we have a mysterious new kid on the
block astronomers call it Oh mwah mwah
which in Hawaiian roughly translates to
first time visitor from far away Oh mwah
mwah
is the first interstellar object ever
detected in our solar system astronomers
discovered it in 2017 with the
pan-starrs one telescope and like all
grand discoveries it has raised more
questions than it answers where did it
come from what's it made of and yes even
the ultimate query is it aliens that's
what to Harvard astrophysicists posed in
a recent paper suggesting that Oh mwah
mwah
could be some type of alien spacecraft
and when we spoke with one of them the
idea didn't sound as far-fetched as you
might think I prefer to adopt the maxim
of Sherlock Holmes that if you rule out
the impossible whatever remains
improbable as it is must be the truth
now a good rule of thumb is that aliens
are always the least likely answer but
here's the thing the more reasonable
explanation right now isn't panning out
most astronomers think that Oh moi moi
is probably a stray comment from another
stellar system the only problem is that
it doesn't look like any comment we've
ever seen because it appears to lack
that iconic tail there wasn't a normally
seen in the data and it cannot be
explained by the most conventional
explanation which in this case is a
cometary outgassing and so we propose an
alternative interpretation which is the
only one I could think of but it seems
extreme to assume aliens just because Oh
moi moi doesn't look like a comet right
not when the Harvard scientists
accounted for another peculiarity as omo
amoA traveled through our solar system
it didn't follow the normal path of a
typical comet under the sun's gravity
rather it slightly shifted off course
which couldn't be explained by gravity
alone something else some unknown force
was also at play manipulating the
object's behavior I cannot think of any
other possibility
then they out gassing that we find in
comets which seems to be ruled out
because we don't see a cometary tip or
the pressure from the sunlight there is
no other proposal on the table right now
pressure from sunlight it works
similarly to how wind pushes against a
sail on a boat so too can sunlight push
against a spacecraft to propel it
through space incidentally we call these
spacecraft solar sails there's just one
catch pressure from sunlight is
extremely light lighter than the weight
of a fly on your hand which means in
order for it to be effective solar sails
also have to be extremely light and thin
in 2010 for example Japan's Space Agency
launched its a carros solar sail which
only weighed 1.1 pounds but it
eventually managed to travel over 65
million miles from Earth on just
sunlight alone and it's this type of
force that the Harvard scientists think
could be propelling Oh mwah mwah - of
course that's if it's an alien made sail
in the first place well first of all I
am NOT confident that this is the
correct interpretation because we don't
have enough data and so this is one
possibility I will highly recommend
people to read the papers they have a
better idea they should publish it and
as always not everyone agrees with Loubs
hypothesis I think that you know their
explanation I think it's in contrast
with what the data says you know we did
consider that possibility in our own
paper which was published earlier and we
dismissed it as not being physically
valid you know again there's no reason
to think of muumuu is anything but a
natural object that's Rob Weirich who
first discovered Oh mwah mwah in 2017 so
we think Mulla Mulla still has ice and
the supplementing ice gives it a small
tiny kick that gravity alone would an
account for but that the dust it has is
much larger than what comets typically
have and so we just don't see that from
the ground and yes in all probability
he's right Oh mwah mwah is a natural
object like a comet or asteroid but
neither work nor lobe can know for sure
without more data and sadly all
is on its way out of the solar system
beyond the reach of our telescopes so
the best bet for solving this mystery
so for amumu itself it's basically gone
it's it's too faint to see from the
ground there's no way we could send a
spacecraft mission so we really have to
find a second object that would help
answer a lot of questions that we don't
know you know I'm very interested in
finding a second one you know it'd be
nice if I found them all and Loeb
already has some ideas on where to look
next there should be quite a lot of them
right now in the solar system and some
of them could be trapped by Jupiter and
the Sun that act as a fishing net and so
some of these interstellar objects are
bound to the solar system after the
first passage that's right some of these
interstellar objects might be right here
in our solar system trapped and waiting
to be found
it looks like astronomers may have more
fascinating discoveries to come