A mystery interstellar object spotted last week by astronomers could be the oldest comet ever seen, according to scientists.<\/p>\n
Named 3I\/Atlas, it may be three billion years older than our own solar system, suggests the team from Oxford university.<\/p>\n
It is only the third time we have detected an object that has come from beyond our solar system.<\/p>\n
The preliminary findings were presented on Friday at the national meeting of the UK’s Royal Astronomical Society in Durham.<\/p>\n
“We’re all very excited by 3I\/Atlas,” University of Oxford astronomer Matthew Hopkins told BBC News. He had just finished his PhD studies when the object was discovered.<\/p>\n
He says it could be more than seven billion years old, and it may be the most remarkable interstellar visitor yet.<\/p>\n
3I\/Atlas was first spotted on 1 July 2025 by the Atlas survey telescope in Chile, when it was about 670 million km from the Sun.<\/p>\n
Since then astronomers around the world have been racing to identify its path and discover more details about it.<\/p>\n
Mr Hopkins believes it originated in the Milky Way’s “thick disk”. This is a group of ancient stars that orbit above and below the area where the Sun and most stars are located.<\/p>\n
The team believe that because 3I\/Atlas probably formed around an old star, it is made up of a lot of water ice.<\/p>\n
That means that as it approaches the Sun later this year, the energy from the Sun will heat the object’s surface, leading to blazes of vapour and dust.<\/p>\n
That could create a glowing tail.<\/p>\n
The researchers made their findings using a model developed by Mr Hopkins.<\/p>\n
“This is an object from a part of the galaxy we’ve never seen up close before,” said Prof Chris Lintott, co-author of the study.<\/p>\n
“We think there’s a two-thirds chance this comet is older than the solar system, and that it’s been drifting through interstellar space ever since.”<\/p>\n
Later this year, 3I\/Atlas should be visible from Earth using amateur telescopes.<\/p>\n
Before 3I\/Atlas soared into view, just two others had been seen. One was called 1I\/’Oumuamua, found in 2017 and another called 2I\/Borisov, discovered in 2019.<\/p>\n
Astronomers globally are currently gearing up to start using a new, very powerful telescope in Chile, called the Vera C Rubin. <\/p>\n
When it starts fully surveying the southern night sky later this year, scientists expect that it could discover between five and 50 new interstellar objects.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A mystery interstellar object spotted last week by astronomers could be the oldest comet ever seen, according to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1300,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[79,193],"class_list":["post-1299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1299\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}