{"id":217680,"date":"2025-07-12T02:12:41","date_gmt":"2025-07-12T07:12:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/3i-atlas-interstellar-object-may-be-oldest-comet-ever-seen"},"modified":"2025-07-12T02:12:41","modified_gmt":"2025-07-12T07:12:41","slug":"3i-atlas-interstellar-object-may-be-oldest-comet-ever-seen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/3i-atlas-interstellar-object-may-be-oldest-comet-ever-seen","title":{"rendered":"3I\/ATLAS: Interstellar object \u2018may be oldest comet ever seen\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/IXJ221XXPvM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>A mystery interstellar object discovered last week is likely to be the oldest comet ever seen\u2014possibly predating our solar system by more than 3 billion years, researchers say.<\/p>\n<p>The \u201cwater ice-rich\u201d visitor, named 3I\/ATLAS, is only the third known object from beyond our solar system ever spotted in our cosmic neighborhood and the first to reach us from a completely different region of our Milky Way galaxy.<\/p>\n<p>It could be more than 7 billion years old, according to University of Oxford astronomer Matthew Hopkins\u2014who is discussing his <a href=\"https:\/\/conference.astro.dur.ac.uk\/event\/7\/contributions\/751\/\" target=\"_blank\">findings<\/a> at the Royal Astronomical Society\u2019s National Astronomy Meeting (<a href=\"https:\/\/conference.astro.dur.ac.uk\/event\/7\/\" target=\"_blank\">NAM 2025<\/a>) in Durham\u2014and may be the most remarkable interstellar visitor yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A mystery interstellar object discovered last week is likely to be the oldest comet ever seen\u2014possibly predating our solar system by more than 3 billion years, researchers say. The \u201cwater ice-rich\u201d visitor, named 3I\/ATLAS, is only the third known object from beyond our solar system ever spotted in our cosmic neighborhood and the first to [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-217680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asteroid-comet-impacts","category-existential-risks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217680\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}