The Mass Budget Necessary to Explain `Oumuamua as a Nitrogen Iceberg

Amir Siraj; Abraham Loeb

doi:10.1016/j.newast.2021.101730

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arXiv · 2103.14032

The Mass Budget Necessary to Explain `Oumuamua as a Nitrogen Iceberg

Amir Siraj·Abraham Loeb

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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.

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Amir Siraj, Abraham Loeb. 2021-10-15. The Mass Budget Necessary to Explain `Oumuamua as a Nitrogen Iceberg. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.newast.2021.101730

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