{"id":18197,"date":"2019-01-08T01:26:02","date_gmt":"2019-01-07T17:26:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/oumuamuas-discovery-points-to-plethora-of-interstellar-objects-in-our-galaxy\/"},"modified":"2019-01-08T01:26:02","modified_gmt":"2019-01-07T17:26:02","slug":"oumuamuas-discovery-points-to-plethora-of-interstellar-objects-in-our-galaxy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/oumuamuas-discovery-points-to-plethora-of-interstellar-objects-in-our-galaxy\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Oumuamua\u2019s discovery points to plethora of interstellar objects in our galaxy"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_430485\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-430485\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-430485\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/180627-interstellar-630x459.jpg\" alt=\"'Oumuamua\" width=\"630\" height=\"459\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/180627-interstellar-630x459.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/180627-interstellar-768x559.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/180627-interstellar-1260x918.jpg 1260w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-430485\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">This artist\u2019s impression shows the first interstellar object discovered in the solar system, \u2018Oumuamua. (NASA \/ ESA \/ Hubble Illustration \/ M. Kornmesser)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The cigar-shaped object known as \u2018Oumuamua may be the first interstellar interloper to be discovered, but it\u2019s not likely to be the last. Statistics suggest that there are lots more space rocks like it out there.<\/p>\n<p>How many? About 100 septillion in our Milky Way galaxy, according to Yale astronomer Gregory Laughlin, who has analyzed the light curve and weird orbit of \u2018Oumuamua&nbsp;\u2014 a Hawaiian word that basically means \u201cfirst messenger from afar.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That number is a 1 followed by 26 zeroes.<\/p>\n<p>Laughlin arrived at that estimate by extrapolating from the observational capabilities of the Pan-STARRS Telescope in Hawaii, the instrument that first detected the object back in October 2017.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe fact that Pan-STARRS was able to observe \u2018Oumuamua means that there are on the order of 10<sup>26<\/sup> such objects in our own galaxy, floating freely,\u201d Laughlin told an overflow crowd today at the American Astronomical Society\u2019s winter meeting in Seattle.<\/p>\n<p>The mass of all those objects would add up to&nbsp;roughly 100 billion Earth masses, or the equivalent of one Earth for each star in the galaxy, he said.<\/p>\n<p>Based on variations in \u2018Oumuamua\u2019s light curve, astronomers deduced that the object was extremely elongated&nbsp;\u2014 potentially with a 10-to-1 ratio of length to width. It was also accelerating more than expected on its way out of the solar system, which led some astronomers to speculate over whether it could have been an alien light sail.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"The story of 'Oumuamua, the first visitor from another star system | Karen J. Meech | TED\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/rfi3w9Bzwik?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\u2018Oumuamua\u2019s weird shape and behavior added to its interstellar appeal, but Laughlin said subsequent research has shown that the patterns in its light curve are \u201cperfectly consistent\u201d with a moderate amount of comet-like outgassing in a specific direction.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOver time, one gets a rotation spectrum that looks very similar to what was observed. \u2026 We think that the acceleration, the rotation and the chaotic light curve are all reasonably in match,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s lots of mysteries with \u2018Oumuamua, but it doesn\u2019t appear that there\u2019s anything completely crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Laughlin said the details will be laid out in a research paper that he and his colleagues are preparing for publication.<\/p>\n<p>As more next-generation telescopes swing into operation, it\u2019s possible that more objects like \u2018Oumuamua will show up. But Laughlin noted that&nbsp; \u2018Oumuamua itself is fading from view forever as it makes its solar system exit.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe odds of it coming close to another star are roughly 1 in every 10<sup>14<\/sup>, 10<sup>15<\/sup> years,\u201d he said. \u201cSo those brief, exciting moments in September and October were wonderful for us, but they were really the time of \u2018Oumuamua\u2019s life.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This artist\u2019s impression shows the first interstellar object discovered in the solar system, \u2018Oumuamua. (NASA \/ ESA \/ Hubble Illustration \/ M. Kornmesser) The cigar-shaped object known as \u2018Oumuamua may be the first interstellar interloper to be discovered, but it\u2019s not likely to be the last. Statistics suggest that there are lots more space rocks [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3117,4393,1661],"class_list":["post-18197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-oumuamua","tag-aas","tag-astronomy"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18197"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18197\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}