Icy Visitor from Another System ⚡ экспресс
NASA's SPHEREx space observatory has re-observed interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS after its perihelion passage. The object's activity surged dramatically: water ice vaporized, and water gas emissions became 40 times brighter. Spectra revealed new lines from cyanide and organics, while a carbon dioxide cloud stretched over 3 arcminutes. It's like a layered pie: the top water layers vanished, uncovering a carbon-rich filling from another star system.
In December 2025, the SPHEREx telescope, using spectroscopy (breaking light into chemical 'fingerprints'), re-examined object ISO 3I/ATLAS—a wanderer from another star system. Under the rays of the Sun, it behaved like a 'dirty snowball': frozen gases vigorously evaporated, and clouds of water vapor, carbon dioxide, and cosmic dust formed around it.
The water vapor became 40 times brighter, the icy crust melted away, exposing hidden carbon compounds—from carbon monoxide to complex molecules like CN, precursors to amino acids. But the main surprise was the shape of the gas clouds: they didn't stretch into a tail but remained nearly round, as if the object had wrapped itself in a symmetrical cocoon. This pointed to the presence of unusual carbon-rich layers beneath the ice.
It's now clear: interstellar drifters may not be just icy chunks, but carriers of organics, just as Fred Whipple, the creator of the 'dirty snowball' theory, had suggested.
🎯 ISO 3I/ATLAS is one of only two known interstellar visitors to date (the first being 'Oumuamua).
🎬 Sci-fi writers have long sent ships and asteroids on interstellar journeys—like in Arthur C. Clarke's 'Rendezvous with Rama.' But the real object turned out far dirtier and chemically richer than any fiction.