agencies
Wednesday, May 31, 2023 11:00 PM
Astronomers found that the recalcitrant objects from star systems Aliens can be captured by Earth’s gravity and remain in orbit around our planet for millions of years, she said RT.
However, most of these objects are likely too small to detect with current telescopes, according to a new study published May 17 in the journal Nature. arXiv.
A group of experts from Harvard University, led by physics professor Avi Loeb, said investigations are underway to confirm that some of the objects in our orbit are from alien star systems.
Loeb explained: “The bodies that go in Solar System Some of the interstellar space outside this system can be locked into specific orbits around the Sun as a result of a close passage of Jupiter. We are investigating the possibility that some of them could be captured and become NEOs (NEO)”.
These “interstellar interlopers,” as the team calls them, will take the form of icy boulders that have been discarded by their respective star systems before taking up residence in our own.
However, Loeb and his colleagues do not rule out the possibility that objects made by intelligent aliens could end up in our solar system as well.
Interstellar visitors have been of great interest to astronomers since 2017, when the first “intruder” space rock, a cigar-shaped object called ‘Oumuamua, was discovered in the cosmic backyard.
After observing this cigar-shaped space rock, scientists concluded that it had been roaming our galaxy, unconnected to any star system, for hundreds of millions of years before it accidentally collided with the solar system.
The renewed search for interstellar objects soon led to the emergence of a second object, the rogue comet Borisov, an Eiffel Tower-sized ball of ice and dust discovered in 2019.
Neither Oumuamua nor Borisov are associated with the sun, which means that both objects will eventually exit the solar system as capriciously as they entered it, with the cigar-shaped object already escaping beyond Neptune’s orbit.
In a new paper, the study’s authors investigate whether other interstellar objects could be captured by the gravity of the sun, or even planets, and thus forced to stay in the solar system.
Previous attempts to study this idea focused on capture by the Sun and the Jupiter system. For the new study, the researchers set out to investigate whether Earth could also capture and hold interstellar visitors as near-Earth objects.
Using numerical simulations, the team found that the Earth could periodically capture interstellar objects in its orbit. However, the effect is minuscule compared to that of Jupiter, which is almost a thousand times more efficient at catching interstellar objects than Earth.
In addition, scientists found that any objects captured by Earth’s gravity would be unstable and live around our planet for a shorter period than currently known NEOs do.
Eventually, these bodies will be disturbed by interactions with other planets or the sun, and will be thrown out of the solar system just as they were once thrown out of their parent planetary system.
Loeb explained that while the team does not assume that there are currently interstellar objects orbiting Earth, astronomers should continue to investigate this possibility. The upcoming Vera C. Rubin Observatory, which will be operational in August 2024, should assist in this endeavour.
“Using computer simulations, we found that some captured objects roughly the size of a football field can be detected by the Rubin Observatory, which will survey the southern sky every four days with a 3.2 billion-pixel camera,” Loeb said.
Studying interstellar objects around Earth could reveal new insights into the formation of distant star systems. However, Loeb added, there may be a small chance that this overlapping investigation will reveal something unusual.
