The comet 3I/ATLAS keeps circling around our solar system and has the scientific world with all its attention on it. Many believe it is a UFO that comes to watch us, others that it is simply another meteorite, but our scientists have all their sights set on the most powerful observatories we humans have, the Keck II, Hubble and the James Webb.
And it seems they have discovered that this space traveler has a lot of nickel, quite a bit of cyanide and CO2, a very strange mix of compounds that does not match absolutely anything from the stellar objects that have been studied until now, and of course, it is normal that thousands of questions arise, but… can this comet affect our atmosphere in any way?
We know you love crazy theories, we do too, but we are going to tell you why this traveler is so strange, what the experts say… and what is known so far!
A composition never seen before
Astronomers are puzzled by the chemistry of this comet, not because it presents cyanide in very large quantities (because according to them it is very common in comets), but the intensity with which it appears surprises them and because they had never seen it mixed with nickel. What is the 3I/ATLAS?
Experts also doubt
And well, how could they not? This comet has a very marked anti-tail, and that is something that is not seen every day. In addition, the cloud of compounds that surrounds it is much larger than normal, and it works differently from the other comets that have been observed.
What is the anti-tail?
It is an optical illusion caused by the position of the comet, the sun and the earth, normally comets have two tails, a dust tail (which points backward following the comet’s orbit) and an ion tail that points in the opposite direction of the sun, but the anti-tail from the earth seems to point toward the sun, and in the case of 3I/ATLAS it is dragging such a large trail of dust that they want to investigate why this phenomenon occurs.
Can 3I/ATLAS poison Earth’s atmosphere?
Spoiler: no. Some people are already imagining apocalyptic scenarios in which 3I/ATLAS crashes into our planet or that its composition could do something to our atmosphere. The short answer is no, the comet is going to pass so far from us that there is no risk (it does not even touch Earth’s orbit!!)
So, if by magic part of the comet’s material were to break off toward us (which we assure you is not going to happen) it would be lost in the vacuum before it could even brush our planet.
And the cyanide???
Scientists have been seeing CN in comets for decades, so it is not a risk, what surprises them is the intensity with which it appears, but not its presence.
But do we know what 3I/ATLAS is?
For now, we only know that it is a comet, that it comes from very, very far away and that probably, when it broke off from its system, ours had probably not even formed yet.
Of course all this sounds complicated to imagine for our mortal minds, but that piece of rock wandering through space has been strolling alone through the immense void for millions of years, who knows how many millions of kilometers it has already traveled until reaching our system.
And no, it is not here to stay, as soon as it passes it will continue its path until it reaches another system, and it will continue like that for millions of thousands of years more.
So… do we have to worry?
No. It is not going to get close, nor contaminate, nor do we have to put the dinosaurs in safety because it is not going to crash into our planet. It is interesting because it is an opportunity to study primitive systems, but nothing more!
A stellar object like this has never been detected, so the scientific world has a lot of hype, but there is no threat to the Earth, relax!!