Interstellar visitor

[F2d5thCav]

@"nerb"#273 

Agree it is quite interesting.

For my part, I remain somewhat skeptical because I have no way of assessing their statements.  Hoping perhaps gortex may chime in on this.

[Ninurta]

@"nerb"#273 

Agree it is quite interesting.

For my part, I remain somewhat skeptical because I have no way of assessing their statements.  Hoping perhaps gortex may chime in on this.

It sounded like magick, alchemy, sorcery, or some combination of all 3 to me. It seems they believe that water just magically appears out of nowhere at some distance from the comet. So I'm skeptical, too. I've never, in my entire life, seen something come from nothing.

Maybe they're trying to somehow connect the comet to the Big Bang - another science fantasy where everything comes from nothing.

.

[Tecate]

I find this absolutely fascinating and I’m asking myself “If this is an ancient machine, to what end?”

Is this something that another civilization has built? Is it a drone? Is there someone aboard it?

Cool and freaky at the same time.

Tecate

[gortex]

@"nerb"#273 

Agree it is quite interesting.

For my part, I remain somewhat skeptical because I have no way of assessing their statements.  Hoping perhaps gortex may chime in on this.

The link doesn't work for me mate so I can't read the article , I think Atlas may be more than the sum of its parts due to the irregularities it displayed over the months we observed it , it's on its way past Jupiter right now and we've recently  discovered it's loaded with Methanol so the possibility of an Interstellar Alien booze cruise can't be ruled out.

“Observing 3I/ATLAS is like taking a fingerprint from another solar system,” said Nathan Roth, a research assistant professor at American University, in a statement. “The details reveal what it’s made of, and it’s bursting with methanol in a way we just don’t usually see in comets in our own solar system.”

When a typical comet nears the sun, ice inside the space rock turns to gas, leaving a trail of gases such as carbon monoxide, methane and ammonia in its wake—and sometimes a little methanol. But according to new measurements from the ground-based Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, the interstellar interloper is “heavily enriched” in methanol—indeed, far, far more methanol than astronomers would have expected.

The finding could offer clues to where 3I/ATLAS came from: a question that’s intrigued scientists since the comet’s discovery in July 2025. The research has been posted on the preprint server arXiv.org and is yet to be peer-reviewed.
Meanwhile Comet 3I/ATLAS is still going strong on its journey through our solar system—and our spacecraft are still keeping an eye on it.

In February a new image taken by the European Space Agency’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer spacecraft revealed that 3I/ATLAS, now past the sun, appeared as “white, glowing egg-shaped object” as it went by, according to the agency.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/artic...alcoholic/

Nanu nanu.


The question is why is it still glowing so brightly so far from the Sun ?
Hmmmm