Men's JournalScientists Make Surprising 3I/ATLAS Discovery — But It's Not AliensJessica McBride
Thu, December 4, 2025 at 12:08 AM EST
3 min read
31/Atlas is a mysterious object that has sparked speculation about aliens and scientific fascination because it comes from a different solar system.
NASA has insisted it's a comet, albeit one with unique characteristics, and created an entire website to answer questions about the object. Harvard Professor Avi Loeb told NewsNation’s Elizabeth Vargas that he believes "the interstellar object could be an alien vessel," which NASA has challenged. Now, scientists have authored a non-peer-reviewed study that made a surprising find:
*The object "could be covered in erupting 'ice volcanoes'" as it gets closer to the sun, according to Live Science. "3I/ATLAS is only the second confirmed cometary object known to enter the Solar System from interstellar space," the journal article,
published on Arxiv, says.
*3I/Atlas shares compositional traits with "dwarf planets and other objects that orbit the sun beyond Neptune," the study found.
*Specifically, the researchers believe the object is "experiencing cryovolcanism." They added, "We propose that the combination of elevated metal abundance and abundant water ice can account for the unusual coma morphology and chemical products reported to date."
"We were all surprised," study lead author Josep Trigo-Rodríguez, told Live Science. "Being a comet formed in a remote planetary system, it is remarkable that the mixture of materials forming the surface of the body has resemblance with trans-Neptunian objects, bodies formed at [a] large distance from the Sun but belonging to our planetary system."
The Experts Were Able to Obtain Photos of AI/Atlas to Back Up Their Reporthttps://bsky.app/profile/joseptrigo.bsky.social/post/3m6hkfigiy22uThe researchers "snapped the highest-resolution images yet of jets of gas and dust particles coming off the comet," according to Live Science.
But some are still clinging to the alien theory.
“Let’s wait and see,” Loeb told Elizabeth Vargas Reports on November 19. “Bureaucrats or unimaginative scientists want us to believe in the expected, but the rest of us know the best is yet to come.” He has identified 12 anomalies in the object.
According to NASA, the Hubble telescope captured images of the object in July that "revealed a teardrop-shaped cocoon of dust coming off of the comet's solid, icy nucleus."
NASA calls the object a comet outright. "Observations as of Aug. 20, 2025, indicate that the upper limit on its diameter is 3.5 miles (5.6 kilometers), though it could be as small as 1,444 feet (440 meters) across," NASA says on its website.
"On July 1, the NASA-funded ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) survey telescope in Rio Hurtado, Chile, first reported observations of a comet that originated from interstellar space," NASA added.
The comet "poses no threat to Earth and will remain at a distance of at least 1.6 astronomical units (about 150 million miles or 240 million km)," NASA wrote. "It is currently about 4.5 au (about 416 million miles or 670 million km) from the Sun. 3I/ATLAS will reach its closest approach to the Sun around Oct. 30, at a distance of 1.4 au (about 130 million miles or 210 million km) — just inside the orbit of Mars."
Continued NASA: "The interstellar comet’s size and physical properties are being investigated by astronomers around the world. 3I/ATLAS should remain visible to ground-based telescopes through September, after which it will pass too close to the Sun to observe. It is expected to reappear on the other side of the Sun by early December, allowing for renewed observations."
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/scientists-surprising-3i-atlas-discovery-050817983.html
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