The latest analysis by the James Webb Space Telescope of the interstellar object 3I/Atlas

All the telescopes in the world are looking for gaps to analyze this object, because regardless of whether it's extraterrestrial or not, it's an interstellar object, which is reason enough to investigate it no matter what. It's a priority object, because it's not going to be here forever; it's going to leave, unless it ends up coming for us.

It will be close to the sun on October 29, which is its closest approach to the sun, and then it will continue on its way. We have to study it because it is a rare object with anomalies, yes, many anomalies. All comets have their anomalies, each one has its peculiarities, but this one is rarer than normal, very rare.

First of all, it is very old. It is estimated to be 2.4 billion years older than the solar system. It is much older than the Sun, so simply the composition of this object can give us clues about the composition of other stars and other systems. One of the great questions that astronomers have always had is whether the solar system is special, with a different combination of elements that has led to the existence of life, at least on Earth and perhaps on Europa or elsewhere. But at least on Earth, we had a special combination of elements that allowed that to happen. Or are the elements that make up life common in the rest of the cosmos? This object can give us many clues, at least in that sense.

According to the latest data, 3I/Atlas currently has a diameter of approximately 5.6 km. Initially, it was estimated that it could have a diameter of up to 46 km. It is somewhat difficult to determine its diameter because it is currently behaving like a fairly “normal” comet, that is, it has a coma, a bubble of gas surrounding it. This is normal because when comets approach the sun, their outer ice sublimates and forms gas surrounding the comet, making it quite difficult to know its diameter because what we are seeing is that bubble of gas.

But it is estimated that it would have a minimum diameter of 5.6 km and a maximum of 46 km, and thanks to the fact that it now has this gas bubble, the James Webb, which is what we are seeing in the images, can study the physical properties and chemical composition of this object, and this is where the strange and anomalous things begin.

The coma, the gas halo, is normal. Soon, the closer it gets to the sun, a cometary tail should form, which would also be normal up to that point, the normal degassing of an object that has ice like any comet. But the problems begin with the composition of what we are seeing and detecting. First of all, a lot of carbon dioxide has been detected, as well as water, water ice, carbon monoxide, and carbonyl, which is a gas that smells very bad.

The curious thing is the large amount of carbon dioxide, it's an enormous amount. It is not normal for a normal comet in the solar system; it is an enormous amount that does not correspond to what we know in the solar system, except for one very rare case. There is a comet that visited us in 2018 called C2016 R2, also a huge comet, 38 km in diameter and with a chemical composition similar to what we are seeing in 3I/Atlas. Atlas, and it is a very rare composition. In fact, it was a blue comet when the sun began to vaporize the outer ice of this object, so let's hope that 3I/Atlas turns blue due to those CO2 gases.

When comet C2016 R2 got closer to the sun, carbon monoxide, nitrogen, and even rarer, heavy elements, heavy metals, iron, and nickel were detected. Detecting iron and nickel in a comet is extremely rare, and it was also detected in that diffuse atmosphere, in the coma that forms around any comet. What happened is that this particular coma was very rare. Iron and nickel, that is, metals, can be detected in this new interstellar object. We will know for sure shortly.

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