https://www.nasa.gov/feature/solar-system-s-first-interstellar-visitor-dazzles-scientists
QuoteAstronomers recently scrambled to observe an intriguing asteroid that zipped through the solar system on a steep trajectory from interstellar spaceâ€"the first confirmed object from another star.
Now, new data reveal the interstellar interloper to be a rocky, cigar-shaped object with a somewhat reddish hue. The asteroid, named ‘Oumuamua by its discoverers, is up to one-quarter mile (400 meters) long and highly-elongatedâ€"perhaps 10 times as long as it is wide. That aspect ratio is greater than that of any asteroid or comet observed in our solar system to date. While its elongated shape is quite surprising, and unlike asteroids seen in our solar system, it may provide new clues into how other solar systems formed.
(https://media.wired.com/photos/5a14a540adde5d5eaeeed157/master/w_1024,c_limit/eso-TAFA.jpg)
This could be of some real interest. I hope they can get a mission quickly enough to go study it up close.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYGs92-qnFY
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes it is an interstellar asteroid ;-)
Not the usual shape, therefore obviously an alien structure. (koff, koff).
Run for it!
I keep hearing that it's never aliens, but sooner or later it may be - what better way to travel incognito?
Shame we likely won't be able to do anything with it, with the state NASA and the fed. govt is atm. Maybe the EU or India or China can step up and send something it's way.
Quote from: Shiranu on December 23, 2017, 10:51:39 PM
Shame we likely won't be able to do anything with it, with the state NASA and the fed. govt is atm. Maybe the EU or India or China can step up and send something it's way.
The state of NASA aside, no country or agency on Earth currently has the technology to send any type of probe to the general vicinity of this object. It was already moving away from the sun, and moving to fast for us to catch up with it by the time it was first discovered. The launch for such an intercept would have to have taken place months if not years in advance.
I'm disappointed in the thread. There could have been hundreds of dirty jokes about this thingy, and no one came up with anything.
Four billion years the planet's been around. I suspect this thing isn't our first such visitor.
There's a lot of stuff floating around out there, and it clobbers the stuffing out of the solar system. All those craters on the moon should suggest something about our tenuous situation. Perhaps the real miracle is not that there is life on our planet, but that life hasn't been wiped out yet.
Quote from: SGOS on December 25, 2017, 01:56:32 PM
I'm disappointed in the thread. There could have been hundreds of dirty jokes about this thingy, and no one came up with anything.
President Clinton knew what to do with a cigar ... I suspect Freud did to, or he wouldn't have commented on it (I was quoting Freud).
Quote from: SGOS on December 25, 2017, 07:37:46 PM
There's a lot of stuff floating around out there, and it clobbers the stuffing out of the solar system. All those craters on the moon should suggest something about our tenuous situation. Perhaps the real miracle is not that there is life on our planet, but that life hasn't been wiped out yet.
The worst of that came from local junk and pretty got cleared out during the Late Heavy Bombardment.
Quote from: Gawdzilla Sama on December 25, 2017, 07:21:54 PM
Four billion years the planet's been around. I suspect this thing isn't our first such visitor.
One article I read about this thing, could have been the one in the OP, said they estimate we get at least one such visitor a year. This is just the first one that's been positively identified as coming from somewhere else due to its orbit.
Quote from: SGOS on December 25, 2017, 01:56:32 PM
I'm disappointed in the thread. There could have been hundreds of dirty jokes about this thingy, and no one came up with anything.
"The internal system was penetrated and we didn't even get mildly excited before it was gone"?
Quote from: Cavebear on December 26, 2017, 04:30:25 AM
"The internal system was penetrated and we didn't even get mildly excited before it was gone"?
Thanks. That helps.
Quote from: SGOS on December 26, 2017, 08:37:42 AM
Thanks. That helps.
I had several other thoughts, but went with my best. ;)
Quote from: Cavebear on December 26, 2017, 04:30:25 AM
"The internal system was penetrated and we didn't even get mildly excited before it was gone"?
And not even any foreplay - just slam, bam, thank you ma'am!
I was listening to an audiobook of Rendezvous with Rama when I heard about it, for that extra layer of weirdness. :)
That's an excellent book! I've read one of the sequels, but not all of them. Something to look forward to!
Quote from: Unbeliever on December 27, 2017, 03:28:18 PM
That's an excellent book! I've read one of the sequels, but not all of them. Something to look forward to!
I cannot recommend the sequels -- they're not really Clarke anyway, they're Gentry Lee's work with only stray input from Clarke and nowhere near as good.
Rama II is tolerable in spots;
The Garden of Rama and
Rama Revealed are just awful.
Well, that's too bad. I'd hoped Lee could do them justice, but not everyone can be A.C. Clarke, I guess.
Quote from: Unbeliever on December 27, 2017, 04:27:52 PM
Well, that's too bad. I'd hoped Lee could do them justice, but not everyone can be A.C. Clarke, I guess.
In fact, the main thing that
Rama Revealed is that Gentry Lee is no Arthur C. Clarke.
The books all devolved into (allegedly) intelligent people deliberately doing demonstrably stupid things for dumb reasonsâ€"with various pauses along the way for homophobia, genocide, enforced polyamory, and a creepy December-May relationshipâ€"all wrapped up with a genuinely disappointing
dénouement. It was as out-of-place with Clarke's work as Benford's
Foundation's Fear was with Asimov's.
Quote from: trdsf on December 29, 2017, 10:24:18 AM
In fact, the main thing that Rama Revealed is that Gentry Lee is no Arthur C. Clarke.
The books all devolved into (allegedly) intelligent people deliberately doing demonstrably stupid things for dumb reasonsâ€"with various pauses along the way for homophobia, genocide, enforced polyamory, and a creepy December-May relationshipâ€"all wrapped up with a genuinely disappointing dénouement. It was as out-of-place with Clarke's work as Benford's Foundation's Fear was with Asimov's.
Did you think that the 4th and 5th books in the Asimov trilogy (Foundation) to be any good?
Why would a "trilogy" have more than 3 books?
Maybe the triune God is more than just Big Daddy, Junior and the Spook?
Quote from: Unbeliever on December 29, 2017, 04:28:07 PM
Why would a "trilogy" have more than 3 books?
I am reminded that as books were added, Douglas Adams referred to his series as 'the increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhikers Guide trilogy'. :)
Words like 'tetralogy' or 'pentalogy' don't fall off the tongue quite so easily, though, do they? I don't know why we don't use them. They're perfectly cromulent words. And even though it's the right word for them, we refer to the seven Harry Potter books as the 'Harry Potter series' or just the 'Harry Potter books' rather than the 'Harry Potter heptalogy'.
Quote from: PopeyesPappy on December 24, 2017, 10:23:08 AM
The state of NASA aside, no country or agency on Earth currently has the technology to send any type of probe to the general vicinity of this object. It was already moving away from the sun, and moving to fast for us to catch up with it by the time it was first discovered. The launch for such an intercept would have to have taken place months if not years in advance.
Well that's boring then.
Quote from: Unbeliever on December 29, 2017, 04:28:07 PM
Why would a "trilogy" have more than 3 books?
Maybe the triune God is more than just Big Daddy, Junior and the Spook?
It was a trilogy for a long time. Then after decades, he found he could write some more, then stopped again, empty of more things to say on the subject.
In Kabbalah, G-d is a dekad. Each component (sephirot) linked by the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Leading to gematria.