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Could it be....RAMA?
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Gord Green
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 27, 2017 3:24 pm    Post subject: Could it be....RAMA? Reply with quote

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2017/10/27/mysterious-object-from-deep-space-has-entered-solar-system.html

From :Fox News:

Mysterious object from deep space has entered the solar system

It was first seen just a month ago. A tiny blip of light was seen to be moving through the sky by the PanSTARRS1 telescope in Hawaii.

The number-crunching which followed was automatic. The results were unusual.

This object is in an odd position. It's moving very fast. And it's in what appears to be a somewhat extreme orbit. Extreme enough not to actually be an orbit, in fact.



Observations published by the by the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center (MPC) suggest it could have come from deep space.

Specifically, it could be a comet that has escaped another star.

"If further observations confirm the unusual nature of this orbit, this object may be the first clear case of an interstellar comet," the MPC declares.
piqued by where it had come from.

Most objects orbiting our Sun do so along a common plane: the planets, dwarf planets and asteroids mostly swing around in roughly the same way.

This one appears to have come down on the plane from 122 degrees, from the direction of the star Vega, in the constellation Lyra. And its path did not indicate the curved ellipse typical of clockwork-like returning comets.



Best guesstimates make it a comet of about 160m diameter, with a surface reflectivity (albedo) of about 10 per cent.

Astronomers are now attempting to refine their observations and data to pinpoint exactly where it came from. If it truly is of interstellar origin, the next task is to find which star it is likely to have come from.

At the moment, it appears to have been somewhere in the direction of the star Vega.

It's also likely to have been wandering, alone, in deep space for a very, very long time.

Vega is a relatively close neighbour of our Sun at 25 light years distance. At the speed it's travelling, it would take about 1.7 million years to cross the interstellar divide.



The "Rama" of the title is an alien starship, initially mistaken for an asteroid categorised as "31/439". It is detected by astronomers in the year 2131 while it is still outside the orbit of Jupiter.

Its speed (100,000 km/h) and the angle of its trajectory clearly indicate it is not on a long orbit around the sun, but comes from interstellar space. The astronomers' interest is further piqued when they realise the asteroid has an extremely rapid rotation period of 4 minutes and is exceptionally large. It is named Rama after the Hindu god, and an unmanned space probe dubbed Sita is launched from the Mars moon Phobos to intercept and photograph it.



The resulting images reveal that Rama is a perfect cylinder, 20 kilometres ) in diameter and 54 kilometres (34 mi) long, and almost completely featureless, making this humankind's first encounter with an alien spacecraft.


Last edited by Gord Green on Fri Oct 27, 2017 7:39 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Gord Green
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 27, 2017 7:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

MISSIVE IN A BOTTLE

By : Anonymouse

!MESSAGE BEGINS!

We made a mistake. That is the simple, undeniable truth of the matter, however painful it might be.

The flaw was not in our Observatories, for those machines were as perfect as we could make, and they showed us only the unfiltered light of truth.

The flaw was not in the Predictor, for it is a device of pure, infallible logic, turning raw data into meaningful information without the taint of emotion or bias.

No, the flaw was within us, the Orchestrators of this disaster, the sentients who thought themselves beyond such failings.

We are responsible.

It began a short while ago, as these things are measured, less than 6^6 Deeli ago, though I suspect our systems of measure will mean very little by the time anyone receives this transmission.

We detected faint radio signals from a blossoming intelligence 2^14 Deelis outward from the Galactic Core, as photons travel.

At first crude and unstructured, these leaking broadcasts quickly grew in complexity and strength, as did the messages they carried.

Through our Observatories we watched a world of strife and violence, populated by a barbaric race of short-lived, fast breeding vermin.

They were brutal and uncultured things which stabbed and shot and burned each other with no regard for life or purpose. Even their concepts of Art spoke of conflict and pain.

They divided themselves according to some bizarre cultural patterns and set their every industry to cause of death. They divided their species based on variations of hue, political and philosophical ideas and reasons of minutia.

They terrified us...... but we were older and wiser and so very far away...... so we did not fret.

Then we watched them split the atom and breach the heavens within the breadth of one of their single, short generations, and we began to worry.

When they began actively transmitting messages and greetings into space, we felt fear and horror.

Their transmissions promised peace and camaraderie to any who were listening, but we had watched them for too long to buy into such transparent deceptions.

Their transmissions must have been lies.

They knew we were out here, and they were coming for us.

The Orchestrators consulted the Predictor, and the output was dire. They would multiply and grow and flood out of their home system like some uncountable tide of Devourer worms, consuming all that lay in their path. They were like a supreme pestilance committed only to chaos.

It might take 6^8 Deelis, but they would destroy us if left unchecked. With aching carapaces we decided to act, and sealed our fate.

The "Gift of Mercy" was 8^4 strides long with a mouth 2/4 that in diameter, filled with many 4^4 weights of machinery, fuel, and ballast. It would push itself up to 2/8th of light speed with its onboard fuel, and then begin to consume interstellar Primary Element 2/2 to feed its unlimited acceleration.

It would be traveling at nearly light speed when it hit.
They would never see it coming.

Its launch was a day of mourning, celebration, and reflection. The horror of the act we had committed weighted heavily upon us all; the necessity of our crime did little to comfort us.

The "Gift" had barely cleared the outer cometary halo when the mistake was realized, but it was too late.

The "Gift" could not be caught, could not be recalled or diverted from its path.

We could only watch in shame and horror as the light of genocide faded into infrared against the distant void.

They grew, and they changed, in a handful of lifetimes they abolished war, abandoned their violent tendencies and turned themselves to the grand purposes of life and Art.

We watched them remake first themselves, and then their world.

Their frail, soft bodies gave way to gleaming metals and plastics, they unified their people through an omnipresent communications grid and produced Art of such power and emotion, the likes of which the Galaxy has never seen before.

Or again, because of us.

They converted their home world into a paradise (by their standards) and many 10^6s of them poured out into the surrounding system with a rapidity and vigor that we could only envy.

With bodies built to survive every environment from the day lit surface of their innermost world, to the atmosphere of their largest gas giant and the cold void in-between, they set out to sculpt their system into something beautiful.

At first we thought them simple miners, stripping the rocky planets and moons for vital resources, but then we began to see the purpose to their constructions, the artworks carved into every surface, and traced across the system in glittering lights and dancing fusion trails.

And still, our terrible "Gift" approached.

They had less than 2^2 Deeli to see it, following so closely on the tail of its own light. In that time, oh so brief even by their fleeting lives, more than 10^10 sentients prepared for death.

Lovers exchanged last words, separated by worlds and the tyranny of light speed. Their planet side engineers worked frantically to build sufficient transmission infrastructure to upload the countless masses with the necessary neural modifications, while those above dumped lifetimes of music and literature from their databanks to make room for passengers.

The "'Gift" arrived suddenly, the light of its impact visible in our skies, shining bright and cruel even to the unaugmented ocular receptor.

We watched and we wept for our victims, dead so many Deelis before the light of their doom had even reached us.

Many 6^4s of those who had been directly or even tangentially involved in the creation of the "Gift" sealed their spiracles with paste as a final penance for the small roles they had played in this atrocity.

The light dimmed, the dust cleared, and our Observatories refocused upon the place where their shining blue world had once hung in the void, and found only dust and the pale gleam of an orphaned moon, wrapped in a thin, burning wisp of atmosphere that had once belonged to its parent.

Radiation and relativistic shrapnel had wiped out much of the inner system, and continent sized chunks of molten rock carried screaming ghosts outward at interstellar escape velocities, damned to wander the great void for an eternity.

The damage was apocalyptic, but not complete, from the shadows of the outer worlds, tiny points of light emerged, thousands of fusion trails of single ships and world ships and everything in between, many 10^6s of survivors in flesh and steel and memory banks, ready to rebuild.

For a few moments we felt relief, even joy, and we were filled with the hope that their culture and Art would survive the terrible blow we had dealt them.

Then came the message, tightly focused at our star, transmitted simultaneously by hundreds of their ships.



"We know you are out there, and we are coming for you."

!MESSAGE ENDS!
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MetroPolly
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PostPosted: Sat Oct 28, 2017 6:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

You're just a ray of sunshine, ain't ya, gord? Shocked
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Gord Green
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 29, 2017 2:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Just my homage to Arthur C Clarke.
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Gord Green
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 20, 2017 11:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The actual trans-galatic object has been seen.
VERY unusual!



More information here:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/interstellar-asteroid-studied-1st-time-172900764.html

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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 21, 2017 1:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Okay, so that's the SCIENCE. Now let's add the FICTION!
________________________________


Suppose this object isn't natural after all. Shocked

At first I wondered if the end-to-end rotation was caused deliberately by the builders a cigar-shaped starship to create gravity at the two ends, with the force lessening progressively towards the center of rotation. That's still possible I guess, but since it only rotates once every eight hours, only a very weak gravity would be created.

Still, that may be just what the 'Oumuamuains wanted.

(I thought I'd just try that name out, but it sounds just as silly as the actual name of the object, so I'll promise I used it one more time, tops. Let's just call them "the builders". If we every actually got to meet one, we'll call him "Bob . . . the Builder. Laughing)

As for its appearance, apparently nobody got a snapshot when this thing zipped past us, so all we have are artist conceptions like this one, which isn't even the "reddish" color which several articles claim the object is, based on "spectroscopic analysis".

Other than that, this does look cool as hell, art-wise. It's shaped roughly like a starship!






(On a completely unrelated note, my wife had a T-shirt I gave her while she was pregnant with our first child which said "Artist Conception" across her chest, with an arrow below it pointing down to her big baby-filled tummy. Nice play on words, I thought. Cool )

Since Polaroids of the actual object seem to be as rare as photos of Gavin MacLeod in Foridden Planet, 'Oumuamua's appearance seems to be mostly a matter of speculation. Astronomers have stated that it's elongated — 800 meters long by 80 meters wide, which is more than twice as long as the 381-meter height of the Empire State Building!

But every article I've read so far phrases the description as just an educated guess, like the excerpt below from Sky & Telescope.

If Oumuamua has a very dark surface that reflects only 4% of sunlight, then its average diameter must be a bit more than 100 meters (330 feet) across. But that's a rather meaningless mean given the extreme light curve. Instead, note Meech and her colleagues, the true shape must be 800 m (0.5 mile) long and only 80 m across — more like a gigantic spindle or cigar than a ball of rock.

This roller-coaster-shaped graph is supposed shows the way the object varied in brightness because of its rotation. And the caption below the graph smacks of some serious guessing on the part of our guys in the white lab coats.






This plot shows how the interstellar asteroid `Oumuamua varied in brightness by a factor of 10 during three days in October 2017. The colored dots represent measurements through different filters, covering the visible and near-infrared part of the spectrum. The dotted line shows the light curve expected if `Oumuamua were a cigar-shaped ellipsoid with a 1:10 aspect ratio. The deviations from this line are probably due to irregularities in the object's shape or surface albedo.

My point, of course, is that as far as those guys know, 'Oumuamua could be a dead ringer for the Empire State Building! Or Rama, for that matter! Shocked

Before I found out that the object has already passed the Earth and rounded the sun so close it was inside the orbit of Mercury and then headed back into deep space, I had the funny idea that a giant ship filled with alien invaders might be sneaking up on us in a spacecraft whose exterior was disguised as an asteroid!

You know, sort of like the cylinders in War of the Worlds!






And am I the only one who's impressed by the way this object soared into the solar system and streaked through the orbits of Earth, Venus, and Mercury before it went skidding around the sun like a "drifting" race car and shot off into interstellar space, leaving all the astronomers in the world shaking their heads and asking, "Who was that masked stranger on the white horse?" Confused

But since the actual appearance of the object is just a quess (based on the assumption that it's a wacky-shaped asteroid), I think us sci-fi geeks should be open to the idea that it might actually look more like THIS!






And if that's the case, this is not just an object that "wander into the solar system"!

It's a starship that dropped out of hyperspace and looped around the sun so close the crew could roast marshmallows while they scanned Earth to see if we looked interesting enough to send a First Contact team back our way!

If that turns out to be the truth behind these 'Oumuamuains, please remember that you heard it here first on All Sci-Fi!


Animation of `Oumuamua passing through the Solar System


_________



_____ First Interstellar Asteroid Wows Scientists


_________



__ Meet 'Oumuamua, the first observed interstellar visitor


_________

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Gord Green
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 21, 2017 3:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

One eyebrow raised......

"Fascinating...."
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Gord Green
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 22, 2017 12:21 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

The concept of using a hollowed out asteroid is not a new idea. There has been a number of suggestions that utilize asteroids as spacecraft and colonies.














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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 22, 2017 5:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

My God! What a dunce I am! Why didn't I think of that! Shocked

Why disguise a starship to look like an asteroid when you can just build a starship inside a real one?

That way, you could pass through a star system which has a planet with sentient beings who haven't developed the technology yet to tell a normal asteroid from a "converted" one, and you wouldn't risk contaminating their "pre-warp culture" by parading past their planet in full view of their telescopes in a glitzy, hi-tech starship which screams "We are not alone!" Shocked

Imagine what would happen if we say THIS in our telescopes! Shocked






However, if all we saw was THIS —





— nobody would bat an eye! Rolling Eyes

Gordon, you're brilliant! That would be the perfect way to "survey a new planet" without giving the newly discovered species a clue that a starship from another species was passing right by them! Very Happy

The bold and potentially dangerous flight path of 'Oumuamua through our system attracted a great deal of attention — but we just assumed it was a normal space object, and we were delighted that it didn't hit any planets before it streaked back out of the solar system!

Little did we know that it was huge starship disguised as an oddly-shaped asteroid, filled with curious aliens who studied us carefully and made careful records of what they discovered before they seemingly "drifted" back out of the system . . . and then engaging their hyperdrive to travel to their next destination and repeat their survey of it too!

What a great story this would make! Arthur C. Clark would love it! (And I'm pretty fond of it, too!) Very Happy

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Gord Green
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 22, 2017 9:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

A great thing about using an asteroid is that the layers of rock and metals would shield the interior from radiation and meteorite debris in the interstellar voyage.

Also, a small amount of radioactive material could provide the heat needed to sustain the interior environment for whatever "crew" is aboard (either organic or mechanical). Interstellar hydrogen could be collected (think of the Bussard engine here!) to provide constant refueling along the way.

And.....This whole idea is SO reminiscent of Clarke's RAMA books.

Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction!
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Gord Green
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 30, 2018 12:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Visitor from another solar system accelerated away from the Sun

Simplest explanation for the visitor's motion is heated jets of gas.

excerpted from:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/06/visitor-from-another-solar-system-may-have-been-a-comet/?&comments=1

Last year, the Solar System was treated to its first known tourist. 'Oumuamua, an odd, cigar-shaped body, shot through our neighborhood at high speed, following an orbit that indicates it arrived from somewhere else. Although bodies ejected from other solar systems are expected to make regular visits, this was the first one that we'd imaged sufficiently to determine that its origins were elsewhere.
But now, a large international team of researchers is weighing in with another vote for comet.

The argument, says the team, is based on the odd behavior of 'Oumuamua, which appears to have been accelerating away from the Sun.

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PostPosted: Sat Jun 30, 2018 2:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Now let get this straight.

This "natural object" whipped through the solar system and back out again . . . and now it's accelerating? Shocked

And none of the scientists can agree on a theory to explain why it's speeding up?

The author of the article shoots down every theory proposed so far for reasons that sound logical. And he calls the one he says is most likely correct the least-worst of the possible explanations.

The article above says this:
________________________________

In the end, warming-induced gas release is the least-worst of the possible explanations.

It should generate a consistent force and one that scales with proximity to the Sun, which is what seems to be happening.

But it also requires that 'Oumuamua be fairly comet-like, which is inconsistent with its shape and rotation. Plus there's the fact that we didn't see any signs of outgassing, like a plume of dust or the spectral signature of gasses.

________________________________

Wait, hold the phone. It's spewing out gases that are acting like rocket engines . . . while it's rotating? Ummm . . . wouldn't it have to remain in one position and spew the gases out behind it for that to work?

If it's rotating, the gas jets would spend just as much time pushing backwards and sideways as they would pushing it forward! Net effect: zero.

Admittedly, since it only rotates once every eight hours, it's possible that the side facing the sun will warm up and start spewing out the gas, creating the rocket engine effect. But how long would it take the sunlit side to get warm up enough to start spewing gas?

If it rotates once every eight hours, that means that each side spends four hours in the sunlight and four hours in the dark. If it took two of the four hours to start making like a rocket and pushing the object along, how long would the gas keep spewing out after a given side turned away from sun?

Once the warm side turns away from the sun, would the gases stop spewing out quickly enough to prevent these jets (which are now shooting in the wrong direction) from nullify the push they just gave the object in the right direction?

The author of the article, John Timmer, spots a few holes in this whole idea of outgassing, when he says the theory —
________________________________

" . . . requires that 'Oumuamua be fairly comet-like, which is inconsistent with its shape and rotation. Plus there's the fact that we didn't see any signs of outgassing, like a plume of dust or the spectral signature of gasses."
________________________________

So, the "least-worst of the possible explanations" is that this non-comet-like object is acting like a comet and it's spewing out gases which push it along like rocket . . . even though it shows no signs of outgassing . . . and its rotation prevents it from heating up one side for more than four hours before the spewing jets of gas turn away from the sun and start spewing sideways or even backwards to the object's forward motion!

So much for THAT theory! Rolling Eyes

Here's MY theory.

This SPACESHIP rotates because the inhabitants of the 800 meter long vessel (more than twice the height of the Empire State Buiilding) want to create a weak gravity field at the two ends, and the thrusters which line the craft's hull are fired sequentially out of whichever side is facing backwards at any given moment.

And since we never really got a look at this object, all the guesses about it's appearance are based purely on data and the accepted models of space objects, so we don't have a CLUE as to what it really looks like.

Hell, it might look like this! Shocked




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Gord Green
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 30, 2018 2:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bud, you have reached a very PLAUSABLE conclusion!
One which I just happen to share by the way.

The actions are completely consistant with an object under some kind of control.

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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 30, 2018 4:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Well damn, Captain Gordon, that clinches it!

We, sir, are definitely steely-eyed missile men! Very Happy

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


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Robert (Butch) Day
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 10, 2018 4:44 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

In a way this reminds me of a story in which the aliens came to Earth and wouldn't "come out to play" unless Johnny Carson was there to greet them.
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