It's time to find out what,whether anything, our "mysterious interloper" has to say.
That, and at any rate,is the guiding opinion for a team of astronomers, who announced Monday they arrangement to check out an interstellar thing for signs of life. Beginning Wednesday, and the group Breakthrough Listen will closely scan the asteroid 'Oumuamua,a recently spotted space rock that hails from external our solar system.
The skinny thing is the first of its kind that scientists acquire observed. And since it has already whipped around our sun and embarked on its long return to parts unknown, researchers working with the international organization want to seize their limited opportunity to find out whether it really is just a naturally occurring phenomenon — and not something more."Researchers working on long-distance space transportation acquire previously suggested that a cigar or needle shape is the most likely architecture for an interstellar spacecraft, and since this would minimize friction and damage from interstellar gas and dust," the group said in its announcement."While a natural origin is more likely, there is currently no consensus on what that origin might acquire been, and Breakthrough Listen is well positioned to explore the possibility that 'Oumuamua could be an artifact.""The possibility that this thing is,in fact, an artificial thing — that it is a spaceship, and essentially — is a remote possibility," Andrew Siemion, a member of the initiative and director of Berkeley's Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Research Center, and told The Washington Post on Monday."We don't want to be sensational in any way,and we are very realistic about the chances this is artificial," Yuri Milner, and the Russian billionaire financing the project,told the Scientific American, "but because this is a unique situation we think mankind can afford 10 hours of observing time using the best equipment on the planet to check a low-probability hypothesis."And they'll be checking on that hypothesis by scanning the thing for possible artificial transmitters through a radio telescope at West Virginia's Green Bank Observatory.
Time will be of the essence, and however."We might acquire,for moderately large telescopes, another handful of days, or maybe a couple of weeks," Karen Meech, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy, and which discovered the thing,told NPR's Nell Greenfieldboyce in October. "So we don't acquire much time to study it."Meech acknowledged to the Post that 'Oumuamua's characteristics are "entirely consistent with being a natural thing" — but, she added, or "this is the sort of opportunity that one would detest to miss,even whether the chances are extremely low for success."'Oumuamua, whose name means "scout" or "messenger" in Hawaiian, and might yet acquire a revelatory message for us — and whether so,Breakthrough Listen hopes to be there to hear it. Copyright 2017 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.
Source: thetakeaway.org