Keyword: interstellar
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A Harvard astrophysicist who believes the Manhattan-sized comet hurtling towards Earth could possibly be fueled by alien technology has invited Kim Kardashian to join his research team — after she got a quick response from the federal government. Kardashian asked NASA’s acting administrator Sean Duffy on X last week to spill the “tea” on 3I/ATLAS, the mysterious interstellar comet that’s baffled scientists like Avi Loeb with its anomalous qualities. “Great question!” Duffy promptly responded to Kardashian’s query. “@NASA’s observations show that this is the third interstellar comet to pass through our solar system. No aliens. No threat to life here...
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Explanation: How typical is our Solar System? Studying 3I/ATLAS, a comet just passing through, is providing clues. Confirmed previous interstellar visitors include an asteroid, a comet, a meteor, and a gas wind dominated by hydrogen and helium. Comet 3I/ATLAS appears relatively normal when compared to Solar System comets, therefore providing more evidence that our Solar System is a somewhat typical star system. For example, Comet 3I/ATLAS has a broadly similar chemical composition and ejected dust. The featured image was captured last week from Texas and shows a green coma, a wandering blue-tinted ion tail likely deflected by our Sun's wind,...
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Does 3I/ATLAS have interstellar headlights? Harvard scientist Avi Loeb speculated that NASA’s recently released photos of 3I/ATLAS could potentially point to its artificial origins — and even wondered if the so-called comet was purposely targeting and sweeping meteorites out of its path. He posited his theory in a viral new blog post on Medium. “The extended glow is ahead of the object, not trailing it as expected for a cometary tail,” the astrophysicist told The Post. “In the case of a technological object, it could be a beam of particles or light illuminating the path forward to avoid the hazards...
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Explanation: Now outbound after its perihelion or closest approach to the Sun on October 29, Comet 3I/ATLAS is only the third known interstellar object to pass through our fair Solar System. Its greenish coma and faint tails are seen against a background of stars in the constellation Virgo in this view from planet Earth, recorded with a small telescope on November 14. But this interstellar interloper is the subject of an on-going, unprecedented Solar System-wide observing campaign involving spacecraft and space telescopes from Earth orbit to the surface of Mars and beyond. And while the comet from another star-system has...
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Hubble captured this image of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS on July 21, 2025, when the comet was 277 million miles from Earth. Hubble shows that the comet has a teardrop-shaped cocoon of dust coming off its solid, icy nucleus. Credit: NASA, ESA, David Jewitt (UCLA); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)NASA will host a live event at 3 p.m. EST, Wednesday, Nov. 19, to share imagery of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS collected by a number of the agency’s missions. The event will take place at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.Comet 3I/ATLAS, discovered by the NASA-funded ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact...
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For the first time, astronomers have picked up a radio signal from the mysterious interstellar visitor as it speeds through our Solar System. South Africa's MeerKAT radio telescope detected absorption lines from OH molecules...Harvard professor Avi Loeb, who has been studying 3I/ATLAS since the summer, said: 'These molecules leave a distinct radio signature that telescopes like MeerKAT can pick up.'... Optical images captured on November 9 reveal that 3I/ATLAS is ejecting enormous jets of material both toward and away from the sun. The jets stretch nearly 600,000 miles sunward and almost 1.8 million miles in the opposite direction, roughly the...
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Behind the Sun, the comet appears to show signs of acceleration beyond what is expected by gravity. And for reasons not yet clear, it appears to have changed color. Ateam of astronomers monitoring interstellar object 3I/ATLAS have found something a little surprising. Our third confirmed interstellar visitor appears to have changed color for the second time. Meanwhile, another team finds that the comet has begun to show signs of non-gravitational acceleration as it approached perihelion. For those of you who haven't been following the story of our third interstellar visitor, on July 1, astronomers at the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert...
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JUICE might be bound to Jupiter, but it is fortuitously in place to peek at this object from beyond the stars. Comet 3I/ATLAS looking stunning! Image credit: International Gemini Observatory /NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/Shadow the Scientist, Image Processing: J. Miller & M. Rodriguez (International Gemini Observatory/NSF NOIRLab), T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage/NSF NOIRLab), M. Zamani (NSF NOIRLab) (CC BY 4.0) ================================================================ Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS is about to be studied from not one but two locations in deep space. The comet has just gone through perihelion, the closest approach to the Sun, but unfortunately, it is on the opposite side of our star....
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Comet 3I/ATLAS is heading toward a rare encounter with NASA’s Europa Clipper, offering a unique opportunity to uncover secrets of the cosmos. © Image credit: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/Shadow the Scientist NASA’s Europa Clipper mission, currently on its way to Jupiter, may soon encounter a unique scientific opportunity. The interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS is about to cross the path of the spacecraft’s trajectory, potentially showering it with charged particles from its ion tail. This rare alignment could provide the closest look yet at material from beyond our solar system, offering a glimpse into the distant star systems where such comets originated. A...
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I have held off on covering this because I wanted to see how things shook out and whether the “research” on this was valid, but now that Glenn Beck is covering it, I want to at least bring it to your attention. Is a Manhattan-sized ALIEN SHIP hurtling towards Earth?! Well, the short answer at this point is possibly so! Allow me to explain why…. Many believe it is shaped with structured geometric formations that don’t occur naturally in nature: It is reportedly made of a never-before-seen metal alloy mixture: Here are a bunch more: In fact, here’s a short...
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...Scientists have been keeping a close watch on those changes, both to ensure there’s nothing unexplainable by our current understanding, but also to compare 3I/ATLAS to both previous interstellar visitors as well as comets in our own solar system. A recent paper from European researchers describes how the changes in a particular material ratio in 3I/ATLAS’ coma fit with our current understanding of cometary geology.That ratio is the nickel to iron (Ni/FE) abundance ratio. It has been measured for two decades, including on twenty in-system comets as well as 2I/Borisov, the last known interstellar visitor our solar system had. However,...
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Shocking new images of the interstellar visitor have revealed that it has mysteriously shrunk in size weeks ahead of its closest approach to Earth. NASA recently calculated the change, noting it shed 13 percent of its material after 3I/ATLAS soaring past the sun last month. Harvard Professor Avi Loeb, who has been analyzing the object since the summer, noted that this sudden shrinkage was directly tied to the noticeable change in the interstellar object's course as it moved closer to the sun. 'For a typical comet, this should have resulted in a massive coma with dust and gas that would...
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3I/ATLAS is a mad topic surrounded by speculations about aliens and other controversial takes. But there's a lot of real science about this fascinating objects. So, in this video we put together all the major discoveries and scientific papers about 3I/ATLAS. 3I/ATLAS Is Extremely Weird. But Not In The Ways You Think | 23:39 Fraser Cain | 476K subscribers | 74,119 views | October 10, 2025
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Recent images purportedly depicting the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS during its closest approach to Mars last week have erupted in controversy online, as many took to social media with theories about what the object’s unusual shape could mean about its nature and origins. The new images obtained last week by NASA’s Perseverance rover appear to show 3I/ATLAS streaking through the Martian night sky as it passed through the field of view of the robotic explorer’s Right Navigation Camera (Navcam) from its position in Jezero Crater. The recent imagery was originally uploaded to NASA’s multimedia page in raw format. Since that time,...
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We’re gonna need a bigger telescope. Scientists have discovered that the 3I/ATLAS — a Manhattan-sized interstellar object that potentially has alien tech — is much larger than previously thought, according to a new report. First discovered by NASA on July 1, the cosmic anomaly has been under watch by Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb and his team as it shoots across the solar system. The object, which is believed to be a comet, reportedly has interstellar origins, making it the third ever object from beyond the solar system ever detected after ‘Oumuamua, which was discovered in 2017, and 2I/Borisov in 2019....
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The “Wow! Signal” was detected on August 15, 1977 as a strong narrowband radio signal by Ohio State University’s Big Ear radio telescope. Its origin was inferred to be extraterrestrial. The latest natural explanation (accessible here) hypothesized that the “Wow! Signal” was caused by a sudden brightening of the hydrogen line emitted from an interstellar cloud, triggered by a strong transient radio source, such as a flare from a highly magnetized neutron star (magnetar). The “Wow! Signal” originated from the sky coordinates of Right Ascension (RA)=19h25m=291 degrees and Declination (Dec)=-27 degrees. On August 12, 1977, the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS was...
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Although most scientists have concluded that the mysterious object is comet, NASA's Perseverance rover on the Martian surface sent back photos showing what appears to be a massive cylindrical shape.
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According to the team the polarimetric behavior is "significantly different from all known comets (either interstellar or bound to our Solar System)". 3I/ATLAS imaged by NASA’s Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer (SPHEREx). Image credit: NASA/SPHEREx. ================================================================= Ateam of astronomers have presented the first polarimetric observations of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS, finding that it has extreme negative polarization. On July 1, 2025, astronomers spotted an object moving through the Solar System at nearly twice the velocity of previous interstellar visitors ‘Oumuamua and Comet Borisov. The object was confirmed to be an interstellar comet with...
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Scientists using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have confirmed the presence of electrically-charged molecules in space shaped like soccer balls, shedding light on the mysterious contents of the interstellar medium (ISM) - the gas and dust that fills interstellar space. The molecules … are a form of carbon called "Buckminsterfullerene," also known as "Buckyballs," which consists of 60 carbon atoms (C60) arranged in a hollow sphere. C60 has been found in some rare cases on Earth in rocks and minerals, and can also turn up in high-temperature combustion soot. C60 has been seen in space before. However, this is the first...
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