Astrophysicist Loeb: Interstellar object 3I/ATLAS began to behave "abnormally"

The 3I/ATLAS interstellar object flying through the Solar System has undergone an "anomalous evolution", starting to change its color, an astrophysicist from Harvard's Avi Loeb.

A sharp increase in the release of cyanide and nickel, which is why over the past two weeks the color of the mysterious object has changed from red to green, was reported at the end of August by scientists from Paranal Observatory of the European Southern Observatory in Chile.

"The ATLAS team interprets this anomalous evolution as a transition from the scattering of sunlight by dust lifted from a reddened surface to the formation of small, optically bright ice particles, which changed the opacity of the plume of materials dumped by 3I/ATLAS," Loeb wrote.

The 3I/ATLAS interstellar object was spotted on July 1. Scientists later determined that it was a comet from another star system. Her coma (a cloud of gas and dust around the core) — about 24 kilometers in diameter. The computer model showed an approximate age: more than seven and a half billion years — three billion older than the Sun. It may be the oldest comet ever observed.

In August, Avi Loeb reported that the 3I/ATLAS emits its own light, similar to the glow of a car's headlights, while the source of the glow is not installed. He suggested that 3I/ATLAS could be an artificial object with a powerful energy source capable of generating light visible millions of kilometers away.