• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Our Solar System May Have Captured A Number Of Interstellar Objects

June 27, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

In 2017, astronomers at the Pan-STARRS1 observatory looking for near-Earth asteroids spotted an object as it hurtled past our Sun at 38.3 kilometers per second (23.8 miles per second). 

Advertisement

Soon, telescopes around the world pointed in the unusual object’s direction, trying to capture as much data as they could before it moved away from the Sun. Looking at visible light reflecting off the object, scientists were able to determine its size and shape, finding it is around 400 meters (1,300 feet) long, and likely shaped like a pancake.

Advertisement

The speed and trajectory of the object A/2017 U1 suggested that it did not come from our Solar System, and that it will leave our Solar System again. ‘Oumuamua, as it is now called, was our first confirmed interstellar visitor. In 2019, we had our second confirmed interstellar visitor in 2I/Borisov, our first rogue comet.



So, is the Solar System absolutely teeming with interstellar objects, or are these rare occurrences that we happened to spot?

That’s a difficult question to answer, as (mentioned above) we have only ever seen two such objects moving at a relative velocity suggesting that they did not come from the Solar System. But papers have attempted to put limits on how many (or few) objects we should expect to find within certain orbits.

Advertisement

We have a few other clues that can help with this. Looking at the organization of our own Solar System. For instance, what we have learned about planet formation suggests that we should have sent a lot of our own comets on their own interstellar journey.

“Oort cloud formation models predict that for every comet that reaches the classical outer Oort cloud, a factor η = 3—100 more are expelled into interstellar space,” one paper on the topic explains. “If most stars have planets, and if planetary formation is usually accompanied by comet ejection, then there should be a substantial population of free-floating interstellar comets.”

Astronomers have also proposed that if there are a lot of interstellar objects out there, our Solar System may be able to capture them. Teams have found that interstellar objects whose orbit takes them within that of Jupiter would likely end up being obliterated by the gas giant within a few million years, with highly inclined orbits beyond that lasting longer.

There are objects in the Solar System – known as Centaurs – with high inclinations and unstable orbits. 

Advertisement

“If a Centaur orbit is integrated forward or backward in time, it will invariably either hit the Sun, the planets, or be ejected from the Solar system,” one paper explains. Given enough time, Centaurs will be ejected from the Solar System, or collide with a planet (the most likely being the gas giants). 

“The past lifetime is trickier to interpret literally because it would mean the Centaurs cannot have lived in the Solar system more than 1–100 Myr in the past. This indicates that they must all have been captured from the interstellar medium in the recent past.”

The team used a precise orbit determination method to look at the possible orbits of 17 high-inclination Centaurs, and a further two trans-Neptunian objects, going back billions of years into the past. Doing so, they found that their orbits were nearly polar 4.5 Gyr in the past, far from the common orbital plane expected if they had formed in the Solar System. Instead, the team suggests they were likely captured as the Solar System passed through the interstellar medium.

As for the precise number of how many interstellar objects are passing through the Solar System, that remains unclear. Recent studies have had more information to work with, given that we have found interstellar objects, with one estimating that “at any one time, there are ∼104 interstellar bodies of [ʻOumuamua]-size closer to the Sun than Neptune. Each takes ∼10 years to cross the planetary region before returning to interstellar space.”

Advertisement

We will learn more by looking for more interstellar objects, something which will hopefully become easier when the Vera C. Rubin Telescope begins searching the skies. If we find more, we may even be able to catch up with them.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. China vehicle sales slid 18% in August – industry body
  2. Fed’s Powell: Reopening economic bottlenecks could be “more enduring”
  3. The World’s Oldest Bottle Of Wine Might Actually Be Safe To Drink
  4. How Coffee Could Protect Against Alzheimer’s: Espresso Found To Inhibit Tau Proteins

Source Link: Our Solar System May Have Captured A Number Of Interstellar Objects

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • 2024 Saw Higher Levels Of Carbon Dioxide In The Atmosphere Than Ever Before
  • Halloween Fireballs Will Grace Our Skies As The Taurid Meteor Showers Arrive
  • Newly Discovered Hunting Megastructures Suggest Pre-Bronze Age Societies More Sophisticated Than Previously Thought
  • What Is Spectroscopy And Why Is It So Important To Science?
  • Parkinson’s “Trigger” Seen For The First Time: Scientists Image The Toxic Molecules Inside The Human Brain
  • What Flying Animals Exist That Are Not Birds?
  • DNA Evidence Uncovers Surprising Origins Of Native Americans
  • Single Gene Swap “Transfers A Behavior” Between Two Species For The First Time
  • Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS Has A Rare “Anti-Tail”, New Observations Confirm
  • Asteroid Apophis: Animation Shows Asteroid’s Nail-Biting Close Approach To Earth In 2029
  • Titan Breaks A Key Chemistry Rule: What That Means For Alien Life
  • Scientists Studied “Chicago Rat Hole” – They Have Bad News, The South Atlantic’s Magnetic Field Weak Spot Is Growing, And Much More This Week
  • Could This Be The Real Reason Humans Survived And Neanderthals Died Out?
  • Newly Discovered Snail Species Named After Studio Ghibli Co-Founder Is A Hairy Beauty
  • 2025 SC79 Is The Second-Fastest Asteroid Ever Found – And Only The Second Within Venus’ Orbit
  • When Red Devil Spiders Arrived On A New Island, Their Genome Dramatically Shrank In Half
  • Is This The World’s Oldest Story? Ancient Human Tale About The Seven Sisters May Be From 100,000 BCE
  • This Pill Is Actually A Tiny Printer That Repairs Internal Injuries Using Biocompatible Ink
  • “This Is Amazing”: Scientists Have Found Evidence Of A Long-Lost World Deep Within The Earth
  • From The Shiniest World To Lava And Eternal Darkness, These Are The Weirdest Known Planets
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version