Fair, but this thing is from outside the solar system. It seems like that is very rare (although who knows, maybe with ATLAS we’ll discover that extrasolar objects are super common.)
Unless it got really, really lucky and found a super rare object that quickly - especially so soon after we discovered Oumuamua - makes me think this has happened a lot and we’re just now able to see them.
We’re definetly catching more interstellar visitors now that our detection capabilities are improving - astronomers estimate there could be thousands of these objects passing through our solar system every year, we just couldn’t see the smaller ones before.
The Rubin Observatory has already found 2,100 new asteroids. I imagine we’ll see a lot more of these extra solar bodies with it.
Fair, but this thing is from outside the solar system. It seems like that is very rare (although who knows, maybe with ATLAS we’ll discover that extrasolar objects are super common.)
Unless it got really, really lucky and found a super rare object that quickly - especially so soon after we discovered Oumuamua - makes me think this has happened a lot and we’re just now able to see them.
This is actually a third one. The second was called 2I/Borisov, I think.
We’re definetly catching more interstellar visitors now that our detection capabilities are improving - astronomers estimate there could be thousands of these objects passing through our solar system every year, we just couldn’t see the smaller ones before.