It's not an alien spaceship and it doesn't have a broken solar sail, mmkay ?
But Spitzer tracks asteroids and comets using the infrared energy, or heat, that they radiate, which can provide more specific information about an object's size than optical observations of reflected sunlight alone would.
The fact that 'Oumuamua was too faint for Spitzer to detect sets a limit on the object's total surface area. However, since the non-detection can't be used to infer shape, the size limits are presented as what 'Oumuamua's diameter would be if it were spherical. Using three separate models that make slightly different assumptions about the object's composition, Spitzer's non-detection limited 'Oumuamua's "spherical diameter" to 440 meters, 140 meters or perhaps as little as 100 meters. The wide range of results stems from the assumptions about 'Oumuamua's composition, which influences how visible (or faint) it would appear to Spitzer were it a particular size.
The new study also suggests that 'Oumuamua may be up to 10 times more reflective than the comets that reside in our solar system — a surprising result, according to the paper's authors.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/nasa-learns-more-about-interstellar-visitor-oumuamua
Sister blog of Physicists of the Caribbean in which I babble about non-astronomy stuff, because everyone needs a hobby
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