Could read about these things all day. No one really knows what it was but it was a very fast mover and unlike anything detected before.
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My orbital mechanics is rusty, but didn’t the path for it come in at 90 degrees but it’s current path is much flatter to our orbit. Not really saying anything with that, outside of how gravity tweaks a trajectory like that. That and if something 10 times bigger came out of the darkness heading right towards us…
This gives a better visual and his analysis is very detailed as to why it’s so strange even beyond it’s interstellar trajectory. The shape probably shouldn’t be able to hold up if as elongated as it appears and spinning as it does, but who knows what we don’t know. Just that it’s an amazing coincidence it used the sun like it did, going closer than even Mercury. That’s what we do with our ships, which is often use gravity as propulsion.
This guy isn’t the only one highly interested in it, that’s for sure.
Sometimes I think that looking for radio signals from these things is like New Guinea tribesmen doubting our existence because they don’t see our smoke signals…
I’m getting to be so cynical I’m suspicious it’s some elaborate advertisement for the new Star Wars movie.
Given the distances involved in an interstellar search, what we’re really doing is looking for fossils of previous life. Any evidence obtained would likely be hundreds/thousands/millions of years old. There is presently no way to do a real-time search. If we were to detect any “smoke signals” it isn’t very likely that the civilization that generated them still exists.
That.
On the 0.002% chance that this thing is artificial, odds are that it’s been floating around the galaxy/galaxies for billions of years. Relatively speaking, this thing was traveling very slowly based on interstellar speeds.
I look up at the night sky and KNOW that there is other intelligent life out there, but given the distances involved, we’ll probably never know.
Now, there is the whole faster than light and/or wormhole theories, but that’s all that they are for now. IMHO, any civilization that has that technology developed (if possible) either hasn’t found us as the vast expanse of the universe makes finding us as remote as finding a particular grain of sand located somewhere in the world. If they have found us, their technology would be so advance that they could mask their presence, until they wanted us to see them.
<— My two cents are on no one even knows were here. Yes, our civilization puts out a massive electromagnetic signature (radio waves). Those said waves are more than likely washed out after a few billion miles by our sun. Our closest star neighbor probably can’t detect our signature due to the background interference of our own star. Someone else would have to be really close to see or hear us. Same goes for us hearing someone else…
Or maybe this is just the government screwing with people… maybe it’s another super secret government aircraft. I didn’t know we had stealth helicopters till we wrecked one killing bin laden, if we know about that then what do we not know about?
There’s a lot of possibilities. A lot of people assume that whatever other life is out there is far more intelligent than we are. Maybe they are, or maybe they aren’t… has anyone ever considered that we may be the smartest, most advanced thing in the universe?
Maybe all the other planets are just full of those teddy bear looking things from Star Wars.
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Seriously no, let’s not go there. More than likely its an asteroid, possibly partially made of an unknown material or element allowing it to maintain it’s integrity. Except for light spectrum analysis we are only physically familiar with what orbits our sun, which this object does not and never will.
But it may be something totally different. Too far away already to confirm now.
ET just flew home:D Who knows what it could be. Personally I don’t see how we could be the only beings in the universe when any start out there could possibly have a planet in its galaxy that could harbor life.
For a great read on a similar subject…
Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C Clarke
Maybe Clarke’s best book, if not Childhood’s End, but as an author I just couldn’t get into his writing that much. The tech stuff was fascinating but the rest was kind of ‘meh’.
Space is a vacuum, so it’s shape and the fact it is spinning shouldn’t have any impact on it’s ability to remain intact, correct? i.e. it isn’t like a long 77gr 5.56 round hitting flesh (resistance) and fragmenting because the length can’t maintain it’s integrity due to the forces acting against it as it begins to tumble.
We have only put out that electromagnetic signature for roughly 100 years, so the emissions can only reach out to roughly 100 light years. Any detectors beyond that will not know we are here. The other problem is that the universe is 13 billion years old. Stars/galaxies are not all on the same lifecycle. There may have been intelligent life for millions of years relatively nearby that faced extinction 5 billion years ago. In that case, they went away before the earth was formed.
When you look at all of the variables the odds of detecting extraterrestrial life, that still exists, is pretty slim.
But our future selves might contact them in the next 500 years and if we are advanced enough that message will reach anyone listening long before the radio waves we sent out 100 years ago. And if “they” exist and are advanced enough we could actually be seeing a reply to a signal that won’t actually exist for another 500 years.
Obviously for “first contact” to occur, we will be heavily dependent upon the abilities of a far more advanced life form. If “they” actually exist in our local group, their advanced capacity could be a good or a bad thing.
The silence from the cosmos is deafening… Either we are way behind on comm tech, life is not common and intelligent life even less so, intelligent life has a habit of extinguishing itself or there are reavers out there culling species that get too advanced. None of those is comforting.
500 stars with in 100 light years, something like 260,000 with in 250 years and 2 million with in 500 years. That is outbound. In bound I’d have to sit down and try to figure out the probability of intelligent life based on 100 years of listening and somehow calculate in civilization survival length.
I think you hit on something there. If you look at our civilization, we have been a high tech society for roughly 100 years. We have already seen multiple instances where life on earth could have been severely impacted. It would be hard to believe that a society could continue to advance at this exponential rate without stumbling into extinction in less than a couple of thousand years. No reason to believe it would be any different on another planet.
Sort of but not really. There are other forces at work that generate rounded or semi-rounded objects for a reason, including both gravity as well as momentum vs a physical structure’s ability to handle it vacuum or not. Of course space offers no air resistance, but it doesn’t mean that physics breaks down. Not at that level anyway.
Just figure that planets are round for a reason, therefore air resistance or not if one is big enough gravity will pull it upon itself. Some asteroids or proto-planets included. If not it will eventually break up and yes the speed combined with rotation is still relevant.
The point that I make is that our radio waves of 100 years ago have more than likely already been washed out by the background of the sun. More and more data indicate that once you are more than a light year or two from our solar system, our radio waves are being washed out by the background radio interference of our own sun. A star as close as 10 light years away with our current listening capability, more than likely cant hear us NOW.
Think of staring right at an anti-aircraft searchlight shining directly at you while that light is a few miles away. There is a firefly 100 feet from the searchlight directly in the beam, and that little firefly is shinging as bright as he can… You are not going to be able to detect the firefly. It’s feeble light will be washed out. Sorry, that’s a laymans attempt of explaining, but it’s the same principle with our very weak (compared to the sun) electromagnetic signature.
Yup… There could be another earth just as advanced as us circling Alpha Centauri just 4.4 light years away with the same type of radio and TV going on for 100 years. Odds are that we cant pick up their transmissions for the same reason… Until we (or they) send out something more powerful than the sun’s signature, it’s like dropping a pebble in the ocean hoping someone across the world will notice that particular ripple.