Comet in “Manhattan size” is directed to Earth

A impeccable comet -sized – it is typically mentioned that it has the “Manhattan size” – may not in practice be a natural stellar object but may be object of alien technology He supports Harvard astrophysicist.

The comet was first identified by NASA On July 1 And he is watched by Harvard’s astrophysicist, Avi Loeb and his team, as he crosses the solar system.

Object, believed to be a comet, allegedly has an interstellar origin, making it the third object beyond the solar system ever found after “Oumuamua”, discovered in 2017, and 2i/Borisov in 2019.

The team has gathered some “important” new information about the interstellar visitor, namely that ‘The mass of 3i/Atlas must be greater than 33 billion tonnes’, According to a Loeb post on his blog.

They reached this number by calculating the object’s orbit to find that the “gravitational acceleration” of Atlas is “less than 49 feet a day in the square,” the Futurism scientific journal said.

This was then compared to how much mass was eliminated through gases and dust particles to determine the size.

Loeb and his team also found that the diameter of its core with solid density should be greater than 3.1 miles (almost 5 kilometers) – the ceiling of current views based on observations by the Hubble Space Telescope.

This makes it greater than “three to five classes” than its predecessors, “Oumuamua and 2i/Borisov”.

Loeb is particularly fascinated by the rarity of Atlas, which resembles a needle in a intergalactic pile of hay.

Fortunately, despite its course to Earth, Atlas is not a threat. However, its abnormal trajectory will bring it close to Jupiter, Venus and Mars, with the object being spent 1.67 million miles from Mars’ orbit around the Sun on the weekend.

To a more controversial estimateLoeb and his team believe that the interstellar visitor, which consists mainly of carbon dioxide, could possibly be an extraterrestrial detector sent to make recognition on Earth – probably with hostile intentions.

‘The assumption in question is that the [31/ATLAS] It is a technological article and in addition has ” active intelligence ”. If this is the case, then two chances are followed, “wrote Dr. Loeb, Adam Drulul and Adam Hiberd in a work published on July 17. ‘First, that his intentions are absolutely well -intentioned and second, How are they malicious. “

Believe that it could be eto a spaceship Based on various elements, namely its non-gravitational acceleration and its unusual approach to Venus, Mars and Jupiter, for whom the work argued that they could be “key target planets”.

The “low retrograde slope” of 31/Atlas – the rotation in the opposite direction from the other bodies of the solar system – would apparently allow it to “access our planet with relative security”.

Further, Loeb assumes that the slope and route would allow for an intelligent life in the object to collect “Astrometric measurements, to identify the orbits and masses of the planets of the solar system, allowing it to prepare an optimal approach to the solar system.”