Interstellar visitor

[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