New Delhi: It is not often we get an alien from another solar system. Comet 3I/ATLAS is only the third confirmed interstellar object ever detected in our celestial neighbourhood. And this interstellar visitor has gotten both the scientific and the lay astronomy community excited. So, what is this ‘alien’ object in our space and does it possess any threat to earth?

The comet’s name is a story in itself, encoding both its classification and its discovery.

‘3I’ refers to ‘third interstellar’ — the two other known interstellar objects are 1I/ʻOumuamua, which was seen in 2017, and 2I/Borisov, detected in 2019. According to NASA, astronomers have categorised comet 3I/ATLAS as interstellar because of the hyperbolic nature of its orbit. This means it has come from outs

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