An interstellar object is a natural body — like a comet or asteroid — that comes from outside our solar system and passes through it on a hyperbolic path, meaning it’s not bound by the Sun’s gravity.
Let's talk about the latest interstellar object that blew scientists mind with its unique feature -
Interstellar Object 3I Atlas news
- 3I/ATLAS was first detected on July 1, 2025 by the Asteroid Terrestrial‑impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) survey in Chile.
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It has a hyperbolic trajectory — meaning it is not bound to our Sun and is interstellar in origin (i.e., came from outside our solar system).
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It has made its closest approach to the Sun (perihelion) around 30 October 2025, at about 1.4 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun (~210 million km).
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It poses no threat to Earth yet but scientists are puzzled because of its unnatural behavior . Every typical comet brightens very slowly when they approach Sun but 3I Atlas blazing much faster than expected by scientists.
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When its observed by James Webb Telescope it has revealed a very unrealistic chemical make up- its Coma seen rich in Carbon Dioxide but lacking water vapour and other likely volatiles.
It may be the oldest comet-like object ever seen: analysis suggests it might come from the “thick disk” of the Milky Way and could pre-date our solar system.
Around September: images showed it “turning green” and exhibiting threshold-type activity (nickel + cyanide outgassing) as it heated up near the Sun.
What Loeb finds unusual about 3I/ATLAS
Loeb argues that this object shows features that are atypical for a comet or asteroid, including:
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The lack (or very weak presence) of a classical cometary tail. In his analysis of the high‐resolution image from the Hubble Space Telescope he notes:
“The image shows a fuzzy glow … the only elongation of the glow is toward the Sun … If the scattering of sunlight had been off dust particles, then these particles would have been pushed … and would have produced a tail behind the object.” Medium+1
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The trajectory is unusually aligned with the ecliptic (the plane of the planets’ orbits) and passes close to multiple planets, which he considers improbable if purely random. Medium+1
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A brightness implying a large size (he speculates on the order of kilometres in radius) combined with questions about how such a large interstellar rock would occur given our models of material in interstellar space. Medium
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The possibility of non‐gravitational acceleration or other anomalous behaviour (though he treats this with caution). Sky at Night Magazine
🎯 His hypotheses (including speculative ones)
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While Loeb says the most likely scenario is a natural object, he also treats the technological/alien origin hypothesis as a valid thought experiment. For example, in a blog post he wrote that “this cannot be ruled out, but requires better evidence to be viable.” Sky at Night Magazine+1
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He co‐authored/prepared work (on arXiv) where the possibility that 3I/ATLAS is technological and possibly hostile is discussed — as an exercise in exploring extreme possibilities. arXiv
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He proposes that investigation (even via spacecraft intercept) would be scientifically valuable given the stakes of discovering something truly novel.
New interesting Footage leaked from Japanese Space agency as everyone speculating though its is not confirmed. The comet looks like above object. As time will pass we will get to know about this interstellar visitor.
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