IntroductionOn the 19th of October, 2017, an interstellar object was detected by scientists for the first time¹. Called ‘Oumuamua, many factors about this foreign object were of high interest to the scientific community. This includes the fact that it was highly elongated, with theories on its shape ranging from it being shaped like a long cigar with a 10:1 ratio of height/ length, to it being unbelievably wide and thin as a millimeter². Another anomaly connected to the interstellar object was that it was able to achieve non-gravitational acceleration despite the fact that it was not a comet. It is decidedly not a comet due to its lack of a tail and no obvious star system of origin². This raised the question of ‘Oumuamua’s makeup to the scientific community as they attempted to understand how such anomalies could have occurred. One idea was that the object could have been an asteroid made of a highly porous material that gave the object a mean density much lighter than air³. Another idea is that the object was a large chunk of frozen hydrogen⁴. Some even made the assertion that the object was an artificially made solar sail created by interstellar intelligence². All these ideas have flaws in some ways, as both porous material and hydrogen ice would lose much structure upon being too close to the sun, and there has never as of yet been any evidence to suggest that life can come into existence at all beyond Earth, let alone life with the ability and will to create interstellar objects. One idea that therefore seems much more viable is the idea by Desch and Jackson, where they considered the possibility that ‘Oumuamua was a piece of an exo-planet similar to Pluto, that was rich in N2 ice⁵. This would allow the object to experience non-gravitational acceleration via outgassing from the heat of the sun. It would also explain the strange shape as melting from the sun on one side of the chunk could have been the cause of uneven ice removal. Overall this theory makes much sense as an explanation regarding the anomalies present in the object, however, Desch and Jackson’s backing of the statistical likeliness of this nitrogen iceberg appearing within our solar system is based upon the presumption that our planetary system is “typical” compared to others⁶. This may not be true. This is of high importance to the applicability of Desch and Jackson’s paper as they assert the idea that in order for a piece of a Pluto-like exoplanet to reach interstellar space and therefore have a high likeliness of reaching our solar system, an exoplanet similar in distance from its star to Neptune would need to exist so that objects within an “exo-Kuiper Belt” would have their orbits fully disturbed enough for ejection⁶. This study seeks to understand if the existence of planets as far away as Neptune exist to a large enough degree throughout the universe that the expulsion of fragments similar to the proposed nitrogen ice model of ‘Oumuamua from other systems is as likely as Desch and Jackson assert.
