Implications of evaporative cooling by H$_2$ for 1I/`Oumuamua
Abstract
The first interstellar object observed in our solar system, 1I/`Oumuamua, exhibited several peculiar properties, including extreme elongation and non-gravitational acceleration. Bergner and Seligman (hereafter BS23) proposed that evaporation of trapped H created by cosmic rays (CRs) can explain the non-gravitational acceleration. However, their modeling of the thermal structure of 1I/`Oumuamua ignored the crucial cooling effect of evaporating H. By taking into account the cooling by H evaporation, we show that the surface temperature of H-water ice is a factor of 9 lower than the case without evaporative cooling. As a result, the thermal speed of outgassing H is decreased by a factor of 3. Our one-dimensional thermal modeling that takes into account evaporative cooling for two chosen values of thermal conductivity of and WKm shows that the water ice volume available for H sublimation at K would be reduced by a factor of 9 and 5 compared to the results of BS23, not enabling enough hydrogen to propel 1I/`Oumuamua.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2303.13861,
title = {Implications of evaporative cooling by H$_2$ for 1I/`Oumuamua},
author = {Thiem Hoang and Abraham Loeb},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2303.13861},
year = {2023}
}
Comments
6 pages, 2 figure; Accepted for publication, Astrophysical Journal Letters