It looks like the #CometEmpire is going to establish a base on #Mars before #Elon does!
Four Telescopes Confirm There's Something Deeply Strange About the Mysterious Object Headed Into the Solar System
If it's a comet, it's an incredibly strange one.
"And while there's a broad consensus among experts that the object is a comet — a small, icy body that releases gases as it passes by the Sun — the data tells a strikingly more nuanced story, making clear that the object is deeply strange in ways that will make it a topic of study and comparison for many years.
"For one, SPHEREx and James Webb observations have both shown that its coma, which a large atmosphere of gas and dust that surrounds a comet's nucleus, bears a much higher proportion of carbon dioxide gas than expected. In fact, scientists found it to have the highest carbon dioxide to water ratio ever observed in a comet.
"TESS, which had technically already spotted the object months ahead of its July discovery that were later found in its archived observations, showed the object was already bright and active when it was six astronomical units from the Sun, well past the orbit of Jupiter, far more distant to be showing activity than most comets.
"#NASA's #Hubble revealed a 'teardrop-shaped cocoon of dust coming off of the comet's solid, icy nucleus,' yet it 'does not feature a distinct cometary tail,' according to Harvard astronomer #AviLoeb (who has colorfully suggested that the object could have been sent to us by an #extraterrestrial civilization.)"
https://futurism.com/four-telescopes-strange-mysterious-object
Mysterious Object Headed Toward Mars
by Victor Tangermann
Sep 3, 2:05 PM EDT
Excerpt: "To back up his far-fetched theory, Loeb has pointed out that 3I/ATLAS' highly unusual trajectory brings it suspiciously close to Jupiter, Mars, and Venus. In a new blog post, the astronomer pointed out that the object will come within just 1.67 million miles of Mars' path around the Sun, in what he characterized as a 'remarkable fine-tuning' of the object's path.
"To Loeb, it's an exceedingly rare and exciting opportunity to directly observe it using NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) — but whether we'll come up with a plan in time for a 'blind date' between 3I/ATLAS and the Red Planet remains to be seen.
"It's theoretically possible that we could see an even more dramatic interaction between the object and Mars; in a new paper, Loeb and his colleague Adam Hibberd found that just a small nudge — an 'orbit correction by [6.2–9.3 miles] per second during the month of September 2025' — could cause the mysterious object to collide with the Red Planet itself.
"However, the 'ejection of icy fragments from the surface of a natural comet' could only account for a fraction of such a correction.
"In other words, if 'materials from 3I/ATLAS' were indeed to arrive at Mars in October, it would be a 'potential signature of technology.' "
https://futurism.com/the-byte/mysterious-object-headed-toward-mars
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