3I/ATLAS is the third interstellar object ever found in our photo voltaic system. Telescope observations recommend it’s a roughly 7-mile-wide (11 kilometers) comet zooming at greater than 130,000 mph (210,000 km/h). Astronomers found it in early July because it emerged from past the orbit of Jupiter. An evaluation of the comet’s composition and unusually flat, straight trajectory revealed that it didn’t originate inside our cosmic neighborhood, and was possible ejected from a distant star system lengthy earlier than our solar ever shaped.
The unique comet has many peculiar properties, from its chemical composition to its giant dimension. This has fuelled hypothesis that the comet is an alien spacecraft deliberately guided right here. That’s nearly definitely not the case, but it surely doesn’t imply that astronomers aren’t enthusiastic about finding out it to raised perceive the circumstances round different stars, the early Milky Means, and the frontier of interstellar area. Reside Science will proceed to comply with the newest analysis because the comet reemerges from the far aspect of the solar in mid-November, changing into seen to Earth-based telescopes as soon as once more.
