Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS Is Spewing Water Like a Cosmic Fire Hydrant

Comet 3 I/Atlas Continue Be full of wonder. As well as only Object of the Third Intersteller Never detected, new analysis shows that it is producing hydroxil (OH) emissions, these compounds betray the presence of water on its surface. This discovery was created using a group of researchers at the University of Alabama NASA Blue Gerales Swift Observatory, and a study published was described in Astrophysical Journal LettersThe

Hydroxil compounds are detected by their produced ultraviolet signatures. However, on earth, many UV wavelengths were blocked by the atmosphere, which is why researchers had to use the Blue Gerales Swift Observatory – a space telescope free from experienced intervention by the monitoring of the earth.

Virtually present every water Comet In the solar system, so high that the chemicals and physical reactions of water are used to measure, catalogs and track these heavenly objects, and how they react to the sun’s heat. Looking at 3 I/Atlas means being able to study its features using the same scale used for regular comets and in the future this information can be useful data for studying comet processes produced in other star systems.

“When we detect water – or even its stupid ultraviolet echo, oh – from the comet of an inter -center, we are reading a note from another planet,” Dennis Bodywits said, an opaque university physicist who cooperated with research, who assisted in a study. Press statementThe “It tells us that the chemistry of life is not unique to us ourselves.”

Is the comet Rock, gas and dust frost This is usually the orbital stars (the exceptions are still three interstellar objects. When they are far from the star, they are completely frosty, but as they come closer, solar radiations get their frozen elements heated up and sublimate – spread from stiff to gas – including some of these elements emitted from the nucleus of the comet for the energy of the stars, To form a “tail”.

However, the data collected with 3 I/Atlas has revealed an unexpected detail: Oh production by the comet was already far from the sun – when the comet was three times more than the sun in the sun in a region of The solar system where the temperature is not enough to easily produce ice. Already at that distance, 3i/Atlas was leaking water at the rate of about 40kg per second, a stream comparable – the study writers explained – to “hydrant in maximum energy”.

This details seem to indicate a more complex structure than what is usually observed in the solar system comets. For example, it can be explained by the presence of small pieces of isolation from the comet’s nucleus, and it is subsequently evaporated by the heat of the sun, the heavenly body is about to feed an aerial cloud. This is a thing that is still noticed only in a small number of far -flung comets and can provide valuable information about the processes from which 3 I/Atlas originated.

“So far every intersteller’s comet has been surprised,” Jexi Jing, an Oburn University researcher and invention assistant, one says in one Press statementThe “Oumuamua was dry, Borisov was rich in carbon monoxide and now Atlas is releasing water at a distance where we did not expect it. Everyone thought we thought how we knew how we form around the planets and comets stars.”

This story was originally attended Wired Italia And translated from Italian.