Latest 3I/Atlas anomalies

3I/Atlas, the rarest and most intriguing interstellar object that has visited us, of the three officially known, because there is a fourth that has yet to be corroborated; has become more active approaching the Earth, it is another strange anomaly, but it is with nuances, here we must specify some things, 3I/Atlas is becoming more active, but not as it approaches the Earth, because its “close pass to the Earth”, which will be on December 19, will be about 269 million kilometers, that is about five times farther than the distance that separates the Earth from Mars when Mars and the Earth are closest, it is a huge stay.

If 3I/Atlas really became more active by approaching a planet, then that moment would have to have been October 3 when it passed 29 million kilometers from Mars. Some may think that there is more activity simply because now it is easier to see it and there are a lot of observatories aiming to capture anything that happens and therefore it seems to us that it is more active, of course, there is more data, there are more images from amateurs, from observatories of all kinds and that is why it seems more active.

But not this time, the increase in activity is not apparent, it is true that there is more data, and more measurements and more photos, but the increase in activity is real and has also been determined by certain circumstances, for example, the coma, the cloud of gas and dust that surrounds it from its previous dimension to the current one, grown to approximately 25,000 to 35,000 km in diameter, that is between double and almost triple the diameter of the Earth, the coma is the cloud of gas and dust that surrounds 3I/Atlas, I repeat, we have never seen what the core of 3I/Atlas is like.

It is supposed to be about 5 km in diameter, although some say that it could reach up to 11 km in diameter, but we do not know if it is elongated, if it is spherical, if it is triangular or what shape it is, we do not know because we have never seen the nucleus, what is suspected, because there are more and more points in favor of this, is that it is very dense, that is, it is a fairly compact nucleus, it has broken us.

Also recently, dust ejections have been captured at a rate of 6 to 60 kg per second and CO2 gas ejections that are incredible, about 7.6 times more CO2 than water and that is a lot, it is a huge proportion, it is about 15 to 20 times more CO2 than any comet in the known solar system, so 3I/Atlas has cometary activity, but it is an object that looks more like planet-forming blocks and not what we have or We understand by comet here in the solar system, so it is not a typical comet, nor even, it is not even an abnormal comet among the abnormal comets of the solar system.

There are no symptoms of fragmentation, which confirms that the core is quite compact, quite solid, although some said that it was releasing auxiliary ships, or I don't know what, cryovolcanoes have also been detected, it refers to volcanoes or an activity similar to a volcano that instead of releasing lava what it emits is frozen or frozen material or at low temperatures, the fact that cryovolcanoes exist makes one suspect that 3I/Atlas has a hard crust or more resistant to solar heat, but that it has interior layers where there should be great amount of frozen gases, presumably CO2, that enormous amount of CO2 that is now coming out forcefully through those cryovolcanoes, through those holes that have opened in that hard crust.

This is also indicative that it is not a normal comet, as some say, it is an object composed of layers of different materials, and since it is made of different materials, it heats up in different ways and due to its passage through the sun its effect is delayed; Astronomers call this thermal delay, that is, an object that comes from the cold of the distant regions of the solar system takes a while to heat up, but once it passes close to the sun and heats up, it maintains its heat or takes a while to find its thermal equilibrium and its effects can take a while after passing perihelion, but not as long as three and Atlas, therein lies the anomaly, that this activity is taking a little longer than what would be normal.

This is the first time that it approaches the sun and according to some it could be the first time that it really approaches a star, they have done a follow-up within our possibilities thanks to the Gaia observatory, which is an observatory that is dedicated to astrometry, that is, measuring the position of the stars to know where they are going, where they are coming from, the speed they have, etc., but in number of millions of stars, the last calculation was more than 1000 million stars, a brutality and with this we begin to have a real picture of where the solar system is going, for example, and where 3I/Atlas is going, and it didn't get close to any stars, the Sun is the first star it got close enough to, at least in that time frame.

The penultimate anomaly discovered is that it has detected that it emits X rays, it is the first time in history, X rays are produced when the wind from our Sun collides violently with the gas atmosphere of the comet, it is a clash of titans at the atomic level: solar ions against atoms of another star and that brightness in X rays is the definitive proof that 3I/ATLAS brings with it an exotic chemistry, a protective cloud that is not from here.

And the last and most amazing anomaly is that it beats every 16 hours and 16 minutes, with the precision of a Swiss watch, and its brightness skyrockets, that beat, that pulse of light every 16 hours has a mechanical explanation and is no less spectacular, 3I/Atlas rotates in the dark, and most of its surface is covered in black dust, dark as coal, but at one point there is a crack, a cool valley, an open wound where the shiny ice is exposed.

Every time the comet rotates around itself, that ice spot looks at the Sun, the Sun hits it, then the ice instantly sublimates, an explosion of gas and brightness occurs, and then the comet continues to spin and the spot returns to the shadow, there is silence and hours later again, it is a "Lighthouse Effect": Rotation and active surfaces, astronomers call it a rotational light curve, but for us it is a lighthouse effect, like a natural lighthouse.

And the fascinating thing is that this beat is allowing us to map its surface without seeing it, we know that it rotates, we know that it is elongated, we know that it has active regions and dead regions, we are scanning a ghost, from millions of kilometers away, it is amazing.

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