According to scientists, a mystery intersteller object can be seen last week by astronomers.
Name 3i/Atlas, it can be three billion years old from our own solar system, suggests Oxford University team.
Preliminary conclusions were presented at the National Meeting of Royal Astronomical Society of UK at Durham on Friday.
Oxford’s astronomer Matthew Hopkins University told BBC News, “We are very excited by 3I/Atlas.” He finished his PhD study when the object was discovered.
He says that it can be more than seven billion years old, and it can be the most notable intersteller visitor yet.
The 3I/Atlas was first seen by the Atlas Survey Telescope in Chile on 1 July 2025, when it was about 670 million km from the Sun.
Since then astronomers from all over the world have been running to identify their way and find more information about it.
Mr. Hopkins believes that it was born in Milky Way’s ‘fat disc’. It is a group of ancient stars that revolve up and down the area where the Sun and most stars are located.
The team believes that because 3i/Atlas is probably formed around an old star, it is made of too much water snow.
This means that as it goes to the Sun at the end of this year, the energy from the sun will heat the surface of the object, causing vapor and dust bangs.
It can make a shining tail.
Researchers made their findings using a model developed by Mr. Hopkins.
Professor Chris Lintot, co-writer of the study, said, “This is an object from a part of Galaxy that we have never seen before.”
“We think there is a two-thirds of chance. This comet is older than the solar system, and that it is flowing anytime through the intersteler space.”
At the end of this year, 3i/atlas should be visible from the Earth using amateur telescopes.
Before seeing 3i/Atlas, only two other people were seen. One was called 1i/’OUMUAMUA, found in 2017 and one and one named 2i/Borisov was discovered in 2019.
Globally astronomers are currently ready to start using a new, very powerful telescope in Chile, called the vera si robin.
When it begins to fully survey the southern night sky at the end of this year, scientists hope that it can find between 5 and 50 new intellectual objects.
