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Astronomers discover 3I/ATLAS – Third interstellar object to visit Solar System
Minor Planet Electronic Circular: https://minorplanetcenter.net/mpec/K25/K25N12.html https://minorplanetcenter.net/mpec/K25/K25N12.html
- carlsborg 1y agoThe great filter: light years of travel needed by detection probes.
- ordu 1y agoJudging by how humanity didn't see any of those for millennia and now three in just several years, I can propose two hypotheses: 1. Astronomers became good enough to notice them 2. These rocks are first in an incoming flood of such objects, the Universe decided to destroy humanity.
- em3rgent0rdr 1y agohah! Yeah the title "Third Interstellar Object Discovered" needs to be changed to be more like "Third Discovery of an Interstellar Object"
- noduerme 1y agoI love this. But I can't help imagining the conversation on some remote South Pacific island going like this: "Third cargo chest discovered" "Maybe they've been sailing by here already for a long time and we just didn't notice."
- haiku2077 1y ago3. After we found the first one by chance we started looking for more objects outside the solar system's orbital plane
- eesmith 1y agoThis object is near the solar system's orbital plane - far closer than Halley's comet, for example. People have searched off the orbital plane for a long time, if only to find new comets. This object was found by ATLAS, the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System. The project goal is to identify near-earth asteroids, evaluate the risk they might impact the Earth, and alert others if impact is predicted. The project started in 2015, two years before ʻOumuamua. It was not made specifically to find interstellar objects transiting the solar system.
- metalman 1y agoun-nervingly near the orbital plane, as the depiction shows the object passing just above, on approach, and juct below, on departure, of the orbital plane of mars given the low relative speed of these objects so far, we can define them as extra solar, something exra galactic could be moveing at fractional light speed relative to us and be almost impossible to see and track unless it was realy big and close, and as there are confirmed exra galactic stars, it is not conjecture to to then include rouge planets and asteriods ,etc in the list of signatures to be looking for, and perhaps dismissed from previous data as bieng equipment artifacts or noise.
- dotnet00 1y agoI get that you're joking, but I wonder if it could just be that we happen to be passing through some sort of interstellar debris cloud.
- tigerlily 1y agoGet ready for the, uh, Latter Day Late Heavy Bombardment!
- mr_toad 1y agoActually we’re in a surprisingly sparse area of the galaxy, a giant hole in the galaxy created by one (or more) supernova. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_Bubble https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_Bubble
- stevedonovan 1y agoSo much for the old thermonuclear ramjet idea....
- kirykl 1y agoMaybe. The solar system was in this galactic position about 250 million years ago (one galactic year) and there was a major extinction event around that time
- DevelopingElk 1y agoIt's 1. A combination of better telescopes and GPU accelerated algorithms for picking out moving objects.
- 9dev 1y ago> These rocks are first in an incoming flood of such objects When ʻOumuamua flew past, we should have noticed it was a passive sensor drone. Now it is too late.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- shiroiuma 1y agoIt's not "the Universe"; it's an alien race that wants to destroy us before we become a threat to them.
- belter 1y agoWe are a much bigger threat to ourselves.
- phatskat 1y agoYep, the best thing for a race that is (rightfully) worried about our aggressiveness is to wait it out.
- lynx97 1y agoCame here to say that. Best to just wait and let history take its course.
- nandomrumber 1y agoOr launch an attack fleet, only to later, due to an error in a scaling factor, have the entire fleet unknowingly swallowed by a small dog.
- belter 1y agohttps://youtu.be/smwd8b0ycBg https://youtu.be/smwd8b0ycBg
- dguest 1y agoIt's more complicated than that. Benevolent aliens are planting incompetent people in positions of power so that we are perpetually on the verge of self-annihilation. But this is all to save us from the malevolent aliens who would obliterate us if they thought we had any chance of survival.
- eb0la 1y agoI believe #1 is true; but not #2. It's just that those rocks are more common than we thought. And we thought they were uncommon because we weren't able to spot them... yet.
- polytely 1y agoVera Rubin just came online, will will start to do surveys of the entire sky every 3 nights, which makes spotting stuff like this easier. https://youtu.be/X3N-DjVXh44 https://youtu.be/X3N-DjVXh44 so we are probably gonna notice a lot more of them
- TheBlight 1y agoWe don't know if they're all rocks or not yet.
- slightwinder 1y agoWe hadn't the means to discover them for most of the last millennia, so now being good enough is obvious. But the question is why now, and not 10 or 20 years ago. It might be that we had the ability for a longer time already, but it just never "clicked" until now to recognize them. It is also possible that we really just got good enough recently. Or even that until now, there really were none in the last decade we could find, and we are just lucky(?) that now more are coming our way. We might know this better in the next years, depending on whether there will now be an explosion of dozen and dozens of new interstellar objects discovered, or not. It might be another rush, like with exoplanets and local dwarf-planets.
- jerpint 1y agoI know nothing about this type of data; what does it mean and how can it be interpreted as an object ?
- ddahlen 1y agoThis is an announcement from the Minor Planet Center (MPC). They are the official international clearing house for observations of solar system objects. The top indicates that the object has two names (this is common): 3I/ATLAS = C/2025 N1 (ATLAS) ATLAS was the telescope that made the discovery. The list of data are individual observations of the object by different telescopes. This observation format has been in use for a long time, but is being phased out. A row is meant to fit on a single punch card... These observations are then used to calculate orbits, the MPC calculates the orbit as well, but this list of observations is also ingested by JPL and their Horizons service.
- ddahlen 1y agoThis one is coming in fast, it has an eccentricity of over 6 with the current fits. For point of reference, 1I and 2I have eccentricities of 1.2 and 3.3. Right now it is mostly just a point on the sky, it is difficult to tell if it is active (like a comet) yet. If it is not active, IE: asteroid like, then the current observations put it somewhere between 8-22km in diameter (this depends on the albedo of the surface). From what we know, we would expect it to likely be made up of darker material meaning given that range of diameters it is more likely to be on the larger end. However if it is active, then the dust coming off can make it appear much larger than it is. As it comes in closer to the sun and starts to warm up it may become active (or more active if its already doing stuff). It will not pass particularly close to any planet. It will be closest to the sun just before Halloween this year at 1.35 au, moving at 68 km/s (earth orbits at 29-30 km/s). It is also retrograde (IE, it is moving in the opposite direction of planetary motion), for an interstellar object this is basically random chance that this is the case. Link to an orbit viewer: https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/tools/sbdb_lookup.html#/?sstr=3I&view=VOP https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/tools/sbdb_lookup.html#/?sstr=3I&vi... The next couple of weeks will be interesting for a bunch of people I know. Source: Working on my PhD in orbital dynamics and formerly wrote the asteroid simulation code used on several NASA missions: https://github.com/dahlend/kete https://github.com/dahlend/kete
- noduerme 1y agoWhat planets is it passing between?
- ddahlen 1y agoIt is inside jupiter's orbit now, it will come inside Mars for a time. It is almost on the plane of the solar system, not very inclined. I linked an orbit viewer above if you want to look.
- Teever 1y ago> It is almost on the plane of the solar system, not very inclined. Is this also random chance or is there a reason why it's so close to the plane of the solar system?
- zeristor 1y agoI am assuming with that the newly commissioned Vera Rubin telescope should start finding a lot more of these.
- BurningFrog 1y agoIt's built to find all of them, above a certain brightness. We genuinely don't any idea how many it will be, so I'm hoping for a lot! Imagine when we can get real sample material from other solar systems!
- newcommiedeal 1y ago[flagged]
- belter 1y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3I/ATLAS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3I/ATLAS
- lionkor 1y agoDon't look up
- Validark 1y agoAhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- tomhow 1y agoWe updated the URL to the ABC news report as it's more understandable to lay people, at least those like me. If someone finds a better report, let us know and we'll be happy to update it. The original URL was https://minorplanetcenter.net/mpec/K25/K25N12.html https://minorplanetcenter.net/mpec/K25/K25N12.html, which I've included in the header.
- rjinman 1y agoThe more interstellar objects we find that resemble comets, the weirder Oumuamua is.
- LeoPanthera 1y agoThe Ramans do everything in threes.
- moritonal 1y agoThank you! Finally a good Rama reference in the wild.
- TheOtherHobbes 1y agoMaybe. I think it's more likely that an alien probe - assuming there are aliens and they fly probes - would be the size of a cubesat, and we wouldn't even notice it. Perhaps Oumuamua was the mothership and the solar system is now swarming with cubesats we're not noticing.
- hermitcrab 1y ago>I think it's more likely that an alien probe - assuming there are aliens and they fly probes - would be the size of a cubesat Or maybe the size of a sub-atomic particle, as in the sci-fi Novel 'The 3 body problem'. https://three-body-problem.fandom.com/wiki/Sophons https://three-body-problem.fandom.com/wiki/Sophons
- callc 1y agoDoes anyone else see a timer ticking down in their vision or is it just me? Time to quit my job at the LHC and be a baker.
- le-mark 1y agoI really hope someone sends a probe to catch Omaumau. When Starship is flying regularly it should be doable, just barely.
- martinclayton 1y agoIn a thread elsewhere I saw "Interstellar Objects in the Solar System: 1. Isotropic Kinematics from the Gaia Early Data Release 3" (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2103.03289 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2103.03289) mentioned. In there, one estimate of the number of these objects is Nisc <~ 7.2 × 10−5 AU−3 Which (my, probably wrong, calc) implies roughly one inside the orbital volume at the radius of Saturn's orbit at any time.
- fouronnes3 1y agoThe first two were used up, empty deceleration stages of a giant alien spaceship, discarded during interstellar cruise while the rest of the assembly kept burning for its years long deceleration from relativistic speeds. This is the main ship.
- whycome 1y agoexpand this into a sci Fi novella please
- jcfrei 1y agoIf this new 8m diameter telescope already provides us with so many new discoveries then I can't wait until the ELT with 39m diameter goes online.
- sapiogram 1y agoELT will not discover many new objects, it's built to do deeper followup observations of known targets. On the other hand, Vera Rubin was designed to be a survey telescope, repeatedly imaging the entire night sky to discover new objects. It will not do targeted observations, or at least very few.
- aeve890 1y ago>Vera Rubin was designed to be a survey telescope, repeatedly imaging the entire night sky to discover new objects. The entire _southern hemisphere_ night sky right?
- sapiogram 1y agoYeah, not the entire northern sky at least. It's located only 30 degrees south though, so its coverage will be pretty damn good.
- andrewstuart 1y agoThey’re always coming through. The solar system is an interstellar highway. Chariots Of The Gods, man. But seriously, why would interstellar objects come towards our solar system? It seems strange. Does gravity do that? If there’s two within ten years then there has to be a veritable swarm of these things traveling between the stars - is that right or wrong?
- Jyaif 1y agoA very rough calculation would suggested that the cylinder that goes from our solar system to Proxima Centauri contains 5000 similarly sized objects moving at the same speed: 1 object crossing the solar system plane every 5 years at 60km/s + Proxima Centauri is approximately 5 light years away => there are `speed of light / 60km/s` objects in the cylinder.
- hermitcrab 1y agoObjects can get flung out of solar systems when they pass close to large objects. Similar to how spacecraft get gravity assists.
- alganet 1y ago> But seriously, why would interstellar objects come towards our solar system? Why wouldn't they?
- coolspot 1y agoBecause to go through plane like that they need to match our solar system speed relative to galaxy.
- alganet 1y agoUniverse is big and full of random small rocks floating around everywhere. Why should I believe some object was _intentionally_ thrown here? Maybe it is just one of those random rocks.
- 1y ago
- andrewstuart 1y agoAre we going to be able to get a close look at this?
- russdill 1y agoNot really, the sun will be in a rather inconvenient position.
- artur_makly 1y agoIf it were to come right for us, what do we have today to stop it (if at all) ?
- atrus 1y agoIf we're just talking about interstellar objects, and assuming a decent lead time (not oh hey it's going to hit in 3 days), it's probably easier to prevent it from hitting us since it's most likely just passing through. You'd only need to give it a small enough nudge to have it miss a smidge. That's something we're more than capable now of doing, and have done.
- coolspot 1y ago> That's something we're more than capable now of doing, and have done. You’re very optimistic about our ability to divert 22km-diameter object moving at 70km/s . DART smashed 680kg payload into a 780m-diameter Didymos changing its orbit.
- gora_mohanty 1y agoWe would need to detect it in time, have an interceptor fast enough to rendezvous with it, and also with enough payload to nudge it off course. Seems quite difficult with current technology
- russdill 1y agoIf this object were coming straight for Earth there would be pretty much nothing we could do to avoid a collision. Luckily the chances of such a collision are enormously small. We are fortunately bringing more resources on line to find such objects sooner.
- renrutal 1y agoIt would be neat if we could take a hitchhike with it. Probably only Project Orion would be able to catch up to its current 60kms/s speed by October.
- Klathmon 1y agoGiven it's passing retrograde (is that even the right way to say that?), would that make it easier to catch up and intercept? Assuming you don't want to do anything but fly by or smash into it
- isx726552 1y agoWow. The 2019 novel “The Last Astronaut” hypothesized about a fictional interstellar object coming into the solar system, called “2I” in the novel for short, but back here in real life, we’re already up to 3I.
- NooneAtAll3 1y agotbf, Omuamua was given denomination 1I in 2017 - so it's not "reality coincided with imaginary naming", but simply "book followed real life"
- m3kw9 1y agoIt sucks to have the unpopular opinion that I wish it is aliens coming for a visit.
- netsharc 1y agoThe "popular" understanding might even be "it's aliens!". Let me pull my elitist card, but I think it's irresponsible for journalists to use the word "visit", because it implies a thinking creature performing an action. God knows this planet has too many morons who'll see this headline and understand it to be "definitely aliens!"...
- beefnugs 1y agoHow do they plot the path of these things without knowing its weight and size? Seems like bullshit, especially when they specifically say "the sun will barely affect it" ?? The sun affects everything in proportion to the things you exactly dont yet know, doesn't it?
- codelikeawolf 1y agoWhen you're dealing with objects as small as this, their weight and size is essentially mathematically irrelevant. It doesn't have any type of propulsion, so we know that unless it collides with something along its trajectory, it will keep following the same course. We know the mass and diameter of the celestial bodies that the object will be traveling near, so we can calculate how those bodies will affect its trajectory. As one of the top comments said: it has a very high eccentricity, which means it's traveling along a path that forms a very elongated, open hyperbole, so it won't come close enough to the sun to be affected by its gravitational pull if it continues to follow its current trajectory.
- sasikumardas 1y agoInteresting