{"id":314130,"date":"2025-10-18T19:15:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-18T19:15:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/314130\/"},"modified":"2025-10-18T19:15:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-18T19:15:11","slug":"interstellar-object-3i-atlas-emitting-alloy-not-seen-in-nature-harvard-scientist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/314130\/","title":{"rendered":"Interstellar object 3I\/ATLAS emitting alloy not seen in nature: Harvard scientist"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Manhattan-sized interstellar object 3I\/ATLAS<\/a> zipping through the solar system is producing a metal alloy never before witnessed in nature, an expert told The Post.<\/p>\n

New images of the mysterious object taken by the Keck II telescope in Hawaii in August and released Wednesday, confirmed the interstellar flier is emitting a plume which contains four grams of nickel per second with no evidence of iron \u2014 unheard of in comets.<\/p>\n

The end result is an alloy called nickel tetracarbonyl, which has only ever been previously witnessed in human manufacturing, Harvard astrophysicist Dr. Avi Loeb told The Post.<\/p>\n

The newest image from the Keck II telescope at the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii confirm the strange
appearance of a nickel alloy only ever seen in industrially produced nickel alloys. W. B. Hoogendam et al. 2025<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is only one place where that is known to exist and that is in industrially produced nickel alloys,\u201d Loeb said. \u201cThis was never observed for any other object.\u201d <\/p>\n

In every known comet, including the two previous interstellar comets, nickel and iron appear in comparable amounts, according to experts.<\/a><\/p>\n

The type of refined compound seen in 3I\/ATLAS is used in metal coatings in manufacturing, including in the aerospace industry, to strengthen surface materials.<\/p>\n

The images come from a new study<\/a> by researchers from the Keck Observatory which suggested that this nickel-producing phenomenon, though strange, is natural.<\/p>\n

Loeb, who teaches theoretical physics at Harvard and is a director at the Center for Astrophysics, doesn\u2019t agree.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was a process that we can imagine only because it was used in industry,\u201d he said, adding, \u201cNever seen in comets before.\u201d<\/p>\n

3I\/ATLAS as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope\u2019s Wide Field Camera on in July. NASA<\/p>\n

The bizarre object was first photographed by the Hubble Telescope on July 21.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Another strange feature of the object coming into focus with more data is 3I\/ATLAS\u2019s lack of a cometary tail.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe usually see beautiful tails extending from the object away from the Sun, and in this case there was no evidence for such a tail,\u201d Loeb said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Instead, the Hubble Space Telescope image showed a 330-pounds-per-second stream of materials trailing towards the Sun.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy are we seeing a jet pointed at the Sun? A stream of material in the direction of the Sun?\u201d Loeb pondered.<\/p>\n

The stream is composed of mostly carbon dioxide and water with trace, though detectable, amounts of cyanide and nickel without iron, according to the American Astronomical Society.<\/a><\/p>\n

The anomalous object was also captured by the James Webb\u2019s Near-Infrared Spectrograph instrument. NASA\/James Webb Space Telescope<\/p>\n

Skywatchers around the world are currently on the edge of their seats as they await the release of images taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter\u2019s HiRISE camera taken between Oct. 4 and Oct. 7. <\/p>\n

Those were snapped as the object<\/a> passed by within 12 million miles of Mars<\/a> \u2014 but have yet to be made public due to the ongoing government shutdown which has seen the NASA communications department furloughed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWho cares about the communication departments? We want to see the data from the scientists,\u201d the doctor said forcefully.<\/p>\n

Images from the HiRISE camera will be the closest and best that humanity will gather during 3I\/ATLAS\u2019s brief traversing of our inner Solar System.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Manhattan-sized interstellar object 3I\/ATLAS zipping through the solar system is producing a metal alloy never before witnessed…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":314131,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[15875,20907,30517,916,159,783,26898,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-314130","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-comets","9":"tag-hubble-space-telescope","10":"tag-interstellar","11":"tag-nasa","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-space","14":"tag-ufos","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115396773799004303","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314130\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/314131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}