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Study attributes 'Oumuamua's push to escaping hydrogen

When: 22 Mar 2023
Sources: 2 public sources

Hubble view of Oumuamua; a 2023 study tied its push to escaping hydrogen geckzilla, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

In Nature, Jennifer Bergner and Darryl Seligman proposed that cosmic rays turned ice in 'Oumuamua into trapped hydrogen that escaped as it warmed, giving the small speed-up once cited as a sign of an alien craft. A later Nature reply argued the mechanism is hard to make work.

Sources

FirsthandSurprisingly simple explanation for alien comet 'Oumuamua's weird orbit (opens in a new tab)University of California, Berkeley (Robert Sanders) / 2023-03-22
PressSurprisingly simple explanation for the alien comet 'Oumuamua's weird orbit (opens in a new tab)ScienceDaily (from UC Berkeley) / 2023-03-22

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How the story came out

This reports on 'Oumuamua shown to accelerate without visible outgassing (27 Jun 2018).

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Where it fits

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