Skip to playerSkip to main content
  • 7 hours ago
Oumuamua was the first interstellar object humankind ever discovered and it was such a momentous discovery, some scientists were even wondering if it could be an alien spaceship. That was only in 2017, but just two years later astronomers discovered another ISO, this time a comet. Now some scientists are saying there are likely many more interstellar travelers in our solar system, but rather than simply passing through, they may have stayed and made a new home.
Transcript
00:00Oumuamua was the first interstellar object humankind ever discovered.
00:08And it was such a momentous discovery, some scientists were even wondering if it could be an alien spaceship.
00:13But just two years later astronomers discovered another ISO, this time a comet.
00:18Now some scientists are saying there are likely many more interstellar travelers in our solar system.
00:23But rather than simply passing through, they may have stayed and made a new home.
00:27They call it ISO capture, and it's when one of these cosmic objects isn't moving fast enough to escape the gravity of the sun,
00:33eventually getting caught in its gravity well, ending up orbiting it just like all of the other objects in the solar system.
00:39The new study indicates that new observatories will be much better at identifying these objects,
00:43which they estimate they might be able to identify five every year.
00:46Most of them they say are likely caught up in the Oort cloud,
00:49or the theoretical cloud of debris and ice at the furthest reaches of our solar system.
00:54In fact, they even posit that more interstellar objects might have been captured and orbiting past Neptune
00:59than ones that derived from our solar system.
01:01What's more, the researchers also note that Earth and the Moon, along with Jupiter,
01:05could play a central role in the capturing of these objects,
01:08with the researchers saying that those three objects collectively
01:11increased the chances of capturing an ISO by a factor of 104.
01:16There are many others that may have been interviewed by a historical research group among the two groups.
01:21What's more?
01:22More.
01:23More.
01:25More.
01:26More.
01:27More.
01:28More.
01:29More.
01:30More.
01:31More.
01:32More.
01:33More.
01:34More.
01:35More.
01:36More.
01:37More.
01:42More.
01:43More.
01:44More.
01:45More.
Be the first to comment
Add your comment

Recommended