Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb said Thursday that telescopes around the world will be trained on the interstellar object known as 3I/Atlas as it makes its closest approach to Earth, calling the overnight observation window a rare opportunity to gather critical data under unusually favorable viewing conditions.
Loeb told Newsmax's "The Record With Greta Van Susteren" that 3I/Atlas — only the third confirmed interstellar object ever detected — is drawing intense global attention as it nears Earth on Thursday night, with hundreds of observatories expected to monitor it simultaneously.
Loeb explained that the object originated far beyond the solar system and went unnoticed for millennia "because objects are very faint when they are far from the sun."
"They are getting fainter inversely with distance to the fourth power. And this object entered the solar system, the outskirts, at 100,000 times the Earth-sun separation 8,000 years ago, when human history started to be documented," he said.
"That's when it entered the solar system. But we noticed it only this year, and it looked quite unusual in the sense that it flies through the plane of the planets around the sun.
"And it also has an anti-tail, unlike the cometary tails that we are used to. There is a jet pointed towards the sun," Loeb said.
"We saw it from the start. We see it right now.
"And the question is: Why is this jet going out to about 1 million kilometers [621,371 miles] in the direction of the sun? And it's sort of different from what we have seen before around comets."
Loeb said viewing conditions are especially favorable because the object's closest pass to Earth coincides with a new moon.
"[T]onight is actually a new moon, and that's an unusual coincidence. So the dark sky overhead will not be contaminated by moonlight.
"And there will be hundreds of observatories around the globe looking at it. ... I hope we will have an image from the Webb telescope," he said.
Loeb added that scientists do not yet know the object's exact size, though estimates suggest it is comparable to a major U.S. city.
"We don't know exactly, but it's roughly the size of Manhattan Island [New York]. We don't have a close-up photograph of it.
"And, of course, that would have nailed the nature of the object if we had it. You know, if we saw a rock and an iceberg, we could immediately conclude that it originated from the vicinity of a star by a natural process," he said.
"If we saw, on the other hand, a spacecraft that has buttons on it, the question would have arisen as to whether we should press a button.
"So altogether, you know, the fun of doing science is that it's like the work of a detective: The more data we have, the better. And we shouldn't assume anything and just try to explain what we see," Loeb said.
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Jim Thomas ✉
Jim Thomas is a writer based in Indiana. He holds a bachelor's degree in Political Science, a law degree from U.I.C. Law School, and has practiced law for more than 20 years.
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