Shortly after its discovery, telescopes worldwide revealed that 31/ATLAS was indeed a comet, complete with a coma of ice and dust. Observations, including those from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and SPHEREx, showed that the comet has an unusually high carbon dioxide-to-water ratio, among the highest ever recorded.
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As NASA noted,
“This may indicate that 3I/ATLAS was exposed to higher levels of radiation than comets from inside the solar system or that it formed in a region of its original planetary disk where CO ice naturally freezes out from the gas.”
The “Galactic Cosmic Ray” Revelation
A recent paper from astronomers in Belgium and the U.S., which has not yet been peer reviewed, suggests that the comet’s unusual makeup can be explained by galactic cosmic ray (GCR) processing. Over billions of years, these high-energy particles likely converted carbon monoxide into carbon dioxide, forming an irradiated crust rich in organic compounds.
