RE: Evidence for ET?
November 23, 2018 at 12:16 am
(This post was last modified: November 23, 2018 at 12:29 am by Paleophyte.)
(November 22, 2018 at 7:50 pm)Gawdzilla Sama Wrote: Let us not forget that a light sail large enough to push/pull that thing would occlude a hell of a lot more stars than the rock itself does.
They aren't proposing a light sail pushing an asteroid. That just makes no sense. They are proposing a light sail in place of the asteroid, in which case it's a fair bit smaller and very low mass.
One of the more interesting anomalies about Oumuamua is that it had a very low velocity relative to the Local Standard of Rest prior to entering our solar system. That might suggest that it wasn't pulled free of another star but formed in interstellar space. I don't know how that might happen but it could very well give rise to something that is neither the asteroids nor comets that we are familiar with. That might account for some of Oumuamua's unusual characteristics.