New questions have emerged as the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS continues its approach, with a new study pointing to the unusual abundance of nickel and iron in its plume of gas, which its authors describe as “extremely puzzling.”
The discovery, detailed in a paper by an international team of researchers, complicates inquiries by astronomers into the unusual object’s chemistry and why its composition appears to differ significantly from past observations of interstellar comets that have made their way into our solar system.
For their research, the team relied on the UVES spectrograph on the European Very Large Telescope in Chile. Their findings came as a surprise, since comets are generally too cold to allow refractory minerals containing nickel and iron to sublimate, the process by which materials transform directly into vaporous forms when heated.
While some similar signatures were detected on 2I/Borisov, the second known interstellar object observed by astronomers, as well as in comets native to our solar system, the recent UVES spectrograph detections reveal an outstanding nickel-to-iron ratio in 3I/ATLAS, suggesting the mysterious object possesses extreme properties unlike anything previously observed.
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