interstellar Comet โ3i/Atlas: A 10-Million-Year Journey through the Milky Way Yields Fewโ Clues to its Origins
By rachel Kim, World-Today-News.com – octoberโฃ 26, 2024
The interstellar comet 3i/atlas โcontinues to captivate the scientific community, prompting intensive study with the most powerful telescopesโ available. Now, a new study leveraging data โฃfrom the European Space Agency’s (ESA)โ GAIA probe is offering a fascinating, though ultimatelyโ inconclusive, look at theโค comet’s trajectory – stretching back an โคastounding 10 million years.
The GAIA โคmission, completed in January after an extended โขrun since 2022, meticulously charted the positions,โค brightness, and movements โขof billions of stars within our Milky Way galaxy. This unprecedented datasetโ has โallowed a team ofโ Spanish and Swedish researchers to attempt a remarkable feat: reconstructing the comet’s pathโฃ through the galaxy, searching for gravitational interactions thatโ might have altered its course.
The core question driving this research is simple: where did 3i/Atlas come from? Understanding its origin could provide valuable insights into the formationโข and evolution of โplanetary systems beyond our own.
Rewinding Time: A 10-Million-Year Simulation
The team, led by Xabier Pรฉrez Couto of the universidade daโ Coruรฑa, โคused โขGAIA data to simulate the comet’s movement backward in time, seekingโข close encounters with stars that could have subtly shiftedโ its trajectory. The simulation extended a staggering 10 million years into the past – a โขtimeframe rarely attempted inโฃ such โstudies.
The results, published on Arxiv ([[[[