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November 21, 2017 3:28 AM   Subscribe

Interstellar object confirmed to be from another solar system - it's dark red and has organic material - absolutely nothing to worry about [nudity].
posted by fearfulsymmetry (106 comments total) 39 users marked this as a favorite
 
Assuming it is a rock...

Rookie mistake.
posted by mhoye at 3:41 AM on November 21, 2017 [21 favorites]


I, for one, welcome our cigar-shaped rock inhabitant overlords.
posted by zardoz at 3:52 AM on November 21, 2017 [6 favorites]


It's blood, isn't it?
posted by glonous keming at 3:57 AM on November 21, 2017 [12 favorites]


When they say 'cigar-shaped' do they mean fusiform, as cigars often were, or cylindrical, as they more often are now? Might this object actually be an enormous space cigar we are being proffered?
posted by misteraitch at 3:59 AM on November 21, 2017 [7 favorites]


Sometimes an enormous space cigar is just an enormous space cigar.
posted by Dr Dracator at 4:00 AM on November 21, 2017 [82 favorites]


Sometimes an enormous space cigar is just an enormous space cigar.

Dammit! Beat me to it.
posted by mystyk at 4:03 AM on November 21, 2017


I mean this is obviously an MC80 though, right?
posted by EndsOfInvention at 4:08 AM on November 21, 2017 [4 favorites]


Oumuamua, Hawaiian for “a messenger from afar arriving first”

Am not sure it's a good omen that Hawaiian has a specific word for this.

But it's a lovely word!
posted by chavenet at 4:11 AM on November 21, 2017 [20 favorites]


absolutely nothing to worry about.

... unless it begins to decelerate.
posted by sammyo at 4:12 AM on November 21, 2017 [6 favorites]


... unless it begins to decelerate.

Or starts blasting Earth with ads for Alpha Lyraen timeshares.
posted by dephlogisticated at 4:26 AM on November 21, 2017 [13 favorites]


Look, we've done worse. We're doing worse.
posted by Halloween Jack at 4:29 AM on November 21, 2017 [9 favorites]


Remember, the Ramans do everything in threes.
posted by Johnny Assay at 4:47 AM on November 21, 2017 [36 favorites]


misteraitch, smoke 'em if you got 'em.
posted by alex4pt at 4:50 AM on November 21, 2017


I wonder who beamed a LinkedIn connection request into space?
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 4:51 AM on November 21, 2017 [2 favorites]


So it's red, possibly metallic, possible cylindrical? Like... a rusty old space jalopy? I'm hoping for two very old beings out for a very long drive. "Let's pull over at this blue planet. I need to pee again."
posted by pracowity at 4:59 AM on November 21, 2017 [8 favorites]


is it rotating along it's longitudinal axis?
posted by DigDoug at 5:11 AM on November 21, 2017 [6 favorites]


Are you planning a rendezvous?
posted by lazycomputerkids at 5:12 AM on November 21, 2017 [6 favorites]


Are you planning a rendezvous?

I wish we lived in a world where we could scramble a lander mission in circumstances like this.
posted by mhoye at 5:17 AM on November 21, 2017 [15 favorites]


So guys I think the vote in the Galaxy Parliament went not so well for us
posted by angrycat at 5:21 AM on November 21, 2017 [8 favorites]


I know you're all just kidding around but honestly an alien extermination mission would be such a relief at this point.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 5:29 AM on November 21, 2017 [51 favorites]


Perhaps it's here to clear the way for the new intergalactic bypass.
posted by RhysPenbras at 5:39 AM on November 21, 2017 [15 favorites]


Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son of a bitch in space.
posted by tobascodagama at 5:42 AM on November 21, 2017 [5 favorites]


I'M FROM BUENOS AIRES, AND I SAY KILL 'EM ALL!


Sorry, jumping the gun a bit there.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 5:46 AM on November 21, 2017 [27 favorites]


I know you're all just kidding around but honestly an alien extermination mission would be such a relief at this point.

Well, plop, plop, fizz, fizz...do you mean our extermination or theirs? Because the sentence isn't clear on that point.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 5:46 AM on November 21, 2017 [2 favorites]


I'm not saying it's the blood monolith of the star vampires, but signs point that way more than they should, you know?
posted by Artw at 5:48 AM on November 21, 2017 [25 favorites]


Maybe it's the thing from that fucked-up King story wherein an asteroid thing animates all the corpses and it's zombie apocalypse time
(anybody remember the name of that story)
posted by angrycat at 5:57 AM on November 21, 2017


I mean this is obviously an MC80 though, right?
posted by EndsOfInvention


Better hope it's the mon cal and not the yuuzhan vong...
posted by Wretch729 at 5:57 AM on November 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


Are all the whales OK? Are they available to talk? You know, just in case.
posted by PlusDistance at 6:06 AM on November 21, 2017 [37 favorites]


Whales, shmales. What about the petunias?
posted by ZeusHumms at 6:07 AM on November 21, 2017 [6 favorites]


It's usually comets that cause zombies, isn't it? This thing at least is uncomet-like.
posted by Artw at 6:07 AM on November 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


Also has anyone checked if Pete Thiel has been near any radio telescopes?
posted by Artw at 6:08 AM on November 21, 2017 [5 favorites]


At first this made me think of The Expanse but I’ve been thinking about a friend’s Fermi Paradox jokes following 2016 and now I’m wondering whether this is the very high tech equivalent of planting a disguised camera in the bird colony to better document what happens.
posted by adamsc at 6:10 AM on November 21, 2017 [4 favorites]


Just a warning that the trailer in the main story here is probably not safe for work, unless your work is cool with female frontal nudity...
posted by Paladin1138 at 6:15 AM on November 21, 2017


Maybe it's the thing from that fucked-up King story wherein an asteroid thing animates all the corpses and it's zombie apocalypse time
(anybody remember the name of that story)

Maximum Overdrive?
posted by The Bridge on the River Kai Ryssdal at 6:19 AM on November 21, 2017


this is really exciting! I doubt this is unusual, but I perceive it as an exciting showing of our technology capabilities that we are able to capture this thing.
posted by rebent at 6:20 AM on November 21, 2017 [2 favorites]


no it wasn't Maximum Overdrive; funny that's his go-to for the apocalypse, though. Comet-animated cars, animated corpses
posted by angrycat at 6:28 AM on November 21, 2017


This is an astonishing event. It has crossed thousands - possibly hundreds of thousands - of light years. Then it flew past our world - it was closer to us than Mars or Venus will ever be. We didn't notice until it was already departing.

It will never return - It has kinetic energy that could only come from an interstellar journey.

As it flies away, every major telescope is gathering every possible photon so we can learn as much as we can from our first truly alien encounter.

It formed in the genesis of an alien star. It fell for aeons through space. We saw it after it had passed us, and soon we will lose sight as it continues its unending journey.
posted by Combat Wombat at 6:33 AM on November 21, 2017 [80 favorites]


We're not actually that sure if Oumuamua is really cigar shaped. It could be a contact binary, two asteroids stuck loosely together, with one of the lumps of rock being darker than the other to create the observed changes of brightness.

The real puzzler is where the heck it came from. Using estimates of its velocity before it encountered the sun, scientists have tried to track it back to any of the obvious local stars, but there are no clear candidates. It could be that Oumuamua has interacted with many stars, planets and heavy lumps of junk that hang around in interstellar space, being bounced around like an intergalactic game of pinball.

We will probably see many more objects like Oumuamua now we have the ability watch for them, and given the first one we have spotted is so weird, it will doubtlessly change what we know about the environment outside our solar system.
posted by Eleven at 6:34 AM on November 21, 2017 [14 favorites]


No, comets make people go blind so they can't fight off the triffids.
posted by AzraelBrown at 6:34 AM on November 21, 2017 [4 favorites]


Are all the whales OK? Are they available to talk?

It's from Vega. It's probably looking for Jodie Foster.
posted by octobersurprise at 6:38 AM on November 21, 2017 [3 favorites]


> "Maybe it's the thing from that fucked-up King story wherein an asteroid thing animates all the corpses and it's zombie apocalypse time (anybody remember the name of that story)"

The Little Prince?
posted by kyrademon at 6:38 AM on November 21, 2017 [2 favorites]


Home Delivery

IIRC it's a ball of worms.
posted by Artw at 6:40 AM on November 21, 2017 [3 favorites]


The Stephen King story is "Home Delivery", originally published in Book of the Dead (horror fiction anthology, also with other notable names in horror), and later in King's anthology Nightmares & Dreamscapes. The best bit by far is when the joint space shuttle mission tries to pull an Armageddon destroy-the-thing stunt and, well, it doesn't go well for the crew.

dang it Artw
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:42 AM on November 21, 2017 [4 favorites]


It is thought to be an extremely dark object, absorbing 96% of the light that falls on its surface, and it is red. This colour is the hallmark of organic (carbon-based) molecules. Organic molecules are the building blocks of the biological molecules that allow life to function.

It is widely thought that the delivery of organic molecules to the early Earth by the collision of comets and asteroids made life here possible. ’Oumuamua shows that the same could be possible in other solar systems.


This is exactly what I was thinking - isn't this like, pretty major evidence to support the panspermia* hypothesis? I mean we haven't had technology capable of detecting interstellar objects and their composition for very long and we have already seen one - suggests there's probably a whole crap top of these going around.

*dear lord i hate that name. i'm just finishing up a philosophy of science class (yay going back to uni in your mid 30s!) and the feminists critiques of scientific theory choice are just so spot on.
posted by lazaruslong at 6:46 AM on November 21, 2017 [9 favorites]


What are the chances - a million to one?
posted by Jellybean_Slybun at 6:47 AM on November 21, 2017 [6 favorites]


It's a rock from an alien star.

We know this.

We are the first humans ever to know this. Rocks can cross interstellar space. Big rocks. We even know how fast they can go. We know that because we've just seen one.

Elongated (possibly) rotating (probably) rocks about (400+-150)m long can cross the interstellar void.

We even have some idea what it's made of.

It's an alien artefact.
posted by Combat Wombat at 6:48 AM on November 21, 2017 [8 favorites]


It formed in the genesis of an alien star. It fell for aeons through space. We saw it after it had passed us, and soon we will lose sight as it continues its unending journey.


Does anyone want to switch seats?
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 6:49 AM on November 21, 2017 [14 favorites]


Oh, I went for Blindsight first. I guess it's small enough to be more Starship Troopers.
posted by a robot made out of meat at 6:51 AM on November 21, 2017 [3 favorites]


Y'all are way too highbrow.

SPAAAAACE TURRRRRRRD!
posted by notsnot at 6:57 AM on November 21, 2017 [4 favorites]


SPAAAAACE TURRRRRRRD!

AKA Warren Ellis' and Bryan Hitch's last Authority arc.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:02 AM on November 21, 2017 [2 favorites]


It's a rock from an alien star.

But you are a rock from an alien supernova, we all are made up of "stuff" from other stars that exploded long ago.

Million to one odds? In cosmic terms that's high density, happens all the time (cosmic time frame), duck. What it may mean is that interstellar space is not quite as utterly empty as generally thought. It's dark out there, unless something regularly obscures a known star it's essentially invisible.
posted by sammyo at 7:03 AM on November 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


Jellybean_Slybun: A million to one, but still, they come.
posted by MarchHare at 7:05 AM on November 21, 2017 [4 favorites]


Oumuamua, Hawaiian for “a messenger from afar arriving first”

Am not sure it's a good omen that Hawaiian has a specific word for this.


Well, that seems quite close in meaning to the English word word harbinger. Although that is itself not precisely a comforting analogy.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:06 AM on November 21, 2017 [16 favorites]


It is thought to be an extremely dark object...hallmark of organic ...molecules to the early Earth by the collision of comets and asteroids made life here possible. ’Oumuamua shows that the same could be possible in other solar systems.
This is all true, but not evidence of the Panspermia thing. Other than, every planetary body we have seen is dirty and grubby and covered in nasty chemicals. You wouldn't let kindergarten kids handle a meteorite unless it had been cleansed by the Holy Fires of Orbital Entry,

Every planetary body in the solar system that has not been burned clean by the sun has interesting organic chemistry going on.

Mercury: Nope - sterile.

Venus: Weird shit in the clouds, looks organic.

Earth: Hello! We come in Peace. We have accountants!

Mars: Odd chemistry, Oxygen locked up in weird ways

All the asteroids: Rocky, greasy, nasty.

Jupiter and everything else: Greasy, nasty butterballs made of actual grease.

Finding greasy nasty messy stuff is not a weird thing. The universe seems to be full of it.

Our star has cleansed two of its planets and moons of grease. Mercury and Earth's moon are devoid of it. Every other planetary body has some amount of gloopy, greasy chemistry going on.

So: Why do we need extra, interplanetary grease to get life going?

Panspermia is silly. Greasy mucky chemistry is everywhere.
posted by Combat Wombat at 7:08 AM on November 21, 2017 [18 favorites]


absolutely nothing to worry about yt [nudity].

Do you want naked space vampires? Because that is how you get naked space vampires.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:15 AM on November 21, 2017 [5 favorites]


The asteroid is naked?
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 7:21 AM on November 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


If it turns out to be a shipload of aliens looking for a buffet we could point them in the right direction?
posted by lineofsight at 7:25 AM on November 21, 2017


Panspermia is silly. Greasy mucky chemistry is everywhere.

Wait, I confused... That's the whole point of panspermia, that there's lots of the stuff out there and lots of potential for crosspollination among interstellar bodies. You mean it's silly to frame it as life started "out there" versus "down here"? There's some theoretical suggestion the early universe hosted massive clouds of free floating organic material that implies those building blocks were at one time ubiquitous in space, without necessarily forming on planets. That's consistent with panspermia (agreed they might have picked a better package for the idea; something like intersteller ecologies being the true origins of life or something or maybe instead of "sperm" they could have used "pollen" as the metaphor to avoid the unpleasant connotations sperm has, I guess? Why is it okay that we judge sperm though. It's not personal, just factual. Anything I'm missing about the etymology or connotations of sperm here? It's not like sperm is only a human thing, much less some kind of patriarchal construct is it?)
posted by saulgoodman at 7:27 AM on November 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


It formed in the genesis of an alien star. It fell for aeons through space. We saw it after it had passed us, and soon we will lose sight as it continues its unending journey.

The cosmic ballet goes on.
posted by nubs at 7:29 AM on November 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


Jupiter and everything else: Greasy, nasty butterballs made of actual grease.

You're making me hungry for planets. Is this how Galactus feels.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 7:36 AM on November 21, 2017 [16 favorites]


Galactus is in constant pain from his hunger, so no
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 7:38 AM on November 21, 2017 [3 favorites]


Interstellar asteroids are thought to be rejects from other planetary systems.

So, they're not sending their best then.
posted by nubs at 7:46 AM on November 21, 2017 [7 favorites]


(agreed they might have picked a better package for the idea; something like intersteller ecologies being the true origins of life or something or maybe instead of "sperm" they could have used "pollen" as the metaphor to avoid the unpleasant connotations sperm has, I guess? Why is it okay that we judge sperm though. It's not personal, just factual. Anything I'm missing about the etymology or connotations of sperm here? It's not like sperm is only a human thing, much less some kind of patriarchal construct is it?)

Without continuing the derail too much, framing scientific theories using language that is gendered can seriously muck up the science and contribute to a strong inherent bias. The classic example is the active / passive framing of sperm and ova (sperms seek out the egg and penetrate it) that contributed to our overlooking / minimizing the active role the ova takes in the process and there are a million more examples where that came from. I am just a dude interested in this stuff so I'd highly recommend reading the actual feminist critiques if this area sounds interesting. Here's a good place to start with a brief primer and recommendations for further reading.

posted by lazaruslong at 8:05 AM on November 21, 2017 [7 favorites]


THE X-ISTS ARE FINALLY ARRIVING! X-DAY IS NEAR! ALL DUES PAYING SUBGENII SHALL BE SAVED, AND ALL PINKS SHALL BURN—IF THEY'RE LUCKY! PRAISE "BOB" !
posted by SansPoint at 8:09 AM on November 21, 2017 [12 favorites]


So that's what Chris Roberts spent all of the money on.
posted by Splunge at 8:23 AM on November 21, 2017 [3 favorites]


Rocky, greasy, nasty.

That's what it says on my business cards, ladies.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 8:27 AM on November 21, 2017 [4 favorites]


So: Why do we need extra, interplanetary grease to get life going?

It's got groove, it's got meaning?
posted by octobersurprise at 8:30 AM on November 21, 2017 [12 favorites]


I know you're all just kidding around but honestly an alien extermination mission would be such a relief at this point.

Paging Liu Cixin.
posted by doctornemo at 8:31 AM on November 21, 2017 [3 favorites]


this asteroid appears to be a type two on the bristol scale
posted by entropicamericana at 8:31 AM on November 21, 2017 [11 favorites]


"I wish we lived in a world where we could scramble a lander mission in circumstances like this."
My understanding is that at 26.33 km/s we'd need some serious warning to be able to accelerate something fast enough to make pace with it. If it wasn't already on its way out, and we had enough warning, I imagine there would be some serious conversations happening in the Discovery program to see if anything they're currently working on could be re-purposed.
posted by Blasdelb at 8:47 AM on November 21, 2017


We could probably have built a purely chemical rocket that could launch a small probe fast enough to rendezvous, but we don't have such a thing just sitting on the shelf. (Maybe for something cubesat sized, but not any more massive) Normally that kind of velocity requires an ion drive and a lot of time and/or multiple gravity assists and still quite a bit of time.

If only the Emdrive were a real thing..or we'd made Project Orion work, even without the silly part about launching into space with bombs. With that kind of delta V, we could even now spend a few months assembling a craft in orbit and still have plenty of energy to catch up. It would be a nice repurposing of a bit of our nuclear arsenal, you just have to use chemical rockets to get the whole contraption halfway to the moon before lighting off the bombs.
posted by wierdo at 8:58 AM on November 21, 2017 [2 favorites]


Historically, it will be known as the "Disclosure Rock".
posted by davebush at 8:59 AM on November 21, 2017 [3 favorites]


So this is like a life-missile? Pretty cool! Also hooray that it didn't hit us.
posted by grumpybear69 at 9:02 AM on November 21, 2017


Is it a bad sign that when I saw the [nudity] warning for the last link in the post, I immediately knew what it would be even before I moused over the link? (It is.)
posted by Zonker at 9:03 AM on November 21, 2017 [3 favorites]


Time to start putting together our best team to go against the Mon-Stars, I guess...
posted by Navelgazer at 9:07 AM on November 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


It's not the only exotic interstellar visitor we've spotted...

But it is extremely exciting, not so much for its immediate scientific value - it looks pretty much like the sort of thing we've expected to happen by, if only we had the tools to do industrial-scale sky scanning, and now we do. The real value, as so often, is in the way it crowbars open people's imagination.

Where did it come from? Almost certainly unknowable, but people will be trying very hard to see how far back they can rewind its trajectory and what would have been in its locale during the journey. What's it made of? What does it look like? Where is it going? Can we catch the next one earlier and improve on observations? All these are now valid (and hopefully actively investigated) paths of exploration, and suddenly a new microgenre of active scientific and intellectual enquiry becomes validated.

I particularly like the new way it recasts the sense of an active universe with lots more going on, in the same way that so much less headline-worthy astrophysics has been working towards for decades. There's a real environment out there between the stars; it has dynamic forces that affect us here on earth, it helps define our history and our future, and as for interstellar travel? Hard? Hah! You can be as dumb as a rock and it sitll works.

My understanding is that at 26.33 km/s we'd need some serious warning to be able to accelerate something fast enough to make pace with it.

It's really, really hard to think of anything remotely economic that could do any of the things necessary to intercept something like this. You can't detect it early, you can't have something sitting around at a random point in space with enough potential delta-v to do a short-term intercept. Perhaps you could hit it with a laser... but there's an awful lot of volumetric space around a teeny-tiny fast-moving rock to get past. If we ever get around to building an in-depth asteroid protection system, it miiiight be that part of that would be some sort of small projectile with a space-launching system that could do a very high speed impact, and we could then look at what flew up, but knowing our luck we'd find that the first successful intercept was in fact the Galactic Peace Emissary popping by to see whether we're welcoming or not.
posted by Devonian at 9:08 AM on November 21, 2017 [5 favorites]


ALL THESE PLANETS ARE YOURS, EXCEPT EUROPA.... HOLD UP

NO

NO NONE OF THESE PLANETS ARE YOURS

NONE

WE SAW WHAT YOU DID TO THE FIRST ONE

YOU GET NOTHING
posted by mhoye at 9:35 AM on November 21, 2017 [45 favorites]


Assuming it is a rock

Cf. Schneider, Pierson, et al "System For Discerning Rocks From Non-Rock Objects", 1979
posted by cortex at 9:44 AM on November 21, 2017 [3 favorites]


Look! Up in the Sky! It's a Bird...It's a Plane... It's Space Poo!
posted by spilon at 9:49 AM on November 21, 2017


Oumuamua, Hawaiian for “a messenger from afar arriving first”
Am not sure it's a good omen that Hawaiian has a specific word for this.
Well, that seems quite close in meaning to the English word word harbinger. Although that is itself not precisely a comforting analogy.
This Hawai'ian dictionary gives the definition more prosaically:
Oumuamua (ō'u-mu'-a-mu'-ă), n.
[Mua, the front]

1. The foremost soldier or the front rank in battle.

2. A scout; one sent forward before a battle to discover the position of the enemy.
And this one just says:
n. Leader, as in battle or other activity; scout.
Like, it's a super cool name, but it seems to me like if they were in a less exoticizing mood they could have just glossed it as "scout" and called it a day.
posted by nebulawindphone at 10:05 AM on November 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


cortex: How well does their research apply to space? Didn’t they focus on rock/not-rock identification in beach environments?
posted by SansPoint at 10:06 AM on November 21, 2017


> I'M FROM BUENOS AIRES, AND I SAY KILL 'EM ALL!

THE GODDAMN BUGS WHACKED US, JOHNNY
posted by davelog at 10:20 AM on November 21, 2017 [6 favorites]


DigDoug: "is it rotating along it's longitudinal axis?"

They don't know. In fact the 10X length to width ratio is a minimum derived from assuming a specific rotation; it could be much more elongated.

mhoye: "I wish we lived in a world where we could scramble a lander mission in circumstances like this."

The wiki article on the object says a group thinks we could but I'm guessing it's assuming a lot of wishful thinking like Manhattan project levels of percentage of worldwide GDP to pull it off (IE: theoretically possible but economically/politically impossible).
posted by Mitheral at 10:27 AM on November 21, 2017


How well does their research apply to space? Didn’t they focus on rock/not-rock identification in beach environments?

The conclusions are generalizable, with broad interdisciplinary resonances such that when their findings are considered against a stack of related research, the whole stack shimmies.
posted by cortex at 10:27 AM on November 21, 2017 [6 favorites]


My first thought was Captain Harlock and the spaceship Arcadia.
posted by King Sky Prawn at 10:27 AM on November 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


glossed it as "scout" and called it a day

I'm not sure I would view "scout" as less ominous.
posted by tavella at 10:44 AM on November 21, 2017 [5 favorites]



So: Why do we need extra, interplanetary grease to get life going?


As far as I know, and I know very lite, all life is made of cells. The defining characteristic of cells, as opposed to a primordial soup of replicating molecules, is that they have an inside and an outside divided by a membrane. Also AFAIK the membranes are always made of lipids (grease, fat).

I remember reading something about early cells probably having a semiconducting membrane of iron and other minerals allowing them to store energy in the form of 'natural' proton gradients. This energy could then be focused into biochemistry inside the cell. This is very limited and inefficient and only works for single cells in high energy flux environments (deep sea vents?)

This is very inefficient compared to lipid membranes, which store energy as 'biochemical' gradients of (sodium?) ions.

So maybe grase is not needed, but if it is present it could allow a shortcut. No need to evolve it from scratch if your little biochemical reactor suddenly finds itself trapped in a little grease bubble.

Sorry if this is all wrong, this is all half remembered stuff from way back.
posted by Index Librorum Prohibitorum at 10:44 AM on November 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


maybe it's this?
posted by annsunny at 11:07 AM on November 21, 2017


Object Identified: derelict Zentradi battleship, Nupetiet-Vergnitzs class
posted by The Tensor at 12:27 PM on November 21, 2017 [6 favorites]


1. The foremost soldier or the front rank in battle.

Maybe "vanguard" then? Or even better avant-garde. It's a stylish space turd.
posted by XMLicious at 12:31 PM on November 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


Y'know it doesn't have to be space poo, it might be a space pickle
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 12:53 PM on November 21, 2017 [2 favorites]


YES

HOW LONG TILL IMPACT

what do you mean it's not going to crush us
posted by poffin boffin at 1:40 PM on November 21, 2017 [3 favorites]


it might be a space pickle
I'm thinking more like space zucchini; the aliens have so much of an oversupply that they are dropping them on other stars' doorsteps...
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:55 PM on November 21, 2017 [6 favorites]


A neighbor offered us a friendly cigar, and we didn't accept.
This is why we're never invited to those parties.
posted by Iris Gambol at 3:54 PM on November 21, 2017


I'm not sure I would view "scout" as less ominous.

Relax, it's just a nickname for Jean Louise.
posted by ActingTheGoat at 4:29 PM on November 21, 2017


Good points, lazaruslong--hadn't thought it through from those angles.
posted by saulgoodman at 8:15 PM on November 21, 2017


"Oumuamua slingshotted around the Sun on 9 September ... and is now travelling out of the Solar System." 'only unintelligent here, on to the next'
posted by unearthed at 8:39 PM on November 21, 2017


We only have terrestrial life as an example of but the fact that life kicked off as soon as conditions allowed points away from the panspermia hypothesis. We'll probably know more about the origins of life when we explore Titan and Enceladus and we get better at observing exoplanets.
posted by rdr at 11:18 PM on November 21, 2017 [2 favorites]


If I had a.) a time machine, and b.) a spaceship, I'd go back to a year or two ago and carve "BE SURE TO DRINK YOUR OVALTINE" along the side of this thing just to mess with astronomers.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 1:34 AM on November 22, 2017 [4 favorites]


Or maybe "THIS IS A FAKE".
posted by XMLicious at 4:09 AM on November 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


Do take note that the photo is an artist rendering and all that's been seen is a light that grows brighter and dimmer and has moved in the sky in a way that the trajectory can be calculated. Perhaps the Hubble will get enough to actually image but unless it's at the right angle to the sun that also will not happen.
posted by sammyo at 5:50 AM on November 22, 2017 [2 favorites]


Obligatory, on sammyo's topic.
posted by tobascodagama at 6:09 AM on November 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


UK listeners (or anyone with a web browser) - Inside Science on Radio 4 tomorrow at 1630 zulu is going big on this.
posted by Devonian at 8:58 AM on November 22, 2017


i worked on the telescope that discovered this (Pan-STARRS PS1). I think it looks like a giant pickle.
posted by capnsue at 12:55 PM on November 22, 2017 [2 favorites]


Here is what we thought comet 67/P might look like based on Hubble imaging etc (artist's conception of the type we've been seeing of Oumuamua). Here is a 3-D model of the comet based on Hubble data.

And, here it what it looked like once we got there to see it in close-up via ESA's Rosetta probe.

Point is, from those fuzzy distant photos and light curves you can narrow things down and get a lot of things right. They knew 67/P's approximate size and rotation period, and they knew it was somewhat irregular.

But by god, the real thing turned out to be SO MUCH weirder and cooler than you ever would have imagined based on a "lumpy potato" type of analogy.

Sometimes an intergallactic cigar is just an intergallactic cigar. But in the case of Oumuamua, I can GUARANTEE you--it's not.

It's much, much weirder and much, much better.

The only thing we really know right now about Oumuamua is that it's kind of long and skinny. There are a LOT of different ways to be long and skinny . . .
posted by flug at 8:21 PM on November 22, 2017 [3 favorites]


I'm sorry that's obviously a flying saucer
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 3:27 PM on November 23, 2017


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