A New 'Interstellar Visitor' Has Entered the Solar System (livescience.com) 67
Astronomers have detected a mysterious "interstellar object," dubbed A11pl3Z, speeding through the solar system at 152,000 mph. If confirmed, it would be just the third known interstellar visitor, following 'Oumuamua and Comet Borisov. The visiting space object will pass near Mars and the Sun later this year before leaving the solar system forever. Live Science reports: 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 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.
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.
OMG! What are the chances...? (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
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:5, Funny)
"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)
"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)
Re: (Score:2)
I wish I had the points to mod you up.
Re: (Score:2)
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)
Hurry! (Score:3)
ICE must spare no expense capturing this illegal alien and sending it to El Salvador!
Re: (Score:2)
Rama (Score:5, Interesting)
Finally the rendezvous with Rama
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Rama (Score:5, Informative)
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.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0... [imdb.com]
Re: (Score:3)
If it does get made into a movie finally I don't have very high hopes. The entire story revolves around nothing but the thrill of exploration and mystery behind Rama which is left unknown in the book. Fantastic story, fantastic read. A product of the time. Not sure it would make a popular movie though. No doubt they'd have to add pointless interpersonal conflict like they did in the later Rama books, which weren't nearly as good. Also as the explanation behind Rama was revealed in the books, it was kind
Re: (Score:2)
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)?
Re: (Score:3)
What is the speed of the solar system (relative to the center of the galaxy) ?
Re:152000 mph sounds a lot (Score:5, Funny)
What do you mean? An African or European solar system?
Re: (Score:2)
That. Was. Awesome.
Re: (Score:3)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
The sun is hurtling around the solar system at ~230 kps (relative to the local standard rest frame),
Milky Way Galaxy?
Re: (Score:2)
Relative Speed (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I think it's assumed that the speed is relative to the solar system.
The solar system consists of multiple objects each with velocities that differ enough to make the question about which part of the solar system the object's speed is measured relative to important. Logically it would make the most sense to quote the speed relative to the Sun but since I'm guessing the speed measurement was done from Earth it may be relative to us. The difference in velocity between the Earth and Sun is sufficient that it makes a big difference.
For a car it's pretty obvious that the spee
Re: (Score:2)
Occasionally ephemerides are calculated in geocentric coordinates - Earth-centred ones - but normally that's kept for Earth-orbiting objects and (potential) impactors. (I was reading up on this last night, and the author of one of the tools for converting observations (two angles, a time, and a brightness) commented that he'd only rarely came across a body that needed selenographic coordinates (Moon-centred), and and they'd all been artificial satellites, never a natural body.)
Generally the calculations are
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
1I/`Oumuamua was at approximately "local rest" with respect to the stars in the Sun's vicinity, and we sort-of "ran into it". (The Sun and the Solar system has a significant velocity to most of the nearby stars ; you need to cast the net wider - a few hundred light years - to get a meaningful average. Corollary : the nearest star to the Solar system has changed in the last few myriads of years (10,000 yrs) and will do again repeatedly in the future.)
3I/ATLAS (named for the telescope/ computer system that de
Harvestor (Score: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)
Re: (Score:2)
I thought it was called 3I/ATLAS or C/2025 N1.
Re: (Score:2)
It was assigned that name (for the telescope/ sensor/ computer system that found it) yesterday afternoon - sorry, the day before yesterday, now ; just after midnight, UT. In the same way that 2I is "Borisov" (the discoverer), and throwing 1I/`Oumuamua into contrast whose discoverers chose to give it a different name. Normal service has been resumed on the "interstellar object naming" front.
The discovery system has a name which is an acronym, and in their hundreds (thousands) of other discoveries they've ma
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I read it as All Pies.
Re: (Score:3)
Bypass (Score:3, Funny)
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:3)
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)
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:4, Funny)
When did the Milky Way get a bar, and why haven't we been invited to it yet?
Re:Nobody's commenting on the important part. (Score:4, Informative)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
I don't recall it being mentioned in the 1970s ; don't remember it mentioned in the 1980s ; was hearing mention of it in the 1990s, and definitely in the 2000s. I'll guess it came out of IR (dust-cloud penetrating) ground and space surveys in the 1980s.
The invite is on the back side of Pluto, and we're meant to take Charon as our entry ticket. I don't think they're interested in primitives who can't even travel 50,000 ly carrying a 1
Only the 3rd? (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Might come up with a new religion as the stars slowly vanished, though most of them are far enough away that we wouldn't notice they are gone for a long time.
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)
It's a Comet (Score:2)
It's showing signs of an atmosphere and a tail, hence it's a comet.
Re: (Score:2)
How fast can we resurrect the Yamato?
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, that news came through last night.
Well, "coma". "Atmosphere" in only the most temporary of senses. The average particle won't bump into another particle before it has left the vicinity of the comet and half way across the inner solar system.
As of this lunch time, nobody was reporting a visible tail that I'd seen. It's coming fairly straight-on towards us - about 15 off-direct, I estimate, so we'll struggle to see past the head for a while. Come ... August (?), we'll have a bit of an angle to it and see
A little early (Score:1)
Man this Superman marketing budget must be crazy. Or possibly it's an F4 promo? But then it would be a little late.
It's a giant dildo ... (Score:1)
Shot Across the Bow (Score:2)
Klendathu are just dialing in their aim...