Comet 3I ATLAS – the LONGEST Gamma Ray Burst GRB 250702B – COSMIC CONNECTION? I Took a PICTURE

A remarkable comet is passing through our solar system, one that has captured the attention of scientists and skywatchers alike.

Comet 3I/ATLAS, discovered in 2025, has been the subject of intense scrutiny as it races toward Earth.

What’s extraordinary about this comet is not just its interstellar origin, but the behavior and composition of its dust tail—an anomaly that has left researchers scrambling for answers.

In recent weeks, astronomers have discovered something unexpected: the dust particles are huge, and they’re moving incredibly slowly.

This discovery has profound implications for understanding where 3I/ATLAS came from and how it formed. Let’s dive into what scientists have uncovered.

When 3I/ATLAS was first spotted in early July 2025 by the Atlas telescope in Chile, it was already behaving oddly.

The comet had a large coma—the fuzzy cloud of gas and dust around its nucleus—but there was barely any visible tail, something that’s highly unusual for a comet.

Typically, as a comet approaches the Sun, sunlight heats the ice, causing gas to escape and dust to be blown backward, creating a visible tail.

This is a predictable, well-known process.

But 3I/ATLAS didn’t follow this pattern.

By late August 2025, images from the Gemini South telescope showed the anti-solar tail—the tail pointing away from the Sun—growing slowly. By mid-September, it had stretched to 100,000 km.

Dr. David Jewitt from UCLA and Dr. Jane Lou analyzed Hubble images from July 2025 and concluded that the delayed appearance of the tail was due to the dust particles themselves.

The particles, they found, had an effective radius of about 0.1 mm, which is roughly the width of a human hair.

Even more unusual, these dust particles were being ejected from the comet’s surface at remarkably slow speeds—around 5 meters per second.

To put that into perspective, a person walking briskly moves at about 2 meters per second.

These large, slow-moving particles didn’t respond as quickly to solar radiation pressure, which is why the tail took its time to develop.

Normally, small micron-sized dust particles are quickly blown away by solar radiation, forming an immediate tail.

However, the large grains in 3I/ATLAS take much longer to drift away, which is why the tail took so long to form.

This slow movement and large dust size provide vital information about the comet’s composition.

According to Jewitt and Lou’s findings, there may be smaller dust grains present in the coma, but they’re not in numbers sufficient to affect the light scattering significantly.

Instead, the large grains dominate the tail, suggesting that interparticle cohesion—the ability of smaller dust grains to stick together—has occurred.

This phenomenon is similar to how snowflakes can clump together to form larger masses.

Interestingly, a similar trend of 0.1 mm grains was also reported in 2I/Borisov, another interstellar comet discovered in 2019.

This suggests that large dust grains might be a common feature among interstellar comets.

But 3I/ATLAS differs from Borisov in one significant way: It has a much higher dust production rate.

During July and August 2025, 3I/ATLAS was producing dust at a rate of 180 kg per second at a distance of 2 astronomical units from the Sun.

In comparison, 2I/Borisov was producing only 70 kg per second at the same distance.

This means 3I/ATLAS is ejecting more than twice as much dust as Borisov.

Hubble observations from July 2025 estimated that the comet was ejecting about 6 kg of small dust particles per second and 60 kg of large dust particles per second.

Clearly, the large dust particles dominate.

In addition to the dust composition, recent spectroscopic data from the James Webb Space Telescope revealed more surprises about the comet’s composition.

The ratio of carbon dioxide to water in the comet’s coma is approximately 8:1, which is one of the highest CO2-to-H2O ratios ever observed in any comet.

Most solar system comets are dominated by water ice, with carbon dioxide being a minor component.

But in 3I/ATLAS, CO2 appears to be the primary gas being released.

This tells us something significant about where the comet formed.

Carbon dioxide ice is more common in very cold environments, far from stars.

The comet likely originated in the outer regions of its parent planetary system, where temperatures were low enough for CO2 to condense and remain stable for billions of years.

Additionally, spectroscopic data from the Southern African Large Telescope and the Nordic Optical Telescope showed a slight reddening in the comet’s reflectance spectrum.

The spectral slope is about 22.8% per micrometer in the optical range, suggesting the presence of organic-rich materials similar to those found in comets in the outer regions of our solar system.

What’s more, early observations revealed the absence of certain emission lines—like those from C2, NH2, and CN—which are typically detected in gas spectra from other comets.

This suggests that the comet’s outgassing is primarily carbon dioxide, unlike the typical mix of volatiles found in solar system comets.

As the comet approaches the Sun, the heat from the Sun causes the surface to release material, but instead of forming a traditional tail, 3I/ATLAS’s coma appeared elongated toward the Sun.

This was not a tail, but a dust plume emitted from the heated surface of the nucleus.

As the comet rotated and sunlight hit different parts of its surface, dust was ejected more from the Sun-facing side.

By late August 2025, the coma of 3I/ATLAS had transitioned, forming a clear anti-solar tail—the classic tail structure formed when radiation pressure becomes dominant.

Key Discoveries and What They Tell Us

The dust tail analysis of 3I/ATLAS is revealing fascinating details about the comet’s composition and behavior.

The large, slow-moving dust particles suggest the comet’s nucleus is cohesive and resistant to fragmentation.

Unlike other comets that break apart under solar heating, 3I/ATLAS has remained intact, giving scientists clues about its structure and stability.

The high carbon dioxide to water ratio indicates that the comet likely formed in a cold, distant environment around another star billions of years ago.

Moreover, the presence of organic-rich materials hints that the comet may contain complex carbon compounds similar to those found in the outer regions of our own solar system.

3I/ATLAS is thought to be about 4.6 billion years old, roughly the same age as Earth, and it has been traveling through interstellar space for most of that time, carrying with it a frozen record of its parent star system.

What’s most intriguing is how 3I/ATLAS behaves like other comets but with unique features that suggest its interstellar origin.

Its dust production rate and the composition of its gases point to the idea that interstellar comets like 3I/ATLAS may behave differently from those native to our solar system.

As the comet continues its journey through the solar system, astronomers will be monitoring its behavior closely.

This discovery offers a glimpse into the nature of interstellar comets and their potential to provide insights into the formation of other star systems.

The comet’s journey is far from over, and the information it continues to reveal will likely reshape our understanding of interstellar objects and their role in the cosmos.

What do you think?

Is 3I/ATLAS a unique interstellar comet, or is it part of a larger phenomenon we don’t yet fully understand?