Recently, astronomers learned that a new object believed to have originated from outside our solar system had been spotted coasting through our planetary neighborhood. Later confirmed by NASA and formally named 3I/ATLAS, the mysterious visitor represents only the third interstellar object observed by astronomers in our solar system.
While many questions about the rare interstellar object remain, a team of astronomers at Michigan State University (MSU) working in collaboration with an international team has now revealed the most detailed study yet, revealing everything scientists currently know about 3I/ATLAS.
Darryl Seligman, the lead author of a new paper and a member of the team behind the paper at MSU’s College of Natural Science, said that shortly after the object was spotted, information about it began to appear surprisingly fast.
Seligman recalls going to bed on the night of the discovery, only to wake up in the middle of the night to see that two of his colleagues in other parts of the world had written to him with early confirmation of the mysterious visitor’s likely interstellar origin.
“By the time I woke up around 1 a.m., my colleagues, Marco Micheli from the European Southern Observatory and Davide Farnocchia from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, were emailing me that this was likely for real,” Seligman recently said in a statement.
This prompted additional late-night correspondence among an international network of astronomers, all of whom began an ardent search for the object.
“We have data coming in from across the globe about this object,” Seligman said.
Now, the unique insights gleaned by this international effort to gain insights into the mysterious interstellar visitor have prompted further questions about what we may learn in the months ahead, and even more fundamental questions like, as Seligman now asks, “What Else is Out There?”
The Arrival of a New Interstellar Object
“We have had false alarms in the past about interesting objects, so we know not to get too excited on the first day,” said MSU ATLAS team member Larry Denneau. “But the incoming observations were all consistent, and late that night it looked like we had the real thing.”
Denneau said the early detection was made in the direction of the Milky Way’s center, which is a challenging area to make such observations due to the abundance of background stars in this region.
“Most other surveys don’t look there,” said Denneau, who submitted information on observations of 3I/ATLAS made from the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile.
“Once 3I/ATLAS was identified as likely interstellar, we mobilized rapidly,” said Karen Meech with the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii, who worked with Seligman to quickly compile all the communications and produce data that would serve as the backbone of the new study.
While many questions remain, Seligman and the team’s early efforts have managed to gather a wealth of important information about 3I/ATLAS. Here are several highlights from the team’s recent paper.
3I/ATLAS: Here’s What We Know
As early reports have indicated, 3I/ATLAS is believed to be only the third object from interstellar space ever observed entering our solar system. However, it is almost a certainty that there have been many others in the past, which either evaded current detection capabilities or occurred during earlier periods that predated their existence.
3I/ATLAS also appears to be shedding gas, behavior that’s consistent with a comet, although astronomers have not yet collected enough data to confirm this. Based on the most recent observations, it’s also moving extremely fast, with current estimates placing it at close to 134,000 miles per hour.
The current orbital path of 3I/ATLAS also appears to be an elongated hyperbola or “boomerang” shape, which will carry it through our solar system and back out again. While 3I/ATLAS is not expected to return, the duration of its journey is expected to last for several months, giving astronomers ample opportunity to study it before its departure.
Bright, Large, and a Little Fuzzy
3I/ATLAS is also extremely bright from what we can tell, which could mean several things. If it is indeed a comet, some of its brightness could be related to ice that has accumulated.
“3I/ATLAS likely contains ices, especially below the surface, and those ices may start to activate as it nears the sun,” Seligman said. “But until we detect specific gas emissions, like H₂O, CO or CO₂, we can’t say for sure what kinds of ice or how much are there.”
The new interstellar visitor is also currently judged to be quite large. Some estimates place it close to 15 miles across, meaning that it is massive in comparison to its predecessors, the mysterious ‘Oumuamua and the Comet Borisov, neither of which was believed to exceed a mile in width.
The object’s speed, as well as the straightness of its path, are also greater than those exhibited by its earlier interstellar predecessors.
Despite the object’s size, some of the team’s current observations have revealed that it is difficult to get a very clear picture of the object yet.
“We have these images of 3I/ATLAS where it’s not entirely clear and it looks fuzzier than the other stars in the same image,” according to Georgia Tech professor James Wray, who conceded that the object is still “pretty far away and, so, we just don’t know.”
“Are We Alone?” Further Discoveries Await
Going forward, additional observations by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope should help astronomers gather additional details about the object’s likely composition, along with new details about its spin and how it reacts to the presence of increasing heat as it approaches the Sun in the months ahead.
The team says they believe the detection of this new interstellar object is only the beginning, and that new discoveries that will follow hold the potential for taking science into some potentially interesting areas.
That is, of course, as long as there is still funding for the research. Recent reports have cast a dire forecast for the future of America’s space program, with significant cuts outlined in NASA’s proposed 2026 budget, meaning that several long-running space science missions are likely to see a premature end.
“The fact that this science is not funded by commercial enterprise indicates that our field does not provide a financial return on investment, but instead responds to the public’s curiosity about the deep questions of the universe: Where did we come from? Are we alone? What else is out there?” Seligman said in a statement.
“The curiosity of the public, as expressed by the will of the U.S. Congress and made manifest in the federal budget, is the reason that astronomy exists,” he added.
Seligman and the team’s new paper, “Discovery and Preliminary Characterization of a Third Interstellar Object: 3I/ATLAS,” was uploaded to the arXiv.org preprint server on July 3, 2025, where it can be read in its entirety.
Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. He can be reached by email at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow his work at micahhanks.com and on X: @MicahHanks.
This article was curated by memoment.jp from the feed source: The Debrief.
Read the original article here: https://thedebrief.org/what-else-is-out-there-new-study-reveals-everything-we-currently-know-about-mysterious-interstellar-object-3i-atlas/
© All rights belong to the original publisher.
