Read more: Visit websiteAn interstellar object observed by the Hubble Space Telescope has been confirmed as the fastest ever to travel from beyond our solar system.
3I/ATLAS was discovered by NASA's Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) on 1 July, and is just the third interstellar object ever recorded to enter our solar system , after 'Oumuamua in 2017 and comet Borisov in 2019.
Observations showed that it was a coma (a cloud of gas and dust) rather than a giant Earth-destroying asteroid , which is always good.
But for the comet to be travelling at 130,000mph means it's simply too fast to be gravitationally bound by the Sun, and that's why it's interstellar.
⁘No one knows where the comet came from,⁘ says David Jewitt, the science team leader for the Hubble 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 on its path.⁘
Just days after it was discovered, initial estimates suggested that 3I/ATLAS was around 20 kilometres (12 miles) in size, and it made experts think it could be an unidentified alien object .
Professor Avi Loeb, of Harvard University, told MailOnline that if 3I/ATLAS could be something out of the novel Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke.
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