[xrayzerone]

I'll ask what everyone is thinking but won't say. If the acceleration is in fact being caused by artificial thrusters, what kind of thruster configuration can produce prograde acceleration while maintaining the observed tumble? And why would someone engineer this configuration?

[TheOtherHobbes]

It's maybe worth pointing out the tumbling is a hypothesis used to explain variable brightness measurements and not something that was observed directly.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1712.00437.pdf

For all anyone knows the intrinsic brightness was variable.

(This is probably not very likely without some supporting spectroscopic anomalies. But still.)

As for thrusters - that's the same problem as the comet and outgassing hypothesis. No known mechanism can explain the acceleration.

And if you were alien race and wanted to look at a planetary system without attracting attention, something that looks like a tumbling rock with a plausibly improbable trajectory would be ideal.

It could just be a coincidence that the first large proven extra-solar object slingshotted around the Sun in a way that happened to pass close by the Earth.

But considering the size of the Solar System and the convenient phasing of the Earth's orbit, what are the odds? It's certainly very curious.

[drewrv]

The odds that the first extra-solar object found is close to earth is really high, because they're easier to see if they're close.

[checkyoursudo]

If aliens could do this to make the object look inconspicuous, then why not make it look not suspicious as well?

Someone just f'ed up the config files?

[rdtsc]

They deployed on a Friday. They should have known better :-)

Sorry couldn't resist and hey, it's also Friday today.

I wonder if it was aliens and they made it just slightly interesting without making it look completely obvious. Then they'd monitor and see how we would react. Would we be able to detect. Would we go chase it? Beam microwaves at it. Do we have the capability to fire projectiles at it.

[checkyoursudo]

So you're saying it's possibly an interstellar alien cat toy to test our curiosity and willpower? Plausible.

[tazjin]

Who knows what kinds of things are flying through "their" systems? Maybe this thing is the most not suspicious object they could imagine ;-)

[kranner]

> And why would someone engineer this configuration?

To make its being engineered seem implausible, surely.

[Cthulhu_]

You're saying instead of magic cloaking devices, the aliens used camouflage? Makes sense to me!

[dsfyu404ed]

Because it wasn't an important project so they made the fresh put of college ME do it.

[basch]

couldnt a thruster at its axis spin in the opposite direction to offset? some crude nonsense - https://i.imgur.com/8jj2hWy.png