This is the explanation given by Zdenek Sekanina, an astronomer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in a new unpublished paper. This explanation makes use of the observation that comets split as they approach the sun.

Oumuamua is an interstellar object passing through the solar system, which was detected by astronomers in June 20 17. This is the first interstellar object discovered by scientists, although they expect that thousands of objects have not been discovered. Since the emergence of "Ebony Village", scientists have been arguing about what this celestial body is: an asteroid or a comet, a fragment of a planet, or the most impossible explanation, an alien probe.

This new paper adds another cycle to this already thorny problem, suggesting that this celestial body has undergone a brief change in our solar system. After all, scientists didn't see Ummuamua until it left the community. Therefore, although the object looks red and slender at the exit, it may have different properties. [Ebony village in the photo: explained by the first interstellar visitor in the solar system]

The artist's explanation of "Ebony Village", which is the first interstellar object found in our solar system. (M.Kornmesser/ESO) Starting from this idea, this new paper compares Oumuamua with other dim but more common comets observed by astronomers. Usually, when these faint comets are less than a quarter of the distance from the sun, they can't survive this visit. The death of a comet is not a peaceful process; Instead, these comets experienced a so-called explosion, which triggered their disintegration.

Specifically, this paper considers a comet named C/20 17 S3, which swooped down from the Oort cloud around our solar system. The comet experienced two violent explosions and finally disintegrated. Observers have collected some strange data, which show that the debris of C/20 17 S3 has become "a huge and extremely fluffy collection of loose dust particles" before approaching the sun.

The exact origin and structure of "Oumuamua" puzzled scientists, and this explanation provided a new complicated situation: when scientists first discovered this object, it was actually not a solid, but a mass of residue. The new paper points out that bebell'Oumuamua, similar to C/20 17, broke out before any scientific observation, thus hiding the original structure of the object.

This paper was published in arXiv.org preprint server on October 30th, 65438/KLOC-0.

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