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Old July 10th 18, 06:39 AM posted to sci.astro.research
Jos Bergervoet[_3_]
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Default Spaceship Oumuamua

On 7/9/2018 8:42 PM, Eric Flesch wrote:
On Mon, 02 Jul 2018, Martin Brown wrote:
That is an interesting question though. Did the approach trajectory look
planned to take advantage of the position of any of the gas giants to
get a slingshot assist? That *would* favour ET being involved.


For interstellar travel, the Sun itself can be used for a slingshot
assist for (say) travelling outwards in the Galactic disk. The key
question, I think, is whether the object approached on a similar
vector as the Sun's but travelling a bit faster so as to catch up to
the Sun..


The key question for the slingshot hypothesis is whether it
comes from the direction of a nearby star and leaves the solar
system into the direction of another nearby star.

If both directions would match a star within, say 100 psc
distance, then it is a slingshot trajectory for traveling
along three stars. (By definition it is such a trajectory,
whether it is *intentionally* so, or just by accident, is
then still not proven. but one could calculate how small
the chances for the latter would be..)

Of course one could always match the two directions to very
distant stars, but then there is a big chance that it is
accidental. There are 2 'uncertainty cones' around the
measured directions of arrival and departure and we could
ask: What are the nearest stars in those two cones and
how small (or big) is the combined chance of finding them
at those distances.

[And if nobody has published the result of that calculation
yet, that fact is of course good material for a conspiracy
theory! :-) ]

--
Jos