Speaker 1: Imagine you're driving down the highway right, and there's one
main rule everyone follows, stand your lane, follow the flow
in space. That main rule, that universal traffic cop. That's gravity.
It dictates everything exactly. It pulls things into orbit. It
lets us predict where asteroids will go. It's, you know,
the fundamental law of attraction. It defines what we call
Caplearian mechanics. Everything Earth going around the Sun, the tiniest rock,
it all follows gravity's.
Speaker 2: Rules, right, Celestial dance all choreographed by gravity.
Speaker 1: But what happens when something just ignores the choreography, blows
right past the traffic cop, speeds up when it shouldn't,
deviates completely from that carefully calculated path.
Speaker 2: Well, that's when astronomers set up straight. That's when things
get really interesting. Goes from routine physics to well, a
genuine mystery. That kind of deviation, it's a massive red flag, and.
Speaker 1: That is exactly what we are diving into today. We're
looking at the latest and frankly, a pretty strange behavior
of our current interstellar visitor three I at loss.
Speaker 2: Ah, Yes, ATLS I've been keeping an eye on that one.
Speaker 1: We've all been watching this thing. Maybe a comet, maybe
something else since it popped up at first, the buzz
was visual, right, it was getting noticeably brighter and interestingly
bluer as it got closer to the Sun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that initial brightening was curious enough, But.
Speaker 1: Now now we have solid, measurable evidence, evidence of propulsion.
Speaker 2: It's moved beyond just how it looks, hasn't it. This
isn't just oh it's flaring up a bit. This is
actual physics saying wait a second.
Speaker 1: Precisely, the object is accelerating faster than gravity alone says
it should. Something else is giving it.
Speaker 2: A push, some force acting on it beyond the standard
gravitational tugs of the Sun and planets.
Speaker 1: So our mission for this deep dive is to unpack
what scientists are calling non gravitational acceleration. It sounds a
bit dry, I know, but what it means is this
object is being propelled by a force other than gravity,
a force.
Speaker 2: Not accounted for in the standard orbital cookbook.
Speaker 1: We've gathered a bunch of sources looking at the raw data,
the physics behind potential explanations, and actually some really weird
bureaucratic roadblocks that are getting in the way of scientists
trying to figure this out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when you start talking about something deviating from those
caplarian orbits, the paths laid out by Newton and Kepler,
you're really poking at the foundations of how we expect
things to move out there.
Speaker 1: It forces the question, doesn't.
Speaker 2: It It absolutely does. Is this some spectacular, maybe rare,
but ultimately natural process or are we seeing something else,
maybe something engineered.
Speaker 1: And we need to manage expectations. Right off the bat
headline scream non gravitational acceleration and boom, people jump straight
to alien engines.
Speaker 2: Happens every time.
Speaker 1: We are definitely not there yet. As we'll explore, there
are perfectly natural explanations that could account for this strong
ones even.
Speaker 2: But the amount of acceleration here is the kicker. It's
significant enough that even the natural explanation requires something pretty
dramatic happening.
Speaker 1: Exactly, and that analysis figuring out what kind of natural
event could cause such a push leads directly to a
crucial test, a make or break observation that's basically happening
right now.
Speaker 2: The timing is incredible. Really, the stakes are high because
the data points towards a very clear prediction. These next
few weeks as three actalysts comes back into view from
behind the sun. Yeah, they're going to tell us we'll
get definitive proof whether this thing is you know, a
standard commet just having a really really big outburson.
Speaker 1: Very dramatic comment, extremely.
Speaker 2: Dramatic, Yeah, or if we have to start seriously considering
other mechanisms forces that can push something without leaving the
kind of massive exhaust trail we'd expect from a commet.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's dig into the actual data, because this isn't
just a hunch, right, this is measured. We're not talking
some slight drift that might be there. It's statistically solid.
So for listeners trying to picture this, where did the
key measurement come from? What exactly did they detect?
Speaker 2: Right? The critical data, the confirmation of this acceleration came
from the Ala.
Speaker 1: Observatory ALMA right down in Chile, exactly, the.
Speaker 2: ATA COMMA Large millimeter sub milimeter array. It's this incredibly
powerful network of radio telescopes.
Speaker 1: And why ALIMA what makes it suitable for this?
Speaker 2: Well, ALIMA operates at millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths, and those
wavelengths are perfect for seeing cold dust and gas. The
kind of stuff you'd expect to find around a comet,
even if it's faint or really far away.
Speaker 1: Gotcha, so it can see the potential exhaust so.
Speaker 2: To speak, pffisly. And the detection itself happened as three
i adults was approaching perihelium.
Speaker 1: Its closest point to the sun yep, which.
Speaker 2: Is exactly when you'd expect solar heating to be strongest,
driving off any volatile materials. It's primetime for comet activity if.
Speaker 1: It is a comet, Okay, closer to the fire, more
likely to boil. Makes sense. Now, the measurement itself. You
hear the number and it sounds well tiny, four arcseconds.
Speaker 2: Four arc seconds. Yeah, it sounds minuscule.
Speaker 1: Why is four arcseconds such a big deal in astronomy?
Can you like put that into perspective?
Speaker 2: Absolutely, It's all about angles and distance. So imagine the
entire sky is three hundred and sixty degrees around. Each
degree is split into sixty arc minutes, and each arc
minute is split into sixty arcseconds.
Speaker 1: Okay, so it's a tiny fraction.
Speaker 2: Of a degree, a very tiny fraction. Four arc seconds
is four to sixtieth of one sixtieth of a degree.
It's nineteen hundredth of just one degree.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: To give you an analogy, it's like standing in say London,
and being able to tell that a specific coin placed
on top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris has shifted
slightly to the side. That's the kind of angular precision
we're talking about.
Speaker 1: Incredible. And this deviation was measured in right ascension.
Speaker 2: Correct. Right ascension is basically the celestial version of longitude
on Earth. It measures the east west position. So they
calculated exactly where three II toys should have been based
only on.
Speaker 1: Gravity, the standard type clearion pass.
Speaker 2: The standard path. Yes, and they found it wasn't there.
It actually moved four arc seconds further east than predicted.
It accelerated.
Speaker 1: So even though the angle is tiny, because the object
is so far.
Speaker 2: Away, exactly that tiny angle translates into a huge physical distance,
a massive offset from where gravity alone dictates it should be.
There's no ambiguity. The data quality is high, the deviation
is statistically significant. It's undeniable proof that some continuous non
gravitational force is pushing this thing.
Speaker 1: Okay, undeniable push. If gravity isn't the sole driver, we
need another mechanism and the most obvious natural candidate. The
go to explanation for astronomers is the evaporation hypothesis, right.
Speaker 2: That's the textbook explanation for commets behaving oddly. The idea
is that the non gravitational push comes from recoil.
Speaker 1: Recoil like a gunfiring sort.
Speaker 2: Of yeah, but instead of gunpowder, it's chemical compounds, usually
ices like water, carbon dioxide, maybe methane. On the object's surface,
sunlight hits them, they heat up, turn directly into das supplement,
and shoot off the surface.
Speaker 1: Eah okay, like little jets firing off exactly.
Speaker 2: It's basically nature's own crude rocket engine, and it's all
about momentum conservation Newton's third law. For every action, there's
an equal and opposite reaction.
Speaker 1: Material shoots off one way.
Speaker 2: And the object gets a little kick in the opposite direction.
Think of a garden sprinkler spinning around. Water shoots out
one way, the sprinkler head kicks back the other way.
Same principle here, but with gas and dust blasting off
three I at loose due to the sun's heat. For
most commets, this effect is pretty gentle causes maybe a
slight wobble in their orbit.
Speaker 1: But for three I lows that four arcsecond deviation means
the kick has to be substantial.
Speaker 2: It's substantial and sustained. And the direction matters too. If
the object is rotating and the outgassing isn't perfectly even,
maybe one side is more active, like a leaky valve,
that creates a much stronger, more consistent push than if
stuff was just evaporating uniformly all over.
Speaker 1: Okay, so the size of the prush matters, and that
leads us to this calculation about mass loss. The Jet
Propulsion Lab JPL took that acceleration data and worked backwards
to figure out how much material must have been injected
to create that push, and the number they came up
with is well, it's kind of mind blowing, it really is. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Based on those fundamental aso momentum, the physics says that
to get that specific amount of acceleration three, it glass
had to shed about one sixth of its total mass.
Six let's run it up slightly. It's roughly twenty percent.
Twenty percent of the object's entire initial mass had to
basically boil off into space.
Speaker 1: Twenty percent. That's not just like surface frost melting. That's
a huge chunk of the thing itself.
Speaker 2: It's a massive amount. We're talking about a significant fraction
of its entire body being violently converted into gas and dust.
Just to provide that observed thrust.
Speaker 1: That's almost catastrophic transformation and that scale, that twenty percent number,
it has big implications, doesn't it huge implications? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Because if it really did lose twenty percent of its
mass through evaporation, that strongly supports the idea it is
a comet, albeit an unusually active one.
Speaker 1: Right. It validates the natural explanation.
Speaker 2: It does, but it also gives us a potential way
to analyze it. If that much material was lost, Studying
the compass zition of that loss material could tell us
what three IT class is made of. It gives us
a chemical fingerprint.
Speaker 1: So the mass loss calculation is key to the comet idea.
You can't have that acceleration without that level of mass loss,
assuming its natural outgassing.
Speaker 2: Exactly the physics ties them together.
Speaker 1: And hang on, let me push back on that a little.
How sure are we about the initial mass of three itless?
Isn't that just an estimate based on how bright it looks.
Could the object be, I don't know, less dense than
we think, making that twenty percent figure less dramatic.
Speaker 2: That's a really sharp question. Yeah, you're right. Estimating the
mass of a distant object is tricky. It depends heavily
on assumptions about its size, its reflectivity, its albedo, and
its density. We don't have perfect numbers for those.
Speaker 1: So the twenty percent could be off.
Speaker 2: The exact percentage might shift a bit if our initial
mass estimate is wrong. But here's the thing, even if
you tweak the assumptions, the required mass loss remains substantial
to explain that measured acceleration. If it's denser, the total
tonnage loss has to be even higher if it's less dense,
lighter than losing twenty percent is arguably an even bigger
structural impact. Plus, consider this, losing that much mass, especially unevenly,
which you need for sustained thrust, that would almost certainly
affect how the object spins. We'd expect it to be
tumbling or rotating erratically. That's another observable consequence scientists will
be looking for.
Speaker 1: Are right, So even with uncertainties in the initial mass,
the consequences of the required mass law of this giant
cloud are pretty much unavoidable. If the comet explanation is correct.
Speaker 2: Unavoidable. The physics demands a reaction, and that reaction should
be visible, very visible.
Speaker 1: Which brings us to this incredible moment. It's like the
universe set up a perfect experiment for us.
Speaker 2: It really is beautifully simple in a way. That massive
mass loss, the twenty percent figure demanded by the acceleration,
creates a clear binary prediction, a yes no test for
what this object actually is.
Speaker 1: It all hinges on this. If three ilis really is
a natural commet that just vented a fifth of its.
Speaker 2: Weight, then the unavoidable consequence must be a gigantic cloud
of gas and dust surrounding it.
Speaker 1: Now, let's pause on that. A gigantic cloud. We're not
talking of faint haze. What does gigantic mean here in
terms of actual material. You mentioned five billion tons earlier.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the ballpark figure calculated based on the mass
loss needed for the acceleration using fairly standard assumptions about
how fast that evaporated gas and dust would expand outwards.
Talking about five billion tons minimum.
Speaker 1: Five billion tons, can you give us a sense of
scale for that.
Speaker 2: Okay, imagine the Great Pyramid of Giza, all the stone
used to build it. Now multiply the total mass of
that stone by about.
Speaker 1: Six six great pyramids worth of material.
Speaker 2: Turn into gas and dust now floating in space around
this relatively small object nucleus. It's an almost inconceivable amount
of stuff, a literal mountain range worth of ice and
rock vaporized and ejected.
Speaker 1: Wow. Okay, so a truly enormous cloud. And this leads
us to the crunch time the post sun reveal.
Speaker 2: Right in the past few weeks, the object has been
on the far side of the Sun from our perspective,
hidden in the glare, possible to observe directly from Earth.
But it's it's moving, and the predictions were that it
would emerge from behind the Sun, becoming visible again within
a week or two of that initial report on its acceleration,
which means right about now.
Speaker 1: So the next observations are absolutely critical. They're looking for
the direct evidence of that hypothesized mass loss.
Speaker 2: Exactly, it boils down to two scenarios. Scenario A, the
natural explanation holds true.
Speaker 1: Three I tell us is just a really really active comment.
Speaker 2: If the evaporation hypothesis is correct. If those five billion
tons of material were indeed blasted off, then astronomers should
see an incredibly bright, enormous cloud of gas surrounding the nucleus.
Speaker 1: That's right, because it reflects sunlight.
Speaker 2: Very bright, and because sunlight and the solar wind push
on that gas and dust, it should be streaming away
from the sun, forming a spectacular comentary tale, maybe even
visible with good amateur tellus.
Speaker 1: So if we see that massive cloud, that brilliant tail, then.
Speaker 2: Case close pretty much. It confirms its natural It's a comet,
and the non gravitational acceleration was simply the recoil from
this massive outgassing event. The physics makes sense.
Speaker 1: And what could we learn from seeing that cloud specifically
beyond just confirming it's a comment?
Speaker 2: Oh, that cloud would be a scientific gold mine. We
could immediately turn our spectrographs onto.
Speaker 1: It, analyzing the light exactly.
Speaker 2: Analyzing the light that passes through or reflects off the
gas and dust tells us precisely what elements and molecules
are in there. Is it mostly water, ice, carbon dioxide,
carbon monoxide, methane, more exotic stuff.
Speaker 1: We could get its chemical recipe we.
Speaker 2: Could get a detailed chemical fingerprint of an object that
came from another star system. It would tell us about
the stuff that was floating around in its home nebula
billions of years ago, far away, invaluable data.
Speaker 1: Okay, that scenario a confirmation, But then their scenario be
the alternative.
Speaker 2: Scenario B alternative propulsion. What happens if scientists point the
world's best telescopes at three it less as it emerges,
and there's no giant cloud, no super bright tail. What
if they just see the nucleus, maybe with a little
bit of faint fuzz, but nothing remotely close to the
five billion con spectacle predicted.
Speaker 1: If the push is there but the exhaust isn't, that's.
Speaker 2: When the mystery deepens dramatically. The question becomes unavoidable. What
propelled it? If you have the force, the four x
second deviation proves the force, but you don't have the
massive visible exhaust required by the comet explanation, then something
else must be going on.
Speaker 1: Something creating thrust without shedding enormous amounts of mass.
Speaker 2: Exactly, which leads inevitably towards thinking about mechanisms that are more.
Speaker 1: Efficient, which is where the artificial implication comes in, however, tentatively.
Speaker 2: Well artificial is loaded, but it points towards non natural
in the cometary sense. If the acceleration is real, but
the expected cometary signature that huge cloud is missing, then
the object doesn't behave like any natural comet. We understand
the force must be generated differently, maybe through a highly
efficient engine, though that's pure speculation, or perhaps more plausibly,
based on recent history, maybe it's exploiting a natural force
in a very efficient way, like solar radiation pressure acting
on a very lightweight.
Speaker 1: Structure, sunlight itself providing the push.
Speaker 2: Yes, the implication isn't necessarily aliens, but rather that we
have to consider propulsion mechanisms beyond simple heating and outgassing.
It could be say a piece of derelict technology, maybe
even ours lost long ago, or something else entirely, but
the absence of the cloud forces that conversation.
Speaker 1: And the amazing thing is we don't have to speculate
for long. The universe is about to give us the answer.
We look, we see the cloud, or we don't.
Speaker 2: It's a remarkably clean test. We should have a much
clearer picture very very soon.
Speaker 1: This whole situation that this dilemma of acceleration without the
expected exhaust It really throws us back to uhm ouah,
doesn't it?
Speaker 2: Oh? Absolutely, Uma wu is the unavoidable comparison here. It
was the first interstellar object we ever detected, back in
twenty seventeen, and it completely scrambled our expectations.
Speaker 1: Because it did the same thing right. It showed non
gravitational acceleration.
Speaker 2: It did it deviated from a purely gravity driven path.
Astronomers were baffled because they expected it to just follow
the rules of orbital mechanics.
Speaker 1: But the critical thing about ummum Woah, the part that
made it so deeply weird and sparked so much debate,
was precisely the lack of that cometary cloud.
Speaker 2: Exactly that intense observations were made specifically looking for gas
or dust around Umumwah as it accelerated, and they found nothing.
No kolma, no tail, nothing.
Speaker 1: Which blew the standard common explanation out of.
Speaker 2: The water completely. That absence of outgassing, combined with the
definite acceleration, was the central mystery. It's why scenario B
for three iilatus acceleration without a cloud feels so significant.
We've literally seen this movie before or at least the
first act.
Speaker 1: And the lack of a cloud for Umamouah led to
some pretty wide theories about what could be pushing it.
Speaker 2: It certainly did, since you couldn't explain the push with
ejected material. The leading alternative theory became solar radiation pressure.
Speaker 1: Sunlight pressure photons hitting it and giving it a tiny nudge.
Speaker 2: Tiny nudges that add up over time. But and this
is the crucial part. For sunlight pressure to be strong
enough to cause the acceleration, Umu war showed the object
couldn't be a solid chunk of rock or ice, not
because it would be too heavy, too dense. Sunlight pressure
is a very weak force. To make it effective, the
object needs a huge surface area compared to its mass.
It needs to be very light, maybe thin, possibly hollow,
or even shaped like a fail to catch the light effectively.
Speaker 1: So Umormu's behavior hinted at a structure that was perhaps
engineered or at least highly unusual, very light, maybe like
a leaf or a sheet.
Speaker 2: That was the implication that caused all the excitement and controversy.
A structure optimized deliberately or accidentally to be pushed by light.
Speaker 1: It sounds like science fiction, almost a solar sail drifting
between the stars, until you look at another object found
just three years later.
Speaker 2: Ah twenty twenty so, Yes, that's the crucial grounding case
study connects the dots beautifully. So three years after umah Moah,
the very same telescope in Hawaii that discovered at Umuwa
finds another weird.
Speaker 1: Object, initially thought to be another asteroid.
Speaker 2: Initially, yes, Catalog's twenty twenty so tracked closely because you know,
after Umouwa, everyone was hyper aware of strange orbits.
Speaker 1: But this one wasn't an interstellar visitor, was it? And
we found out what it was made of?
Speaker 2: We did this time, they managed to get really good
spectroscopic data infrared analysis. Basically, they took its chemical fingerprint.
Speaker 1: And not rock, not ice, Nope.
Speaker 2: The spectrum was a dead ringer for stainless.
Speaker 1: Steel, stainless steel in space.
Speaker 2: Stainless steel, which confirmed beyond any doubt that twenty twenty
so was artificial. Specifically, it was identified as the Centaur
upper stage rocket booster from NASA's Surveyor To mission, launched
in nineteen sixty six.
Speaker 1: Wow, so a piece of old human space junk orbiting
the Sun for over fifty years, came back for a
visit and got mistaken for an asteroid.
Speaker 2: Exactly. It had been lost in solar orbit, and its
path brought it back near Earth temporarily captured an interstellar
ghost of our own, making almost that's incredible.
Speaker 1: So we have Umuhua, the interstellar mystery, showing acceleration without
a cloud.
Speaker 2: Uh huh.
Speaker 1: And then we have twenty twenty so, a confirmed piece
of nineteen sixties human tech doing the exact same thing,
acceleration without a cloud.
Speaker 2: And that's the vital link. Twenty twenty so provided the
definitive proof of concept for the Umamua theory. Why was
the rocket booster accelerating because it was a hollow, thin
walled metal cylinder, very light for its size, large surface area, low.
Speaker 1: Mass, perfect for catching sunlight.
Speaker 2: Perfect It was demonstrably being pushed by solar radiation pressure
enough to measurably alter its orbit, exactly like the hypothesis
for umuh Wua, no outgasing needed, So.
Speaker 1: Twenty twenty so proved it light hollow artificial objects can
be propelled by sunlight alone, mimicking that non gravitational accel
leration we see in mysterious objects.
Speaker 2: It's not just theory, it's confirmed observation, a human artifact
demonstrated the physics.
Speaker 1: And that context is absolutely critical for three iilis.
Speaker 2: Now that's a precedent. If three eye lasts comes out
from behind the sun showing scenario B, the acceleration is there,
but that five billion ton cloud is not. Then umuua
in twenty twenty so tell us what to consider next.
Speaker 1: The absence of the cloud becomes the key signal.
Speaker 2: It immediately opens the door to thinking about light weight
structures and solar radiation pressure. Again, it forces us to
consider origins beyond natural comets, whether that's something truly alien
or maybe just another piece of misidentified debris, perhaps much older,
perhaps not even ours, being pushed by light.
Speaker 1: The lesson from twenty twenty so is stark, isn't it.
Sometimes the explanation for weird behavior isn't exotic new physics.
Sometimes it's just efficient engineering, even if it's accidental, like
an empty fuel tank tumbling through space.
Speaker 2: Okay, so we have this potential cosmic revelation unfolding an object,
possibly shedding mountains of ice, or maybe being pushed by sunlight,
huge questions. But now we pivot from the sublime to
the slightly ridiculous getting the actual data.
Speaker 1: Ah, yes, the less glamorous side of science, the paperwork
in politics.
Speaker 2: Because even while we're waiting for these crucial posts on observations,
there's other data images that already exist, taked much earlier,
that could give us vital clues right now. It's incredibly
frustrating for the scientists involved. There's a fantastic camera called
high Rise, the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment onboard NASA's
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Speaker 1: MRO orbiting Mars.
Speaker 2: Yeah, great camera, fantastic camera, and MRO actually took images
of three iyaut lists when the object made its closest
approach to Mars. That was back on October second and third,
well over a month before this non gravitational acceleration report
came out.
Speaker 1: And because MRO is relatively close to three ayoutlas then
compared to Earth.
Speaker 2: The potential resolution is fantastic. Those high Rise images could
potentially show us fine details the objects, maybe how it's rotating,
or crucially, if there was any sign of early localized
outgassing starting back then, any hint of that predicted cloud
beginning to form.
Speaker 1: So that data could already tell us if the comment
hypothesis looks likely well before the main show happens after
it passes the Sun.
Speaker 2: It could give us a massive head start. Yes, but
here's the catch. The data exists, it's stored on a
server related to a spacecraft orbiting Mars managed by NASA,
but scientists can't access it.
Speaker 1: Why not? What's the hold up?
Speaker 2: The process usually involves the principal investigator the PI of
the camera, releasing the data. In this case, multiple requests
were apparently made to the high rise PI for these
specific images of three iyallos, and there was no.
Speaker 1: Response, just silence for data on a unique interstellar object
showing weird behavior.
Speaker 2: That's the report. Now. The official reason cited later for
the lack of response and general delays in getting data
out was the government shut down happening around that time.
Speaker 1: Bureaucratic gridlockh okay, shutdowns cause chaos, fair enough, but for
time sensitive science like this, studying an object that's literally
just passing through.
Speaker 2: It's incredibly damaging. You have this unique visitor, maybe a
once in a generation opportunity, exhibiting fascinating physics and critical
data gets stuck in administrative limbo.
Speaker 1: The argument against withholding it seems obvious scientists need that
information now to plan their follow up observations. Telescope time
is expensive, it's competitive. You need to know what you're
looking for precisely.
Speaker 2: It's about strategy. If those high rise images showed, to say,
clear signs of early outgassing back in October, astronomers worldwide
would be scrambling to get spectrographs ready now for when
it emerges. If the images showed a bare nucleus, maybe
they'd prioritize different instruments.
Speaker 1: Knowing what it looked like near Mars informs how you
look at it near Earth.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, delaying that raw data release hampers the entire global
scientific effort. Science works best with rapid data sharing and collaboration,
especially for transiit events like this.
Speaker 1: And this whole data access issue then led to a
really let's call it a moment of interesting contrasts involving
Congress and Kim Kardashian.
Speaker 2: Yes, it got a bit surreal. The data delay was
causing enough concern that Representative Anna Paulina Luna got involved.
She sent a formal letter to NASA to the acting
NASA administrator at the time, Sean Duffy. The letter was
sent on October thirty. First a formal inquiry from a
member of Congress about releasing scientific data pertinent to understanding
this interstellar object.
Speaker 1: Okay, standard procedure for congressional oversight. What was the response
to the congresswoman's letter.
Speaker 2: According to reports, nothing, No formal response received to the
official letter.
Speaker 1: Radio silence from the acting administrator to Congress.
Speaker 2: Okay. Then, but then around the same time, the celebrity
Kim Kardashian tweeted a very informal tweet basically asking, uh,
what is the tea about three Atlas? You know, asking
for the gossip, the inside scoop on this object.
Speaker 1: What is a tea?
Speaker 2: Right? Okay?
Speaker 1: And the same acting NASA Administrator, Sean Duffy, who apparent
hadn't responded to the formal congressional letter about data release,
responded almost immediately to Kim Kardashian's tweet publicly on Twitter.
Speaker 2: Wow. Okay, So engage instantly with a celebrity's casual question,
but no response to a formal request from Congress about
scientific data.
Speaker 1: That's how it played out publicly. It raises well some
pointed questions about priorities, doesn't it?
Speaker 2: It certainly does look Public engagement is vital for science.
Getting high profile people interested is fantastic, build support, gets funding,
inspires people. We absolutely want.
Speaker 1: That, totally agree. Public's excitement is crucial. But when you
contrast the instant response to a pop culture inquiry with
the silence on a formal request for data needed for
actual scientific research, especially time sensitive research, it does look
a bit odd.
Speaker 2: It creates attention. The administrator's primary role, you'd think, is
facilitating the science and the agency's mission, which includes responding
to oversight and enabling research. Engaging the public is important,
but should it supersede the core operational needs, especially when
data is bottlenecked.
Speaker 1: It suggests maybe the allure of quick, high visibility social
media engagement might sometimes overshadow the slower, less flashy, but
fundamentally necessary processes of scientific administration and communication.
Speaker 2: Perhaps it highlights the difference between chasing immediate public buzz
and ensuring the steady progress of research. We need both ideally,
but when critical data for a unique event gets delayed
and the reason seems tied up in bureaucracy or possibly
skewed pr priorities. It becomes a real impediment, a.
Speaker 1: Tangible obstacle to discovery, created right here on Earth exactly.
Speaker 2: And it just underscores the need for scientists and Congress
to keep pushing for transparency and timely data release, especially
for these fleeting opportunities like three I atleasts before it
zooms off and we lose our chance.
Speaker 1: It really is a drama on two levels, isn't it.
The cosmic one out there with gravity and mysterious forces,
and the very human one down here with bureaucracy and
celebrity tweets, hashtag outro approx. Three time four minutes.
Speaker 2: So wrapping up this deep dive, we've really landed on
a fascinating point with three iad lists. It encapsulates so
much of the excitement and mystery in studying interstellar objects.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the core of it is this stark scientific choice
presented by the data itself. First, you have that undeniable
non gravitational acceleration, that four our second nudge. It's small,
but it's real, and it proves something as pushing it, right.
Speaker 2: A statistically solid deviation from pure gravity, and that push
if we assume it's this standard comet mechanism, outgassing requires
an absolutely enormous physical event.
Speaker 1: The massive mass loss that calculation suggesting maybe twenty percent
of the object's entire body had to boil off into space,
which leads directly to the big prediction.
Speaker 2: The five billion ton cloud. If it's a comet doing this,
it must be surrounded by a truly gigantic, incredibly bright
cloud of gas and dust right now as it emerges
from behind the sun, and that's.
Speaker 1: The beauty of it. We get to test this prediction
almost immediately. The observation happening now or in the coming
days and weeks are critical.
Speaker 2: It's a clear fork in the road. Scenario A, we
see the huge cloud and brilliant tail, confirmation it's a
hyperactive comet. A natural phenomenon will be the spectacular one
we learn about its composition.
Speaker 1: Or Scenario B, the cloud isn't there. The acceleration is confirmed,
but the massive exhaust predicted by the comet model is missing, and.
Speaker 2: If that happens, we're back in Wumamua territory. We have
to seriously consider alternative propulsion, more efficient mechanisms, maybe solar
radiation pressure acting on a light, perhaps engineered structure.
Speaker 1: Like twenty twenty. So the rocket booster proved as possible exactly.
Speaker 2: So either way, whether it confirms a dramatic commt hypothesis
or points towards something even stranger, we're poised to learn
something fundamental about this visitor's nature very soon. The possibilities
have been narrowed right down.
Speaker 1: We'll find out if the physics involved is messy and
volatile like a comet, or clean and efficient, like something
designed to catch the light precisely. And you know, as
we finish, I keep coming back to twenty twenty. So
that piece of nineteen sixty six stainless steel, our own
space junk. Mm hmm, it was hollow light, got pushed
around by sunlight and fooled us into thinking it might
be an asteroid For a while. It showed that mundane
human made objects can mimic these exotic non gravitational accelerations
just because of their shade and low density.
Speaker 2: The sobering reminder, isn't it a ply Ocham's razor? But
also remember our own capacity to create things that behave
unexpectedly out there.
Speaker 1: So here's the final thought to leave everyone with. If
a relatively primitive piece of nineteen sixties tech. A simple
hollow cylinder can drift through space for decades, get pushed
by sunlight, and temporarily confuse us. Yeah, what else is
out there? How many other objects that we track that
we assume are just rocks or dormant commets might actually
be something else? Old probes, bits of debris, rs or
maybe not ours silently catching the solar wind, exhibiting tiny
accelerations we haven't noticed or haven't been able to measure yet.
Speaker 2: How many apparent asteroids are actually just very light, maybe
hot hollo structures being subtly steered by sunlight across the
millennia exactly?
Speaker 1: If our own forgotten trash can masquerade like this, what
about older, more advanced, or just differently designed artifacts from elsewhere?
Could they be hiding in plain sight, dismissed as natural
until something like a four or second deviation forces us
to look closer.
Speaker 2: It makes you wonder about the true inventory of the
Solar system and what might be passing through three I
allis whatever it turns out to be? Really sharpens that
question what's truly natural and what's just efficient design? Floating
through the void?
Speaker 1: A question will be pondering will definitely keep you updated
on what the telescope see in the coming weeks. Thanks
for joining us for the steep dive