{"id":224916,"date":"2025-11-12T01:15:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-12T07:15:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/11\/did-3i-atlas-just-break-up-near-the-sun"},"modified":"2025-11-12T01:15:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-12T07:15:13","slug":"did-3i-atlas-just-break-up-near-the-sun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/11\/did-3i-atlas-just-break-up-near-the-sun","title":{"rendered":"Did 3I\/ATLAS Just Break-Up Near the Sun?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/did-3i-atlas-just-break-up-near-the-sun.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Let me start this quantitative discussion with the conservative assumption that the interstellar object <a class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/3I\/ATLAS\" rel=\"noopener ugc nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">3I\/ATLAS<\/a> is a natural comet, and work out its properties based on its latest post-perihelion image.<\/p>\n<p>The large-scale image of 3I\/ATLAS reported <a class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/britastro.org\/observations\/observation.php?id=20251109_131937_d020b5f5984edbd4\" rel=\"noopener ugc nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a> on November 9, 2029 shows multiple jets reaching out to ~1 million kilometers towards the Sun and ~3 million kilometers in the opposite direction, as discussed <a class=\"\" rel=\"noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/avi-loeb.medium.com\/the-remarkable-large-scale-structure-of-anti-tail-and-tail-jets-from-3i-atlas-242c534cf7b3\" data-discover=\"true\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>For a natural comet, the outflow velocity of the jets is expected to be 0.4 kilometers per second, of order the sound speed of gas at the distance of 3I\/ATLAS from the Sun. At that speed, the jets must have persisted over a timescale of 1\u20133 months.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Let me start this quantitative discussion with the conservative assumption that the interstellar object 3I\/ATLAS is a natural comet, and work out its properties based on its latest post-perihelion image. The large-scale image of 3I\/ATLAS reported here on November 9, 2029 shows multiple jets reaching out to ~1 million kilometers towards the Sun and ~3 [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-224916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224916","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=224916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224916\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}