With that in mind, let us review again the anomalies of 3I/ATLAS so far:

· The retrograde trajectory of 3I/ATLAS is aligned with the ecliptic plane of the planets around the Sun to within 5 degrees, with a chance probability of 1 in 500 (as discussed here). This coincidence brings 3I/ATLAS to pass within several tens of millions of kilometers from Mars, Venus and Jupiter.

· The diameter of the nucleus of 3I/ATLAS has an upper limit of 46 kilometers (as derived here), which would make it a million times more massive than the interstellar comet 2I/Borisov. On October 3, the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance orbiter will be able to image 3I/ATLAS with a pixel resolution of 30 kilometers, providing the best limit on the diameter of its nucleus.

· For a couple of months after its discovery — when 3I/ATLAS was at a heliocentric distance of 3–4.5 times the Earth-Sun separation, it featured a glow, ten times longer than it is wide, towards the Sun and not in the opposite direction — as expected from a cometary tail. This feature of an anti-tail was never observed before for comets (as analyzed here).

· The plume of gas around 3I/ATLAS is composed primarily of carbon dioxide — CO2 (87% by mass) with traces of carbon monoxide — CO (9%), and water — H2O (most of the remaining 4%), as derived here. It also features nickel without iron (as known to exist in industrially-produced nickel alloys) and cyanide, both rising sharply with decreasing heliocentric distance (as reported here).

· 3I/ATLAS is characterized by an extremely deep and narrow negative polarization of −2.77 percent with a low inversion angle of 6.41 degrees (as reported here). This polarimetric behavior is significantly different from all known comets, either interstellar or bound to the Solar System. 3I/ATLAS is the first object known with this combination of low inversion angle and extreme negative polarization. Its anomalous polarization might be the result of the very elongated configuration of scattered sunlight around it with a 10:1 aspect ratio.

Posted by Avi Loeb

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https://avi-loeb.medium.com/political-violence-makes-no-sense-cee20addd441