We know that there is a critical moment on October 29, which is when perihelion will occur, the closest approach to the sun of 3I/Atlas, according to Abraham Loeb, cosmologist at Harvard University. At that moment, if it is a spacecraft and it is active, and it has a mission, it would take advantage of that moment to perform a gravitational assist maneuver, reduce its high speed, and rectify its direction to set course for Earth. This is speculation, a working theory, in the same way that we can speculate before the start of a soccer game about its outcome or before tossing a coin about whether it will land heads or tails.
There are theories, speculations; Abraham Loeb has put this one out there and has also revealed how to prove it. The key moment would be perihelion, but as I say, for now, 3I/Atlas behaves like a natural object. If it is an artificial object, there is no doubt that it would be submerged within a thick crust of ice, but this is also evident and demonstrable.
Remember that comets are also composed of ice, rocks, some metals, and dust, and if it is an artificial object, a remnant, a spacecraft, whatever you want, but artificial, what is certain is that it is surrounded by a crust of ice, of different frozen materials, because we are seeing its large coma, it can be seen in the photos and in all the photos being taken by observatories around the world.
And the great coma is a cloud of gas and dust that surrounds it. in fact, right now it is about the same size as the distance between the Earth and the Moon, and it is formed by all the material that is sublimating, the ice that is sublimating and forming that coma, and as it sublimates, as the ice transforms into gas, excuse me, it expels different materials, including some rather rare ones.
There is new scientific research and the mystery surrounding the presence of nickel continues, but iron has finally been detected, making things more complicated and stranger, because very little has been detected and only in a limited way and under specific conditions. This mystery is because iron is more abundant than nickel on Earth and on the rocky planets of the solar system. The ratio on Earth is 10 times more iron than nickel, and if you go to Mars, it would be more or less the same; you would find more iron mines on Mars than nickel mines.
Something quite strange happens in the comets of the solar system, which is a mystery that gives astronomers a headache. Iron and nickel have been found, not in many comets, only in 20 of them in the last 20 years, but these elements always go together and, curiously, in the same quantities. Even more curious is that astronomers do not know what metals such as iron and nickel are doing in objects that are far from the sun. How is it possible that they have been deposited in these objects, which are supposed to be covered in ice?
Although comets also have rocks and dust and other elements, it is assumed that these elements are in the comet's core, not in the crust, and that the iron and nickel detected by astronomers in those 20 comets over the last 20 years is because as they approached the sun, the solar heat sublimated the ice on the surface, expelling it outward into that cloud, that coma of gas and dust. By analyzing the light, they were able to detect those elements, iron and nickel, and, curiously, in equal amounts, something completely anomalous compared to what is found here on Earth.
But in this interstellar object, there is another twist: there is nickel in abundance in 3I/Atlas, yet iron is very limited and insignificant, and according to this research, it is only found under very special conditions.
What is nickel used for? Well, it turns out that nickel has, at least here on Earth, a use in the technology industry. It is a key component in many high-strength alloys in stainless steel and in superalloys for the aerospace industry. These alloys are used in turbines, for example, in aircraft, engines, and components that operate under extreme heat and stress.
Another piece of research data is where it comes from. Initially, the hypothesis was that 3I/Atlas came from the thick disk of the galaxy. This hypothesis was based on its high speed and the large inclination of its orbit, which makes it practically cross the plane of the Milky Way. In that thick disk, there are very old stars; it is where the oldest stars in the entire galaxy are located. However, a study published on Arxiv on September 10 by a team led by Xavier Pérez-Couto of the University of Coruña, Spain, using highly accurate data from the GA satellite that tracks the movements of billions of stars, has managed to trace more or less where this object comes from.
They have made a kind of film of its trajectory in reverse, and these simulations suggest that despite its high speed, 3I/ Atlas is more consistent with the thin disk population. The thin disk is the main component of the Milky Way, where most of the stars are located, approximately 95% of all stars in the Milky Way. It is also composed of gas and dust and is where the spiral arms of the Milky Way are located, as well as our star, the sun.
And the thick disk, which, to give you a reference, would be like a kind of bubble surrounding the thin disk above and below, forming a halo of very old stars.
The key to this research is that the researchers say that, although the comet originated in the thin disk, its current orbit and speed could be explained by a close encounter with a star that would have launched it into a hyperbolic trajectory at high speed.
For now, there is no change in its age, which is still estimated to be between 7 and 11 billion years old, and we return to the topic at hand: it would be the oldest object to have entered the solar system, the oldest known.
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