(NewsNation) — A swarm of objects could be surrounding 3I/ATLAS’s anti-tail facing the sun, Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb says.
In a blog post, Loeb, who still insists the object could be an alien vessel, acknowledged last month’s post-perihelion images of 3I/ATLAS showed a tear-drop shape of its coma with an extension towards the sun.
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Loeb attributed the new development to 3I/ATLAS having been pushed away from the sun relative to the objects through its nongravitational acceleration.
“At the current separation of 3I/ATLAS from the Sun of 270 million kilometers, the displacement would imply that the objects are closer to the Sun than 3I/ATLAS by about 54,000 kilometers,” he said. “This separation is comparable to the sunward elongation of the teardrop glow around 3I/ATLAS.”
Loeb added if the objects continue to experience nongravitational acceleration from mass, they should maintain an anti-tail geometry.
“A large swarm of objects would have a much larger surface area than that of 3I/ATLAS, even if the total mass in them is a small fraction of the mass of 3I/ATLAS,” said Loeb.
3I/ATLAS is expected to come closest to Jupiter on March 16, 2026, as it leaves our planetary system, Loeb stated last month. By then, the object is estimated to be 33 million miles from Jupiter, compared with the wider berth of 170 million miles the Earth will have with 3I/ATLAS on Dec. 19.
“It comes exactly at the right distance from Jupiter for Jupiter’s gravity to dominate. So, if it wants to release some probes near Jupiter, that’s where it needs to be,” Loeb said.