Astronomers can approach the age and origin of the interstellar comet 3I/Atlas how is this a trunk to the center of our Solar systemField
A new study that has been modeling the last 4 million years of travel of comets through Milky Way It hints that the interstellar visitor came from afar, distant – potentially coming from the wild border, where the oldest and youngest stars of the galaxy are found. If so, a comet can be a relic of an early galaxy dating from billions of years older than the earthly sun.
Galactic Grand Tour
This space visitor is currently undergoing a monthly tour of attractions through our internal solar system, completing a close approach to Mars on Friday (October 3) and is ready to make it closest to the sun on October 30. NASAAfter that, he will again go to the interstellar space, having passed Jupiter in March 2026, before, finally, he will disappear from the review. The comet is not a threat to the earth.
While the immediate 3I/Atlas trajectory is easy to predict, to find out where it came from is much more difficult.
Traveling at a speed of about 130,000 miles per hour (210,000 kmh), a record for interstellar objects, Renegade ice ball is gaining speed for millions, if not billions of years. This leaves him vulnerable to gravitational tows of an inexpressible number Milky Way Star how NASA uses the gravitational influence of the planets of our solar system for Slingshot SpaceCraft In deeper orbit 3I/Atlas, they could easily be shot down from its original trajectory by the weight of massive stars interfering in its path.
Now a new study is published on the Preprint server Arxiv Makes the best efforts to strengthen the origin of the comet, looking at what nearby stars, if any, could affect its orbit.
Using data from European space agencyS. Now retired space telescope GAIAThe authors of the study tracked the trajectory of the comet at 4.27 million years and determined 62 nearby stars, with which the interstellar object probably ran into this path. Using the data in the high clarity of Gaia about the movements of stars, speeds and sizes, the authors of the study came to the conclusion that not one of them changed the orbit of the comet, hinting that it did not happen next to us anywhere.
“We found that none of the stars in the sunny area can explain the trajectory and high speed of 3I/Atlas,” the author of the leading study. Xabier Pérez-CoutoAstrophysical graduate student in Spain Universidade Da Coruña told Live Science in an email. Only one nearby star, which is about 70% of the mass of the Sun, in the visible one, generally influenced the trajectory of the comet, but this was only a small amount, the researchers added in their article.
This made the team postulate that “3I/Atlas is a very old object that traveled for [billions of years]And that its origin belongs to the border of the thin disk, ”said Perez-Cauto.
Object from the wild border?
What is so special about this? Spiral galaxies, such as the Milky Way, share their stars between a thin disk and a thick disk. It is believed that it cuts the central bulge of our galaxy, the youngest and smaller thin disk contains The vast majority of the stars of the Milky Way And the star-forming gases-brown of which are rich in elements, heavier than hydrogen and helium, picked up from the older generations of stars who lived and died before them. On the contrary, a wider thick disk, wrapped around the boundaries of a thin disk, has long ceased his star education. It contains less – But much older – a sample of stars that are poor in heavy metals, according to Svinburn Technological University In Australia.
If the 3I/Atlas comet really came from the border of these two discs, this could mean that the object is incredibly old – potentially 10 billion yearsHaving made it more than half the age of our about 4 billion years. According to Pérez-Couto, the comet was probably “thrown from the original disk of the early formed planetary system”, which can make it a valuable capsule of the time of the ancient Milky Way.
Nevertheless, a new study recognizes the restrictions on his approach: looking at nearby stars, the analysis takes into account only a few million years of the long history of the comet, which makes its exact origin in the entire uncertain. Since 3I/Atlas continues to increase the solar system, scientific instruments on Earth and Mars, as well as in orbit around Jupiter, they will soon be able to study it in much more detail. The disclosure of the composition of the interstellar object will provide the necessary clues for its space place of birth – and will potentially open the precious window into the past of our galaxy.
