An interstellar comet that swept through the inner Solar System last year may be nearly three times older than the Sun and its planets, astronomers said Monday, making it one of the oldest known objects ever observed passing through humanity's cosmic neighborhood.
The comet 3I/ATLAS is just the third visitor from beyond our Solar System that humanity has ever observed, its unusual brightness offering scientists an unprecedented opportunity to study something that came from elsewhere in the galaxy.
After being spotted in July last year, the space rock prompted excitement online, with one prominent Harvard researcher speculating it could be an alien spacecraft – a theory that NASA shot down.
Now, observations by the world's most powerful telescopes are revealing more about the unique comet.
According to a new study published in the journal Nature, 3I/ATLAS could be up to 12 billion years old. Our Solar System is believed to have formed around 4.5 billion years ago.
