Transcription
Well, it's about 10 times bigger at the very least, relative to, uh, the previous interstellar object, and, uh, maybe even 50 times bigger than the first interstellar object. And that means that it's somewhere between a thousand to 100,000 times more massive than the other two interstellar objects that we've seen before.
Now, how do we know that? Uh, it's basically we see how much material is evaporated from the surface of the object in the direction of the Sun. And that tells us how much push the object could get, uh, from that evaporation. But we don't notice, based on all the data that was collected between the 15th of May and the 23rd of September, there is no indication that the object is being pushed away from the Sun. And based on all the data that was collected, uh, in about 4,000 observations from 227, uh, observatories around the world, we were able, in a new paper, to set a limit on the mass of the object. It has to be very massive so that this evaporation is not pushing it much. Uh, and we get a mass of 33 billion tons. That's the minimum mass the object needs to be more massive than that, 33 billion tons, so that it will not be pushed back by the level of evaporation that was measured for it. And that means, if you translate that for solid density, uh, you end up with a size that must be larger than 5 kilometers.
Now, this is just a lower limit. It could be much larger than that. It could be larger than Manhattan Island. 5 kilometers is about half the size of Manhattan Island. So, we don't know how big it actually is. Uh, but we have a limit, a lower limit, a minimum mass that a minimum size that it could have. And that one is already, you know, a 100,000 times bigger in mass than the first interstellar object.
Now, why is that puzzling? Well, there is a limited reservoir of material available in interstellar space. And we should have seen a 100,000 Oumuamua. Uh, that was the first object. It was given the name Oumuamua because it was discovered by a telescope in Hawaii, and that means scout in the Hawaiian language. So there should have been a 100,000 of those small ones, of the order of the size of a football field, about a tenth of a kilometer in size, for every big one. That is the size, the minimum size that we infer for the new interstellar object, 3I Atlas. And we haven't seen a 100,000 small ones. In fact, we saw only one or maybe two. Um, and that raises a big question of how come we are seeing such a rare giant object, uh, as the third object from interstellar space. And, uh, it also looks anomalous in other ways. It's path is in the plane. It's very well aligned with the plane of the planets around the Sun. And it has also unusual materials being shed off it, like nickel without iron, that we are, we only find in industrial production of nickel alloys. And so all of these raises the question of whether it might be alien technology. Maybe, you know, the path that it took was designed. Uh, it was fine-tuned to come close to planets. That's why it's in the same plane. And the size is much bigger than we expect for a rock, because this is not a rock. And so all of this is, is really intriguing. And, and the fun thing of doing science, you know, the fun of discovering more and more evidence about the object is that we can let the data educate us. We don't need to know the answer in advance. Uh, and as I often say, you know, the best way to tell the difference between a curious scientist and a dogmatist is to flood them with data. The dogmatist will be worried that the data will violate past beliefs. And the curious scientist, the genuine scientist, will be delighted to learn something new. And I, I belong to this second category. I very much look forward to the coming months because actually on the 3rd of October, we will get a high-resolution image of this object with the HiRISE camera that is in orbit around Mars. It's on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and it could get a pixel resolution of 30 kilometers. So, um, the brightest pixel in the image will put a very tight constraint on the size of 3I Atlas and this, this new interstellar object. And if it looks even bigger than, uh, 5 kilometers in diameter, you know, it may be up to 46 kilometers in diameter based on other data. You know, if it's that big, I would actually, uh, be quite concerned about it not being natural. Uh, because it will be untenable to produce such a giant rock that arrives to our neighborhood over the past decade. We expect it to arrive maybe once every several millennia or tens of millennia. And the fact that we saw it over the past decade is really surprising.
I want to know, you mentioned following the data here. What is the data to show you in the past? Is there anything that you can compare this to in the past, or is this something just completely brand new that we've absolutely never seen before?
Yeah, it's something we've never seen before because, um, uh, only over the past decade, we had the telescopes that can survey the sky for such objects that are sensitive enough, and, um, computers that can digest large quantities of data, as we currently have. So, this is a completely new frontier. And we found so far only three objects from interstellar space, from outside the solar system. We know that they came from, uh, far away because they are not bound by gravity to the Sun. They're moving too fast. And this one is the fastest. It's moving 600 times faster than the fastest race car that we have on Earth. I calculated that because, uh, a car racer in NASCAR wants to put an image of this object and my image on the hood of his car, and in two weeks he will go to the with that car to compete, uh, in Vegas, in Las Vegas. Um, and I calculated, I told him that irrespective of how fast he goes, he will not move even close to 3I Atlas, which is moving 600 times faster at 60 kilometers per second. And, um, not only that it's very fast, but, uh, it's also anomalous in other ways. And, you know, it's only the third object that we found. In the future, we might find many more because now we have the Rubin Observatory in Chile that can discover a new one every few months. So, um, in my view, we should check each and every one of them, uh, whether it's a rock, a natural object, or perhaps some technological probe that, you know, was produced by another civilization, the way we produced the Voyager, Pioneer, New Horizons. Uh, we might not be the smartest kid on the block, and we should just open our eyes and see what comes our way from outside the solar system.
Uh, you mentioned this object in Chile, or who has access to that? And for your research, how does that compare to what we're currently seeing?
Well, the data that I am referring to that we analyze, uh, first of all, there is data from, um, about 227 observatories on Earth. These are telescopes all around the world. But in addition to that, we have space telescopes like the James Webb Space Telescope or the Hubble Space Telescope that were observing this object. And we are using all the data at our disposal to figure out its nature and the limit, the minimum mass of this object, the minimum size of this object that I mentioned before, was obtained by using all of this data in a paper that I submitted to a journal, uh, today. And so it's very exciting because this is a new result. It gives us a minimum mass, uh, which is already very large. It's a 33 billion tons. Uh, this object is, is just, is a giant object. It's huge, and, um, it might be even bigger than that. And we are just learning about it. And, um, more evidence, more data. It's just like a detective story. The more you have, the better your understanding is of, of, of what the nature of, of, of the object is. And, um, and so I'm looking forward to what we might learn from in the coming month, as it comes close to Mars on October 3rd, which is just around the corner next week. Um, and then after that, it will pass close to the Sun on October 29th. Uh, unfortunately, the Earth would be on the opposite side of the Sun. We won't be able to observe this object because the Sun will be in our way. Uh, but then, uh, on March 16th, 2026, this object will come close to Jupiter. So I'm quite confident we'll have a lot of information about it. And what I really care about is whether the object is natural, a comet, uh, or perhaps technological, in which case, you know, it will change everything for us. And I defined a new scale that I now call the Lobe scale, which, uh, is using a rank of zero for a completely natural object, and a rank of 10 for a technological object that might be a threat to humanity. Uh, and as of now, I give this object a rank of 4. And I expect that in the coming weeks, we'll know more about it, so I can either dial it down or dial it up.
Hey, what exactly are you using, I guess, for this reference and for this Lobe scale? Uh, what, what things are you using to determine, uh, between zero and ten? You say currently we're at a four, but we're expecting another update in October. Uh, do you have any predictions on if that number is going to go up or if it's going to go down based on when we get this next update in a couple of weeks?
No, I think we should be humble and not assume that we can guess the answer in advance. But if you ask me, what, how do I get to the rank of 4? But it's because of the anomalies of this object. There are five of them. One is the large size that I already mentioned that, you know, there isn't enough rocky material in interstellar space to deliver such a giant object, uh, made of rock, uh, to our backyard over the past decade. There is just not enough. And the second is the fact that the object is in the plane of the planets around the Sun, which is surprising. There is a chance of 1 in 500 for that to happen at random. So that's a very small chance, 1 in 500, given that this is only the third object that we found. And then, uh, there was a glow around the object. And usually around comets, you get some reflected sunlight from dust particles, uh, and then the dust particles reflect sunlight and are pushed away from the Sun. So you see that as a cometary tail. But for this object, the glow, the scattered sunlight was ahead of the object, towards the Sun. It was actually 10 times longer than it was wide. And then that was very puzzling. What? Why is this object behaving in a way that you don't see a cometary tail behind it, away from the Sun, but instead you see something towards the Sun? And and that was true in July and August. Uh, and the physics of that, why that happened, is still not completely clear. Uh, and then in addition, the object turned green recently. Uh, it's not clear what is producing the green color. Uh, there is a plume of gas around it that is made mostly of carbon dioxide, not water. 87% is of that plume in mass is carbon dioxide, and only 4% is water. The rest is carbon monoxide. And there is an increasingly rapidly increasing, uh, amount of cyanide and, uh, also nickel without any iron coming out of it. And the only place in nature where we find nickel without iron is when we produce nickel alloys. And so the question is, whether this nickel without iron in the in the cloud of gas around it was a result of a technological production process that made this object. Um, so these are various, and, you know, puzzles about it that we don't fully understand. And I, I, my approach is, when you have anomalies of this type, uh, you know, we should keep our eyes on the ball. We should try and figure out what the nature of the object by collecting more data, more observations, more information from all the assets that we have in space. And in fact, I spoke with representative Anna Paulina Luna, and she asked me for an update about 3I Atlas. And I mentioned the fact that NASA has various observatories like spacecraft Juno around Jupiter that can be used to observe this object when it comes close to Jupiter. And, and she wrote, very graciously, she wrote a letter to the head of NASA, Sean Duffy, uh, to encourage NASA to take that data. So, I very much look forward to the coming weeks where we will learn more about it.
All right, we're looking forward to that update, and I'm sure we'll be checking right back in with you as soon as we find out, as we learn a little bit more about this very, very, very large object that is currently floating in space. Uh, Professor Harvard, Professor Space, low, thanks to them again, as always, for your time, and we look forward to hearing from you in the next.