Okay , sceptical chapeau on . quick ? Let ’s go .
A newspaper publisher has put forward a rather strange hypothesis about the suspected interstellar object Oumuamua . It evoke it may not be a comet or an asteroid as thought , but instead a clump of dark matter . Mmhmm .
Oumuamua , originally known as A1/2017 U1 , tore through our Solar Systemlast month , swinging past our Sun . It had astronomers the public over giddy with agitation as evidence mounted that it was an interstellar object , perhaps originating from a star cluster200 or so light - yearsaway , never to return again .
There has been some debate over whether it was an asteroid or a comet . The five carbon monoxide - author of this composition ( uncommitted onarXiv ) , however , propose that some of the unusual properties of the object pointedness to it being composed of “ macro dark matter ” .
The reason they think it may be composed of dark thing is due to some of its strange properties . For exemplar , it had a featureless red spectrum and was described as appearing “ completely stellar ” . These equipment characteristic are also consistent with it being an asteroid , of line . Occam ’s Razor , anyone ?
“ Contrary to widely held misconceptions , dark subject need not be in the form of weakly interact elementary particles , but might or else be get hold in much larger bit with masses well measured in grams or kg , ” the squad writes .
If so , they note its hatful may be a humongous 10 ^ 25 Gram . That ’s just slimly more than the passel of Earth , despite Oumuamua evaluate a paltry 0.16 kilometers ( 0.1 land mile ) across liken to Earth ’s diam of 12,727 kilometers ( 7,908 miles ) .
" We would expect that if you had one [ a chunk of macro blue affair ] in front of you , it would look like an passing dense , belike very spheric , dark and maybe shiny physical object , " Glenn Starkman from Case Western Reserve University in Ohio , one of the newspaper ’s Colorado - source , told IFLScience .
It might sound a snatch far - fetched , but the researcher say their theory is confirmable . That is , they can establish if it is dead on target or not .
“ If Oumuamua is indeed dense macroscopic non-white matter , then we would carry that its passage close-fitting to Mercury , the Earth and Moon would have had mensurable gravitative effect on their orbits , ” the team writes . “ Such displacements should be perceptible . ”
It ’s an interesting theory , but probably not one that ’s go to be readily accepted any metre soon . We do n’t even have proof of the existence of dark matter , let alone macroscopical dark matter .
“ The existence of macroscopical sinister matter in asteroids in general and Oumuamua specifically stay on hypothetical at the second , ” Andreas Hein from the Technical University of Munich , who was not involved in the newspaper publisher , state IFLScience . “ There does n’t seem to be much evidence for its existence in these objects . ”
Nonetheless , the idea that we can actually prove the theory true or not is interesting . Starkman noted that the research worker were not planning to do the mensuration themselves , but expected them to be done elsewhere .
“ This is , as the authors admit , an unlikely opening due to the constraints we have on the denseness of sullen matter , ” Marshall Eubanks , CEO of the company Asteroid Initiatives , told IFScience . “ But it would be easy for the US spacecraft tracking networks to check , and I have already boost them to do so . ”
Well , looks like some of them have checked at the very least . Davide Farnocchia from NASA ’s Center for Near - Earth Object Studies ( CNEOS ) was a bit more scathing in his reply to us .
“ This paper seems highly speculative and , as far as I can tell , has neither been compeer reviewed nor submitted to any scientific journal , ” he said . “ We do not see any significant perturbation on any of the planets , specially the Earth . ”
Oh well .
