3I/Atlas brings a frozen message from the stars

We earthlings have a mysterious visitor – and this unannounced arrival has space scientists straining their necks to catch a glimpse, while internet conversations about the mystery visitor have been raging – from deep science to wild claims of it being an alien spaceship.

Here’s what set it off. During the last week of June this year, the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (Atlas) in Chile, which scans the sky regularly for asteroids, detected something zooming into our solar system. The object was moving at 69 kilometres per second – far faster than the 42 km/s velocity needed to escape our solar system. Translation: it’s not from our part of the world.

On 1 July, Nasa confirmed this and named it 3I (pronounced three-eye), and the excitement about 3I/Atlas began. The name indicates that it is only the third time we’ve managed to detect such an object. The first, in 2017, named “Oumuamua,” was already leaving our solar system when we noticed it, leaving very little time to get a good look.

To add to the mystery, Harvard astronomy professor Avi Loeb published a paper speculating that the speed and unusual trajectory of “Oumuamua” could mean it was part of a spaceship or something created by some intelligence out there. Most of the scientific community debunked his arguments, but he attracted a substantial following among the UFO-believer community.

Then, in 2019, another alien visitor was spotted, and we named it Borisov after Gennadiy Vladimirovich Borisov, an amateur Crimean astronomer who discovered it using a homemade telescope. It was confirmed as a comet and displayed largely the same properties that comets in our universe do.

And now comes 3I/Atlas. “No one knows where it came from,” said David Jewitt, who led the Hubble Space Telescope observations. “It's like glimpsing a rifle bullet for a thousandth of a second. You can't project that back with any accuracy to figure out where it started.”

The Ancient Messenger: The trajectory shows 3I/Atlas isn't coming anywhere near Earth and will come no closer than about 270 million km – roughly 1.8 times the distance between Earth and the Sun. But it is right in our planetary backyard and will pass close to Mars and Jupiter. The comet will reach perihelion – its closest approach to the Sun, expected around 30 October – and will duck behind the Sun from our viewpoint for a bit.

But it’ll re-emerge in December as it heads back out to interstellar space, never to return. The closest approach to Earth itself happens on 19 December 2025, at about 224 million miles away (too far for aliens to pop by for coffee, sorry Twitter). It'll swing even closer to Jupiter around March 2026, and then – that’s it. It’s leaving our solar system and heading back into the cosmic void. This is a one-time-only visit.

Analysis of the data we have so far shows that it is much older than our Sun, which is 4.6 billion years old, opening up the possibility of providing clues about the origin of our universe. The water and molecules inside 3I/Atlas have possibly been locked in deep freeze for 7 billion years. So, that's basically a frozen message in a bottle from the early galaxy.

Science vs Fiction: There's broad agreement that it's a comet and most plausibly originates from somewhere near the Milky Way rather than our local solar neighbourhood. But the details – which system it came from, how it was ejected, and how it evolved during its journey – remain open and under active study.

The UFO conspiracy brigade, however, isn’t waiting for any such study. Some are already wondering if 3I/Atlas is not a comet at all. A few have even posted pictures of a supposed fleet of spaceships, speculating that maybe extraterrestrials are finally making their house call.

Peace My Brother: Enter Avi Loeb again. Looking at the latest images after 3I/Atlas passed Mars, Loeb has been saying the object “doesn't look like a typical comet.” He's suggested there could be a 30 to 40 percent chance it’s not fully natural – possibly some kind of technological object masquerading as a comet. He's even joked about what message we should send if it shows up: “Hello, welcome to our neighbourhood. Peace!”

But other scientists and organisations like Nasa have been pretty clear that this is an interstellar comet, not a visit from ET’s cousins.

The truth is, the latest images are showing some unusual features that don't fit the standard comet playbook perfectly. The object might be self-luminous in ways we don’t fully understand yet. Or it could just be a really interesting comet from a very far-away place. Science sometimes sounds like science fiction before we get all the data.

Space Spectacle: Meanwhile, everyone with a fancy telescope is watching this thing like football fans at a World Cup final. Europe’s Mars Express and ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter – normally laser-focused on studying Mars – turned their cameras on 3I/Atlas as it zoomed past the Red Planet in early October. Typically, the orbiter, which has studied Mars since 2016, points its camera downward at the surface 400 km below, snapping about three pictures a second with an exposure time of roughly 1.5 milliseconds.

In October, it was aimed at 3I/Atlas, a dot nearly 32 million kilometres away, with five-second exposures, trying to make out something between 1/10,000th and 1/100,000th as bright as its usual observations. Five seconds was long enough to gather sufficient light, but not so long that the dot became smeared by the motion of the comet.

In November, the European Space Agency's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) probe will get its turn. Here on Earth, the newly activated Vera C Rubin Observatory in Chile – which boasts the largest digital camera in the world and the world’s largest lens, weighing 350 tonnes – will also be tracking 3I/Atlas.Basically, half of humanity's best space hardware is now pointed at this speedy interstellar interloper.

Over the next few months, as the data rolls in, scientists are going to have a lot to untangle. Maybe the evidence will confirm it’s just a comet – but a really, really old one that holds clues to the time before our universe was born. That, honestly, is almost as cool as the alien spaceship theory.

Another star from Kerala

Kollam-native Dr Arathyram Sasikala, Assistant Professor at the University of Bradford, has secured 2.2 million pounds to develop technology that uses body movement to heal broken bones and power pacemakers. Her four-year project explores piezoelectroceutics, a field that stimulates tissue regeneration and generates energy without drugs, wires, or batteries. Sasikala, who completed all her early education in Kerala, credits her family and upbringing in the state for nurturing her scientific curiosity.

Her achievement recalls another Kerala scientist who made the headlines in 2024: Professor Lizy Abraham, who secured a half-million-euro Irish government grant for a project on early detection of heart problems in children. Lizy attributes her innovative thinking to hands-on science experiments during her school days in Trivandrum and support from the local science group Sastra Sahithya Parishath. Currently, such stories remain scattered in the media, and creating a repository of achievers like them could guide young generations, showing what’s possible when ambition meets opportunity.

An escape hatch from group drivel

There may finally be light at the end of the tunnel for those trapped in WhatsApp groups they just can’t escape from. The platform is testing a feature aimed at curbing spam by limiting how many messages individuals or businesses can send to unknown people or contacts who haven’t replied. Every message to a non-responding user will count toward a monthly limit – though the exact number is still being tested. So does this mean we’ve found the ultimate way to dodge those diehards who keep posting “Good morning” GIFs and endless forwards – just by staying silent?

Startup eyes private space station

California-based startup Vast plans to launch a private space station called Haven-1 into low Earth orbit by 2026. The company aims to send the 14,000 kg station aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 – the largest spacecraft yet to lift off atop the rocket. During its expected three-year lifespan, Vast will host short-duration astronaut missions, with crews of four spending about 10 days at a time aboard Haven, according to Space.com. The company is also reimagining life in orbit – hiring a former Campbell’s food developer to rethink astronaut cuisine and designing an inflatable sleep system that lets crew members adjust pressure levels to simulate gravity while resting. Sounds almost like a bed and breakfast in space, doesn’t it?

Prank bots and panic buttons

AI-generated videos are flooding the internet, bringing a fresh batch of digital headaches. The latest? Teens making eerily realistic clips of themselves “welcoming” homeless men into their homes and sending them to their parents – just to set off panic buttons. The prank, which began in the US, is now spreading to the UK and New Zealand. The fallout: frantic police calls and warnings urging kids to stop. But let’s be honest – teenagers will always find new ways to turn technology into entertainment. The real question, though, is who’s being cheekier here: the kids having fun with the tech or the companies that hand them these powerful tools for free?