Scientists discovered that the first interstellar object that visited the Solar System in October last year had a violent past that is causing it to tumble and spin around chaotically.
The findings of the study published in the journal Nature Astronomy on February 9 indicate that the cigar-shaped asteroid had collided with another asteroid in the past. Scientists from the Queen's University Belfast in Northern Ireland led the discovery and research, according to Phys. Org.
The scientists found that Oumuamua was not spinning periodically like most asteroids and objects seen in the Solar System. They discovered that Oumuamua has been tumbling or spinning chaotically, probably for billions of years.
Wes Fraser, one of the authors of the study from Queen's University Belfast's School of Mathematics and Physics, said that Oumuamua's erratic motion might be a result of a collision with another asteroid. He further noted that the tumbling could have been caused by an impact with another planetesimal in its system before it ejected into interstellar space. He also said that their modeling of this interstellar object indicates the tumbling will last for many billions of years to hundreds of billions of years before internal stresses cause it to rotate usually again.
