What happens after it’s over?

There are only a few days left before the mystery occurs Comet 3I/ATLAS Keep your step closest to that countryAt this point there is an opportunity to analyze it in depth.

For this reason, there are already those who are wondering what will happen to the object interstellar as soon as it moves away from the earth’s surface.

Since its publication in July, ATLAS has captivated the astronomical community due to its peculiarities, and even the question of Hypothesis that it is actually not a cometbut an unprecedented device.

He December 19th, While many people are preparing for the Christmas celebration, scientists and astronomy fans will be looking at the sky because it is the date on which the Christmas celebration is celebrated Comet 3I/ATLAS will have his closest approach to Earthas defined by the European Space Agency (ESA, according to its English acronym).

It is logical that those who are interested in the object take advantage of this day to look at it in detail, because after This will take an irreversible path towards the ends of spacewhich is becoming increasingly difficult to visualize.

ATLAS has a hyperbolic trajectory, meaning it will leave the solar system forever after getting close to the sun. It is estimated that in the end March 2026 will cross that Jupiter orbitand its brightness progressively decreases until it disappears from our field of vision.

Despite the enthusiasm of those passionate about the comet, this is the truth There will be no way to observe it with the naked eye not even with binoculars. What’s more: ESA expects it to lose some of its brightness as it approaches Earth, so that it could not be visible even with small telescopes.

The ATLAS alone can be seen with telescopes medium and large, and experts assure that the best opportunities for shooting are in remote places with low light pollution. Still some Websites offer an alternativeby monitoring your flight path virtually.

The POT created a simulator called Eyes on the solar system (“Eyes on the Solar System”), in which the path of the object can be observed. It shows in close-up what ATLAS would look like, while providing tools to see its position and trajectory through the solar system.

In the meantime, SkyLivea website specializing in astronomy, offers a more comprehensive option. On its side it simulates a kind of interactive sky in which the planets and stars can be seen. The ATLAS route is marked in real time with yellow dots and various statistics are listed in detail, including the distance that separates the object from the Earth and the Sun.

He 3I/ATLAS was discovered by Final Alert System for the Impact of Asteroids with the Earth (ATLAS, acronym in English) and was first reported on July 1, 2025.

It’s the third interstellar object known (hence the name “3” “I”), after the discovery of 1I/Oumuamua in 2017 and 2I/Borisov in 2019. However, since its appearance, it has a series of special features which makes it significantly more attractive than its predecessors.

It is “interstellar” because it has one external originThat is, it did not originate within the solar system but entered the solar system from somewhere else, and some studies suggest that it may have originated in the oldest regions of the galaxy.

In connection with the above, the ATLAS presents a hyperbolic and retrograde trajectory. Specifically, its orbit is aligned within 5 degrees of the ecliptic plane, the plane in which the Earth and most planets orbit the Sun. Instead of rotating around the Sun like traditional comets, this object moves parallel to it.

The speed at which it does this is also special, as it is more than 200,000 kilometers per hour, making it the front runner fastest interstellar comet ever recorded.

Likewise, the ATLAS has several anomalies related to its body. The most obvious thing is that it is assumed that it can keep up 11 kilometers in diameter, This makes it one of the oldest known interstellar objects Size.

Its gas cloud now contains much more nickel than iron and a significantly higher nickel-cyanide ratio than all previous comets.

At first it also surprised astronomers by producing a “Anti-Cola“: a jet of about 6,000 kilometers directed towards the Sun rather than away from it like the jets of traditional comets.

The brightness the ATLAS did not go unnoticed either. Shows a extremely negative biaswhich was not the case with its predecessors. Polarization, in the case of comets, is a phenomenon that occurs when light is reflected from their dust. If you get it wrong, as in this case, it is said to be negative.

The object is also close to its perihelion (its closest passage to the sun). It shone faster than any other comet.

As ATLAS approached Earth in recent weeks, other features that make the phenomenon unique were also discovered. On the one hand, NOIRLab revealed the body of the object Color changedwhen transitioning from red to Greenand on the other hand, ESA published a photo showing that it could not have any other two cocks

While most scientists assert that these features, although not common, are typical of an interstellar comet, some go further and venture that it is actually an interstellar comet alien ship.

Abraham “Avi” Loeb is an American-Israeli scientist specializing in astrophysics and cosmology.

He holds several important positions in the Harvard University and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Physical Society and the International Academy of Astronautics.

He is also President of the Council on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies of the United States and was named one of the 25 by TIME Magazine in 2012 most influential people in space science.

However, when it comes to ATLAS, this distinguished scientist differs from almost all of his colleagues in that he doubts that it is a comet. and say that It could be an alien ship.

In his Medium blog, he fights against established assumptions about the object on which he primarily bases his articles mathematical calculations which, in his opinion, would demonstrate the remote possibility of a comet having certain properties attributed to ATLAS.

For example, aside from saying that it is too strange that it has such size and brightness, he has written that the probability of it having such a chemical composition and extreme negative polarization is less than 1%.

Furthermore, and in a text that made it clear that he was clearly leaning towards the alien hypothesis, he noted an alleged proximity of the radio signal emitted by ATLAS to the signal known as “Wow! signal“, the frequency that experts believe any extraterrestrial civilization would use to send a message since it is common knowledge.

Despite these and many other statements by Loeb, as already mentioned, Most of the scientific community denies this. He recently took on this task Jason Wrightanother renowned scientist dedicated to the search for extraterrestrial life.

In a long text in which he breaks down the assumptions put forward by his colleague, he argues that Avi’s argument is misleading because The statistics presented were calculated after the properties of the comet were known. and not before. This is called the fallacy of hindsight or reasoning with evidence selected later (Post hoc reasoning).

“If someone had predicted the properties of a spacecraft in advance and matched their predictions, they would have essentially been spot on. But Loeb chose certain aspects of the comet’s orbit to calculate probabilities after he knew them. This is a classic fallacy and a misuse of probability theory,” Jason wrote on his blog.