Third-ever confirmed interstellar object blazing through Solar System
On Wednesday, astronomers confirmed the discovery of an interstellar object race through our Solar System – only third, but scientists suspect that more could go through unnoticed.
The visitor from the stars called 3i/Atlas was probably the largest yet and classified as comets or cosmic snowballs.
“It looks a bit blurry,” said Peter Veres, a astronomer with a small planetary center of the International Association of Astronomy, in his statement to AFP.
“Apparently there is some gas around him, and I think one or two telescope reported a very short queue.”
Planet Defense President Richard Moissl at the European Space Agency said that the object initially known as A11PL3z did not pose any threat to the world.
“AFP’ye told AFP,” the solar system will fly to the depths, but will not hit our neighboring planet, but in the statement he gave to AFP.
Exciting astronomers still improve their calculations, but the object seems to be more than 60 kilometers (37 miles) per second.
This means that unlike objects remaining in the solar system, it is not dependent on the orbit of the sun.
Moissl, orbit at the same time, “not in the orbit of our star, not in the trajectory, it means that he comes from interstellar space and flew back there,” he said.
“We probably think that these small ice balls are associated with star systems,” Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysics Center Jonathan McDowell said, “Probably these small ice balls are associated with star systems. “And then another star passes, he pulls the ice ball, releases. He goes honest, wanders in the galaxy, and now it just passes us.”
A Chile -based observatory, a part of the Atlas survey financed by NASA, discovered the object on Tuesday.
Professional and amateur astronomers around the world searched for past telescope data and watched its orbit at least until June 14th.
The object is now about 10-20 kilometers wide, Moissl, Moissl said, which will make it the largest inter-stars interloper. However, the object may be smaller if it is made of ice reflecting more light.
Veres said that the object would continue to shine as the sun approaches the sun by gently bending under gravity and is expected to reach its closest point on October 29 – Perhelion.
It will then retreat and come out of the solar system over the next few years.
– Our third visitor –
This indicates that humanity has detected an object from the stars to the solar system only for the third time.
First, ‘Oumuamua, 2017 was discovered. It was so strange that at least one well -known scientist was convinced that it was a foreign ship – it has contradicted more research since then.
Our Second International visitor was detected in 2i/Borisov 2019.
There is no reason to suspect an artificial origin for 3i/Atlas, but the teams around the world compete to answer key questions about things like shape, composition and rotation.
Mark Norris at the University of Central Lancashire, England, told AFP that the new object moved much faster than the object that we previously discovered.
Norris said the object is now roughly from the Earth from Jupiter.
Although Norris is smaller than the newly discovered object, he pointed out the modeling that predicts that up to 10,000 in -10,000 drifting from the solar system at any time.
If it is true, this shows that the new online Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile can soon find these dimly -stars visitors every month.
Moissl said it was not possible to send a task to space to prevent the new object.
Nevertheless, these visitors offer scientists a rare chance to examine something outside our solar system.
For example, if we detect life pioneers like amino acids on such an object, he said, “It gives us more confidence that living conditions exist in other star systems.”
DL-IA/JGC
