"The natural explanation for these new pulses is that the object's solid core spins once every 16.16 hours, with pockets of ice on its surface heating up and turning directly into gas when they face the sun, shooting out the jets like clockwork. This is believed to happen because the Sun's warmth hits those exact ice spots at the same point in each spin, blasting material outward at about 985mph and spraying the timed bursts over distances up to roughly 15,900 miles."
"Loeb noted that the pulsations of light were strange because almost all the light telescopes saw comes from the coma, an enormous cloud of gas and dust that can stretch hundreds of thousands of miles, not from the object's dark rocky center. If the core is the only thing spinning and shooting out bursts, the giant cloud should have acted like a big soft blanket that washes out or dilutes the sharp flashes."
Interstellar object 3I/ATLAS displays rhythmic jets of gas and dust every 16.16 hours, producing 20–40% periodic brightening as it approaches Earth. Telescopes recorded coherent bursts timed like a heartbeat, with material expelled at roughly 985 mph reaching distances up to about 15,900 miles. NASA and ESA classify the object as a lifeless comet with no signs of extraterrestrial life. The leading natural explanation is a rotating solid core exposing localized icy patches that sublimate when Sun-facing, generating timed jets. Harvard Professor Avi Loeb argues the large coma should smooth out such sharp brightness swings, predicting only minor (~5%) variations instead.
Read at Mail Online
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