Scientists have revealed that the interstellar object dubbed “Oumuamua”, seen in 2017 by a telescope in Hawaii, was indeed a comet.
The thesis of an extraterrestrial spaceship dismissed. In a published report this Wednesday, March 22 in the scientific journal Nature, scientists have established that the interstellar object “Oumuamua”, seen for the first time in 2017 by a telescope in Hawaii, was in fact a comet.
Nearly 400 meters long and a hundred meters wide, “Oumuamua” (which means “scout” in Hawaiian) had raised many questions regarding its nature, with the scientific community. Indeed, the former director of the astronomy department of Harvard University, Abraham known as “Avi” Loeb, had largely supported the explanation of an extraterrestrial vessel, in his book “The first sign of intelligent life extraterrestrial”, published in 2021.
However, three years earlier, the team of researchers from the Department of Astronomy at the University of Maryland had announced that the first interstellar object to come into our solar system was quite natural. “The extraterrestrial spacecraft hypothesis is amusing, but our analysis suggests that a multitude of natural phenomena can explain Oumuamua”, explained Matthew Knigh, co-director of the investigation at the time.
questions regarding its shape
Unlike more “traditional” comets, “Oumuamua” did not sport a luminous trail, made up of gas and dust. This characteristic had naturally given material to the skeptics and to the defenders of the thesis of an extraterrestrial ship.
In the scientific journal NatureJennifer Bergner, a chemist at the University of California, Berkeley, who led the recently published work, explains that this lack of a “tail” or light trail was solely a result of the composition of the comet.
“As Oumuamua approached the sun, it released hydrogen, which remains less massive than the carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide ejected in typical comets, and would not have had the momentum to fire a lot of dust with it, explaining the absence of a comma or a tail”, specified the author of the study.
‘Strange behavior’
Jennifer Bergner also specifies that this “evacuation of hydrogen” thus makes it possible to explain the strange behavior of the comet, which, once entered the solar system, had deviated its trajectory and had emerged from it.
“We report here that Oumuamua’s acceleration is due to the release of trapped molecular hydrogen that formed by the energetic treatment of an O-rich icy body H2,” reads the explanation of the recent study.
The co-author of the report, Darryl Seligman who works for him at Cornell University (State of New York), argues that “trapped hydrogen is simply the most generic explanation”, in order to scientifically translate the acceleration what the comet experienced.
