No, it’s not the plot of a science fiction film, nor an exaggeration from an online conspiracy: a comet from outside the Solar System is releasing waterand was clearly observed by NASA’s Swift telescope. Is called 3I/ATLAS and it is one of the most mysterious interstellar objects ever recorded.
For scientists it is a sensational discovery. For us, curious human beings still a little lost in front of the Universe, it is further confirmation: .
It is seven billion years old and comes from afar
3I/ATLAS is not just any comet. It does not revolve around our Sun, it does not come from the Kuiper belt nor from the classical – and now almost folkloristic – Oort cloud. This space object comes from outsidefrom outer space, and it could be twice as old as Earth.
When the telescope Neil Gehrels Swift he “pointed” it, he didn’t just take a few photos. He detected very weak ultraviolet radiation: a kind of invisible signature that only extremely sensitive instruments can recognize.
In practice, a very distant breath in the darkness of space. That breath, however, was made of water vapor. Or rather, hydroxyl gas (OH), a compound that forms when water molecules break under ultraviolet rays.
And this is not an isolated phenomenon: the comet releases about 40 kilos of water per secondand this from millions of kilometers away, when it is three times the distance between the Earth and the Sun. An anomalous activity, inexplicable according to current knowledge on comets.
An unexpected behavior that reopens hypotheses on life and water in space
At this distance from the Sun, a “normal” comet would be sleeping, in silence, waiting to get closer to the star to activate. 3I/ATLAS no. She is already awake, active, very alive.
His behavior shocked the experts. Where does all this water come from? How can it be so active if it is so far from the heat of the Sun? And above all: what else don’t we know about water in deep space?
There are those, like the astrophysicist Avi Loebeven ventures the most extreme hypothesis: what if it wasn’t even a comet, but an alien artifact? A probe built by another civilization? For now, only hypotheses remain. But the certain thing is that comet 3I/ATLAS is defying all known rulesand precisely for this reason it is becoming one of the most observed – and discussed – objects in the entire recent astronomical history.
What is certain is that studying these interstellar objects could help us understand where the water really comes from (and perhaps life) on our planet.
And maybe one day we will be able to say: yes, we come from much further away than we thought.
