On July 1 of this year, the Sweetheart Telescope Last LindATLASfor its acronym in English), in Chile, he was the first to inform about his observations of an object from distant places in the universe. It was the first look of humanity on comet 3i/Atlas, the third interstellar object that has been registered in our solar system.
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According to the Nasathis is the third object from outside our solar system that has been discovered so far. These types of objects receive the denomination of interstellar because they are travelers lost by the universe that, without apparent reason, crossed their career with our neighborhood.
“They are fragments of other planetary systems, expelled for gravitational instabilities, collisions or close encounters with gaseous giants. They thus become wandering material, floating for millions of years in the vast galactic vacuum until, by chance, they cross the solar neighborhood, ”explains the astrophysicist Santiago Vargas, professor at the National University of Colombia.
Given how little we know about its composition and its origin, this object has aroused the curiosity of the scientific community that observes it carefully from terrestrial observatories in its passage through the solar system. Analysis that will be possible While this kite remains visible to land telescopes until September 2025. After this, his trip will take him too close to the sun, preventing his observation until the beginning of December.
What is done? Is it an extraterrestrial ship? Where did it come out? Will it collide against the earth? This is what we know so far about this space shipwrecked.
This image shows the observation of comet 3i/Atlas when it was discovered on July 1, 2025. Photo:Atlas/University of hawaái/nasa
Does it represent danger to Earth?
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According to NASA, The 3I/Atlas comet does not represent a threat to the earth and will remain away from our planet. The closest that will be approaching is around 1.8 astronomical units (about 270 million kilometers). In addition, they point out that it will reach its point closest to the Sun around October 30, 2025, at a distance of around 1.4 Au (210 million kilometers, or 130 million miles), just within the orbit of Mars.
Where does it come from?
This object was formed in another stellar system and somehow was expelled to interstellar space, which is the space between the stars, they explain from NASA. For millions or even billions of years, it has moved until it recently reached our solar system. Experts have calculated that it has been approaching since the General Directorate of the Sagittarius constellationwhich is where the central region of our galaxy is located, the Milky Way. When it was discovered, 3i/Atlas was about 670 million kilometers from the Sun, within Jupiter’s orbit.
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Is it an asteroid or a kite?
Astronomers still do not know how big 3I/Atlas is but, from the observations, they can see that It is active, which means that it has an icy nucleus and a comma (a bright gas and dust cloud that surrounds a kite as it approaches the sun). That is why they classify it as a kite and not as an asteroid.
Is it a spacecraft?
The American theoretical physicist Avi counts is among the scientists who have raised The possibility that “3i/Atlas was a probe sent by an alien hostile civilization”. However, so far there is no scientific evidence that this is a reality. However, although scientists such as the astrophysicist Jorge Zuluaga state that it is also not possible to rule out that possibility, however delayed, in science it is common that he is not spent much time to explore the less unlikely hypotheses but that those that are most likely are discarded. “If all are discarded, the option that is left, however unlikely it has to be true,” he says.
How old is it?
According to the astronomer of the University of Oxford, Matthew Hopkins, he could be more than 7,000 million years old and be the most relevant interstellar finding to date “. Unlike the two previous objects that entered the solar system from other parts of the cosmos, 3i/Atlas seems to travel with an steep trajectory through the galaxy, which suggests that it originated in the thick disc of the Milky Way, a population of ancient stars that orbit above and below the thin plane where the sun and most stars reside.
3i/atlas Photo:Nasa
What is done?
Matthew Hopkins’s research predicts that, because 3i/Atlas probably formed around an old star and thick disc, should be rich in water from water.
At what speed does it move?
According to NASA, it moves very fast. When it was discovered, this interstellar kite was traveling about 221,000 kilometers per hour, or 61 kilometers per second, and its speed will increase as you approach the sun.
How many interstellar objects have been discovered?
This is the third known interstellar object that has been observed. ‘Oumuamuadiscovered in 2017, was the first known interstellar object; The second was 2i/borisovwhich was discovered in 2019.
What can the study of this object teach us?
According to Jorge Zuluaga, knowing that there are this type of bodies allows us to understand how many of these rocks are there and how many can be sneaking into the solar system.
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In addition, the astrophysicist points out that one of the strange things of this body, which has led some authors to consider unlikely hypothesis such as that it is an extraterrestrial probe, is that what we know so far of these pieces of vagrants of ice teaches us that the bodies as large as this, although very numerous out there, are not the most abundant.
“Due to simple probability laws, one should not happen so big and so close to the sun in thousands of years. But perhaps this new information allows us to reassess what we expected and re -estimate the number of bodies thus floating among the star,” says the scientist.
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