More Anomalies Of 3I/Atlas

The Daily Mail reports on some additional anomalies seen with comet 3I/Atlas, relating:

    Instead of a shattered mess [after it rounded the sun], astronomers David Jewitt and Jane Luu found an intact body surrounded by a glowing coma, a fuzzy envelope of gas that is stretched out in two directions, one pointing toward the sun and another away from it.

    The new images captured by the Nordic Optical Telescope in Spain also revealed that 3I/ATLAS still has a mysterious 'anti-tail' pointing toward the sun, despite the object now moving away from our home star. Scientists have argued this could be an optical illusion.

    A comet's tail is a trail of dust and debris behind it as the rocks are blasted by sunlight and solar wind.

    However, the new photos taken on Tuesday also spotted two giant jet-like streams blasting out for hundreds of thousands of miles from the object's surface, which defy the laws of science.

The article goes on to relate that "the images revealed that the unexplained jet pointing toward the sun is 620,000 miles long, while the stream facing away from the sun is 1.86 million miles in length."

    The presence of those giant jets means 3I/ATLAS was spitting out an enormous amount of material as it passed the sun in late October and early November, roughly five billion tons per month.

    For a natural comet to release that much gas and dust, it would need a huge amount of ice being vaporized by the sun's heat, and the three-mile-long 3I/ATLAS simply isn't that large.

    Loeb calculated the supposed comet would have needed an icy surface at least 14 miles across if it was composed of CO₂ ice and a staggering 32 miles across if 3I/ATLAS was venting water ice into space. 

Loeb has suggested that while natural sublimation cannot produce these jets based on what we believe to be the size and mass of the comet, artificial thrusters could produce these types of jets with far less mass.