Interstellar visitor

[Kenzo1]

Data from another in the line of telescopes looking at 3I/Atlas has been released and in line with the others the Very Large Telescope based in the Atacama Desert has found its own anomalies.

A new paper on spectroscopic data from the Very Large Telescope (accessible here) reported the surprising detection of nickel without iron in the plume of gas around 3I/ATLAS. Nickel without iron is a signature of industrial production of nickel alloys. This data constitutes a new anomaly of 3I/ATLAS. Natural comets generically show iron and nickel simultaneously, as both elements are produced together in the ejecta of supernova explosions.

Is this anomaly another clue for a possible technological origin of 3I/ATLAS? The paper suggests chemical formation through the nickel carbonyl channel which is an extremely rare and exotic possibility in comets, whereas it is a standard technology for industrial nickel refining.
The inferred mass loss rate of nickel for 3I/ATLAS is about 5 grams per second at a heliocentric distance of 2.8 times the Earth-Sun separation (AU). It exhibits a dramatic rise with decreasing distance from the sun, with a power-law index of -8.43 (+/-0.79).

The spectroscopic data on the plume surrounding 3I/ATLAS also reveals cyanide (CN), with a mass loss rate of about 20 grams per second at 2.85 AU and an even steeper dependence on heliocentric distance to the power of -9.38 (+/-1.2).

https://avi-loeb.medium.com/a-steeply-ri...6e20674303

The luminosity of the object is still causing problems , is its brightness due it being even bigger than we thought or could it be producing its own light ? , questions I'm sure will be answered before perihelium ... or perhaps shortly after when it changes course and takes up orbit.

Maybe an alien mining/refining platform?