Syllabus

GS 3: Science and Technology

Context: Recently, scientists discovered a mysterious interstellar object named 3I/Atlas.

More on the News

• 3I/Atlas was first observed on July 1 by the ATLAS survey telescope in Río Hurtado, Chile when it was around 670 million kilometers away from the Sun.
• The object could be over seven billion years old, making it about three billion years older than our Solar System.
• A team of scientists from Oxford University presented the preliminary findings at the national meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society in Durham, United Kingdom.
• This is only the third interstellar object ever discovered by scientists. The first two were 1I/ʻOumuamua (discovered in 2017) and 2I/Borisov (discovered in 2019).

About Interstellar objects

• Interstellar objects are space bodies that come from outside our solar system and pass through it. 
• They are not bound to any star by gravity and may be thrown into space after collisions or by the gravitational pull of planets or stars.
• Scientists have long believed that such objects often enter our solar system, but they were too small and faint to detect until recently. 
• With better technology and more powerful telescopes, scientists have now started to observe them.

How does scientist identify an interstellar object

• To find out if a celestial body is interstellar, scientists study its path or trajectory. Objects like planets, asteroids and comets in our Solar System move in closed elliptical orbits.
  At their closest point to the Sun (perihelion), they move the fastest but are slowed by the Sun’s gravity.
  At their farthest point (aphelion), the Sun’s gravity pulls them back toward it.
• In contrast, interstellar objects don’t follow closed orbits—they move in open paths and are not held by the Sun’s gravity.
• The path of interstellar objects is very different from that of solar system bodies. 
• They move in open-ended hyperbolic orbits—meaning they have a perihelion (closest point to the Sun) but no aphelion as they travel so fast that the Sun's gravity cannot pull them back. 
• This allows them to escape the Solar System.
• To identify such objects, scientists calculate their trajectory by observing factors like their speed and distance from the Earth compared to background stars. 
• If an object is moving fast enough and is far away, it is likely on a hyperbolic path, confirming it is interstellar.
• In the case of 3I/Atlas, scientists noticed it was moving at 60 kmph while being 670 million km away from the Sun. 
• This is unusually fast for such a distance, since objects that far from the Sun normally move slower due to weaker solar gravity. 
• This suggests that 3I/Atlas entered our Solar System with a high initial speed, confirming that it is an interstellar object.

Significance of Examination

• Objects like 3I/Atlas and 1I/ʻOumuamua can offer important clues about how planets and solar systems beyond our own were formed.
• By studying their chemical composition, scientists can learn about the conditions in their home systems and how they originated.
  For example, if an interstellar object contains a lot of ice, it suggests that it was formed far from a star and later pushed out by a large planet, like Jupiter or Neptune.
  The type of ice can even help scientists guess where it came from.
• As the European Space Agency explains, we may be thousands of years away from visiting planets in other solar systems.
• But interstellar comets give us a rare chance to physically study material from distant parts of the galaxy — from places that are very different from our own Solar System.

SourceSource

https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/birkenstock-lawsuit-craft-and-commerce-of-indias-knockoff-market-10123908/