The researchers explained the acceleration of the space object.
Scientists from the University of California at Berkeley and Cornell University announced that the interstellar asteroid Oumuamua had a completely natural origin. According to them, the unusual acceleration of the object can be explained by the release of molecular hydrogen gas, reports Science Alert.
According to the scientists, this is another proof that the unusual cigar-shaped object was originally the “seed” of the planet. , and then was thrown away from the star and began to travel through the galaxy.
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Researchers say that this “elegant solution” can explain many of the specific properties of Oumuamua without any additional conditions and without resorting to extraordinary claims about the nature of the object.
For the first time in the field of view of scientists, Oumuamua appeared in 2017, shortly after it approached the minimum distance to the Sun, bypassed it and went beyond our system. Since then, researchers have not observed anything like it in the Solar System.
Outwardly, Oumuamua looks like a cigar, no other comet or asteroid in the Solar System acquires this shape. The trajectory of Oumuamua's movement cannot be explained simply by the effect of gravity on it, it seems that it was also affected by the release of gases, as in comets. That is, Oumuamua is something between a comet and an asteroid.
After years of research, scientists came to the conclusion that the interstellar guest is a fragment of a planetesimal – the “seed” of a planet that broke off during a collision with another cosmic body. Such collisions are not unusual in an emerging system. Our Earth is believed to have collided with another object, breaking off a fragment that became the Moon.
But in the case of Oumuamua, the fragment was ejected from the planetary system.
In the course of a new study, scientists decided to find out how the object could emit molecular hydrogen. It is hardly an “iceberg” of molecular hydrogen, but it should still hold it.
Oumuamua-like behavior is possible when a body rich in water ice is irradiated. When ionizing radiation hits an object, radiolytic processes split water molecules to form molecular hydrogen. At the same time, most of the hydrogen would remain trapped in the water matrix until it heated up to certain temperatures.
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According to the scientists, the sublimation of water ice alone could explain only 50% of the object's acceleration. But the presence of molecular hydrogen explains everything.
