‘Comet’ 3I/ATLAS stuffed with ‘ice volcanos’ as alien idea blown broad open by new photos
A new study has dropped a wild theory which claims the 3I/ATLAS comet has ice volcanoes covering it, which could give researchers a huge clue as to what’s inside
The “spaceship” 3I/ATLAS might be covered in erupting “ice volcanoes”, in a wild new theory which could tell us what’s inside. Since July the interstellar comet has captured the public’s imagination and baffled astrology experts as it moves through our solar system.
It comes after Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb suggested 3I/ATLAS could be “pulsing like a heart”. But now – researchers have discovered that as the comet approached the sun a series of “ice volcanoes” erupted on its surface, like zits under a magnifying glass.
These cryovolcanoes can be explained by what the comet is made of, according to the preprint server arXiv. The company presented a study suggesting the comet is similar to icy trans-Neptunian objects, or dwarf planets and other cosmic objects that orbit the sun.
If this is true, it means that the mysterious comet has a surprising amount in common with things in our solar system, despite the fact it came from a different cosmic neighbourhood.
Study lead author Josep Trigo-Rodríguez, a staff leading researcher at the Institute of Space Sciences (CSIC/IEEC), told Live Science: “We were all surprised. Being a comet formed in a remote planetary system, it is remarkable that the mixture of materials forming the surface of the body has resemblance with trans-Neptunian objects, bodies formed at [a] large distance from the Sun but belonging to our planetary system.”
In an article published earlier this week, Avi Loeb wrote of the mysterious comet: “Following its detection on July 1, 2025, the light from the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS showed pulsating variability with a period of 16.16 hours.
“Over the past month, images of 3I/ATLAS showed multiple jets. If the mass loss in the jets is pulsed periodically, the resulting coma would display periodic variability in its scattering of sunlight.”
In November the Harvard professor revealed the “multi-jet structure” will arrive at its closest to Earth on December 19 in what could be our closest ever encounter with alien life and technology.
“This multi-jet structure constitutes a remarkable target for future observations with the Hubble and Webb telescopes, as 3I/ATLAS will arrive at closest approach to Earth on December 19, 2025,” he said as per Medium.
“Its minimal distance from Earth will be 269 million kilometers, about a hundred times larger than the extent of the jet structure in today’s images.”
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