'Oumuamua: 'space cigar's' tumble hints at violent past

[nitpicker]

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-43018706

'Oumuamua: 'space cigar's' tumble hints at violent past

By Jonathan Amos
BBC Science Correspondent

11 February 2018

The space interloper 'Oumuamua is spinning chaotically and will carry on doing so for more than a billion years. That is the conclusion of new Belfast research that has examined in detail the light bouncing off the cigar-shaped asteroid from outside our Solar System.
"At some point or another it's been in a collision," says Dr Wes Fraser from Queen's University. His team's latest study is featured in Sunday's Sky At Night episode on the BBC and published in Nature Astronomy.
(snip)

Initially, it was thought the object could be a comet, but it displays none of the classic behaviour expected of these cosmic wanderers - such as a dusty, water-ice particle tail.

The Queen's team wanted to establish the exact nature and rate of the object's rotation. To do this, the group studied variations in its brightness over time.
(snip)

Almost immediately, Dr Fraser and colleagues could see that it was not spinning periodically like many small asteroids, but spinning chaotically - it was tumbling.
(snip)
.

[Sancho]

1. I have a theory about the crash...

[LastLiberal in PalmSprings]

2. They could have called it Rama, after Arthur C. Clarke's Rama series

A cylindrical object wanders into the solar system and is visited by astronauts and scientists from earth as it passes though. What they find is a hollow cylinder filled with enough adventures to fill three books.

Even if the new body is just a cigar-shaped rock, Rama is a hell of a lot easier to pronounce than Oumuamua.

[ThoughtCriminal]

3. Violent past?

Has it considered a position at the White House?

[Vogon_Glory]

4. I dont think its a stray piece of Alderaan...

I hope...