RE: Oh no! Another alien probe
December 15, 2017 at 8:17 pm
(This post was last modified: December 15, 2017 at 8:27 pm by Anomalocaris.)
Also, take a rough average of the distance between main sequence stars in the neighborhood of our solar system of about 4 lights. Each star would have to itself a volumn of space equal to about 10e38 cubic kilometers.
Solar system currently still has roughly a quadrillion comets orbiting it in the extended Oort cloud. It is believed the Oort cloud originally included many times more objects and extended much closer to the inner solar system. Much of the deficit were swept up or scattered by the gravity of the major planets, primarily Jupiter and Saturn. Most of these collided with planets, the sun, or were through into an inner keeper belt. But a sizeable portion, probably at least equal to the number still remaining in the Oort cloud, were ejected from solar system altogether and scattered into the interstellar space. Say the solar system sent 1 quadrillion objects into interstellar space over its life.
Divide the average volumn of interstellar space per main sequence star, by the average number of objects each main sequence star disperse into interstellar space, take the cube root, we arrive at the average distance separation between interstellar objects.
It turns out due to the enormous number of objects, the separation is not that great, about 90 million Kms. So this means on average, in a sphere of space with a radius equal to the orbit of the earth, there should be around 10 interstellar objects at any given time.
Of course most objects are likely to be small, meter sized or less.
If heliopause defines solar system, then at this very moment, there are probably on the order of a million interstellar objects 1 meter across or bigger inside the heliopause.
Solar system currently still has roughly a quadrillion comets orbiting it in the extended Oort cloud. It is believed the Oort cloud originally included many times more objects and extended much closer to the inner solar system. Much of the deficit were swept up or scattered by the gravity of the major planets, primarily Jupiter and Saturn. Most of these collided with planets, the sun, or were through into an inner keeper belt. But a sizeable portion, probably at least equal to the number still remaining in the Oort cloud, were ejected from solar system altogether and scattered into the interstellar space. Say the solar system sent 1 quadrillion objects into interstellar space over its life.
Divide the average volumn of interstellar space per main sequence star, by the average number of objects each main sequence star disperse into interstellar space, take the cube root, we arrive at the average distance separation between interstellar objects.
It turns out due to the enormous number of objects, the separation is not that great, about 90 million Kms. So this means on average, in a sphere of space with a radius equal to the orbit of the earth, there should be around 10 interstellar objects at any given time.
Of course most objects are likely to be small, meter sized or less.
If heliopause defines solar system, then at this very moment, there are probably on the order of a million interstellar objects 1 meter across or bigger inside the heliopause.
