while Prerecovery Observations Suggest Activity
3I/ATLAS is the third confirmed interstellar object and by far the largest. High-resolution images from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory show a nucleus about seven miles, or eleven kilometers, wide, dwarfing the earlier visitors 2I Borisov and ʻOumuamua. Its orbital eccentricity is well above one, telling astronomers that this traveller will swing through the system only once before heading back to deep space.
Spectroscopy with the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility and Gemini-South reveals abundant water ice mixed with carbon-rich minerals and silicates. The water lacks the heavy-isotope signature common in solar-system comets, suggesting it may have frozen as long as seven billion years ago in a different protoplanetary disk. These clues point strongly toward a natural comet rather than an engineered craft, yet the debate is not settled.
The path of 3I/ATLAS is steeply retrograde. On 3 October 2025 it will pass Mars at about eighteen million miles. Earth observatories and a planned solar-gas animation will trace a line from the L1 point to Mars to illustrate how spacecraft at both locations can monitor the encounter. Perihelion follows on 29 October at roughly 1.36 AU, where jets of vapor will erupt from freshly warmed crust. Early November brings a more distant pass of Venus at about 0.7 AU, and on 19 December the comet will be 170 million miles from Earth, close enough for James Webb and Rubin to study its coma. A final approach to Jupiter on 16 March 2026 takes it within 54 million kilometers of the giant planet.
A separate team led by Avi Loeb proposes that several coincidences hint at artificial origin. They note the object’s high inbound speed, its near-retrograde inclination almost aligned with the ecliptic, and its sequence of close passes to Venus, Mars, and Jupiter. Loeb argues that perihelion on the far side of the Sun could hide any maneuvering and that the comet entered the outer solar system about eight thousand years ago, roughly when human record-keeping began.
Most comet experts remain unconvinced. The lack of detectable volatiles such as cyanogen and diatomic carbon is expected at the object’s current distance; these gases typically appear only after deeper solar heating. Images already show faint dust jets and a classic coma, supporting the icy-nucleus interpretation. Continued monitoring from ground-based observatories, Mars orbiters, and space telescopes should reveal whether 3I/ATLAS behaves like a pristine comet or something entirely unexpected.
Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:40 3I/ATLAS Timeline of Events
4:46 Avi Loeb's Suggests 3I/ATLAS Could be an Alien Probe
9:00 How Oumuamua Compares with 3I/ATLAS
YouTube link: https://youtu.be/bnpp6zfYcag?si=mEo8SInS538U2qic
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