On the Consequences of the Detection of an Interstellar Asteroid

Gregory Laughlin, Konstantin Batygin
(Submitted on 7 Nov 2017)

The arrival of the robustly hyperbolic asteroid A/2017 U1 has potentially interesting ramifications for the planet-formation process. Although extrapolations from a sample size of one are necessarily uncertain, order-of-magnitude estimates suggest that the Galaxy contains a substantial mass in similar bodies. We argue that despite its lack of Coma, A/2017 U1 likely contained a significant mass fraction of volatile components, and we argue that its presence can be used to infer a potentially large population of as-yet undetected Neptune-like extrasolar planets.

Comments:    Submitted to Research Notes of the AAS
Subjects:    Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
Cite as:    arXiv:1711.02260 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:1711.02260v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
Submission history
From: Gregory Laughlin 
[v1] Tue, 7 Nov 2017 02:20:33 GMT (544kb,D)
https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.02260