A mysterious space object that has stunned scientists since its discovery in 2017 is likely to be a breakaway from a Pluto-like planet.
According to a new study published in two research articles in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, the pancake-shaped space object called Oumuamua is thought to be a piece of a distant planet in another solar system. “Until now, we had no way of knowing if other solar systems had Pluto-like planets, but now we’ve seen a part of the earth pass by,” said Steven Desch, an astrophysicist at Arizona State University and one of the authors of the new study.
According to the research, Oumuamua was probably made of solid nitrogen, just like the surface of Pluto, which helps explain its unusual flat shape. “It was probably knocked off the surface about half a billion years ago by an impact and thrown out of its parent system,” said Alan Jackson, an astronomer and planetary scientist at Arizona State and another of the study’s authors. .
Oumuamua, Hawaiian for ‘messenger’, drove past our sun in 2017 at 196,000 miles per hour. Scientists struggled to classify the object, which in some ways looked like a comet but also had other features that were very unusual.
Avi Loeb, a professor at Harvard University, had previously theorized that the space object could be something strange, although Desch shot down the speculation. “Everyone is interested in aliens, and it was inevitable that this first object outside the solar system would make people think of aliens,” he said.