Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS shows erupting ‘ice volcanoes’
New observations suggest that the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS could be covered in erupting “ice volcanoes.”
Researchers discovered that as the comet approached the Sun, a series of cryovolcanoes—nicknamed “ice volcanoes”—became active on its surface. The eruption of these icy jets is thought to be related to the comet’s unusual composition, according to a study posted on Nov. 24 to the preprint server arXiv, News.Az reports, citing Live Science.
The study's findings, which have yet to be peer-reviewed, suggest that comet 3I/ATLAS is similar to icy trans-Neptunian objects — dwarf planets and other objects that orbit the sun beyond Neptune. If this is confirmed, it means that despite coming from another solar system, comet 3I/ATLAS has a surprising amount in common with objects in our own cosmic neighborhood.
"We were all surprised," study lead author Josep Trigo-Rodríguez, a staff leading researcher at the Institute of Space Sciences (CSIC/IEEC) in Spain, told Live Science. "Being a comet formed in a remote planetary system, it is remarkable that the mixture of materials forming the surface of the body has resemblance with trans-Neptunian objects, bodies formed at [a] large distance from the Sun but belonging to our planetary system."
There has been endless speculation about the origins of comet 3I/ATLAS since astronomers first spotted it in July. Much of the online speculation has centered around whether this interstellar visitor could be an alien spacecraft. However, most astronomers are confident that 3I/ATLAS is a comet from an unknown star system.
Comet 3I/ATLAS is only the third interstellar object ever recorded, and offers researchers a rare opportunity to learn more about conditions around other stars and in the deep past (comet 3I/ATLAS could be billions of years older than our system). This means that scientists are scrambling to study the object before it departs our solar system forever next year.
For the new study, Trigo-Rodríguez and his colleagues studied the comet using the Joan Oró Telescope at the Montsec Observatory in the northeastern Catalonia region of Spain, pairing its observations with those made by other observatories in the region. The astronomers watched the comet carefully as it approached its closest point to our star, known as perihelion, on Oct. 29. Comets heat up as they fly closer to stars, causing ice on their surface to sublimate into gas, which researchers can then detect and study.
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