A large-scale survey involving amateur astronomers around the world has discovered fifteen rare asteroids that exhibit unusual ‘active’ properties that blur the boundaries between asteroids and other celestial bodies. The discovered asteroids are described in the Astronomical magazine.
These asteroids were seen in 430,000 images studied by more than 8,000 volunteers as part of the Active Asteroids Project, founded by Colin Orion Chandler, Ph.D., of the University of Washington and a Dirac Institute scientist.
‘Active’ asteroids have properties that make them unique in the solar system. Some have comet-like tails, while others are shrouded in clumps of dust or gas. Since their first discovery in 1949, only a few dozen of these rare objects have been discovered.
“The properties these objects exhibit challenge our traditional understanding of solar system objects,” NASA said.
“They open opportunities for new understanding of the behavior and origins of these rare active asteroids.”
Or maybe these aren’t asteroids at all?
Initially thought to be an asteroid, later recast as a likely comet, and even considered by some as a possible alien spacecraft, the 650-foot-long (200 meters) ‘Oumuamua zoomed through the central solar system in late 2017.
During its brief visit, the rock came within 15 million miles of Earth, about 62 distances between Earth and the moon, and disappeared a few weeks after its discovery.
a paper by researchers at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics raises the possibility that the elongated dark red object, which is ten times as long as it is wide and travels at a speed of 300,000 kilometers per hour, could have an “artificial origin.”
“Oumuamua may be a fully operational probe deliberately sent into Earth’s vicinity by an extraterrestrial civilization,” they wrote in the paper, submitted to the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
