Gaia finds candidates for interstellar ‘Oumuamua’s home
I am not an astrophysicist but reading between the lines it seems unlikely that:
- this piece of space debris would interact with some many systems as opposed to getting caught into orbit (gut feeling)
- originate in a system without some type of larger bodies since the hypothesis is this might be a natural object that has flaked or chipped off something else after a collision (or be a technological relic)
Combining this with the competing theories of the nature and behaviour of the object, I think it remains in the realm of possibility that this was either a relic or active interstellar piece of tech. Do I think that is likely? No, not at all. But I do think it makes sense to at least continue to entertain that as one possible explanation.
If the result of the Gaia analysis was "it started out here, there's a bunch of rocky exoplanets, doesn't look like it interacted with any other systems and coming here was a fluke" I would change my tune.
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