Latest news with #ISOs
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
The Vera Rubin Observatory could find dozens of interstellar objects
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Scientists and astronomers are racing to study only the third-ever known interstellar visitor to the solar system, but with a powerful new observatory coming online, these enigmatic objects may soon become routine discoveries. A comet, now known as 3I/ATLAS, with 3I short for "third interstellar," sparked immediate excitement on July 1 when it was detected by the Deep Random Survey remote telescope in Chile, exhibiting a hyperbolic and highly eccentric orbit. It is the third confirmed interstellar visitor, following 1I'Oumuamua in 2017 and 2I/Borisov in 2019. But fleeting visits of high-speed guests from outside our solar system are likely to be detected much more regularly now, thanks to the new Vera C. Rubin Observatory. The Rubin observatory is located on the mountain of Cerro Pachón in Chile, and saw first light in June after a decade of construction. While it is only in its early commissioning phase, in just 10 hours of observations, Rubin discovered 2,104 new asteroids. Its science objectives include understanding the structure and evolution of the universe, mapping the Milky Way and observing transient astronomical events, but it is also set to revolutionize the detection of interstellar objects (ISOs). This is thanks to Rubin's gigantic Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) camera— the largest digital camera ever constructed for astronomy, with a staggering 3.2 gigapixels. LSST will scan giant swaths of the sky at once and observe the entire southern sky every few nights. Due to its wide field, depth, and how frequently it observes the same regions of sky, Rubin is uniquely capable of catching fast, faint objects like 1I/'Oumuamua or 3I/ATLAS. ISOs like 1I/'Oumuamua or 3I/ATLAS move quickly and can easily pass through our sky unnoticed if the sky is not being scanned often and everywhere. Rubin will be looking constantly and broadly, giving astronomers the best chance yet to catch these fleeting visitors, while also being able to detect objects fainter than nearly any ground-based survey before it. Rubin's powerful imaging and automatic image comparison, coupled with an automated alert system — with millions triggered and filtered every night — means it will pick up telltale motion and flag a potential ISO. So how many interstellar objects might Rubin actually detect? The answer varies widely depending on which assumptions scientists use. We are in the early days of detecting ISOs, so it is difficult to estimate how many Rubin is likely to pick up; we know little about their overall frequency, size range, brightness, if they exhibit cometary activity, and how LSST performs. However, a few recent papers on the topic provide some useful context for how many ISOs LSST might be able to detect, depending on a range of variables. In a 2022 paper, Hoover et al. estimate that LSST will detect on the order of between 0.9-1.9 ISOs every year, or around 15 such objects across Rubin's 10-year observational campaign. It notes that these are lower limits, which can be updated when there is more data on the number density and size frequency of interstellar objects. Additionally, Hoover et al. estimate the chances that Rubin will find an ISO reachable by the Comet Interceptor and Bridge mission concepts, which would fly by an interstellar object as it passes through our solar system. These missions would be launched to lurk in wait, ready to intercept and rendezvous with a passing ISO. The researchers concluded that there is just a roughly 0.07% chance that LSST would identify an ISO target available to Comet Interceptor, which has limited capability to change its velocity, while LSST could detect around three to seven ISOs reachable by Bridge, a more capable but yet-to-be-approved mission concept. RELATED STORIES — New interstellar object 3I/ATLAS: Everything we know about the rare cosmic visitor — Vera C Rubin Observatory reveals 1st stunning images of the cosmos. Scientists are 'beyond excited about what's coming' — 'Oumuamua: A guide to the 1st known interstellar visitor Another estimate, from a 2023 paper by Ezell and Loeb, expects LSST to detect one small ISO 3 to 164 feet (1 to 50 meters) wide every one to two years. A more optimistic assessment comes from Marceta and Seligman in a 2023 paper. They find, based on a simulated suite of galactic populations of asteroidal interstellar objects and their trajectories and kinematics, that Rubin should detect between around 0 and 70 asteroidal interstellar objects every year. Again, one of the main factors is how many objects of different sizes actually exist in the population of ISOs, as well as their albedo, or how much light they reflect. With just three confirmed interstellar visitors so far, much remains unknown about the number, size, and diversity of ISOs. But with the Rubin Observatory coming online, sightings of these fast-moving cosmic messengers may soon shift from rare events to regular science, offering unique insights into the galaxy beyond our solar system. Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
If This Comet Is What We Think It Is, It's Unlike Any Object Humanity Has Ever Seen
"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." Here's what you'll learn when you read this story: Comet 31/ATLAS is only the third interstellar object to ever be observed whizzing through the Solar System. While its origins are uncertain, the comet is thought to come from a part of the Milky Way populated by some of the galaxy's oldest stars. While its age has not been confirmed, if 31/ATLAS really did originate in that region, it could be 7 billion years old (compared to the Solar System's age of 4.6 billion). Few rogue interstellar objects (ISOs) have entered our Solar System. 'Oumuamua nearly broke the internet in 2017 when it streaked past, and Comet 2I/Borisov was caught trespassing by NASA Hubble Space Telescope in 2019. Now, we have another interloper. Astronomers first observed Comet 31/ATLAS on July 1. Though its origins remain unknown, the researchers who have eyes on it think the flying hunk of ice, dust, and frozen gases came from what is known as the thick disk of the Milky Way. This region of ancient stars—most over 10 billion years old—is scattered in a layer above and below our galaxy's thin disk (which is populated by younger stars). If 31/ATLAS really was born in the thick disk, it might be the oldest comet ever spotted, at around 7 billion years old; that's 3 billion years older than the Solar System. And the way it moves suspiciously up and down in the galactic plane is possibly indicative of an object having originated from and stayed in the disk for literal eons. If we're lucky, it could give us an inside look at the formation of the early Milky Way. This comet is thought to have originally been an icy planetesimal, one of the many smaller bodies that once merged to form planets. How it got to us today, however, is more debatable. '31/ATLAS has physical differences to the first two ISOs detected, but its orbit and incoming velocity place it as a member of the Galactic population of ISOs,' the researchers said in a study, which was recently presented at the Royal Astronomical Society's 2025 National Astronomy Meeting in Durham, England, and posted to the preprint server arXiv. The research team employed a probability simulator that models stellar trajectories using the positions and velocities of every star ESA's Gaia satellite observed between 2014 and 2025 (even the dead ones)—about a billion stars. This—combined with models of protoplanetary disk chemistry and dynamics within the galaxy—allowed them to predicted the velocities, ages, and chemical compositions of the Milky Way's interstellar objects. The experts might be able to determine properties of 31/ATLAS based on which stellar population it came from. Star systems—including our own Solar System—form from protoplanetary disks of gas and dust, and models assume that the properties of these disks are influenced by their stars. The models also suggest that ISOs stray from their stars early on, and disperse within the cold outer edges of a star system. Another model used by the researchers predicts how the velocity of ISOs is related to their age, composition, and other properties inherited from the stellar populations from which they originate. This is how the team figured out a tentative age for 31/ATLAS, and that it probably does not come from the same star as the previous two interstellar objects we've seen. There are still many missing pieces to the origin story of 31/ATLAS. Whether it trekked through space on a relatively undisturbed path, or had its orbit perturbed by different stars is unknown. Despite what has been suggested so far, the comet is still shrouded in gas, dust, and mystery. But because interstellar objects are thought to exist almost indefinitely, they could be carrying particles from just about every star that ever existed in the galaxy. 'ISOs provide the opportunity to gain evidence of the process of planetesimal formation and evolution from a host of galactic environments,' the researchers said. 'Further observations of 31/ATLAS will allow us to [test our] assumptions.' Get the Issue Get the Issue Get the Issue Get the Issue Get the Issue Get the Issue Get the IssueGet the Issue Get the Issue You Might Also Like The Do's and Don'ts of Using Painter's Tape The Best Portable BBQ Grills for Cooking Anywhere Can a Smart Watch Prolong Your Life? Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
'Interstellar visitor' 3I/ATLAS could be the oldest comet ever seen — and could grow a spectacular tail later this year
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. The mysterious "interstellar visitor" that was recently spotted whizzing through the solar system may be around 3 billion years older than our cosmic neighborhood, a new study suggests. If confirmed, the alien interloper would be the oldest comet ever seen from Earth. And, if it's made of what researchers think it is, it may also grow a spectacularly long tail in the coming months. 3I/ATLAS is an interstellar comet, potentially up to 15 miles (24 kilometers) across, that is currently shooting toward the sun at more than 130,000 mph (210,000 km/h). Once it passes its closest point to our home star, or perihelion, in late October, the extrasolar entity will begin its long journey back out of the solar system, before eventually leaving us behind forever. The cosmic visitor was discovered July 1 and was confirmed as an interstellar object by NASA less than 24 hours later. Ever since, the astronomical community has been racing to uncover as much as they can about the alien comet. In a new study, uploaded July 7 to the preprint server arXiv and presented July 11 at the Royal Astronomical Society's National Astronomy Meeting in Durham, England, researchers used a computer model to simulate where 3I/ATLAS may have originated from. The team found that the comet likely originates from the Milky Way's "thick disk" — a population of stars located above and below the main disk where the sun and a majority of our galaxy's stars reside. Most of the stars in this part of the galaxy are believed to be billions of years older than our solar system, and because comets are made up from the leftovers of the protoplanetary disks that surround new stars, it is highly likely that 3I/ATLAS could be just as old. Related: Watch newly discovered 'interstellar visitor' 3I/ATLAS shoot toward us in first livestream "Our statistical method suggests that 3I/ATLAS is very likely to be the oldest comet we have ever seen," study lead author Matthew Hopkins, a doctoral candidate at the University of Oxford in the U.K., said in a statement. However, the new findings have not yet been peer-reviewed, and more observations are needed to determine exactly how old the comet is. The study team used a novel computer program, known as the Ōtautahi-Oxford model, which helps predict where interstellar objects (ISOs) come from using data from the European Space Agency's Gaia space observatory. Hopkins designed the model while working toward completing his PhD, and he had only finished defending his doctoral thesis on the topic around a week before 3I/ATLAS was discovered, providing an immediate chance to put his theories to the test. "It's a fantastic opportunity to test our model on something brand new and possibly ancient," Hopkins said. Only two other ISOs have been discovered to date: 1I/'Oumuamua, an asteroid that was discovered in 2017; and 2I/Borisov, a comet spotted in 2019. Both 'Oumuamua and Comet Borisov entered the solar system head-on to the sun, relative to our home star's trajectory through the Milky Way, hinting they come from the galaxy's main disk. But 3I/ATLAS is coming at us side-on, meaning it has a totally different origin from the previous ISOs. "This is an object from a part of the galaxy we've never seen up close before," study co-author Chris Lintott, an astronomer at the University of Oxford, said in the statement. "We think there's a two-thirds chance this comet is older than the solar system, and that it's been drifting through interstellar space ever since," he added. As we collect more data about 3I/ATLAS, the researchers will continue to refine their model to further pinpoint where the alien interloper may have originated from. However, even then, there are limits to how precisely scientists can track its interstellar origins. "We probably won't ever be able to pin it down to a single star system," Aster Taylor, a graduate student at the University of Michigan who was not involved in the new study, previously told Live Science. Understanding where 3I/ATLAS came from can also help researchers predict how it will behave when it shoots past the sun later this year. Experts predict that planetary systems within the thick disk might have an abundance of water, meaning that 3I/ATLAS could be rich with water ice. If this is the case, it means the comet could likely grow a large cometary tail in the coming months, as the sun vaporizes its outer layers, the researchers wrote. RELATED STORIES —An interstellar object exploded over Earth in 2014, declassified government data reveal —1 million 'interstellar objects' — each larger than the Statue of Liberty — may lurk in the outer solar system —An interstellar visitor may have changed the course of 4 solar system planets, study suggests The cloud of ice, dust and gas that surrounds the comet, known as its coma, could also become much larger, allowing it to reflect more sunlight and appear much brighter to us, making it even more visually stunning as it approaches Earth. However, the interstellar comet won't be visible to the naked eye, meaning you will require a decent backyard telescope or a pair of stargazing binoculars to see it for yourself. The best time to see it will likely be in late 2025 and early 2026, the researchers wrote.
Hindustan Times
10-07-2025
- Science
- Hindustan Times
An interstellar object is cruising through the solar system
ON THE NIGHT of July 1st, in a remote corner of Chile, a small robotic telescope noticed something in the sky. What at first seemed a routine detection of an object travelling through the solar system soon turned out to be anything but. The object's trajectory revealed it to be a much rarer visitor than first thought. Formed around a distant star elsewhere in the Milky Way, it is an interstellar wanderer, not a merely interplanetary one. That realisation sparked a scramble. 'It's been full gas for the past week,' says John Noonan, an astronomer at Auburn University in Alabama. 3I/ATLAS—named after the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System, the project that discovered it—is only the third such interloper ever spotted. Dr Noonan is one of the authors of a quickly written paper that tries to establish some basic facts about 3I/ATLAS, including what it is (a comet); how big (perhaps 10km across); how fast it is moving (around 60km/sec) and how far into the Solar System it will come (well inside the orbit of Mars). Most excitingly, 3I/ATLAS offers a chance to test some early theories of interstellar-object-ology, a fledging branch of astronomy (though one in need of a snappier name) that began to receive serious attention only after the detection of 1I/'Oumuamua in 2017, the first interstellar object discovered. 'We think these are the most common macro-scale objects in the galaxy,' says Chris Lintott, an astronomer at the University of Oxford. 'In hindsight it's odd that people hadn't been thinking more about them before.' The current thinking is that interstellar objects (ISOs) are leftover bits of protoplanetary discs, the doughnuts of dust and ice that surround young stars and from which their planets condense. Some 90% of the asteroids and comets formed this way might be ejected from their parent star systems by gravitational interactions with bigger objects. One paper, published in 2018, concluded that there might be around 1026 ISOs in the Milky Way, a million billion times more than the number of stars. Others have modelled how they spread through the galaxy (in braided streams, it seems); or worked out that, because of the Sun's orbit around the galactic core, they should come more often from certain directions. A study from 2019 proposed that ISOs could help explain planet formation: a tiny fraction of ISOs might get captured by young stars and act as nuclei around which full-size planets can grow. In a preprint published on July 9th, Dr Lintott and his colleagues apply some of these new theories to 3I/ATLAS. They conclude that there is a two-thirds probability that it is more than 7bn years old—around half the age of the universe, and far older than the Sun. Its trajectory suggests it comes from a star somewhere in the Milky Way's 'thick disc', a group of old stars that sit above and below the central plane of the galaxy. If so, chemical differences between old and young stars mean it should contain more water than comets native to Earth's solar system. Such predictions will be checked as bigger telescopes catch sight of the comet. The James Webb Space Telescope, a powerful instrument launched in 2021, could make observations towards the end of July, when 3I/ATLAS comes into its field of view. As 3I/ATLAS approaches the Sun, it will grow brighter and begin to shed parts of itself, making it easier to study. Frustratingly, it will disappear from earthly view in September before its closest approach to the Sun on October 30th. But it will remain visible from Mars. Plans are afoot to get probes there to take pictures of their own—though one called MAVEN, which carries an instrument capable of probing the comet's chemical composition, may be decommissioned on October 1st as part of big cuts planned to NASA's budget. 'We'll be taking our glasses off right before the fireworks,' Dr Noonan says, glumly. Still, the future of ISO-ology looks bright. The Vera Rubin telescope, which saw its first light on April 15th, could spot dozens of ISOs over the next ten years. At that point, says Dr Lintott, 'we'll have a proper population of these things, which will be transformative.' It may even be possible to send a probe to look at one up close. The European Space Agency's Comet Interceptor mission, due to launch in 2029, will sit in a parking orbit waiting for a comet to chase after. But it could also run down an ISO, if a suitable one presents itself. Astronomers have dreamed of building an interstellar probe for decades. But why go to the trouble of flying all the way to an alien star system when the alien star system can come to you? Curious about the world? To enjoy our mind-expanding science coverage, sign up to Simply Science, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter.
Business Wire
08-07-2025
- Business
- Business Wire
Merchant Industry Supercharges Growth with Jamie Garfield as Strategic Advisor
LONG ISLAND CITY, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Merchant Industry, a nationwide leader in payment technology and merchant services, is proud to announce the appointment of Jamie Garfield as Strategic Advisor, bringing with her an extraordinary 28-year track record of success in the acquiring and payments space. Jamie's appointment marks a bold step forward as the company positions itself for accelerated innovation, channel growth, and long-term success. As Strategic Advisor, Jamie will play a critical role in shaping the company's growth strategy, optimizing go-to-market initiatives, and expanding strategic alliances. Share Throughout her career, Jamie has served in influential leadership roles at Elavon, Global Payments, Nuvei, TransFirst, and others—guiding businesses through digital transformation, strategic partnerships, and revenue expansion. Her ability to bridge vision with execution has earned her recognition across the industry as a powerhouse in driving scalable growth and operational excellence. In addition to her executive accomplishments, Jamie has served on the Board of the Southeast Acquirers Association and continues to advise top fintechs across the payments ecosystem. Her reputation as a connector, strategist, and mentor brings invaluable depth to Merchant Industry at a time when the company is rapidly scaling its agent and ISO networks. 'We're incredibly excited to welcome Jamie to the team,' said Leo Vartanov, CEO of Merchant Industry. 'Her deep knowledge of the acquiring space and her ability to unlock new growth opportunities is exactly what we need as we enter this next phase. Jamie's insight, drive, and industry relationships will help elevate everything we do—from partner engagement to product innovation.' As Strategic Advisor, Jamie will play a critical role in shaping the company's growth strategy, optimizing go-to-market initiatives, and expanding strategic alliances. With her extensive background and visionary approach, she is uniquely positioned to help bring Merchant Industry to new heights—empowering the company to better serve ISOs, partners, and merchants across the country. 'I'm thrilled to be joining such a forward-thinking and ambitious organization,' said Garfield. 'The potential here is enormous. I look forward to working alongside the leadership team to expand our impact, modernize our offerings, and create new opportunities for growth across the entire Merchant Industry ecosystem.' Based in Atlanta, Jamie balances her professional impact with her family life—raising two children (and keeping up with two energetic dogs!) alongside her husband. Her passion for empowering businesses through smarter, more efficient payment solutions makes her a perfect fit for the company's mission to simplify payments and amplify success. About Merchant Industry Founded in 2007, Merchant Industry is a leading nationwide provider of credit card processing and payment technology solutions. With a network of over 20,000 merchants and $5 billion in annual processing volume, the company offers cutting-edge tools and best-in-class support to ISOs and businesses of all sizes. Learn more at
