Why is 3I/Atlas referred to as 3I/Atlas as thriller ‘spaceship’ hurtles in the direction of Earth
The presence of an interstellar visitor in our Solar System has prompted a swathe of questions, such as why it here? Is it an alien mothership? And how did it get such a catchy name?
A mystery object hurtling through space has sparked a number of questions since it was first spotted in the summer. People have been asking where 3I/Atlas came from, what does it want and, increasingly, why is it called that?
The make-up of interstellar visitor has been baffling boffins for months. Some claim it is a comet, but theoretical physicist Avi Loeb has suggested the object blasting through the Solar System at 130,000mph could be an alien “mothership” on a reconnaissance mission.
Even SpaceX Elon Musk has conceded it could be alien and it will pose a huge collision risk if it deviates from its expected route flying past Earth on December 19 – the day scientists say it will come closest to us.
Traditionally, comets were named after the person or observatory who discovered them. But the space rock got its catchy name from a new coding naming system used by Nasa.
The first letter indicates the category that the comet falls under – in this case ‘I’ for ‘Interstellar’. The number ‘3’ before the ‘I’ indicates that the comet is the third of its kind. The word ‘Atlas’ refers to the programme that operates the telescope that first spotted it.
The naming customs were changed by space chiefs due to new technology greatly speeding up the discovery of comets, meaning single observatories or space missions may discover tens or even hundreds of comets, meaning many could end up with the same name.
First discovered by the NASA-funded ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) observatory on July 1, 3I/Atlas is the third object ever identified as entering our solar system from elsewhere in the galaxy.
Previous interstellar visitors were called 1I/ʻOumuamua in 2017 and 2I/Borisov in 2019.
Nasa say it poses no threat to Earth and will get no closer than 170 million miles to our planet. It flew within 19 million miles of Mars in early October and recently made a slingshot around the sun.
But the European Space Agency’s Planetary Defence Office responded promptly to the discovery, with astronomers contributing to global efforts to track the comet’s path using telescopes in Hawaii, Chile and Australia.
They are also looking for evidence of its existence in older data, a process known as ‘precovery’.
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