{"id":184371,"date":"2025-09-27T02:46:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-27T02:46:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/184371\/"},"modified":"2025-09-27T02:46:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-27T02:46:08","slug":"sun-fires-energy-blast-straight-at-mysterious-interstellar-object-cruising-through-solar-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/184371\/","title":{"rendered":"Sun Fires Energy Blast Straight at Mysterious Interstellar Object Cruising Through Solar System"},"content":{"rendered":"

The interstellar object dubbed 3I\/ATLAS has been fascinating astronomers since its discovery in early July<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The object, generally believed to be a comet, is screaming through the solar system at around 137,000 mph, and is expected to make a close pass of Mars as soon as next week<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And it recently met some considerable resistance as well during its unusual visit. Earlier this week, the Sun unleashed a ferocious flurry of plasma and magnetic fields, called a coronal mass ejection, straight at 3I\/ATLAS.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a fascinating and exceedingly rare collision, as SpaceWeather.com reports<\/a>, the result of which remains speculative.<\/p>\n

Astronomers have previously observed comets originating from within the solar system colliding with the Sun\u2019s plasma. For instance, in April 2007, NASA\u2019s STEREO A spacecraft watched as a comet dubbed Encke temporarily lost its tail after being hit by a \u201cwave of solar material.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe effect, however, was only temporary \u2014 within minutes a new tail formed,\u201d NASA explained in a 2015 blog post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

3I\/ATLAS has repeatedly caught researchers off guard. For instance, observations found that it features a\u00a0much higher ratio<\/a>\u00a0of carbon dioxide to water than expected. Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb has also pondered its strange trajectory<\/a>, which takes it suspiciously close to Jupiter, Mars, and Venus.<\/p>\n

Next week, it\u2019s expected to come\u00a0within just 1.67 million miles of Mars<\/a>, in what Loeb called<\/a> a \u201cremarkable fine-tuning of its path.\u201d (Loeb has raised the possibility<\/a> that the object is some form of extraterrestrial technology, though NASA has pushed back<\/a> on that idea.)<\/p>\n

The astronomer has also suggested that the object could be far more massive<\/a> than the previous two known interstellar objects, concluding in a recent blog post that its mass \u201cmust be bigger than 33 billion tons,\u201d and measuring at least 3.1 miles across. The prior objects, \u2018Oumuamua and 2I\/Borisov, measured roughly a quarter mile and 0.6 miles in length, respectively.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, astronomers observed 3I\/ATLAS becoming extremely bright as it approached its perihelion, or the closest point to the Sun, as it was being exposed to far more solar radiation.<\/p>\n

Most of that brightness increase has been in the green part of the visible light spectrum, suggesting a \u201csurge of gas production as the comet nears the Sun,\u201d according to SpaceWeather. \u201cThe key compound is diatomic carbon (C2), which glows emerald when energized by solar UV radiation.\u201d<\/p>\n

How it fared during this week\u2019s coronal mass ejection remains unclear. Hopefully, scientists will catch a glimpse of 3I\/ATLAS as it rips by Mars next week to find out.<\/p>\n

More on 3I\/ATLAS: Mysterious Object Screaming Toward Mars Is Huge and Far More Massive Than Scientists Thought, According to New Paper<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The interstellar object dubbed 3I\/ATLAS has been fascinating astronomers since its discovery in early July. The object, generally…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":184372,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[14459,13386,718,79,108618,780],"class_list":["post-184371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-avi-loeb","tag-coronal-mass-ejection","tag-nasa","tag-science","tag-solar-material","tag-solar-system"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184371","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=184371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}