{"id":32212,"date":"2025-09-02T09:14:20","date_gmt":"2025-09-02T13:14:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/?p=32212"},"modified":"2025-09-02T09:14:20","modified_gmt":"2025-09-02T13:14:20","slug":"huge-anomaly-a-steeply-rising-production-of-cyanide-and-nickel-without-iron-in-the-gas-plume-around-3i-atlas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/?p=32212","title":{"rendered":"

HUGE ANOMALY! A Steeply-Rising Production of Cyanide and Nickel Without Iron in the Gas Plume Around 3I\/ATLAS<\/b><\/h3>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Avi Loeb<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\"\"<\/picture><\/div>\n<\/div>
Logarithm of the nickel mass loss rate from 3I\/ATLAS (vertical axis) as a function of heliocentric distance (horizontal axis). Blue circles show Very Large Telescope\/X-shooter measurements of 3I\/ATLAS and the black solid curve is a power\u2013law fit to the data with a power-law index of \u22128.43\u00b10.79. Colored symbols compare with Solar\u2013system comets compiled from the literature. (Credit:\u00a0R. Rahatgaonkar et al. 2025<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A new paper on spectroscopic data from the Very Large Telescope (accessible\u00a0here<\/a>) reported the surprising detection of nickel without iron in the plume of gas around\u00a03I\/ATLAS<\/a>. Nickel without iron is a signature of industrial production of nickel alloys. This data constitutes a new anomaly of 3I\/ATLAS.\u00a0Natural comets generically show iron and nickel simultaneously, as both elements are produced together in the ejecta of supernova explosions.<\/mark><\/p>\n

Is this anomaly another clue for a possible technological origin of 3I\/ATLAS?<\/em>\u00a0The paper suggests chemical formation through the nickel carbonyl channel which is an extremely rare and exotic possibility in comets<\/mark>, whereas it is a standard technology for industrial nickel refining.<\/p>\n

The inferred mass loss rate of nickel for 3I\/ATLAS is about 5 grams per second at a heliocentric distance of 2.8 times the Earth-Sun separation (AU). It exhibits a dramatic rise with decreasing distance from the sun, with a power-law index of -8.43 (+\/-0.79).<\/p>\n

The spectroscopic data on the plume surrounding 3I\/ATLAS also reveals cyanide (CN), with a mass loss rate of about 20 grams per second at 2.85 AU and an even steeper dependence on heliocentric distance to the power of -9.38 (+\/-1.2).<\/p>\n

These results add to the chemical anomalies implied by the SPHEREx space observatory (here<\/a>) and Webb space telescope (here<\/a>), which revealed that the gas plume around 3I\/ATLAS is dominated by mass with 95% of CO2 and only 5% of H2O, very different from an expected water-rich comet. The idea that the nucleus is much smaller than the 46-kilometer diameter inferred from the 1-micron data collected by SPHEREx, requires a dense coma of dust to reflect nearly all the sunlight from 3I\/ATLAS. In that case, the dust would have been pushed by solar radiation pressure to trail the nucleus, constituting a prominent cometary tail. However, no cometary tail was observed around 3I\/ATLAS in the Hubble Space Telescope image (available\u00a0here<\/a>), which extended backward as much as it extended sideways, perpendicular to the direction of the Sun.<\/p>\n

If, on the other hand, most of the sunlight is reflected by the surface of the nucleus, then 3I\/ATLAS is a million times more massive than the previous interstellar object\u00a02I\/Borisov<\/a>. We should have detected a million objects of the scale of 2I\/Borisov before detecting a 46-kilometer nucleus if 3I\/ATLAS was a rock on a random trajectory. The fine-tuned alignment of the trajectory of 3I\/ATLAS with the ecliptic plane of the planets (discussed\u00a0here<\/a>) suggests that it may have targeted the inner solar system by technological design, as I suggested in a paper written a few days after 3I\/ATLAS was discovered (accessible\u00a0here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

I am writing this report from Copenhagen, where I was invited to give a lecture at a conference titled \u201cCurrent Themes in Astrophysics and Particle Physics<\/a>\u00a02025,\u201d and attended by Nobel laureate David Gross and other leading physicists and astrophysicists.<\/p>\n

\n
Press enter or click to view image in full size<\/span><\/p>\n
\"\"<\/picture><\/div>\n<\/div>
Participants at the Copenhagen Conference in 1930, photographed in Auditorium A at the Niels Bohr Institute. Four of them received the Nobel Prize in Physics (which Bohr was awarded in 1922) while five were awarded the Max Planck medal. Two played a key role in the Manhattan Project which led to the production of the first atomic bomb. Seated in the front row are Niels Bohr (second from left) to the left of Werner Heisenberg and Wolfgang Pauli and Lev Landau is second from the right. (Credit:\u00a0Niels Bohr Arkivet<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Copenhagen is well known to physicists as the birthplace of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. When I entered Auditorium A at the Niels Bohr Institute, the room looked familiar. I remembered a photograph of this auditorium from 1930, which showed at the front row: Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Wolfgang Pauli and Lev Landau who pioneered quantum mechanics. Niels Bohr debated Albert Einstein about the proper interpretation of quantum mechanics and his view on indeterminism, the irreversibility of quantum measurements, and complementarity \u2014 that objects have certain pairs of complementary properties which cannot all be observed or measured simultaneously,\u00a0prevailed to form the modern understanding of physics<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n
\n

Get\u00a0Avi Loeb\u2019s stories in\u00a0your\u00a0inbox<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
\n

Join Medium for free to get updates from\u00a0this\u00a0writer.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n