‘Oumuamua Origin Story: How Our Mysterious Interstellar Visitor May Have Been Born
The new hypothesis doesn’t involve aliens.
By Mike Wall | Senior Space Writer

SPACE.COM – April 13, 2020 | Our solar system’s first known interstellar visitor may have a very violent origin story.

The mysterious object ‘Oumuamua, which was spotted zooming through the inner solar system in October 2017, is probably a fragment of a larger body that was torn apart by gravitational forces during a close flyby of its native star, a new study suggests.

This “tidal fragmentation scenario not only provides a way to form one single ‘Oumuamua but also accounts for the vast population of asteroid-like interstellar objects,” lead author Yun Zhang, of the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said in a statement.

An artist’s illustration of the evolution of the interstellar object ‘Oumuamua, whose weird, elongated shape may have come from tidal forces. (Image credit: YU Jingchuan from Beijing Planetarium)

The hypothesis explains ‘Oumuamua’s weirdness as well, according to Zhang and study co-author Douglas Lin, an astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

That weirdness is extreme and multilayered. For example, ‘Oumuamua is highly elongated, like a big space cigar (and may be somewhat flattened as well). Astronomers had never before seen a cosmic object with that shape.

In addition, ‘Oumuamua displayed “non-gravitational acceleration” during its trek through our neighborhood — motion that can’t be attributed to tugs by the sun, Jupiter or other big bodies. Such motion can be caused by cometary outgassing, which pushes an object this way and that like thrusters on a spacecraft.

Just a huge chunk of kryptonite, Lex.