"Alien Ship" Oumuamua rotates randomly

The interstellar wanderer Oumuamua , about whom many have written recently, was again in the spotlight. This is due to his strange behavior during the flight - as it turned out, the asteroid rotates. As far as can be understood, this object once collided with another asteroid or something else, which made it rotate. Since then, the asteroid has no peace - it is always in motion, and very chaotic.

The discovery made by scientists from the University of Belfast. The object was first opened in October last year, and almost by accident, and was initially mistaken for a comet. But then, after additional study, it turned out that Oumuamua is an asteroid, and a very unusual one.

About that he represents, materials on Geektimes were already published . Now, scientists were able to discover new aspects that are relevant both to the past of the asteroid and to its present. First of all, this aspect is that the asteroid rotates. But not periodically, many cosmic bodies do this. No, Oumuamua rotates erratically. It is possible that he has been doing this for billions of years, without knowing peace.

Understanding why is difficult enough. One can only assume that scientists are doing. Probably, Oumuamua once collided into another asteroid, perhaps in his system, near his own star. Since it went into space, the asteroid has not stopped its motion for a minute. All this will go on and on - billions of years. Scientists believe that the asteroid will rotate chaotically and many billions of years after the death of the Sun, past which he passed recently. It will already die, and Oumuamua will fly, crossing other star worlds, continuing on its way.

Another interesting point is the color of the asteroid. Almost all of it, according to experts, is the color of dirty snow (not surprising, since it was previously suggested that the asteroid is an ice-covered pebble covered in organic matter). And only in one place the color changes to red. This suggests that the substance of which the asteroid is made is heterogeneous in composition, which is quite rare among space bodies.

“Now we almost certainly know that our asteroid, which is shaped like a cucumber, hails from a different star system. In the distant past, he ran into something, and now rotates. The results of observing him help to get more information about the interstellar traveler. It is quite unusual when compared to most asteroids and comets that we are seeing now or have watched earlier, ”says Dr. Fraser, project leader for asteroid monitoring.



He and his team from the University of Belfast began observing Oumuamua almost immediately after he appeared in the Solar System. Current work is the third in a row, which was published by him and his team.

We have already tried to judge the age of the asteroid earlier, and also by its color. The fact is that the older an object wandering in space, the more it is exposed to hard cosmic radiation and interstellar dust and gas. As a result, the surface of a truly old space traveler gradually turns red. And the stronger the red tint, the older the object.

In Oumuamua, as mentioned above, only one area can be called red, the rest of it is closer to white. Therefore, another group of experts believes that the asteroid is not billions of years, but hundreds of millions. In any case, it should not be older than our solar system.

Scientists believe that an asteroid has been formed, most likely in a binary star system, where they are both close enough to each other. Anyway, the asteroid is still to be studied, at least according to the data that had been accumulated during its passage through the solar system.

Oumuamua is just the tip of the iceberg . Most likely, the Solar System is crossed annually by 46 million interstellar objects of various sizes. Most of them are too far from us for us to observe, or too small. Studying objects like Oumuamua can give us more information about what we will have to deal with in the future.