KEY OBSERVATIONS
Too far from the Sun to behave this way.
Too active to be dismissed as noise.
Too consistent to ignore.
An object from another star system is active in deep space where comets are supposed to sleep.
[USA HERALD] – When scientists measured water vapor coming from interstellar object 3I/ATLAS while it was still far beyond the Sun’s usual zone of influence, the result immediately raised red flags. At roughly three and a half times the Earth–Sun distance, most comets are cold, quiet, and largely inert. Yet 3I/ATLAS was actively releasing water at a rate of about forty kilograms per second, a finding confirmed through ultraviolet observations that track the chemical remnants water leaves behind when sunlight breaks it apart.
That single measurement explains why 3I/ATLAS has proven so difficult to classify. Traditional comet models assume that sunlight heats the surface of an icy nucleus, causing water ice to sublimate directly from the solid body. But at this distance, sunlight is typically too weak to drive that process efficiently. For 3I/ATLAS to be producing this much water under those conditions, either an unusually large portion of its surface would need to be active, or something else entirely must be happening.
