Publications by authors named "Robert Weryk"

'Oumuamua (1I/2017 U1) is the first known object of interstellar origin to have entered the Solar System on an unbound and hyperbolic trajectory with respect to the Sun. Various physical observations collected during its visit to the Solar System showed that it has an unusually elongated shape and a tumbling rotation state and that the physical properties of its surface resemble those of cometary nuclei, even though it showed no evidence of cometary activity. The motion of all celestial bodies is governed mostly by gravity, but the trajectories of comets can also be affected by non-gravitational forces due to cometary outgassing.

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None of the approximately 750,000 known asteroids and comets in the Solar System is thought to have originated outside it, despite models of the formation of planetary systems suggesting that orbital migration of giant planets ejects a large fraction of the original planetesimals into interstellar space. The high predicted number density of icy interstellar objects (2.4 × 10 per cubic astronomical unit) suggests that some should have been detected, yet hitherto none has been seen.

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