Starship Asterisk*

SeedsofEarth wrote:Just wondering: since the Oort cloud theoretically surrounds the sun somewhere near the edge of the heliopause, could it possibly be that this "visitor" was simply knocked loose by a collision with another icy body from its orbit in the Oort cloud above the plane of the ecliptic, and after many thousands of years (or hundreds?) it has made its way to the inner solar system. Is the assumptiuon that it is an alien comet or asteroid based solely on its velocity?

sillyworm2 wrote:Someone is hurling stones at us.

hamilton1 wrote:

rstevenson wrote:The simplest way to determine that an incoming object is artificial would be to observe it changing velocity in a way that would be impossible for a 'natural' object. It could, for example, attempt to adjust its trajectory to use the Sun's gravity for a braking maneuver. Or, if braking was impossible, it might adjust its trajectory to pass close to any source of EM radiation while emitting an unambiguous signal, so as to at least attract attention to itself and hence its senders. But it seems the object just blew through on a normal falling trajectory. That doesn't completely rule out the possibility that it was an artifact of another culture, but it strongly suggests that.

You seem to be assuming that the object would still be under some sort of control, but there's no way of proving that assumption. After all, if Voyager passed by a distant star in the far future, it would behave exactly like a natural object. The only definite from this discovery is that there must be a gargantuan amount of these objects out there, whether they are rocks or probes:)

rstevenson wrote:The simplest way to determine that an incoming object is artificial would be to observe it changing velocity in a way that would be impossible for a 'natural' object. It could, for example, attempt to adjust its trajectory to use the Sun's gravity for a braking maneuver. Or, if braking was impossible, it might adjust its trajectory to pass close to any source of EM radiation while emitting an unambiguous signal, so as to at least attract attention to itself and hence its senders. But it seems the object just blew through on a normal falling trajectory. That doesn't completely rule out the possibility that it was an artifact of another culture, but it strongly suggests that.

Meldok wrote:This event look like, to one of the biggest opportunity, of our History.
His trajectory prove this object coming to outside of our solar system.
What we dont know, at this time; it is only a lost asteroid or a artificiel object.
...
Richard

oldwierdgeek wrote:
Sorry, but a 12-gauge shotgun's muzzle velocity is around 1200 feet/sec (just over Mach 1) or roughly 400 m/sec, not km/sec.

neufer wrote:

geckzilla wrote:
I appreciate your effort, Art.
It's hard to understand the relative and absolute motions of each object when all I have to go on is a short animation.

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

The important thing is that the Sun, Vega, the asteroid and the local neighborhood are all moving along more or less together within the galactic disk at about 220 km/s.

Should we every have an Interstellar Visitor coming in at ~200 km/s (e.g., a 12 gauge shotgun round)
then we might start talking about it being an Intergalactic disk Visitor as well.

geckzilla wrote:
Your car chase image would probably be more useful as an analogy if I had any clue what it was about.

hamilton1 wrote:
Apparently this object can expect to travel several quadrillion years before
encountering another star at such close proximity. Does sound a bit suspicious...

geckzilla wrote:I appreciate your effort, Art. It's hard to understand the relative and absolute motions of each object when all I have to go on is a short animation. Your car chase image would probably be more useful as an analogy if I had any clue what it was about.

ET 2017 wrote:
Space probe disguised as a rock!

BDanielMayfield wrote:

sillyworm2 wrote:
Someone is hurling stones at us.

This theory can be discounted due to the inaccuracy of the aim.

• Unless that someone is now blind.

[b][color=#0000FF]Blinded Polyphemus enraged, hurls rocks at Odysseus's ship.[/color][/b]

---

<<But when we were no further away [out at sea] than a man's voice, I called to the Kyklopes and taunted him : ‘Kyklops, your prisoner after all was to prove not quite defenceless--the man whose friends you devoured so brutally in your cave. No, your sins were to find you out. You felt no shame to devour your guests in your own home; hence the requital from Zeus and the other gods.’

Rage rose up in him at my words. He wrenched away the top of a towering crag and hurled it in front of our dark-prowed ship. The sea surged up as the rock fell into it; the swell from beyond came washing back at once and the wave carried the ship landwards and drove it towards the strand. But I myself seized a long pole and pushed the ship out and away again, moving my head and signing to my companions urgently to pull at their oars and escape destruction; so they threw themselves forward and rowed hard. But when we were twice as far out on the water as before, I made ready to hail the Kyklops again, though my friends around me, this side and that, used all persuasion to restrain me : ‘Headstrong man, why need you provoke this savage further? The stone he threw out to sea just now dashed the ship back to the shore again, and we thought we were dead men already. Had he heard any sound, any words from us, he would have hurled yet another jagged rock and shattered our heads and the boat's timbers, so vast his reach is.’>>

sillyworm2 wrote:Someone is hurling stones at us.

BDanielMayfield wrote:

IamOuibe wrote:
I am curious as to whether our current technology would allow us to detect a Voyager or Pioneer probe that enters our solar system.

It depends on how close it gets. Also on chance, like if it flies into the field of view of a large telescope while someone is looking taking pictures. (Must have photographic evidence to be believed.)

• Assuming it had stopped sending radio signals it would probably have to be within a few million kilometers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESA_Space_Debris_Telescope wrote:
<<The ESA Space Debris Telescope is located at the Teide Observatory on the island of Tenerife, Spain. The telescope is ESA's Optical Ground Station forming a part of the Artemis experiment. As a large part of the observation time is dedicated to space debris surveys, in particular the observation of space debris in the geostationary ring and in geostationary transfer orbits, the term ESA Space Debris Telescope became used very frequently. Space debris surveys are carried out every month, centered on New Moon. The telescope is a Ritchey-Chrétien telescope with an aperture of 1 m and field of view of 0.7 degrees, equipped with a cryogenically cooled mosaic CCD-Camera of 4k*4k pixels. The detection threshold is between 19th and 21st magnitude, which corresponds to a capability to detect space debris objects as small as 10 cm in the geostationary ring.>>

geckzilla wrote:
I appreciate your effort, Art.
It's hard to understand the relative and absolute motions of each object when all I have to go on is a short animation.

geckzilla wrote:
Your car chase image would probably be more useful as an analogy if I had any clue what it was about.

IamOuibe wrote:I am curious as to whether our current technology would allow us to detect a Voyager or Pioneer probe that enters our solar system.