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from the listening-for-the-little-green-men dept.
'Oumuamua's interstellar origin and unusually elongated shape has been enough to convince the billionaire-backed Breakthrough Listen to observe it to look for signs of alien technology:
The team's efforts will begin on Wednesday, with astronomers observing the asteroid, which is currently speeding away from our Solar System, across four different radio frequency bands. The first set of observations is due to last for 10 hours.
[...] Mr Milner's Breakthrough Listen programme released a statement which read: "Researchers working on long-distance space transportation have previously suggested that a cigar or needle shape is the most likely architecture for an interstellar spacecraft, since this would minimise friction and damage from interstellar gas and dust."
Andrew Siemion, director of the Berkeley SETI Research Center, who is part of the initiative, said: "'Oumuamua's presence within our Solar System affords Breakthrough Listen an opportunity to reach unprecedented sensitivities to possible artificial transmitters and demonstrate our ability to track nearby, fast-moving objects." He added: "Whether this object turns out to be artificial or natural, it's a great target for Listen."
Previously: Possible Interstellar Asteroid/Comet Enters Solar System
Interstellar Asteroid Named: Oumuamua
ESO Observations Show First Interstellar Asteroid is Like Nothing Seen Before
(Score: 5, Informative) by Immerman on Wednesday December 13 2017, @03:35PM (1 child)
Only if it already had relativistic speed before we involved the black hole - basic orbital dynamics means that no matter how fast something goes on the flyby, by the time it leaves it's going just as slow as it arrived. You can cheat a little slingshotting around moving objects like planets, stealing some of their orbital momentum, but while that's theoretically possible around stellar objects you'd pretty much need an intentionally designed flightpath to do any good, and there just aren't that many stars that are moving a lot faster than the herd.
A nice N-body clusterfsck might give yo a nice boost, but you're still not getting anywhere close to relativistic speeds on the dismount. Not unless you slingshotted around a blackhole that was already orbitting another black hole at relativistic speeds - and without doing the math I suspect that situation only occurs very briefly when they're about to merge. Years? Minutes? I don't know, but it won't be long. At those speeds the system will be radiating orbital energy as gravity waves at a phenomenal rate.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday December 13 2017, @05:34PM
I have modded you up as someone wasted mod points on mine. 😂😂😂
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