“Every one here seems t speculate that if this was a probe it is currently sailing away. I believe that if it is indeed a probe it detached from the solar sail near perihelion causing the solar sail to tumble. The probe itself could be of the size of a smartphone and has probably further decelerated after detaching from the sail. It is now perhaps heading towards earth. But given the size of the probe it is unlikely we will be capable of detecting it.”
If it was travelling unpowered how long would it take such an object to reach Earth? What I’m saying is do I need to stock up and/or run around in a hand-flailing panic now or later?
It wouldn’t be headed for Earth because it would be traveling in the same direction and speed as the rest of the object at the time of detachment and would not have the ability to change it’s direction and speed to reach Earth. “John” is an idiot.
Given the assumption that Oumuamua was some sort of alien space craft, and not just a random space rock, I’m not sure what you’re basing the bolded part on.
I’m basing the bolded part on that if the alien civilization had the miracle propulsion technology to allow a “cell phone sized object” to move from a hyperbolic to the sun course into one that intersected with the Earth (in any form other than a particularly bright meteor) they would have no need for something so primitive as a solar sail.
It’s fun to imagine, but I have a hard time buying it. The thing with solar sails is, they’re big. Really big, and opaque. If this thing were a solar sail, we’d have seen it.
It’s interesting that some folks seem to know whether or not alien spacecrafts are opaque or emit EM. If it’s a probe, do you think its builders have FTL technology?
A solar sail would have to be opaque because that is the whole purpose of a solar sail–to have light not pass through it. If it wasn’t opaque it wouldn’t be a solar sail.
We know that the probe didn’t emit EM because we looked for that:
Any civilization with FTL wouldn’t be using probes that take millions of years to reach nearby stars.
There’s no reason an advanced technology couldn’t harness charged particles from a star with a device that’s not opaque. Why should it emit EM? How do you know how long it took Oumuamua to get here?
But why do we assume they are communicating using some form of EM? Because that is all we know? The ship contained a massive drive system that manipulates the vacuum energy field, which is why the acceleration profile resembled a solar sail: it is comparatively low output in steep gravitational gradients, like near the sun. And their communication system modulates the polarity of the same vacuum energy – the pervasive “dark energy” that we cannot seem to detect. That is why it looks like just an old rock or something.
A solar sail is based on propulsion from photons, not charged particles. Charged particles would supply around a thousand times less propulsion than photon pressure.
It wouldn’t be a probe if it wasn’t emitting EM (and please skip the neutrino beam nonsense.)
We guess how long it took to get here based on it’s speed on approaching and estimating which stars it was near in the past. Close encounters with other stars are millions of years back. But even those don’t mean that the object must have come from one of those stars and the near approach could be coincidental, so the real figure could be anywhere from a few million years to many times that figure.
Darren open your mind…
A magnetic sail or magsail is a proposed method of spacecraft propulsion which would use a static magnetic field to deflect charged particles radiated by the Sun as a plasma wind, and thus impart momentum to accelerate the spacecraft.[1][2] A magnetic sail could also thrust directly against planetary and solar magnetospheres.
eschereal I’ve made similar comments, like can c change near a black hole. And I also got called a pink unicorn. Keep thinking…and fuck anyone who tells you to stop.