AN ‘OUMUAMUA ANALOGUE?
When interstellar object 1I/‘Oumuamua was first spotted tumbling through the Solar System, we’d never seen anything , that behaves remarkably like ‘Oumuamua: It tumbles like the interstellar object did, and it seems to be just as elongated. Unlike ‘Oumuamua, though, this asteroid is not a new arrival; it has probably been going around the Sun for billions of years. Follow-up observations will take some patience, since 2016 AK won’t come close enough to observe again until 2029, Heinze says. Still, the asteroid’s mere existence is intriguing. Its current near-Earth orbit is unstable over 100 million years, Heinze notes. So it’s possible this object used to belong to the main belt before a gravitational encounter redirected it, and that nudge might even have precipitated its reshaping. More and better observations will help us understand this object’s past.
