Talk-Polywell.org

We may have visitors.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... gnals.html

Here's where it came from.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/30/health/se ... index.html

Definitely curious, but given that it's (1) tumbling, and (2) showing no sign of any sort of acceleration of its own, it's most likely a rock.

Carl White wrote:Definitely curious, but given that it's (1) tumbling, and (2) showing no sign of any sort of acceleration of its own, it's most likely a rock.

Or if a spacecraft, a derelict.

Alas, we're not in a position to send a probe after it. Picture what a stunning find it would be if we could examine an extraterrestrial spacecraft, even a derelict tens of millions of years old. It would be interesting enough to chase down just as an unusual extrasolar rock. Aside from the apparent length, it also lacks a tail ... this is not a comet, and if an asteroid, any ice it bears is buried deeply.

Maybe it was a miss, in the opening salvo of our new interstellar war, of which we are currently unaware.

Or it tumbles to maintain gravity inside. I read somewhere it's flyby of our sun will put it on a direct route to a nearby star. If you were an alien civilization and started picking up radio traffic from earth, you might want to investigate, and protect yourselves from discovery at the same time. What better way than making your probe look like a rock, then do passive radio listening during flyby of the suspect star systems.

Now we're getting into "El Dorado" territory, a story I wrote after Dr. Bussard told me about his design for an Interstellar Ramjet Star Killer."

The problem with that one is, by the time it was close enough to see, it would be right behind the light you were seeing, doing about 0.999999c.

It looks like a splatter of mildly viscous matter. Couldn't it just be a spurt of ejecta that cooled into that same original shape it was jettisoned as, and be one of a few/the one stray ejectus that got away?

Betruger wrote:It looks like a splatter of mildly viscous matter. Couldn't it just be a spurt of ejecta that cooled into that same original shape it was jettisoned as, and be one of a few/the one stray ejectus that got away?

Alien space probes are more fun.

Betruger wrote:It looks like a splatter of mildly viscous matter. Couldn't it just be a spurt of ejecta that cooled into that same original shape it was jettisoned as, and be one of a few/the one stray ejectus that got away?

If it was hot enough to be considered plastic, it should have reached hydrostatic equilibrium -- pulled itself into a (rough) sphere. My thoughts are more along the lines of a large chunk of rock that happened to fracture off something else into its current shape.

Of course, I haven't seen any images of it, even radar/radio "images", like we've seen with other space rocks that get close enough. I don't know if that is because of how far it was when first detected (most probable, to my mind), or some other reason.

Yeah. Anyway really interesting shape and a real shame we can't probe the shit out of it.

krenshala wrote:If it was hot enough to be considered plastic, it should have reached hydrostatic equilibrium -- pulled itself into a (rough) sphere.

A sphere would be equilibrium under gravity or surface tension. Add rotation and other shapes may be favored.