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The Vera Rubin Observatory could find dozens of interstellar objects

The Vera Rubin Observatory could find dozens of interstellar objects

Yahoo6 days ago
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Scientists and astronomers are racing to study only the third-ever known interstellar visitor to the solar system, but with a powerful new observatory coming online, these enigmatic objects may soon become routine discoveries.
A comet, now known as 3I/ATLAS, with 3I short for "third interstellar," sparked immediate excitement on July 1 when it was detected by the Deep Random Survey remote telescope in Chile, exhibiting a hyperbolic and highly eccentric orbit.
It is the third confirmed interstellar visitor, following 1I'Oumuamua in 2017 and 2I/Borisov in 2019. But fleeting visits of high-speed guests from outside our solar system are likely to be detected much more regularly now, thanks to the new Vera C. Rubin Observatory.
The Rubin observatory is located on the mountain of Cerro Pachón in Chile, and saw first light in June after a decade of construction. While it is only in its early commissioning phase, in just 10 hours of observations, Rubin discovered 2,104 new asteroids. Its science objectives include understanding the structure and evolution of the universe, mapping the Milky Way and observing transient astronomical events, but it is also set to revolutionize the detection of interstellar objects (ISOs).
This is thanks to Rubin's gigantic Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) camera— the largest digital camera ever constructed for astronomy, with a staggering 3.2 gigapixels. LSST will scan giant swaths of the sky at once and observe the entire southern sky every few nights. Due to its wide field, depth, and how frequently it observes the same regions of sky, Rubin is uniquely capable of catching fast, faint objects like 1I/'Oumuamua or 3I/ATLAS.
ISOs like 1I/'Oumuamua or 3I/ATLAS move quickly and can easily pass through our sky unnoticed if the sky is not being scanned often and everywhere. Rubin will be looking constantly and broadly, giving astronomers the best chance yet to catch these fleeting visitors, while also being able to detect objects fainter than nearly any ground-based survey before it. Rubin's powerful imaging and automatic image comparison, coupled with an automated alert system — with millions triggered and filtered every night — means it will pick up telltale motion and flag a potential ISO.
So how many interstellar objects might Rubin actually detect? The answer varies widely depending on which assumptions scientists use.
We are in the early days of detecting ISOs, so it is difficult to estimate how many Rubin is likely to pick up; we know little about their overall frequency, size range, brightness, if they exhibit cometary activity, and how LSST performs.
However, a few recent papers on the topic provide some useful context for how many ISOs LSST might be able to detect, depending on a range of variables.
In a 2022 paper, Hoover et al. estimate that LSST will detect on the order of between 0.9-1.9 ISOs every year, or around 15 such objects across Rubin's 10-year observational campaign. It notes that these are lower limits, which can be updated when there is more data on the number density and size frequency of interstellar objects.
Additionally, Hoover et al. estimate the chances that Rubin will find an ISO reachable by the Comet Interceptor and Bridge mission concepts, which would fly by an interstellar object as it passes through our solar system. These missions would be launched to lurk in wait, ready to intercept and rendezvous with a passing ISO. The researchers concluded that there is just a roughly 0.07% chance that LSST would identify an ISO target available to Comet Interceptor, which has limited capability to change its velocity, while LSST could detect around three to seven ISOs reachable by Bridge, a more capable but yet-to-be-approved mission concept.
RELATED STORIES
— New interstellar object 3I/ATLAS: Everything we know about the rare cosmic visitor
— Vera C Rubin Observatory reveals 1st stunning images of the cosmos. Scientists are 'beyond excited about what's coming'
— 'Oumuamua: A guide to the 1st known interstellar visitor
Another estimate, from a 2023 paper by Ezell and Loeb, expects LSST to detect one small ISO 3 to 164 feet (1 to 50 meters) wide every one to two years.
A more optimistic assessment comes from Marceta and Seligman in a 2023 paper. They find, based on a simulated suite of galactic populations of asteroidal interstellar objects and their trajectories and kinematics, that Rubin should detect between around 0 and 70 asteroidal interstellar objects every year. Again, one of the main factors is how many objects of different sizes actually exist in the population of ISOs, as well as their albedo, or how much light they reflect.
With just three confirmed interstellar visitors so far, much remains unknown about the number, size, and diversity of ISOs. But with the Rubin Observatory coming online, sightings of these fast-moving cosmic messengers may soon shift from rare events to regular science, offering unique insights into the galaxy beyond our solar system.
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This star escaped a supermassive black hole's violent grips — then returned for round 2
This star escaped a supermassive black hole's violent grips — then returned for round 2

Yahoo

time2 hours ago

  • Yahoo

This star escaped a supermassive black hole's violent grips — then returned for round 2

When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. A distant supermassive black hole may have bitten off more than it can chew! Not only did the star it selected for a stellar meal escape its clutches, but it came back for a second encounter! Evidence of the death-defying star was spotted in the form of a flare that was followed by a near-identical second flare around two years later (700 days). The double-flare has been given the designation AT 2022dbl. The team behind this research ruled out the possibility that it was caused by two stars being devoured by this black hole, leaving them to conclude the flares came from two "bites" of the same stellar snack. The discovery is the first evidence of a star escaping a destructive encounter with a supermassive black hole and then coming back to let it take a second bite. The big question is, did the star survive to return for a second rematch with the black hole? It could therefore change our view of so-called "tidal disruption events" or "TDEs" in which black holes rip apart stars and devour their remains, indicating this could just be the first act of a longer cosmic performance. Some black holes prefer a lighter meal Supermassive black holes with masses equal to that of millions or billions of suns dwell at the heart of all large galaxies. TDEs occur when unfortunate stars wander too close to these cosmic titans and experience their immense gravitational influence. This generates terrific tidal forces within the star that simultaneously squash it horizontally while stretching it vertically. This process, vividly known as "spaghettification," results in shredded stellar pasta, some of which falls around the black hole, wrapping around it like spaghetti around a fork, and is gradually fed to it. The rest of this material is blasted out from around the supermassive black hole. The material that remains swirls around the black hole at incredibly speeds, generating friction that causes bursts of light, and the ejected material also flares. These flares last weeks to months, illuminating the region around the supermassive black hole, allowing it to be studied. However, over the last decade, some TDEs have been observed that don't behave the way scientists would expect. That is because both the temperature and brightness of some TDEs have been lower than expected. AT 2022dbl could explain this by implying that some black holes like to savour their stellar meals rather than immediately and totally destroying them. The team now wants to know if the third time is the charm for this daring star. If it survived its second black hole encounter, the star will swoop back toward the black hole, causing a third flare around 700 days after the second. "The question now is whether we'll see a third flare after two more years, in early 2026," team member and Tel Aviv University researcher Iair Arcavi said in a statement. "If we see a third flare, it means that the second one was also the partial disruption of the star. "So maybe all such flares, which we have been trying to understand for a decade now as full stellar disruptions, are not what we thought." Related Stories: — New kind of pulsar may explain how mysterious 'black widow' systems evolve — Hear 'black widow' pulsar's song as it destroys companion —NASA X-ray spacecraft reveals secrets of a powerful, spinning neutron star Should a third flare not erupt in two years, it would indicate that the star's second encounter with the black hole was fatal. Should this be the case, the similarity between the first flare and the second one would imply that non-fatal and fatal TDE flares, or partial and full disruptions, look the same. That is something that scientists had previously predicted but have never evidenced with observations. "Either way, we'll have to rewrite our interpretation of these flares and what they can teach us about the monsters lying in the centers of galaxies," Arcavi concluded. The team's research was published on July 1 in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Are interstellar objects proof of alien life? This could finally settle the debate.
Are interstellar objects proof of alien life? This could finally settle the debate.

National Geographic

time8 hours ago

  • National Geographic

Are interstellar objects proof of alien life? This could finally settle the debate.

The Vera Rubin telescope is poised to kick off an explosive era of discovery. "It's like old-fashioned astronomy: Find the thing, point telescopes at it, argue about it. It's going to be fun." Astronomers predict that the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, which begins surveying the night sky this year, could spot dozens more interstellar objects over the next decade. Photograph by Tomás Munita, National Geographic In our solar system, everything belongs to the sun. While they might take years and years to complete one loop, every planet and moon, asteroid and comet, every bit of crushed ice and rock, is gravitationally bound to our star, fixtures of a perpetual cosmic carousel. But every once in a while, something else comes along that, based on careful measurements of orbital mechanics, is unmistakably untethered: an interstellar visitor. The object arrives from the realm between stars, and after a quick sojourn in our solar system, it goes back out to the unknowable depths. Such enigmatic travelers are called interstellar objects, and they bring with them a glimpse of a part of the cosmos that we've never seen before. Each time one shows up it kicks off an observing spree, with astronomers mustering other telescopes, on the ground and in space, to scrutinize the visitor. The object appears as little more than a fuzzy speck of light, but astronomers try to uncover its true nature before it slips away, from fundamental properties (dimensions, chemical composition) to the wild possibilities (signs of alien technology). Only three interstellar objects have ever been discovered, with the latest appearing just this month, from the direction of somewhere in the center of the Milky Way. 3I/ATLAS, as the object is known, is currently traveling just inside the orbit of Mars, captivating telescopes around the world. These are rare events—for now. A new telescope, scheduled to begin full operations later this year, is expected to find many more such transient objects. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, perched on a mountaintop in the Chilean desert, is designed to scan the sky night after night and capture faint glimmers in the darkness—including sunlight reflecting off a fast-moving celestial body. Its observations produce time-lapse views, allowing astronomers to track those objects and study their orbits for any oddities. Rubin didn't discover 3I/ATLAS but happened to snap dozens of pictures of the object, before and after its interstellar nature became apparent. Those images are already helping astronomers form a clearer picture of the visitor. Rubin's Simonyi Survey Telescope can detect very faint objects like interstellar visitors and track their paths, as they swoop through our solar system before heading back out to the space between stars. Photograph by Tomás Munita, National Geographic With Rubin, the field is in for a potentially explosive era of discovery; according to astronomers' statistics-driven predictions and exhilarated personal bets, the observatory could spot somewhere between five and 100 interstellar objects in the next decade. "It's like old-fashioned astronomy: Find the thing, point telescopes at it, argue about it," Chris Lintott, an astrophysicist at Oxford, says. "It's going to be fun." What we know about interstellar objects An interstellar object, once anchored to a star of its own, can travel for millions and even billions of years before encountering the warmth of another. When the first known interstellar guest appeared in 2017, astronomers were stunned—not only because of the historic moment, but because 'Oumuamua, as it was later named, didn't match up with their working theories of the universe. Scientists had long thought that interstellar objects must exist, thrown out from the cold edges of their home system as new planets swirled into shape, a distinctly turbulent time. 'Oumuamua, though, wasn't like anything astronomers had observed before: weirdly shaped, rocky like an asteroid but plowing forward like a comet, and yet lacking the signature tail of dust. (Ideas about alien origins abounded.) The second recorded interstellar object to visit, Borisov in 2019, was more in line with expectations—an icy comet, though perhaps originating from a smaller, dimmer kind of star. While astronomers have already characterized 3I/ATLAS as a comet, it has its own quirks; the object is far larger than 'Oumuamua and Borisov, and appears to be a few billion years older than our solar system. ʻOumuamua (illustrated above) means 'a messenger from afar arriving first" in Hawaiian, and the first confirmed interstellar object to visit our solar system continues to puzzle astronomers today. Illustration by NASA/ESA/STScI The Hubble Space Telescope snapped this image of our solar system's second-known interstellar visitor, a comet named for its discoverer, amateur astronomer Gennady Borisov. Photograph by NASA, ESA and D. Jewitt (UCLA) An entire catalog of interstellar objects, however, can help reveal how cosmic forces shape planetary systems over time. Right now, "there's a whole zoo of explanations for interstellar objects," says Susanne Pfalzner, an astrophysicist at Forschungszentrum Jülich, a research institution in Germany. The space rocks could have been ejected because of the gravitational jostling of giant planets fresh from the cosmic oven. Most stars form in clusters, and the crowded environment could force objects from several budding planetary systems to fly off. Grown systems could lose celestial bits and pieces too; the icy bodies at the very ends of a planetary system are secured by the faintest hint of gravity, and could easily be whisked away by a passing star. And when a star exhausts its lifetime of fuel and begins to expand, the stellar winds unleashed in the dying act could expel many interstellar objects. These wanderers are relics of countless histories, and Rubin's future inventory could help astronomers determine which are most common, Pfalzner says. A flurry of Borisovs would indicate that the objects likely spring from the cold, dark outskirts of their systems. More 'Oumuamuas would suggest that most interstellar objects originate in their inner star systems, where the heat of their star has stripped away most of the chemical compounds that would typically create a shimmery tail during an encounter with our sun. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory's potential to help build a more extensive catalogue of interstellar visitors could help researchers answer big questions about the objects themselves and how planetary systems change over time. Photograph by Tomás Munita, National Geographic Rubin's observations could also help settle the discussion over whether 'Oumuamua was something other than a space rock, says Avi Loeb, a Harvard physicist. Loeb thinks that 'Oumuamua is a broken piece of alien structure; our own solar system, he says, is full of space trash—rocket parts, a red Tesla—which are sometimes mistaken for asteroids by amateur astronomers. He and his collaborators suggest that 3I/ATLAS is a piece of alien tech, too. Should Rubin turn up more objects that look and behave like 'Oumuamua or 3I/ATLAS, they're less likely to be the products of extraterrestrials, Loeb says. "At the very least, we will learn more about rocks that are thrown out of other stars,' he says. ' But we might also find an answer to the most romantic question in science: Are we alone?" It's a spine-tingling thought, and certainly daydream fodder, even for the astronomers doing the work. The late astronomer Vera Rubin, for whom the new telescope is named, wrote in 2006 that when she examined the nearby galaxy M31 through a telescope, "often I wondered if an astronomer in M31 was observing us. Always I wished we could exchange views." (Vera Rubin was the GOAT of dark matter.) Most of the astronomy community doesn't share Loeb and his collaborators' interpretation of 'Oumuamua, or his latest claim about 3I/ATLAS. "It's strange, but it's not so strange that we need to fall back on the aliens hypothesis," says John Forbes, an astrophysicist at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. 'Oumuamua's unusual acceleration, which can't be explained by gravity's influence, could be explained by comet-like properties. 'Oumuamua may have released a tiny amount of gas as it thawed in the warmth of the sun enough to propel it along, but not necessarily to be observed by telescopes, says Darryl Seligman, an astrophysicist at Michigan State University. In the last few years, Seligman and his colleagues have reported the discovery of a dozen asteroids near Earth that vent gases just like comets do, but produce a tail that isn't visible to us. They suggest that these asteroids belong to a new class of celestial bodies, which they call dark comets. "This type of thing could be much more widespread that we haven't noticed before and potentially haven't even been looking for," Seligman says—and visiting objects could exhibit this behavior, too. Exploring our galactic wilderness While some scientists focus on chasing after these objects as they hurtle through our solar system, others are eager to investigate their journeys through the galactic wilderness. While they aren't bound to specific stars, interstellar travelers move around the Milky Way. Forbes, in his research, posits that space rocks, once unmoored from their home system, start traveling in a long, thin current through the galaxy. Stars ejected from stellar clusters can form streams, and Forbes predicts that interstellar objects may do the same. These currents would expand over time, becoming more diffuse, because "the galaxy is messy, and there's all sorts of things going on that perturb your nice, simple orbits," Forbes says. He hopes that Rubin will spot multiple newcomers arriving from the same spot in the sky and traveling at matching velocities. "That's a pretty strong indication that we're sitting in a dense stream of interstellar objects," he says. Our sun could be drifting through millions of such currents. (What other mysteries could the new Vera C. Rubin Observatory solve?) A menagerie of interstellar objects could help astronomers solve a particularly puzzling aspect of planet formation, including Earth's own story. Planets form in much the same way that dust bunnies around the house do, with particles swirling and sticking together until they grow large enough to become worlds. Computer simulations have shown, however, that while it's easy for cosmic forces to make the leap from dust-sized particles to boulder-sized objects, it is actually quite difficult for those boulders to then grow into something larger. While the universe has obviously overcome this challenge—"we are living proof," Pfalzner says—astronomers haven't figured out how. Interstellar objects, she says, are just about the right size for this conundrum, ready to be glommed on and grown. If there's a lot of interstellar objects floating around in the vicinity of a new system—perhaps drawn in by the gravity of the freshly ignited star at its center—the universe has all the raw materials it needs, removing any friction in the process. The interstellar objects whizzing through our skies may someday, help shape someone else's solar system. Rubin's search for interstellar objects, whether it turns up only a few or dozens, provides a kind of knowledge that goes beyond pure empirical research. We can know, better than before, what kind of universe stretches out all around us, as if we've cracked open a giant secret and become privy to wonders we weren't meant to witness. What lies beyond Earth isn't nature in any sense that we might recognize, but it is a kind of wilderness nonetheless, shaped by many of the same forces that led to the familiar landscapes on this planet. Interstellar objects are a reminder that the cosmos is a shared place, and that we are just as much a part of it as those mysterious travelers, carving our own path through time and space.

Rare interstellar object the size of Manhattan could be an alien probe: Harvard scientists
Rare interstellar object the size of Manhattan could be an alien probe: Harvard scientists

New York Post

time16 hours ago

  • New York Post

Rare interstellar object the size of Manhattan could be an alien probe: Harvard scientists

It's probe-ably nothing. The newly discovered Manhattan-sized interstellar object zooming through our solar system has been identified as a comet — but two Harvard scientists argue there is reason to believe it's really an alien probe. NASA discovered 31/ATLAS on July 1, speeding through the inner solar system at 140,000 miles per hour according to observations from the ATLAS telescope in Chile — with experts clueless as to where it originated. Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb suggested in a new paper that the object — only the third interstellar object ever detected — could be an intelligently directed alien craft observing Earth with possibly hostile intentions. 3 The trajectory of 31/ATLAS, which passes right through the interior Solar System and will end up passing Jupiter, NSF NOIRLab 'The hypothesis in question is that [31/ATLAS] is a technological artifact, and furthermore has active intelligence. If this is the case, then two possibilities follow,' Dr. Loeb, Adam Drowl, and Adam Hibberd, wrote in a paper published on July 17. 'First, that its intentions are entirely benign and second, they are malign,' the experts opined, suggesting ETs. The paper presented several anomalous characteristics of the object, which could indicate that it is not a comet at all but instead a directed craft. One of the 'most puzzling' observations is that the object has 'significant 'non-gravitational' acceleration whilst having now 'cometary outgassing.' Loeb writes that 31/ATLAS 'approaches surprisingly close to Venus, Mars and Jupiter with a probability of <0.005%,' the paper claimed. 31/ATLAS's 'low retrograde tilt' would seemingly allow it to 'access our planet with relative impunity.' 3 31/ATLAS pictured by Gemini North. NSF NOIRLab The retrograde tilt 'means attempts by humanity to intercept it, or even more difficult, rendezvous with it, are extremely challenging,' while the route simultaneously gives 31/ATLAS easy access to 'certain key target planets,' the paper hypothesized. Loeb further suggests that the tilt and pathway would allow the intelligent life on the object to gather 'astrometric measurements, to determine the orbits and masses of the Solar System planets, allowing it to prepare an optimal approach strategy to the Solar System.' Another possible smoking gun is that 31/ATLAS will come closest to the Sun on October 29 — on which day the object will be completely blocked from Earth's view by the fiery ball. 3 31/ATLAS pictured by Gemini North. NSF NOIRLab The paper, presented in part as a 'pedagogical experiment,' embraces the 'Dark Forest' hypothesis regarding alien life — which assumes that other intelligent life would likely view Earthlings as a threat to be snuffed out. The Dark Forest hypothesis, coined in the 2008 novel 'The Dark Forest' by Cixin Liu, is a direct rebuttal to the Fermi Paradox, which suggests that contact with extraterrestrial intelligences is impossible.

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