A new study from the United States reveals that interstellar objects such as asteroid Oumuamua and comet 2I/Borisov play a significant role in the formation of planets.
This shocking conclusion comes from research led by the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. Calculations suggest that every 10 million years, the number of strange objects entering our Solar System from the interstellar medium could reach up to 600 billion. We rarely observe them simply because human observational capabilities are limited.
Oumuamua, one of the “intruders” from outside the Solar System – (Image: NASA)
In an interview with New Scientist, Dr. Amaya Moro-Martin, one of the lead authors of the study, expressed surprise that the cosmological models they constructed based on various observational datasets and astronomical theories revealed this unusual finding.
Previously, another study in August 2021 claimed that there are over 100 trillion strange objects wandering between the stars, poised to enter beyond the Oort Cloud—the protective barrier at the edge of the Solar System.
According to the Daily Mail, the new research indicates that these objects may form from gas and dust in other star systems or in the vast void between star systems within the Milky Way galaxy. They frequently intrude into star systems and significantly contribute to the material that forms young planets.
This explains why spectral measurements of objects outside the Solar System show that different star systems share many similar components. In other words, when a star system with planets forms, like our Solar System, a lot of foreign material contributes to it, and sometimes even includes “seeds” of life—supporting the hypothesis that life comes from the interstellar medium.
The two most recently discovered interstellar objects are asteroid Oumuamua and comet 2I/Borisov, both detected due to their distinct characteristics compared to what exists in the Solar System. Oumuamua has even been speculated by scientists from Harvard University to be a technological product of extraterrestrial beings.
