{"id":11240,"date":"2025-08-20T09:18:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-20T09:18:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/11240\/"},"modified":"2025-08-20T09:18:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-20T09:18:10","slug":"a-bizarre-glowing-object-is-baffling-scientists-and-its-hurtling-towards-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/11240\/","title":{"rendered":"A bizarre ‘glowing’ object is baffling scientists – and it’s hurtling towards Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scientists have discovered that a mysterious object hurtling through space<\/a> from beyond the solar system<\/a> is emitting its own light \u2013 and it\u2019s headed right for us.<\/p>\n

In what is only the third example of its kind to be observed, an interstellar object<\/a> was seen by astronomers last month heading for the centre of our solar system<\/p>\n

The officially unknown object has been dubbed 3I\/ATLAS and caught the attention of astronomers, including Harvard\u2019s Avi Loeb, who has suggested that previous interstellar objects are relics from an extraterrestrial civilization.<\/p>\n

While there is a strong consensus among many other astronomers that 3I\/ATLAS is a comet, Loeb has argued that it is not and pointed to evidence of a \u201cglow of light\u201d that is coming from the object.<\/p>\n

In a blog post<\/a>, Loeb argued that observations from NASA\u2019s Hubble Space Telescope show a \u201cglow of light, likely from a coma, ahead of the motion of 3I\/ATLAS towards the Sun\u201d.<\/p>\n

Within this context, the coma of a comet is a hazy cloud of gas and dust that surrounds a comet\u2019s nucleus.<\/p>\n

\"\"\/ D. Jewitt et al\/NASA\/Wikimedia<\/p>\n

Loeb wrote there is \u201cno evidence for a bright cometary tail in the opposite direction\u201d. This, some scientists have suggested shows that dust was evaporating from the side of the object that is facing the Sun. <\/p>\n

However, Loeb, after deliberation with Harvard colleague, astrophysicist Eric Keto, has put forward another theory \u2013 that 3I\/ATLAS itself is creating its own light.<\/p>\n

Loeb argued the \u201csimplest interpretation\u201d of the object\u2019s \u201csteep brightness profile\u201d is that its own nucleus \u201cproduces most of the light\u201d.<\/p>\n

He suggested that two different reasons why could be possible: first, the the object is made up of \u201crare fragment from the core of a nearby supernova that is rich in radioactive material\u201d and is emitting radiation, or, that it is actually a \u201cspacecraft powered by nuclear energy, and the dust emitted from its frontal surface might be from dirt that accumulated on its surface during its interstellar travel\u201d.<\/p>\n

He did, however, say that the first explanation was \u201chighly unlikely\u201d and that the second would need stronger evidence to be \u201cviable\u201d.<\/p>\n

His theory, while out there, would mean the 3I\/ATLAS is smaller than originally thought and would bring it roughly in line with the size of the two previous interstellar objects that have been observed, named Oumuamua and 2I\/Borisov.<\/p>\n

Later this year, 3I\/ATLAS will pass very close to Mars \u2013 an opportunity that Loeb suggests should be utilised to more closely examine it.<\/p>\n

Why not read\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

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How to join<\/strong><\/a> the indy100’s free WhatsApp channel<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scientists have discovered that a mysterious object hurtling through space from beyond the solar system is emitting its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11241,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[270],"tags":[582,7043,18,19,10908,17,133,10214,451],"class_list":{"0":"post-11240","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-astronomy","9":"tag-comet","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-interstellar","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-science","15":"tag-solar-system","16":"tag-space"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11240\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}