Space Rock ‘Oumuamua may have been torn by a star from a planet, after which it was stretched into a cigar shape by the star’s intense gravity. The origin of the first asteroid that entered our solar system from another planetary system was unknown for a long time, but Chinese and American astronomers now think they have the answer, they write in the journal Nature Astronomy.
Oumuamua was discovered in 2017 with a telescope in Hawaii. His name is Hawaiian for ‘messenger from afar who arrives first’. The object’s cigar shape was immediately noticeable, since asteroids are normally not so stretched. ‘Oumuamua is 40 meters wide and 400 meters long, just slightly larger than the Gerbrandy Tower in IJsselstein.
Because of its unusual shape, it was suspected that the space cigar might still be a spaceship of aliens. This was possible according to a previous study Nature Astronomy are not the case.
On the basis of computer simulations, the astronomers now conclude that ‘Oumuamua is a kind of splinter of a broken planet. This planet may orbit a distant star billions of years ago. The celestial body came too close to the star, after which the star’s gravity pulled the planet apart and left several cigar-shaped stones.
At least one of these stones has been ejected from this planetary system, to be spotted by astronomers on Earth in 2017.
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