{"id":548338,"date":"2026-04-24T13:36:21","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T13:36:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/548338\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T13:36:21","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T13:36:21","slug":"scientists-traced-interstellar-comet-3i-atlas-to-an-extremely-cold-origin-sciencealert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/548338\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists Traced Interstellar Comet 3I\/ATLAS to an Extremely Cold Origin : ScienceAlert"},"content":{"rendered":"

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) \u2013 The comet that rambled past us from another star<\/a> last year likely originated in a cold, isolated corner of the galaxy that had yet to gel into its own solar system, astronomers reported<\/a> Thursday.<\/p>\n

Comet 3I\/ATLAS<\/a> is only the third interstellar visitor<\/a> to be confirmed and quite possibly the oldest.<\/p>\n

Scientists estimate it could be up to 11 billion years old, more than twice as old as the Sun.<\/p>\n

\"YouTube frameborder=”0\u2033 allow=”accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share” referrerpolicy=”strict-origin-when-cross-origin” allowfullscreen><\/p>\n

A team led by the University of Michigan used the ALMA observatory in Chile’s Atacama Desert to examine the comet last fall.<\/p>\n

The errant but harmless iceball was discovered last summer, giving NASA and the European Space Agency plenty of time to aim multiple space telescopes at it as it zoomed past Mars<\/a> in October and made its closest approach to Earth in December.<\/p>\n

It’s now well past Jupiter<\/a> on its way out of our Solar System for good, still visible only to the professionals.<\/p>\n

In the study, scientists said they detected extremely high amounts of deuterium, or heavy hydrogen, in comet 3I\/ATLAS’s water.<\/p>\n

\"AnInterstellar comet 3I\/ATLAS has a remarkably high content of deuterium in its water. This form of hydrogen is comparatively less abundant in our Solar System. (Hans Anderson\/Michigan News<\/a>)<\/p>\n

That suggests that the comet originated in a place considerably colder \u2013 before the star of this solar system even formed \u2013 than our own cosmic neighborhood, said the University of Michigan’s Teresa Paneque-Carreno.<\/p>\n

While our Sun may have been surrounded by other newborn stars as it was forming, she noted, this comet’s home star could have been more of a loner, leading to less heating and colder conditions.<\/p>\n

\"GraphicAn artist’s impression compares the semi-heavy water content of interstellar comet 3I\/ATLAS (left) and Earth (right). Insets illustrate the relative abundance of deuterated water (HDO) molecules. 3I\/ATLAS contains over 30 times more HDO than is found in Earth’s oceans. (NSF\/AUI\/NSF NRAO\/M.Weiss<\/a>)<\/p>\n

The comet’s precise place of origin is still unknown.<\/p>\n

Observations by the Hubble Space Telescope put the size of its nucleus somewhere between a quarter-mile and 3.5 miles (440 meters and 5.6 kilometers).<\/p>\n

Comet 3I\/ATLAS is hurtling away at 137,000 mph (220,000 kph).<\/p>\n

\"Subscribe<\/a><\/p>\n

Linking all these “puzzle pieces together may give an idea to how the planet-forming conditions were at these early times,” Paneque-Carreno said in an email.<\/p>\n

Related: A Giant Telescope Searched 3I\/ATLAS For Signs of Aliens. Here’s Why.<\/a><\/p>\n

The first known interstellar object to stray into our celestial backyard \u2013 Oumuamua \u2013 was discovered by a telescope in Hawaii in 2017.<\/p>\n

Comet 2I\/Borisov followed in 2019, named for the Crimean amateur astronomer who first spotted it.<\/p>\n

The findings were published in Nature Astronomy<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) \u2013 The comet that rambled past us from another star last year likely originated…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":548339,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[59,90,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-548338","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=548338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548338\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/548339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}