{"id":24578,"date":"2019-04-09T07:42:12","date_gmt":"2019-04-09T12:42:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=24578"},"modified":"2019-04-09T07:42:12","modified_gmt":"2019-04-09T12:42:12","slug":"but-just-how-are-they-distributed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2019\/04\/09\/but-just-how-are-they-distributed\/","title":{"rendered":"But Just How Are They Distributed?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong>NewScientist<\/strong><\/em> (23 March 2019, paywall) has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/article\/2196552-earth-may-be-partly-made-of-rocks-from-elsewhere-in-the-galaxy\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">some estimates<\/a> to pass on about the siblings of <a href=\"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2018\/11\/06\/or-they-gave-their-course-a-goose-ctd\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u2018Oumuamua<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Parts of Earth may originally be from another part of the galaxy, having crossed light years to form the ground beneath our feet. That is the conclusion of a study suggesting that the Milky Way should be full of free-floating rocks like \u2018Oumuamua, the interstellar asteroid\u00a0that\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/article\/mg23731630-200-interstellar-the-bizarre-visitor-from-a-far-off-solar-system\/\">visited our solar system<\/a>\u00a0in October 2017, and they may act as seeds to form planets in nascent planetary systems.<\/p>\n<p>Our traditional picture is that planets form\u00a0out of discs of gas and fine dust around a star, but some observations seem to show them being born much faster than that\u00a0model predicts. Interstellar objects\u00a0like \u2018Oumuamua may be the solution to this discrepancy.<\/p>\n<p>Researchers have estimated that there should be about 29 trillion \u2018Oumuamua-like objects per cubic light year in our galaxy, floating free after having been thrown out of orbit around their home stars. They are likely to be relatively\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/article\/2155904-that-interstellar-asteroid-could-be-a-shard-of-a-shredded-planet\/\">small, dark, and fast-moving<\/a>, which is why we have only seen one so far.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>My question, as you may have guessed, is how are they distributed in that cubic light year? Is \u2018Oumuamua just a random traveler, or are we about to see a horde of its siblings descend on the Solar System?<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 1290px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.jpl.nasa.gov\/images\/asteroid\/20171120\/eso1737a-16.jpg?resize=800%2C450&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" \/><p class=\"wp-caption-text\"><em>An artist&#8217;s concept of interstellar asteroid 1I\/2017 U1 (&#8216;Oumuamua) as it passed through the solar system after its discovery in October 2017. Observations of &#8216;Oumuamua indicate that it must be very elongated because of its dramatic variations in brightness as it tumbled through space. Image credit: European Southern Observatory \/ M. Kornmesser<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NewScientist (23 March 2019, paywall) has some estimates to pass on about the siblings of \u2018Oumuamua: Parts of Earth may originally be from another part of the galaxy, having crossed light years to form the ground beneath our feet. That is the conclusion of a study suggesting that the Milky \u2026 <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2019\/04\/09\/but-just-how-are-they-distributed\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24578"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24578\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24579,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24578\/revisions\/24579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}