Could Solar Radiation Pressure Explain Oumuamua’s Peculiar Acceleration?
arxiv.org
arxiv.org
The initial paper and comments by some experts convinced me that there is a strong chance that this is a probe. It seemed plausible based on my limited understanding of Physics. (Moment of Inertia, Stresses etc.)
But then a paper[1] was released claiming this to be a comet. I so wanted my original belief to be true(because it was more exciting!) I considered the possibility that their [2]model wasn't accurate. I was even willing to entertain the idea of cover-up just because it didn't align with what I wanted to be true!
[1] https://www.space.com/41015-interstellar-visitor-oumuamua-co...
[2]A recent study claims that it was indeed the case and the probe is more likely to not be a comet. https://www.quantamagazine.org/interstellar-comet-oumuamua-m...
Edit: Formatting
In general I think it is because of baggage associated with "God". Which God(s)? Was/is there persecution, torture, killing, suppression of human rights happening or happened using the belief or lack of believe in said God(s) as a pretext.
Aliens are a cute curiosity. That is, it is pretty safe to say we believe in them or hope that they visited us without getting too many people upset. Which is kind of what they did here. "Assuming this body can't outgas, and that the acceleration came from the solar wind, then it might have these other properties, including being an alien solar sail"
It's similar to "my camera spotted this amazing illusory effect and I think it's an artificial body"...
It just sounds small when you write it as 0.14 because it's a small fraction of an AU, but an AU is freaking huge. If we sent a probe to Jupiter and it only got within 0.14 AU I can't see that being considered much of a success.
~99.9̅% chance of being random. Absent any sort of evidence, it was a rare, meaningless event. The law of large numbers, however, suggests that rare events occur more frequently than you'd expect. E.g 1 in 1000 year floods could occur 3 times in a decade, since each event is statistically independent from others.
Where did you get that number from? Because it looks like you made it up.
In other words the odds that that specific rock get’s that close is low. But, if we only observe rocks close to us then the odds that we will see a rock close to us depends more on the number of rocks than the low odds for anyone rock.
More generally becase we notice unusual events more than common ones you need to consider all possible unusual events you would notice not just the odds of that specific event.
Could someone clarify whether it means what I think it is saying - that an Arxiv paper is trying to prove that this is an object sent by an alien civilization to peek at our solar system?
Weirder Arxiv papers exist, it's not that odd.
Comet Rosetta's perihelion was August 13, 2015 [1] and there was a big outgassing event February 2016 [2]. Takes time for heat to propagate through stuff.
But yeah, I'd rather it was due to radiation pressure on an alien solar sail.
[1] https://www.space.com/30237-rosetta-spacecraft-comet-closest...
[2] http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2016/08/25/rosetta-captures-com...
Your misanthropy doesn’t even make sense. We should be destroyed because we are going to destroy ourselves? As in, we’re going to fall off a cliff, so why not just push us off pre-emptively?