The last and only third known interstellar visitor of our solar system becomes every week more fascinating. Sight in early July, the object, baptized as 3I/Atlas, would be, according to all observations to date, a kite. He travels so fast that a single look at his speed was enough for astronomers to know that he comes from countless thousands of light years away. And could even be older than our entire solar system.
Now, the James Webb Space Telescope He has directed his look, specifically, his near infrared spectrograph, towards the object, providing more details about its size and composition that support what other observatories, including the Hubble space telescope, had previously discovered.
These findings were published in A new study Made by scientists of the POT and various universities, currently waiting for pairs. And there is an especially fascinating detail in the conclusions: “3I/Atlas has the proportion of fastest water to water dioxide ever observed in a kite.”
And it also seems that the ice buried in the kite could have been exposed to higher radiation levels than those from our solar systemaccording to the authors. It is a pristine sample of the cosmos, delivered, by chance, just at our door.
“Continuous spectroscopic observations interstellar objects have the potential to reveal crucial details about physics and chemistry of planetary training in planetary systems other than ours, ”confirms the study.
It is believed that comets arise in large quantities during the formation of a planetary system and can be expelled By gravitational meetings with M objectstoS Big, as planets, explain the authors of the study. These snowballs CeitherSymms, a mixture of rock, ice and dust, they heat up when they approach a star like our sunwhich causes them to release a bright gas cloud called coma, which gives them their distinctive appearance.
It was believed that the previous interstellar visitor, Borisov, was also a comet. Both have shown clear signs of commentary activitylike the presence of a comma. But Borisov was largely similar to the well -studied comets of our solar system, the authors wrote, except for the unusual levels of carbon monoxide.
With its end imbalance of water and carbon, 3i/Atlas seems to be a very different object. A hypothesis that suggests this proportion of unprecedented carbon is that the kite It was initially formed in the Circmpnestelar cloud of gas and dust surrounding a nascent star called protoplanetary disc, specifically near a region called CO2 ice line, where temperatures are low enough for CO2 molecules to freeze and become a solid.
Alternatively, something could be preventing the heat from the sun from reaching the depths of the comet’s coresuppressing the sublimation of water from water in water vapor, the authors speculated.
At this precise moment, 3i/Atlas is directed quickly towards the center of the solar system to more than 222,000 kilometers per hour. Its speed, added to its trajectory, suggests that it originated in the center of the galaxy, possibly in a stellar system with low content of heavy elements. And to reach such an incredible rhythm, it would have to be unimaginably old: Perhaps 3 to 11 billion years, according to previous estimates. James Webb’s latest findings could help clarify more doubts about their origins and history.
It is expected that 3i/Atlas will reach the perihelio, its distance closer to the Sun, around October 30 of this year, approaching the orbit of Mars. During the tour, he will move behind the sun from our perspective, which means that, for a while, it will be impossible to observe it.