‘OUMUAMUA. When I began this blog (see here), I marveled at how radio waves from the Big Bang could be detected in radio static on earth. Now, an object from another galaxy has visited our solar system, and our scientists have been able get an idea of its orbit and movement.
This article by Brooks Hays on the UPI website (February 12, 2018) tells about ‘Oumuamua, an intergalactic object which appeared last fall, traveled through our solar system and past the sun, and is now moving away from the sun. Scientists were able to train several telescopes on the object. This wikipedia entry says that the date of the discovery was October 19, 2017. The name is from the Hawaiian language. The first character is a Hawaiian okina, not an apostrophe, and is represented by a single quotation mark and pronounced as a glottal stop. The object is featureless and colored red. Its size is 230 meters by 35 meters by 35 meters (a football field is, very roughly, about 100 meters in length and about 50 meters wide).
Brooks Hays says that: “The latest investigation of ‘Oumuamua suggests the orb doesn’t spin or rotate like most asteroids. Instead, it tumbles ….”
Research suggests ‘Oumuamua has been tumbling about the universe for at least a billion years. Hays quotes a scientist who says: “Our modeling of this body suggests the tumbling will last for many billions of years to hundreds of billions of years before internal stresses cause it to rotate normally again….”