A New 'Interstellar Visitor' Has Entered the Solar System (livescience.com)
- Reference: 0178265858
- News link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/07/03/0041226/a-new-interstellar-visitor-has-entered-the-solar-system
- Source link: https://www.livescience.com/space/asteroids/astronomers-spot-potential-interstellar-visitor-shooting-through-the-solar-system-toward-earth
> The newly discovered object, currently dubbed A11pl3Z, was first spotted in data collected between June 25 and June 29 by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS), which automatically scans the night sky using telescopes in Hawaii and South Africa. The mystery object was confirmed by both NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies and the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center on Tuesday (July 1), according to [4]EarthSky.org .
>
> A11pl3Z is most likely a large asteroid, or maybe a comet, potentially spanning up to 12 miles (20 kilometers). It is traveling toward the inner solar system at around 152,000 mph (245,000 km/h) and is approaching us from the part of the night sky where the bar of the Milky Way is located. Based on A11pl3Z's speed and trajectory, experts think it originated from beyond the sun's gravitational influence and has enough momentum to shoot straight through our cosmic neighborhood without slowing down. However, more observations are needed to tell for sure.
[1] https://www.livescience.com/space/asteroids/astronomers-spot-potential-interstellar-visitor-shooting-through-the-solar-system-toward-earth
[2] https://science.slashdot.org/story/17/11/20/2224239/study-of-recent-interstellar-asteroid-reveals-bizarre-shape
[3] https://science.slashdot.org/story/19/11/02/0240206/second-oumuamua-like-comet-from-beyond-our-solar-system-suggests-alien-comets-may-be-common
[4] https://earthsky.org/space/new-interstellar-object-candidate-heading-toward-the-sun-a11pl3z/
Is there something we can do? (Score:5, Funny)
I don't like it. They leach off our gravity.
Re:Is there something we can do? (Score:4, Funny)
> I don't like it. They leach off our gravity.
"These freeloader comets need to be deported back to their home star! This is Sparta! I mean Solar System! Other stars are not sending their best comets; these comets have mental, have virus, catastrophe our grammar, flatten dogs and cats, and nobody wants them! If you think the Dino's had it bad! At least Dino's gave us gasoline, God's Liquid Gold [sniff].
They are poisoning the ions and isotopic ratios of our system, damaging our prosperous pro-Solar culture! Even Jupiter wants to leave now! We cannot even tell the gender of these degenerate lumps, so sad. I and I alone have the power and means to stop this horrendous invasion of these unwanted shit-hole clumps of useless dust and smelly gas. Make the Solar System Great Again! [claps]
Re: (Score:2)
>> I don't like it. They leach off our gravity.
> "These freeloader comets need to be deported back to their home star!
No comet is illegal! Make Earth a Sanctuary planet. Life was made possible by comets.
Re: (Score:1)
Careful, that's how we got F@ing pit-bulls. The Dog Star didn't send its best.
Re:Is there something we can do? (Score:5, Funny)
Can't we just deport it to the Mars and let it leech of that gravity instead! Damn foreigners coming and stealing our valuable fundamental forces!
Re: (Score:2)
Just wait 'til they find out it's actually a capsule carrying an army of borg drones and nanonites to prep sector 001 for assimilation.
Re: (Score:2)
Klaatu barada nikto!
Re: (Score:2)
[1]Thanks Bruce [youtube.com]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFcpFjOmioQ
Re: (Score:2)
I wish I had the points to mod you up.
Re: (Score:2)
That would assume we would be interesting for the Borg.
I highly doubt that.
Re: (Score:3)
> That would assume we would be interesting for the Borg.
> I highly doubt that.
They get here and see the state of American politics and conclude we are already a hive mind and move on.
Re: (Score:2)
We should be a great wall. And make them pay for it.
Hurry! (Score:3)
ICE must spare no expense capturing this illegal alien and sending it to El Salvador!
Rama (Score:4, Interesting)
Finally the rendezvous with Rama
Re: (Score:2)
Does sound like the plot. Aren't they making that into a movie soon?
Re: (Score:3)
Yeah the Rama movie has been in production hell for decades now but recently Denis Villeneuve got attached to direct after he's done with Dune 3 and/or James Bond or the other 3 projects he's got lined up so I still give it a 50/50 shot it gets made still.
I imagine whoever owns the rights doesn't want to sell them or I'd imagine it would be a prestige-TV series by now but I'd be happy to see his version of the story.
[1]https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0... [imdb.com]
[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0134933/?ref_=nm_flmg_job_1_unrel_t_5
Re: (Score:2)
This would probably be Rama II.
152000 mph sounds a lot (Score:2)
... but then everything is relative and our solar system is moving at quite a lick. Could it be that we're the ones moving fast past it and this asteroid is more or less just hanging around minding its own business (so to speak)?
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What is the speed of the solar system (relative to the center of the galaxy) ?
Re: (Score:3)
What do you mean? An African or European solar system?
Re: (Score:2)
HAH!!!!!!
That. Was. Awesome.
Re: (Score:2)
The sun is hurtling around the solar system at ~230 kps (relative to the local standard rest frame), but so is the asteroid.
Since both objects can be considered to be orbiting the milky way at the same speed, we generally consider that speed to be zero for the purposes of comparison, and only compare the two objects motion relative to each other.
Relative Speed (Score:2)
Actually one of my problems with the article is that it completely fails to mention what the quoted speed is relative to. I'm guessing it is relative to the sun and not the Earth but since the Earth's orbital velocity is almost 30 km/s (well over 100,000 km/h) relative to the Sun it actually makes a significant difference whether the speed is relative to Earth or the Sun.
Harvestor (Score:1)
"The visiting space object will pass near Mars and the Sun later this year before leaving the solar system forever." Only that it suddenly stops without any deceleration and starts harvesting biomass from our system. Prepare to get harvested!!1
Re: (Score:2)
> "The visiting space object will pass near Mars and the Sun later this year before leaving the solar system forever." Only that it suddenly stops without any deceleration and starts harvesting biomass from our system. Prepare to get harvested!!1
Please. If we're gonna go out, may as well go out in an interesting way.
It needs a better name (Score:3)
for sure.
Re: (Score:2)
I thought it was called 3I/ATLAS or C/2025 N1.
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What's wrong with "All Please"?
Bypass (Score:1)
Traffic should increase nicely once the Earth is demolished and the intergalactic bypass is completed.
Can we now detect them all? (Score:2)
I know that a decade or so ago we did not have the ability to detect and monitor all objects capable of destroying life on Earth yet. Do we now have that ability? Are we now identifying and tracking every potential candidate of that kind, or is that even possible?
Re: (Score:2)
No, we aren't tracking EVERY object of that kind. (You didn't say all, so that includes the meteor that hits a gopher in his hole.)
Possible? Yeah, I think it's possible. It would be a bit expensive. We're tracking most large objects that cross Earth's orbit. New ones don't appear very often, and we rarely lose track of any. It would take multiple observatories in places outside the plane of the solar system to track all of them, so we've been surprised occasionally by "city killer" meteors, though non
I minus 1 (Score:2)
What's Randy Quaid been up to lately? For a few years there he was making good progress transforming into a real-life Russell Casse.
Don't fall for it (Score:2)
"The visiting space object will pass near Mars and the Sun later this year before leaving the solar system forever."
That's what they want you to believe but I think we all know it's here to blow up the Earth.
Nobody's commenting on the important part. (Score:3)
> ...and is approaching us from the part of the night sky where the bar of the Milky Way is located.
When did the Milky Way get a bar, and why haven't we been invited to it yet?
Re: (Score:2)
1923.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milky_Way_(chocolate_bar)
Only the 3rd? (Score:3)
This makes me think how different solar systems have almost nothing to do with each other. If all the other solar systems (that is, 99.9999999% of the universe) disappeared tomorrow, would it have any affect on us whatsoever?
It's the grays (Score:2)
They're throwing shit at us because they're bored and their AI is so inbred after several generations of consuming its ancestors' slop that it hallucinates frequently and so the asteroids miss Earth.
They do everything in threes.. (Score:2)
...Just sayin'...
OMG! What are the chances...? (Score:2)
...that Avi Loeb is going to claim it's aliens?
Re: (Score:2)
My sources say yes.
Re: (Score:2)
Probably depends on its characteristics.
He had quite an amusing series of papers popping the bubbles of all the 'debunkers'.
He never proved what it was but he sure proved many things that it wasn't, as claimed by ThE eXpErTs.
Midwit scientists abhor an unknown and run to bad ideas like a safety blanket.
FWIW his grad student at the time had the better ideas, involving relative motion of solar systems within the Galactic Plane. His models were the best fit for the available data.