No cigar: Interstellar object is cookie-shaped planet shard

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Our solar system’s first known interstellar visitor is neither a comet nor
asteroid as first suspected and looks nothing like a cigar. A new study says the mystery object is
likely a remnant of a Pluto-like world and shaped like a cookie.
Arizona State University astronomers reported this week that the strange 148-foot (45-meter) object that
appears to be made of frozen nitrogen, just like the surface of Pluto and Neptune’s largest moon Triton.

The study’s authors, Alan Jackson and Steven Desch, think an impact knocked a chunk off an icy
nitrogen-covered planet 500 million years ago and sent the piece tumbling out of its own star system,
toward ours. The reddish remnant is believed to be a sliver of its original self, its outer layers
evaporated by cosmic radiation and, more recently, the sun.
It’s named Oumuamua, Hawaiian for scout, in honor of the observatory in Hawaii that discovered it in
2017.
Visible only as a pinpoint of light millions of miles away at its closest approach, it was determined to
have originated beyond our solar system because its speed and path suggested it wasn’t orbiting the sun
or anything else.
The only other object confirmed to have strayed from another star system into our own is the comet
21/Borisov, discovered in 2019.
But what is Oumuamua? It didn’t fit into known categories — it looked like an asteroid but sped along
like a comet. Unlike a comet, though, it didn’t have a visible tail. Speculation flipped back and forth
between comet and asteroid — and it was even suggested it could be an alien artifact.
"Everybody is interested in aliens, and it was inevitable that this first object outside the solar
system would make people think of aliens," Desch said in a statement. "But it’s important in
science not to jump to conclusions."
Using its shininess, size and shape — and that it was propelled by escaping substances that didn’t
produce a visible tail — Jackson and Desch devised computer models that helped them determine Oumuamua
was most likely a chunk of nitrogen ice being gradually eroded, the way a bar of soap thins with use.

Their two papers were published Tuesday by the American Geophysical Union and also presented at the Lunar
and Planetary Sciences Conference, typically held in Houston but virtual this year.
Not all scientists buy the new explanation. Harvard University’s Avi Loeb disputes the findings and
stands by his premise that the object appears to be more artificial than natural — in other words,
something from an alien civilization, perhaps a light sail. His newly published book
"Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth," addresses the subject.

Given that Oumuamua is unlike comets and asteroids — and something not seen before — "we cannot
assume ‘business as usual,’ as many scientists argue," Loeb wrote in an email Wednesday. "If
we contemplate ‘something that we had not seen before,’ we must leave the artificial origin hypothesis
on the table and collect more evidence on objects from the same class."
When Oumuamua was at its closest approach to Earth, it appeared to have a width six times larger than its
thickness. Those are the rough proportions of one wafer of an Oreo cookie, Desch noted.
It’s now long gone, beyond the orbit of Uranus, more than 2 billion miles (3.2 billion kilometers) away —
and far too small to be seen, even by the Hubble Space Telescope. As a result, astronomers will need to
rely on the original observations and, hopefully, continue to refine their analyses, Jackson said.
By the time the object starts leaving our solar system around 2040, the width-to-thickness ratio will
have dropped to 10-to-1, according to Desch.
"So maybe Oumuamua was consistent with a cookie when we saw it, but will soon be literally as flat
as a pancake," Desch said in an email.
That’s the way the cosmic cookie — this one anyway — crumbles.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical
Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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