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Avi Loeb: `Oumuamua is EXTRATERRESTRIAL (#307)
Into the Impossible With Brian Keating
The Role of the Web Telescope in Searching for Objects
It depends on the trajectory. If you assume that it came on a random trajectory, there should be an object like it every year coming into the orbit of the Earth around the Sun. You can reduce the number of objects by a factor of 10 to the 10 billion or so if you imagine that they were targeting the habitable zone. And we don't know. So we just need better statistics and hopefully the Verarubian Observatory will give us more examples.
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Speaker 2
Yeah, the promise sometimes they're too childish. Sometimes they're too child-like. They want to take their toys and go home and they want to be jealous and petty. So Avi, we have a few minutes left. I've got a ton of questions, 700 questions here. Go ahead. I only ask you, we'll do a rapid fire. Rock SD is asking, is it significant that of all the planets in our solar system that both Omu Amua and this meteorite came to the Earth instead of St. Jupiter?
Speaker 1
Oh no, then, okay, it depends on the trajectory. So if you assume that it came on a random trajectory, there should be an object like it every year coming into the orbit of the Earth around the Sun. So it's really common. However, you can reduce the number of objects by a factor of 10 to the 10 billion or so if you imagine that they were targeting the habitable zone. So if they were sent into the habitable region where the Earth moves around the Sun, then there are many fewer by 10 billion. And we don't know. So we just need better statistics and hopefully the Verarubian Observatory will give us more examples.
Speaker 2
So someone's asking about JWST. Is anything JWST can do with regard to searching for these objects or similar? Not to search
Speaker 1
because the web telescope has a very small field of view for the five arc minutes. Yeah. About the 10th of a degree. So it's a very small view. And these objects, you need to look at the entire sky and also find one of them. And so in combination with the Verarubian Observatory that will serve the sky, that could alert the web telescope to an existing object. And then it's just like having two eyes, you can gauge distance much better. The reason we have two eyes is so that we can have three-dimensional calibration of the threat that is in front of us. That allows us to survive. So in the same way, web telescope and Earth-based telescope could figure the distance and very precisely to an object like whom. Oh, great.
Speaker 2
Okay.
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