In 2017, a mysterious celestial object crossed the solar system and surprised scientists because it did not have a tail or halo like the rest of its peers, in addition to the fact that its shape resembled that of a cigar. Now, it seems that there is more information about this comet in a new report published by the science magazine “Nature”, which indicates that “the traveler” could be a body “particularly rich in H2O”.
“As Oumuamua got closer to the sun, the heat released the hydrogen that acted as an unexpected ‘reactor,’ changing its trajectory and speeding it up,” Jennifer Bergner, an astrochemist at the University of California, told the science outlet Nature. Berkeley University who was in charge of this study together with other specialists. “All those exaggerated ideas about hydrogen icebergs and other crazy things arose, while this is the simplest explanation,” said the scientist about the questions surrounding this object that surprised people in 2017.
According to the study’s other author, Darryl Seligman, “the most mysterious thing is its non-gravitational acceleration”, and a possible answer may be that it is the “Yarkovsky effect”by which small asteroids as “The Traveler” they absorb photons from the sun and radiate them out like a kind of propellant plume.
Still, this would give a small fraction of the acceleration possible, but the presence of water and the heat of the sun would have started nitrogen, carbon monoxide, and molecular hydrogen, which “want to be in their liquid state most of the time.” , although on some occasions they can be frozen”, which would allow their speed to be increased when they melt.
What is the Oumuamua
Originally discovered by a telescope located on the island of Maui, in Hawaii, this object surprised the scientific communityin part, because of its strange elongated shape similar to that of a cigar and because of the erratic and eccentric orbit that it managed.
This situation sparked rumors that it could be proof of the existence of extraterrestrial life and even that it could be an interplanetary ship.However, most of the international scientific community quickly dismissed these ideas.
