It was only detected when 4.5 AUs from the Sun (which, I'll also note, exerts significant graviational force on inbound objects). It was already close; we can't currently detect the tens/hundreds/thousands of similar objects likely whizzing past at further distances as we speak.
This thing traveled light years to get here. Possibly over billions of years. 30 million kilometers from Mars and 300 million and 3 billion kilometers from Mars would all be close approaches. Any approach can be claimed to be close; that's the magic trick at play here.
Our robot representatives there were not the ones who spotted it, so what relevance is it that they are there?
I don't think you're responding to my claim, which is that the close passes to Mars and Jupiter seem very unlikely. Of all random trajectories through the solar system at the distance of this body, what fraction of them pass equally close to major planets? I'd even be willing to limit it to trajectories close to the ecliptic plane, because we may be scanning that plane more.
4.5AUs is as close as 0.2AUs from an interstellar standpoint. Both are equally likely, just as every Powerball number is equally likely. Any object of this nature we can spot is going to be quite close with our current detection technology.
Again, your argument is effectively like arguing that 04 24 49 60 65 01 cannot possibly be yesterday's winning Powerball numbers, because it's a 1:300M chance. The game must be rigged!
Now, if the next couple interstellar objects we detect also do a similarly close pass on Jupiter and Mars, there'll be something worth wondering about.
(Similarly, if tomorrow's Powerball numbers are 04 24 49 60 65 02, I'll have questions!)
You are basically saying that if the first Powerball number drawn was 01 02 03 04 05 06 that there would be no reason to suspect something wrong with the Powerball lottery process. It's random! It could happen!
Yes I understand that random trajectories could potentially be anything. But it's notable that this particular random trajectory has an unusual characteristic. It's a characteristic that an alien probe might have. That's what makes it interesting.
Yes. People hate this fact, because it feels very counter-intuitive, but 01 02 03 04 05 06 and 04 24 49 60 65 01 are equally likely.
You need more than one data point to determine if something screwy is happening. (And, again, the available set of interstellar objects is both very small (n=3) and incredibly biased towards very close ones.)
Your first statement is correct, but your second doesn't follow and is incorrect.
If the first numbers that comes out of the Powerball lottery are 01 02 03 04 05 06, then we don't need another one to state that something screwy is very likely to be happening.
If I saw the numbers "01 02 03 04 05 06" from code that's supposed to spit out random numbers, my first thought won't be "well, statistically that's just as likely as any another 6 numbers". My first thought will be, did someone set random=false?
We need a larger sample size than n=3 and better surveillance of the solar system. What’s weird for in-system objects may be the norm for interstellar ones. Astronomy is a constant barrage of “huh, wtf is that?” without aliens being the explanation.
