English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Zendy Plus

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Zendy Tools

Zendy Open

The origin of the interstellar object 1I/‘Oumuamua has defied explanation. In a companion paper (Jackson & Desch, 2021), we show that a body of N 2  ice with axes 45 m × 44 m × 7.5 m at the time of observation would be consistent with its albedo, nongravitational acceleration, and lack of observed CO or CO 2  or dust. Here we demonstrate that impacts on the surfaces of Pluto‐like Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) would have generated and ejected ∼10 14  collisional fragments—roughly half of them H 2 O ice fragments and half of them N 2  ice fragments—due to the dynamical instability that depleted the primordial Kuiper belt. We show consistency between these numbers and the frequency with which we would observe interstellar objects like 1I/‘Oumuamua, and more comet‐like objects like 2I/Borisov, if other stellar systems eject such objects with efficiency like that of the Sun; we infer that differentiated KBOs and dynamical instabilities that eject impact‐generated fragments may be near‐universal among extrasolar systems. Galactic cosmic rays would erode such fragments over 4.5 Gyr, so that fragments are a small fraction (∼0.1%) of long‐period Oort comets, but C/2016 R2 may be an example. We estimate ‘Oumuamua was ejected about 0.4–0.5 Gyr ago, from a young (∼10 8  yr) stellar system, which we speculate was in the Perseus arm. Objects like ‘Oumuamua may directly probe the surface compositions of a hitherto‐unobserved type of exoplanet: “exo‐Plutos.” ‘Oumuamua may be the first sample of an exoplanet brought to us.

1I/‘Oumuamua as an N 2 Ice Fragment of an Exo‐Pluto Surface II: Generation of N 2 Ice Fragments and the Origin of ‘Oumuamua