ʻOumuamua

Now, assuming an albedo or reflectivity of 0.1, that gives it a volume of around 130,000 cubic meters.

A typical asteroidal density is 2,000 kilograms per cubic meter, so that gives it a mass of around a quarter of a billion kilograms.

It was moving much faster than most solar system objects, at around 50 kilometers per second at its closest approach to Earth.

So its kinetic energy, half MV squared, was around three by 10 to the power of 17 joules, or 70 megatons of TNT, and that's greater than the yield of Tsar Bomba, the greatest hydrogen bomb ever detonated.

Assuming 'Oumuamua is entirely rocky and hit the atmosphere pretty much head-on, it might actually reach the ground before disintegrating to deliver that energy.

It's going to be really simple.

And after that, and I saved the most dramatic one for right here, there is a long, reddish, weird looking object flying through our solar system called 'Oumuamua, and some very serious scientists are now asking, could this thing be space junk left behind by aliens, extraterrestrial life? Yes, we're going to explain that as well throughout this hour.

And before we wrap this hour, of course, we've got your stargazing guide for right here in Sharjah and the United Arab Emirates.

What can you spot in the sky with your own eyes? Stay with me because the answer might surprise you, so don't go anywhere.

They're checking their telescopes, drinking their cuppa when, uh, they're having their cup of coffee, and suddenly something shows up, something that has never been seen before, an object flying through our solar system past our planets, past our sun that did not come from here.

It came from somewhere out there, like deep, deep, deep in interstellar space between the stars from another part of the galaxy entirely, and then they gave it a name.

They named it Oumuamua, and that is a Hawaiian word meaning scout, and honestly, that name choice alone should tell you something.

Something is absolutely awkward.

We learn, the first one, we were totally not ready.

'Oumuamua took everybody by surprise.

We even saw it when it was leaving.

Then we have Borisov.

His phase two concept, TFINER, tackles a question that has haunted space scientists since 2017.

If another interstellar object like ‘Oumuamua passes through our solar system, how do we actually catch it? His answer involves nuclear physics, a sheet of material thinner than a piece of paper, and speeds that could get you from Boston to Washington, DC in just about six seconds.

So I'm here with Jim Bickford from the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory Incorporated with a project called TFINER.

So this is a thin film isotope nuclear engine rocket, right? But if you look at the images of this thing, it doesn't look anything like a classical rocket.

One of the really cool applications of this technology that I was reading about is this potential that maybe we could use this to check out interstellar objects.

We- we've only had three of these that we've found so far.

There was one, ‘Oumuamua, two, Borisov, and then most recently, three, Atlas.

Mm-hmm.

But also, he's been in this realm and in this arena for years, talking about, uh...

What was the asteroid? Uh, 'Oumuamua.

Yeah.

And so he has recently been appointed.