Top view of the Milky Way galaxy showing the estimated orbits of both our sun and the 3I/ATLAS comet. 3I/ATLAS is shown in red dashed lines, and the sun is shown in yellow dotted lines. The large extent of 3I’s orbit into the outer thick disk is clear, while the sun stays nearer the core of the galaxy. Credit: M. Hopkins/Ōtautahi-Oxford team. Base map: ESA/Gaia/DPAC, Stefan Payne-Wardenaar, CC-BY-SA 4.0
A mystery interstellar object discovered last week is likely to be the oldest comet ever seen—possibly predating our solar system by more than 3 billion years, researchers say.
The “water ice-rich” visitor, named 3I/ATLAS, is only the third known object from beyond our solar system ever spotted in our cosmic neighborhood and the first to reach us from a completely different regi...
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