A snapshot of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS obtained during July at the Gemini South Observatory in Chile(Image credit: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/Shadow the ScientistImage Processing: J. Miller & M. Rodriguez (International Gemini Observatory/NSF NOIRLab), T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage/NSF NOIRLab), M. Zamani (NSF NOIRLab))
As it surges toward the core of our solar system, astronomers may be drawing nearer to ascertaining the age and provenance of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS.
A recent investigation that models the past 4 million years of the comet’s voyage through the Milky Way proposes that the interstellar arrival originated from a remote location — perhaps stemming from the untamed boundary where the galaxy’s most ancient and most modern stars intersect. Should that be accurate, the comet could be a vestige of the early galaxy, predating Earth’s sun by billions of years.
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Galactic grand tour
This extraterrestrial arrival is presently undertaking a months-long exploratory journey across our inner solar system, executing a near approach to Mars on Friday (Oct. 3) and prepared to achieve its nearest passage by the sun on Oct. 30, according to NASA. Subsequently, it will proceed outwards toward interstellar space again, transiting Jupiter in March of 2026 before finally vanishing from sight. The comet presents no hazard to Earth.
While 3I/ATLAS’s instantaneous trajectory is straightforward to foresee, determining its place of origin poses a greater challenge.
Propelling at roughly 130,000 miles per hour (210,000 kmh), a record among interstellar objects, the rogue ice mass has been accelerating for millennia, if not eons. This makes it susceptible to the gravitational influences exerted by an untold quantity of Milky Way stars. Mirroring how NASA utilizes the gravitational pull of our solar system’s planets to propel spacecraft into more distant orbits, 3I/ATLAS could have readily been diverted from its original path by the gravity of enormous stars cutting across its course.
Currently, fresh investigation disseminated on the preprint server arXiv represents the foremost endeavor thus far to ascertain the comet’s roots by examining which adjacent stars, if any, might have swayed its orbit.
Employing data from the European Space Agency’s now-decommissioned Gaia space telescope, the study authors traced the comet’s path retroactively 4.27 million years and recognized 62 neighboring stars that the interstellar entity likely encountered along its progression. Leveraging Gaia’s high-resolution information on the stars’ movements, speeds, and dimensions, the study authors surmised that none of them substantially modified the comet’s orbit — hinting that it did not emerge from any vicinity near us.
A chart from the team’s research paper illustrating proximate stars that have engaged with comet 3I/ATLAS. The team concluded that none of the stars significantly affected the interstellar entity’s path.
“We have ascertained that none of the stars in the solar vicinity can elucidate the trajectory and high speed of 3I/ATLAS,” stated lead study author Xabier Pérez-Couto, an astrophysics postgraduate student at Spain’s Universidade da Coruña, to Live Science via email. The researchers noted in their paper that only one nearby star, approximating 70% the mass of the sun, seems to have influenced the comet’s path at all, but solely by a trifling amount.
This steered the team to hypothesize that “3I/ATLAS is an exceedingly ancient object, that has been traversing for [billions of years], and that its genesis resides on the periphery of the thin disk,” Pérez-Couto conveyed.
Object from the wild frontier?
What confers such distinctiveness to this? Spiral galaxies like the Milky Way separate their stars across a thin disk and a thick disk. Bisecting the central protuberance of our galaxy, the younger and smaller thin disk is conceived to house the overwhelming majority of the Milky Way’s stars and star-generating gases — most of which are replete with elements heavier than hydrogen and helium, amassed from the earlier lineages of stars that existed and perished prior to them. In contrast, the more expansive thick disk, encompassing the perimeters of the thin disk, has long suspended its star formation. It harbors a more diminutive — yet notably more venerable — sampling of stars that are deficient in heavy metals, according to Swinburne University of Technology in Australia.
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Should comet 3I/ATLAS genuinely stem from the border of these two disks, it might denote that the object is incredibly ancient — perhaps 10 billion years in age, rendering it more than double the lifespan of our approximately 4 billion-year-old sun. Pérez-Couto suggests that the comet was likely “ejected from the early disk of a nascent planetary system,” potentially establishing it as a valuable relic of the ancient Milky Way.
However, the current investigation recognizes the confines of its methodology: by concentrating on nearby stars, the scrutiny solely accounts for a mere handful of million years of the comet’s extensive chronology, rendering its precise source still considerably vague. As 3I/ATLAS persists in traversing through the solar system, scientific apparatus on Earth and Mars, along with those orbiting Jupiter, will soon possess the chance to scrutinize it in considerably enhanced detail. Deciphering the interstellar object’s makeup will furnish indispensable indications to its cosmic place of birth — and potentially unlock an invaluable gateway into our galaxy’s ancestry.
TOPICSMilky Way
Brandon SpecktorSocial Links NavigationEditor
Brandon functions as the space/physics editor at Live Science. His compositions have been featured in The Washington Post, Reader’s Digest, CBS.com, the Richard Dawkins Foundation website and other publications. He possesses a bachelor’s degree in creative writing from the University of Arizona, complemented by minors in journalism and media arts. He relishes writing predominantly concerning space, geoscience and the enigmas of the universe.
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