Transcription
So on November 9th, we captured possibly the wildest images of 3I/2019 Y4 (Atlas) yet, with jets of material stretching millions of kilometers into space.
And in this video, we'll explore Avi Loeb's analysis of these images and the massive problem with the math here, because this object appears to be losing way more material than it should physically be able to lose.
So the jets pointing toward the sun are stretching about 1 million km into space, and the jets pointing away from the sun are stretching almost 3 million km. The distance from Earth to the moon is about 400,000 km. These jets are stretching seven times farther than that distance.
What makes this even more incredible is that back in July, the Hubble Space Telescope captured this object and saw a small glowing cloud around it. These new jets captured on November 9th are 3,000 times bigger than what Hubble observed. 3,000 times bigger in just a few months is absolutely insane.
Now, as you probably know, normal comets usually have one main tail that points away from the sun. That happens because of something called the solar wind. This solar wind acts like a giant leaf blower, pushing all the gas and dust from a comet backward at over 800,000 miles per hour. So seeing jets that point toward the sun and actually push against that wind is really unusual. For these jets to push against the solar wind and stay together for a million kilometers, they must be incredibly dense and powerful.
Now, anti-tails are rare, but not impossible with natural comets. Back in 1992, astronomers discovered a comet called Shoemaker-Levy 9 that had passed too close to Jupiter. The planet's gravity ripped it into 21 separate pieces. When those fragments hit Jupiter in July 1994, each one created explosions visible from Earth. The impact scars were bigger than our entire planet and stayed visible for months.
Another one is Comet Holmes, which in 2007 suddenly brightened and created a huge expanding cloud. Both of those were natural comets experiencing fragmentation. That is probably what we are seeing with 3I/2019 Y4 (Atlas) right now. A comet breaking into many fragments, with each fragment creating its own jet of gas and dust.
Now here's where everything gets even weirder. Avi Loeb calculated how much material these jets must be carrying away from 3I/2019 Y4 (Atlas). And the numbers are pretty shocking. He estimates that 3I/2019 Y4 (Atlas) has to be losing about 50 billion tons of material every single month.
When objects travel through space, their path is determined by their mass. By tracking how this object was moving and how the sun's gravity was affecting it, scientists calculated that 3I/2019 Y4 (Atlas) weighs around 33 billion tons in total.
So let me lay this out clearly. Total estimated weight is 33 billion tons. Material losing per month is 50 billion tons. You would think that it cannot lose 50 billion tons if it only weighs 33 billion tons. The math is not mathing here.
But to your surprise, we have actually seen this before. When Shoemaker-Levy 9 broke apart near Jupiter, the total amount of material it released was way more than what scientists thought the original comet weighed. But that made perfect sense once they realized it had fragmented.
When the sun heats up an icy object, the ice does not always melt evenly. The side facing the sun gets hot, while the other side stays cold. Temperature differences create stress inside the object. That stress builds and builds until the whole thing literally breaks apart like glass under pressure. When you break something into smaller pieces, you suddenly have way more surface area exposed to the sun. More surface area means more ice can melt all at once. More melting means more gas shooting out in all directions.
If 3I/2019 Y4 (Atlas) has shattered into hundreds or thousands of pieces, this would explain the seven jets seen on November 8th and the massive multi-million km jets in the November 9th images. Each little fragment is melting and creating its own jet. And all those jets combined would add up to the enormous amount of material Loeb is calculating.
But as of right now, we do not know for sure if 3I/2019 Y4 (Atlas) has actually broken apart. If future observations show that 3I/2019 Y4 (Atlas) is still in one solid piece and is still producing these massive high-speed jets, it would be the first object we have ever seen that does not fit a previous pattern. That would be extraordinary and would require extraordinary evidence, because there is no way a solid object can lose more mass than it weighs.
Another very weird thing about 3I/2019 Y4 (Atlas) is that it's traveling in what astronomers call a retrograde orbit. To understand what that means, imagine looking down at our solar system from way above the North Pole. All the planets orbit counterclockwise around the sun. Earth goes counterclockwise. Mars goes counterclockwise. Jupiter goes counterclockwise. Everything goes counterclockwise. But 3I/2019 Y4 (Atlas) is going clockwise. It is traveling the opposite direction compared to literally everything else in our solar system.
Only about 1 or 2% of objects do this. Most things that orbit retrograde are small moons that were captured by planets long after the solar system formed. Finding a big interstellar comet on a retrograde orbit is unusual.
And even stranger, the path of 3I/2019 Y4 (Atlas) lines up almost perfectly with the ecliptic plane. That is the flat disc where all the planets orbit. Imagine our solar system as a plate. All the planets orbit on the surface of that plate. Most objects coming from interstellar space would arrive from random directions above the plate or below the plate at steep angles. But 3I/2019 Y4 (Atlas) came in almost perfectly aligned with the plate. The chance of that happening randomly is about 0.2%. That is a 1 in 500 chance.
Now, have we seen this before? Well, sort of. Um, 'Oumuamua also had some really weird statistics and unusual behaviors. Its shape seemed to be very elongated, like a pancake. Its brightness changed in strange ways as it tumbled. And most puzzling, it accelerated slightly as it left the solar system in a way that was hard to explain with normal outgassing from ice.
Avi Loeb wrote a whole book arguing that 'Oumuamua might not be natural. He suggested it could be a light sail, like a giant solar panel pushed by sunlight. Most astronomers think 'Oumuamua was probably a weird-shaped comet made of hydrogen ice or nitrogen ice, which would explain the acceleration, but the debate is still ongoing.
The difference is that 'Oumuamua was tiny, maybe a few hundred feet long. 3I/2019 Y4 (Atlas) is gigantic, over a mile wide and weighing billions of tons. Finding something this enormous on an unusual orbit does raise eyebrows.
The fact that 3I/2019 Y4 (Atlas) is big and on an unusual retrograde orbit does not tell us much by itself. But combined with the mass loss problem from the November 9th images, it makes this object one of the most fascinating mysteries astronomers have ever studied.
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