Our visitor from deepest space is now departing from whence he came. Last Friday, the interstellar comet designated 3I/ATLAS completed its closest approach to Earth without crashing into us or throwing off an invading armada. In fact, “nearest” here means 168 million miles, or just under twice the distance from Earth to the sun. Wow! Avoided that one. From here, our friend from beyond the stars will continue his lonely quest through our solar system. Per Space.com3I/ATLAS will visit Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune in the coming years, eventually leaving us all behind sometime in 2028. Whatever you’re looking for there, I hope you find it, friend.
While our friend may not actually be an alien spacecraft (sorry everyone), it sure has blown everyone’s mind. It could be as old as the Milky Way galaxy itself. As the sun has melted the icy comet, it has emitted cyanide (which is somehow normal for comets), CO2 in unusual amounts, and even bizarre elements like the metals nickel and iron. It’s also only the third interstellar object ever detected in our solar system (hence the “3I” in the name), making it a scientific gold mine. This mysterious outsider wasn’t in town long, but this town may never be quite the same again.
The flight of 3I/ATLAS
Good thing ATLAS did its job there! It is designed to detect anything that could crash into us, and successfully saw this near miss coming. It would certainly be bad if, for example, ever-growing satellite constellations began to obscure all observatories to such an extent that they would become almost unusable. If that actually happens, we might not even know the next interstellar visitors are here. And if any of them, let’s say, want to make an impact, our first idea of ​​that might be upon landing.
#Goodbye #3IATLAS #interstellar #comet #close