The Mass Budget Necessary to Explain `Oumuamua as a Nitrogen Iceberg
Earth and Planetary Astrophysics
2021-11-24 v4
Abstract
Recently, a nitrogen iceberg was proposed as a possible origin for the first interstellar object, 1I/2017 U1, also known as `Oumuamua. Here, we show that the mass budget in exo-Pluto planets necessary to explain the detection of `Oumuamua as a nitrogen iceberg chipped off from a planetary surface requires a mass of heavy elements exceeding the total quantity locked in stars with 95\% confidence, making the scenario untenable because only a small fraction of the mass in stars ends in exo-Plutos.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2103.14032,
title = {The Mass Budget Necessary to Explain `Oumuamua as a Nitrogen Iceberg},
author = {Amir Siraj and Abraham Loeb},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2103.14032},
year = {2021}
}
Comments
3 pages, 2 figures; accepted for publication in New Astronomy