Transcription
Hey everyone, geoysicist Stefan Burns here. A massive interstellar object is currently hurdling through our solar system at incredible speeds. This is 3 I atlas. It's moving at about 58 kilometers per second at this moment in time. That's already faster than the orbital velocity of Mercury, which is the fastest planet in our solar system being closest to the sun. And threei Atlas will speed up to about 68 kilometers per second during its closest approach to the sun, its perihelion, on October 29th of this year, 2025.
The other thing about three Atlas is that it is absolutely massive. It has a coma surrounding it that right now has been calculated to be about 700,000 kilometers across. That is half the diameter of the sun. Now the actual nucleus inside it that is unknown, but there are estimates now that's about 46 to 50 kilometers in diameter. So this is a massive object. If we just look at its nucleus size coming in from beyond our solar system and if we look at its envelope of dusty gas and plasma, it is half the diameter of the sun. So, this is an absolutely massive object.
That carbon dioxide coma shows up really well in near infrared measurements. We have that now from Sphere X and also from the James Webb Space Telescope. Its optical coma is smaller at about twice the diameter of the Earth. That's about 25,000 kilometers. But regardless, we have this very energetic object traveling through our solar system which has this envelope of gas, dust, and plasma. Meaning it is very electromagnetically active. And because it is so large with that carbon dioxide coma, it's going to very likely have a lot of unique electromagnetic interactions within our solar system. Especially when you consider that it is traveling retrograde 175° inclined to the ecliptic plane. Meaning there's only a 5 degree inclination difference between the orbit of threei atlas and all the planets in our solar system. So it's interacting with the heliospheric current sheet. It's moving through the solar wind for a long duration of time. And as a result, I think we're going to see some very, very interesting consequences as a result of this third interstellar visitor flyby.
We'll begin with some of our most recent observations on three Atlas as provided by the James Webb Space Telescope, one of the most powerful telescopes that we currently have. And it takes measurements in the near infrared spectrum. So this is just below visible light and that allows us to see things like dust and also carbon dioxide and some of these other gases very well, which normally you wouldn't be able to see with visible light because of scattering. So we have these four flux maps here and they correspond to different micrometer slices of this overall spectrum and we see the coma size as a result of that for different things. For example, this one right there is for carbon dioxide where this is a smaller micrometer uh observation that is more in this dust range. And then we also see here uh the the spectrum for water specifically water H2O. And then we also see this flux map there for uh carbon monoxide. So we see that these uh there's like a shell structure around whatever this central nucleus is and there is an elemental differentiation that is taking place with this interstellar object.
The spectrum really tells quite an interesting story because it has a tremendously high percentage of carbon dioxide CO2. It's enhanced to a much greater degree than most comets that we've ever observed. There's only been one other comet that had a higher CO2 to water ratio. And I think just in general with these observations of three Atlas and our interpretation of them, we really need to keep in mind that it is of interstellar origin. And so we really probably can't apply too much of what we know now with all the observations that we've made of comets and our standard models of comets which is based on sublimation to threei atlas because it was created and evolved in a completely different interstellar environment from the original nursery you could call it that it was created in to its travel through interstellar space which has probably been doing for a very very long time being blasted by galactic cosmic rays and before. Now it's within our heliosphere. Now it's interacting with the solar wind and the larger electric circuits of the solar system. And as it gets closer and closer to the sun, cutting within the orbit of Mars, the furthest most out inner planet, making it through the asteroid belt, reaching Mars, doing that perihelion, it's probably going to really strongly interact with those near field electric circuits of the sun that all the inner planets interact with.
Here we see that spectrum water slight bump there. This is all dust. We measure this the flux there. This is a logarithmic scale. Here we see our wavelength. We see this deficiency there in water ice and then we see its big spike up to carbon dioxide and then we also have carbon monoxide there, some other carbon-based compounds. So in general, this is a very carbon-rich object that's sublimating these volatiles out into space and or there's some level of photoionization that's occurring or even particle interactions causing temporary ionization. And in general with three Atlas, it is a complex dusty plasma coma that it has. So it's not just dust and ice and gas. There is plasma involved. 99% of the universe is composed of plasma. As it gets closer and closer to the sun, that ionization of the coma is going to increase, making it more electromagnetically active and also expanding the size of that coma. At some point we could see this coma, specifically the carbon dioxide coma of three Atlas expand to perhaps even the size of the sun or beyond.
And here we have two more observations of three eye atlas so we can better understand this coma, this complex dusty plasma that surrounding this object. This first graphic here is provided by the 2-meter twin telescope array. It's a deep G-band optical image and we see the coma there. They have this size there of about 25,000 kilometers across for this visible light coma. That's twice the diameter of the Earth. So already quite large just looking at the visible light spectrum. Now if you look at it in near infrared, this is provided by Sphere X. You see that the size is much larger, 700,000 kilometers across approximately. And again, that's very likely to expand and grow as three Atlas gets closer and closer to the sun. So this is primarily CO2 dominant right there. And CO2 has some very interesting properties because we've done a lot of laboratory experiments with plasma using CO2 and a mixture of other gases. And what we find is that they actually create these nanoparticles. By the way, there are a ton of research papers I've linked in the video description if you'd like to read up more on threei atlas and some of these complex dusty plasma characteristics. If you wanted to, you could throw them all into Notebook LM and have it generate a podcast for you and just listen to that to get more in-depth information.
Here we see a complex dusty plasma in the laboratory. So, this is a carbon-rich plasma that was created with a microwave. And we see this very bright region there in the center that is a dust-free void that is producing a ton of light. And then we get this complex dusty plasma surrounding it. But what we see both in space and also in laboratory settings is that plasma generates dust. And dust maybe isn't a nuanced enough of a term. So what is plasma? Plasma is the fourth state of matter. And when you take a molecule or even an atom and you cause the electron to pop off, you ionize it and you build these two charge carriers, positive and negative. Now, they are susceptible to the electromagnetic force much more so than they would have been otherwise because when they're neutral, they don't interact with electromagnetic fields all that easily. But the moment they become charged, they are dominantly under that influence. And the electromagnetic force is 10 to the 30 something times more powerful than gravity. So it can extend much much much further out.
So this coma surrounding three atlas if it is a complex dusty plasma and it is a complex dusty plasma because you're going to have some level of ionization of that gas that's sublimating from the surface of this object. It's going to behave electromagnetically. We see some very interesting things with complex dusty plasmas. In this research paper, they created these complex dusty plasmas. And what the plasma starts to do is it will start to create dust grains. Just inherently any plasma seems to do this. Which is why you can't talk about plasmas without talking about dust. And we call them complex because they form these very unique cellular structures and they can take on crystalline dynamics. So they can form these crystalline bonds within them. Even though they are highly ionized and mobile and they have charge, they also have an inherent ordered structure that they form. And so they found these plasmoids, these little balls of plasma being generated in these laboratory experiments. And within these plasmoids they s they found that they were producing these nanoparticle diamonds and also graphite and that those clusters would grow together into larger nanoparticle grains. So these like nanodiamonds were like 2 to 5 nanometers across but they would create grains and conglomerates like 10-15 nanometers across. And so what we see is that when you have these sort of uh gases mixed together and then you ionize them into a plasma, the plasma starts to produce these really fantastic materials. Diamonds, the hardest known substance that we know of, graphite, highly conductive and known for its very unique properties.
So we have three atlas flying through at high speeds through the solar system as it's getting closer to the sun. It's ionizing more and more just simply because the sun is emitting a lot of ultraviolet extreme ultraviolet x-ray radiation. This is all happening during solar maximum which increases that photoionization effect. And then you are going to get some ionization from the solar wind particles that is all plasma. And also any large explosion on the sun that generates a particle storm will also greatly increase ionization of anything that that wave hits. And in fact, that is just what happened. On August 21st, there was a massive explosion on the far side of the sun. So this is the side of the sun that's not facing Earth. And that launched out a huge coronal mass ejection at quite high velocity, greater than 1,000 km/s.
Here we see the 5.5 astronomical unit space weather model created for that by NASA. And so the Earth is right there. We fixed the Earth in place for these models. The Sun is in the center. We have Venus right there. This orange dot there is Mercury. Mars is red. Here is Jupiter. And I've put in three Atlas. We also see a variety of probes in the near-Earth environment that they show on these models. So you'll notice that three Atlas passes over the Psyche probe pretty closely, which is interesting. That's due to Rhonda View with one of the largest asteroids in the asteroid belt in I think 2029. But you'll see this large coronal mass ejection propagate out there. That is from that far side explosion and you see that sweeps by Mars pretty nicely. But that solar storm shock wave does not hit three Atlas directly. Maybe just the slightest flank impact from the edge of that wavefront will hit threei Atlas.
But here we are on Earth. This solar storm launch was not conducive to hit us with a radiation storm because with these most powerful uh explosions on the sun, you accelerate a lot of particles to relativistic speeds. That is speeds near the speed of light. As a result, the faster a particle is traveling, the more energy it has and therefore the greater ionization it can do. Well, we are right now in an S1 proton radiation storm as a result of that far side explosion. And those particles are having to cut against the solar wind instead of flowing in a direction that is conducive due to the magnetic field dynamics. You normally want an explosion from about here. So they flow in nicely through the magnetic field directly into the earth. But instead from that angle it's having to cut across the magnetic field. And even then we are in an S1 radiation storm. It's greatly enhanced flux. Normal values are about 0.2 for protons greater than or equal to 10 mega electron volts and S1 threshold is 10 particles per cubic centimeter. So it's a huge difference.
Well, even though this coronal mass ejection did not hit three Atlas, instead it has hit Mars, it definitely hit three Atlas with a ton of these relativistic protons and other ions. And so it received a much stronger radiation storm than we did. And those James Webb Space Telescope observations were done on the 6th of August. This was launched out on the 21st of August. And that storm takes a little bit of time to sweep through, let's say, a couple days. And so it just underwent a major ionization event. Therefore, that coma likely has expanded. And also the percentage of plasma within that coma has also increased. And again, as we talked about with these complex dusty plasmas is the plasma creates these interesting nanoparticles. And when carbon's involved that is diamonds and graphite and these other exotic materials.
So we have this interstellar object. We don't know what the nucleus itself is. It clearly is carbon-rich. If it has a uh diameter of about 50 kilometers, which is what is indicated by the Sphere X observations, that's a huge object, way bigger than Oumuamua or Borisov, the two other interstellar objects that have flown through. Though there are other objects in our solar system which are larger, like the centaurs, you know, 200 km across, of course, the dwarf planets, you know, our moon, things of this nature. Regardless, it is a big object traveling at very high velocity. You would only need like a 1 millimeter layer around a 50 kilometer diameter object to sublimate over the course of a few years to provide this sort of coma. So, it's not like it's going to evaporate away on us. It can continue to produce this coma and even expand that out very easily and effortlessly for a long period of time. And it's not going to be our solar system forever. But because it is creating this complex dusty plasma coma, now it has a lot of unique electromagnetic interactions that it can perform within our solar system. And that close inclination to the ecliptic plane means that it is interacting with the heliospheric current sheet generated by the solar wind and the sun which all the planets are embedded within.
So, we're already seeing a lot of solar activity in the direction of three Atlas. There were some big solar flares and coronal mass ejections that were launched out before this biggest eruption occurred on the 21st. Those were more aligned to hit three eye atlas directly. And again, as it gets closer and closer in, there just in general will be a greater photoionization effect due to these very highly vibrational light photons, ultraviolet light, extreme ultraviolet, X-ray causing some of that CO2 to ionize at least temporarily before recombining with an electron. So you get this electron that pops to a higher orbital because it's energized and then there's a recombination occur and that plasma that ion now becomes a neutral gas once more. So some of this coma is plasma is made up of these charged carriers. So these complex dusty plasma processes are occurring at three atlas and we don't know exactly what that means and therefore we really don't know what threei atlas is. It's quite a bit different than any other comet we have observed.
There are people that think it could be an alien craft. I think that's probably not the case. I think it's its own classification of object that it's the first that we've seen of and because it's coming in from a completely different part of the galaxy. I mean perhaps even beyond it formed under completely unique conditions. And so we can't apply much of our current knowledge base to understanding what three Atlas is. So yes, that is correct. We have an interstellar object currently traveling through the solar system which at its maximum extent is half the diameter of the sun. Now keep in mind that the overall mass of this object is quite low. This is of a pretty low density CO2 gas plasma dust mixture, but it is still extending out half the diameter of our sun. By far the largest object in our solar system. And so I expect a lot of very unique interactions between three Atlas, the sun, and all the planets over the course of its movement through the solar system because of these complex dusty plasma physics.
If we look back to Oumuamua, the first interstellar object observed in 2017, we saw some double-digit X-class flares in the days immediately around its perihelion and also the strongest earthquake of 2017, a magnitude 8.2 in Mexico struck one day before its perihelion and Oumuamua flew into our solar system at a very high inclination. So only interacted with the solar wind, the heliospheric current, the overall electromagnetic system of the inner planets, the inner solar system for a short duration of time. Three Atlas is flying in much much much larger than Oumuamua with a huge coma. We didn't observe a coma on Oumuamua and it's traveling along basically the ecliptic plane interacting with us for a long duration of time. The only difference really is that it's going to be traveling just inside the orbit of Mars, whereas Oumuamua actually swung in closer than the orbit of Mercury. But I expect some very unusual dynamics to unfold as it relates to the sun, solar activity, perhaps processes here on Earth.
And if you also consider plasma consciousness, then that adds in a whole another dimension and layer of depth to consider as it relates to this interstellar object. It bringing in perhaps interstellar information and consciousness because you cannot separate consciousness from the quantum field and the quantum field underlies everything. For example, an electron is not really a particle. It's just an expression, a probability of the quantum field. And so that is underlying everything. And we know that consciousness is inherent to that. So this interstellar object has some sort of consciousness to it. The sun has some sort of consciousness to it. Of course, we all have consciousness. We all have free will. What these two are going to do together and in concert with the other planets and objects in our solar system is a big big mystery.
And let's examine the key dates that we should be aware of as it relates to the movement of three eye atlas through the solar system both the inner solar system and the outer solar system. I have this set for today, August 27th, 2025. We see that it's already past the orbit of Jupiter, Saturn, of course, Uranus and Neptune going out. We caught this first at the very beginning of July. But if we go forward to the very beginning of October, we see its closest approach to Mars. And so it flies in just above Mars. Very close approach. Quite unusual that a it's traveling so close to parallel to the ecliptic plane and that it passes so closely to Mars. Also, Jupiter does that next year. But if we go forward here, we'll see the superior conjunction that three Atlas has with the Earth on around the 21st of October. So, here we see that there the Earth and the Sun and Threei Atlas will be aligned. And actually, let me go back really quick to the 21st because the other interesting thing about it there is that it's also forming this alignment where you have the sun, Mercury, Mars, threeey atlas. So there's a lot of interesting planetary geometry that is active at this time. If you go back again to the superior conjunction of threei atlas as viewed from Earth, that's also during a new moon. So we have the new moon within just a few hours of this superior conjunction. So it's Earth, Moon, Sun, threeey atlas. That's quite bizarre.
Now, if we go to the 29th of October, that is its closest approach to the sun. We can see that right here. It gets as close as it can on the 29th. And I expect there to be enhanced solar activity during this time window of October in general. This could then extend out to November as well. Again, this coma is half the size of the sun right now, and it is electromagnetically active and alive because it is a complex dusty plasma. Then if we go forward after that perihelion we see it getting close to Jupiter there. This will occur uh in March that close approach which is very bizarre as well. So here we see how close it gets to Jupiter and this is right around the 21st to 20th of March or so now at this point flying underneath the ecliptic plane. So it has that approach and it slices through the ecliptic plane. uh looks like after its perihelion right about there. So uh this is a developing story. I'll keep you up to date on what is happening with three Atlas.
If you'd like to learn more about my thoughts on 3i Atlas from a consciousness and intelligence perspective, then you can click my video here. And if you'd like to check out the products that I offer at www.earevolution.com/store, you can click right there. We have merch. Boom shakalaka t-shirts and the pirate t-shirts are back in stock. Check that out along with all the all organic herbal tea blends. Thank you so much for watching. I've been your host Burns wishing all of you well and I'll see you all in the next video.