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LEMON TREE

April 23, 2020

Strange Object May Be Remains of a Planet TornApart

Exercise 1- Vocabulary

solarsystem – n. our sun and the planets that move around it

journal – n. amagazine that reports on things of special interest to a particular group ofpeople

alien – adj. fromsomewhere other than the planet Earth

tidal – adj. ofor relating to the regular upward and downward movement of the level of theocean that is caused by the pull of the Sun and the Moon on the Earth

comet – n. anobject in outer space that develops a long, bright tail when it passes near thesun

asteroid – n. anyone of thousands of small planets that circle around the sun

disrupte(d)– v. to cause (something) to be unable to continue in the normal way

mutual – adj. sharedbetween two or more people or groups

hypothesize(d) –v. to suggest an idea or theory

Excercise2 - Article

Strange Object May Be Remains of a Planet TornApart

A long, thin object moving throughour solar system may be the remains of a planet that was pulledapart, scientists say.

Researchers say the planet was likely destroyedlong ago when it moved either too far from or too close to the star it onceorbited.

The object is called ‘Oumuamua, which means“messenger from afar” in the native Hawaiian language. A report on the recentfindings appears in the journal Nature Astronomy.

Scientists have been trying to understand moreabout ‘Oumuamua since its discovery in 2017. Some have even proposed it may bean alien spacecraft. In the recently published research, astronomersYun Zhang and Douglas Lin said computer predictions suggest the object was apiece of a planet or planetary building block. The planet might have been tornapart by its star’s “tidal forces.”

‘Oumuamua is the first object from another starsystem found passing through our solar system. It is about 400 meters long. Itsshape, strange way of moving and lack of dust and gases suggest it is not anormal comet or asteroid.

When a smaller body passes near a much biggerone, tidal forces created by the larger body can destroy the smaller one. Thisis what happened when comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 came too close to the planetJupiter in 1992.

Zhang told the Reuters news agency that mostplanetary bodies are made of groups of rocks joined under the influence ofgravity. In a way, they are similar to the sandcastles that children make atthe beach, except that they are floating through space, Zhang said.

“Their structure canbe disrupted when the force acting on the individual ‘sand particle’is larger than their mutual gravity,” he added.

Zhang noted that ocean tides on Earth areaffected in this way. Tides result from the gravitational pulls of the sun andmoon. In space, a planetary body that comes close enough to a star falls victimto its strong gravitational pull.

Lin is an astrophysicist at the University ofCalifornia, Santa Cruz. He said the star that destroyed ‘Oumuamua’s home worldprobably was one-tenth to eight-tenths of the mass of our sun. Or it might havebeen a rare kind of cool and dense star called a white dwarf, Lin added.

The studysuggests the existence of many objects formed this way.

“We show the possibility of panspermia carriedby these objects,” Zhang said. Panspermia is the hypothesized spreadof microorganisms or chemicals that support life on objects moving throughspace.

‘Oumuamua is continuing on its path out of oursolar system.

Questions:

1. What have the scientist noticed inthe solar system that have been moving in our solar system?

2. How does it look like?

3. How was it like?

4. When was it discovered?

5. What did the scientist believe on where theremais come from?

6. What is Panspermia and how is it beneficial toliving objects?