Another paper

One of the big problems with Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama was that the Earth spacecraft sent to intercept it was able to come alongside the object at all. One would expect that any extraterrestrial craft would pass through the solar system at velocities which would demand relativistic speeds on the part of the pursuit craft, even if the pursued object was NOT traveling at relativistic speeds.. And of course, you have to brake to be able to come alongside and board it!

After it’s slingshot around the sun, I don’t know where this rock is headed now, but at its current speed it won’t be getting anywhere for thousands of years. You have to keep in mind, any technology capable of interstellar travel speeds will not have to rely on gravity-assist maneuvers.

If this object was ejected from some other solar system, it may have happened many billions of years ago; both the sun and its parent star may have made many revolutions about the galactic nucleus since then. Its parent star may not even exist any more. This is just another mote of dust adrift in the void. Just like us.

It’s tempting to fantasize this object as some sort of ETI interstellar probe, but the facts just don’t add up. Its velocity relative to the Local Standard of Rest suggests it is just drifting along in the stream of stars just like we are. Any interstellar vehicle would be moving along at a speed of at least several hundreds of km/sec, not several tens of km/sec. And an ETI that couldn’t work up at least a few thousand km/sec would not be very technologically interesting. At its current slow speed, it would not require a needle configuration to slip easily through the interstellar medium.

No, except for its odd shape, (which may turn out to be some misinterpretation of data after all) this thing is pretty much what we would expect for some ordinary rock or iceball. Now that we have the tech to spot these guys, I expect we’re going to be seeing a whole lot more of them.

Where I’m going doesn’t have to involve ships. Wouldn’t you think that a natural object that had been travelling through interstellar space for a long time, possibly millions of years, at a respectable speed, might have been abraded down to that shape?

It’s also speculated that if we but watch closer, we’ll spot more of these ISOs. So if the second and third turn out to have that characteristic shape (and we confirm they’re not actually “needle ships” by close-up observation using probes waiting for the sightings, next time), that might confirm my idle notion,.

The next one might be a lumpy potato. Hope not.

What I want to know is, is there anything along that extrapolated trajectory within a few light years? Is there a reason to suspect an opportunistic use of the Sun, versus an accidental hyperbola?