ʻOumuamua: Our First Interstellar Visitor | How the Universe Works | Science Channel

Interstellar space is the space between the Stars Interstellar space is vast largely unknown and largely unmat now astronomers are probing this great abyss and discovering something remarkable Interstellar space is busy it's filled with activity there are rogue planets that are not attached to a star they cosmic rays they're Interstellar gas clasm you even got high velocity stars all of that is Greening around out there the greatest secrets in our universe Interstellar space is where we came from could lie between the Stars if Interstellar space is the region between Star systems in our galaxy until now

we've known little about it for so long we thought of the space in between the stars as entirely empty but this turns out not to be true at all there's a lot going on out there and it's the Forefront of astronomy one of the biggest clues about Interstellar space came right to our doorstep [Music] October 2017 the pan Stars One telescope spots something unusual pan stars is an observatory in Hawaii and it's scanning large sections of the sky looking for things that change all of a sudden there was this tiny little visitor just screaming through

the solar system it was going about 200,000 M an hour it became very clear that yeah this was not some solar system object falling from a long way away our first known Interstellar visitor on a flyby it was the very first object that we had ever discovered that had originated outside the solar system this thing came from Interstellar space into our solar system and the main question is what could it be the object's shape was mystifying it's almost sort of shaped like a cigar it's 10 times longer than it is wide and this is extraordinary

there's no object in our solar system that we've ever measured that is this elongated omua mua looked so unnatural it sparked science scientists imaginations one of the things to remember about scientists is that we're still human beings we have read science fiction we have imaginations I have to admit when I first heard about it my first thought is that it was Rama from an Arthur C Clark Story Rendevous with Rama this is a very elongated spaceship that came from another star it reminded me of some designs we had for Interstellar spacecrafts that have to be

much longer than their wide in order to minimize friction with the interstellar gas could amua mua be an alien Interstellar spacecraft astronomers including Professor Avi lobe took the idea seriously we decided to uh follow this object using the best telescopes in the world and observe whether there is any radio transmission from it astronomers hunted for signs of alien communication but after 8 hours of listening across multiple frequencies nothing sadly no emissions were detected uh it's almost certainly a natural object I would bet all of my money on that I was disappointed I would have been

much more excited if we have found evidence for an alien civilization no Little Green Men this time am mua mua is a natural object but what exactly is it at first observers thought it might be a comet something that's mostly ice with a little bit of rock those are the sorts of bodies that exist really far out from the Star and are the easiest things to eject but a comet passing this close to the Sun would warm up turning the ice into a gas forming a vapor trail on a mua mua astronomers saw no sign

of this happening there was no fuzziness around it that you would expect from a comet as the ice was turned into a gas it was really mysterious and so everybody who was observing it thought it was an asteroid as teams track the mua mua across the sky there was an unexpected twist as UA mua passed through our solar system it it basically was falling in toward the sun speeding up immensely as it passed the sun before exiting the solar system in almost the opposite direction but then something weird happened as it was moving away from

the Sun it was slowing down as you'd expect but it wasn't slowing down fast enough amua mua gets a boost through our solar system but how so we think the reason is that it's out gassing in other words it was emitting a little bit of gas and that was acting as a little bit of a rocket motor push on it it's kind of like a little jet engine on the surface it just gives it a little thrust over time this tiny nudge reveals amua mua's true identity so in that case it is looking more like

a comet it's just that that emission wasn't enough to see powered by outgassing this Interstellar Nomad might travel from star to star but figuring out where in the Galaxy it came from just got more difficult now that we know that UAM mua has outgassed which changes its veloc and changes its trajectory and makes it much harder to do that amua mua's surface tells the story of its journey through Interstellar space the interesting thing about omua mua is its color it's actually red I'm standing on a Surface that's a nice analog for the surface of uua

as you look around you see a really dark kind of shiny coating to all of the rocks and it extends up the valley and even onto the mountains behind me scientists think amua mua's red Sheen comes from tholin organic molecules that are the building blocks of life how cool is it that something came out from some other origin passed through our neighborhood and it possessed some form of Organics that could be a possible gold mine for us in our own solar system distant objects like comets and asteroids also carry tholin this happens because their surfaces

are bombarded by cosmic rays and that changes the nature of the chemicals on the surface so we think the same thing has happened to omua mua it's been out there in interstellar space and been bombarded by cosmic rays over the eons for