{"id":191716,"date":"2025-09-30T07:03:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-30T07:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/191716\/"},"modified":"2025-09-30T07:03:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T07:03:09","slug":"interstellar-comet-3i-atlas-far-larger-than-scientists-first-thought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/191716\/","title":{"rendered":"Interstellar comet 3I\/ATLAS far larger than scientists first thought"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!\n <\/p>\n

A comet traveling outside the solar system and heading toward the Earth is much larger than scientists first believed, a scientist has detailed in a new report.<\/a><\/p>\n

Avi Loeb claims the comet could even be an artifact of alien technology<\/a> rather than a natural body because it weighs more than 33 billion tons and spans at least 3.1 miles across.<\/p>\n

The object, named 3I\/ATLAS, is only the third interstellar visitor ever detected, after Oumuamua in 2017 and 2I\/Borisov in 2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n

SCIENTISTS DISCOVER ANCIENT RADIO SIGNALS FROM DISTANT GALAXY CLUSTER<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Astronomers <\/p>\n

Astronomers discovered an unusual object entered our solar system earlier this month, but a Harvard physicist is sounding alarms that the object could be an alien probe. (NASA, ESA, David Jewitt (UCLA); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI))<\/p>\n

The astrophysicist also revealed in a Medium blog post <\/a>that new data and measurements indicate the comet\u2019s nucleus is more massive than first estimated.<\/p>\n

3I\/ATLAS<\/a> was spotted in July with observations showing the comet is shedding huge amounts of carbon dioxide and dust as it races toward the Sun.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Loeb and his colleagues calculated a slight “non-gravitational acceleration” in its movement caused by “outgassing” which suggests the object must be far heavier than early models assumed.<\/p>\n

ASTRONOMERS MAKE GROUNDBREAKING DISCOVERY ABOUT LARGEST COMET EVER OBSERVED FLYING THROUGH DEEP SPACE<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Astronomers <\/p>\n

Astronomers discovered an unusual object entered our solar system earlier this month, but a Harvard physicist is sounding alarms that the object could be an alien probe. (ATLAS\/University of Hawaii\/NASA)<\/p>\n

The comet dwarfs Oumuamua, just a quarter-mile long, and Borisov, about 0.6 miles across.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“This makes 3I\/ATLAS three to five orders of magnitude more massive than the previous two interstellar objects we\u2019ve observed,” Loeb wrote in his post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

ANCIENT \u2018STICK FIGURES\u2019 ON BEACH ONCE AGAIN VISIBLE AT TOURIST DESTINATION<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Comet\" <\/p>\n

Comet C\/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) appears in the sky over Molfetta, Italy, on September 28, 2024. (Getty \u00a0Images)<\/p>\n

Next week the comet will pass within 1.67 million miles of Mars\u2019 orbit <\/a>while also coming close to both Jupiter and Venus.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Loeb has urged NASA <\/a>to turn the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter towards the object and said that even a single bright pixel could fine tune estimates of its true dimensions.<\/p>\n

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP<\/a><\/p>\n

“We should not decide about the nature of 3I\/ATLAS based on the chemical composition of its skin,” Loeb wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“For the same reason, we should not judge a book by its cover,” he added.<\/p>\n

Emma Bussey is a breaking news writer for Fox News Digital. Before joining Fox, she worked at The Telegraph with the U.S. overnight team, across desks including foreign, politics, news, sport and culture.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles! A comet traveling outside the solar system and heading toward…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":191717,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[718,8319,79,193],"class_list":{"0":"post-191716","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-nasa","9":"tag-planet-earth","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-space"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191716","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=191716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191716\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/191717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}