solar system roughly around the
year 1605. Oumaumua was approaching the solar system,
while British captain George Weymouth set sail from England in search of lands where
it is possible to found a Catholic colony, explored Nantucket Island and the Maine coast.
His expedition report inspired the founding of the Virginia Company, a corporation with
commercial interests in the New World.Also, it is the same year in which was discovered dust
plot in London.
Will Oumuamua ever leave the solar system?
Anyway, Oumuamua is probably going to officially leave the solar system by the year 2430, moving
at speed of about 26.3 kilometres per second now.
One of the more unusual features of this object was, of course, its light curve. For some
reason, this is what the scientists observed, which they interpreted as the object tumbling
around, as it was basically moving through the solar system.
But the actual shape has been debated ever since.
At first, it was a cigar shape...later on, scientists actually worked out that it was
probably more of a disc shape, but so far nothing really makes this object “unusual”.
I mean, it is simply an asteroid, isn't it? Well, yes, But something happened that the
scientists didn’t expect as they started to observe this object leaving the solar system.
They realized that there was a slight deviation between the observed orbit and the expected
orbit now for conics. But again, that’s actually totally not unusual.
We expect the comets, as they emit a lot of material from their core generally start to
change their orbit and trajectory, and usually, this is correlated with the commentary tale
itself. But what made Oumuamua different is that the
cometary tale was not observed! And so the trajectory here was changing, yet
at the same time, the tail was not observed anywhere. How could it be possible?
Scientists tried to explain this behaviour, and that’s where this explanation came from
and honestly, at least scientifically, this still doesn’t make sense, because there
are so many other better explanations! In the paper there are really only two main
assumptions that are being made: one of them is that it was definitely a pancake
shape and the second explanation was that it is not made from the same material as typical
comets we detect such as the famous 2020 Neowise comet.
In fact, a comet is usually made out of different frozen gases, all sorts of water, ices and
also carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and methane. A lot of these gases are visible and also
emits certain types of colours, as we look at them when the sun illuminates them from
the distance. But we also know that there are a lot of objects
out there in the outer solar system, such as, for example, objects in the same vicinity
and in the same orbit as Pluto. They actually are made out of something different,
something that gives Pluto a beautiful reddish colour.
A lot of the red colour we see on the surface is nitrogen ice, and that’s something that
evaporates very differently from the material that usually is present in most comets.
In other words, what the scientists in this paper implied was that it was actually a chunk
of nitrogen ice most likely separated from some distant pluto-like object in another
star system, or in other words, it was basically a chunk of exoplanetary, Pluto or exopluto
planet. So of course, it was something “alien”, in the sense that It came from another world,
but nothing more! Anyway, this happened possibly about 400 to
500 million years ago, as something collided with a distant pluto-like object in another
star system and essentially this really large piece eventually escaped into the outer star
system or into the interstellar space. Now originally, this chunk was probably more
circular in shape, but with time, because of the way that nitrogen interacts with cosmic
rays, for example, it slowly eroded through various types of radiation and in some sense,
just like your soap in your bathroom eventually becomes kind of flattened.
Now, you’ve all seen this before, as you rub the soap around and as you basically use
it over the next few weeks, it eventually becomes really really flat.
The same mechanism applies to what happened here.
It then entered the solar system, approached the closest point to the sun in 2017 and then
made its way out of the solar system. Just a few months later, we were able to see
it with the telescope and those deviations from the orbit were very likely caused by
the evaporation of nitrogen ice from the surface. And as nitrogen evaporates, it doesn’t actually
produce any kind of tails at all. We would not really be seeing this anywhere
and on top of this, because this was a chunk of ice from another dwarf planet.
The implication here is that it was probably also a lot more reflective, and thus the object
was probably much smaller than we initially assumed, and by being so much smaller, the
number of emissions coming from the object was able to deviate its orbit a lot more than
initially predicted. So, by being a reflective chunk of ice and
by also emitting a lot of nitrogen in the process, a lot of the observations of the
orbital changes can be easily explained and are easily explained in this particular paper.
As a matter of fact, this explanation seems to provide the exact match to everything we’ve
seen so far. Even the reflectivity of this object was very, very similar to the reflectivity
we usually detect on objects like Pluto and Triton.
So, in other words, Oumuamua was definitely a chunk of a dwarf planet or some sort of
an object from another star system, but from the same region where we usually discover
dwarf planets and the object itself probably came from a relatively young star system.
This tells us that other star systems also have their own dwarf planets, which are probably
made of the same stuff as Pluto, Triton and a lot of dwarf planets in the solar system.
This is AMAZING! But with recent estimates suggesting that
approximately seven such objects should be passing through the solar system every single
year, we now have a great opportunity to possibly discover another one of these objects and
study it in a lot more detail before it disappears. Although the controversies and the non-scientific
tales told about Oumuamua during the years, this is one of the most interesting discoveries
of the last decade and is definitely one of those discoveries that a lot of scientists
will be talking about in years to come. For now, that’s all we know, and this explanation
is more than enough, because it provides all of the necessary answers, and provides all
the explanations to everything that was seen in this unusual object.
Once we discover something else out there, specifically once we find another one of these
objects, we will let you know! Until then remember to keep it curious, but remember
to make a distinction between sci-fi and science!
"This video ends here! Thanks for watching everyone! Did you like this video? What are
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See you next time on the channel!"