Some of you may have heard about Oumuamua from your social media platforms and decided to read this article to find out more. Our goal here is to present you with all the data that scientists have uncovered so far in order to keep you up to date with what is happening in outer space news.
What is Oumuamua exactly?
According to sources, the name may sound strange but it is actually a very long, cigar-shaped rock, that has entered our solar system recently. Alan Jackson, along with a team of researchers did a study on Oumuamua where they uncovered a number of interesting aspects. The study was published in a scientific journal, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
For starters, they concluded that Oumuamua came from a binary star system. They were a bit confused to see an asteroid be the first foreign thing to enter our solar system, since comets are a much more common occurrence. However, asteroids are more likely to be thrown out from binary star system, rather than comets.
The name Oumuamua may sound strange to some people but it is the Hawaiian word for scout. Since the team that discovered it came from Hawaii, the Haleakala Observatory to be exact, it was only natural that they got to name the rock.
When they first say it, they thought it was an icy comet. They had no doubts about this object coming from another solar system, since it had a particular trajectory and speed. His eccentricity is of 1.2 which means that the object is not bound to the Sun’s gravity, letting it roam free.
Scientists’ main goal when talking about Oumuamua is to study it more and to find out how rock formation like this happen in binary star systems. This would later on expand the discussion to how planets in other star systems are formed.
