Comet A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, discovered in 2023, has made its closest approach to the Sun.
According to reports, the long-period comet last visited our planet 80,000 years ago.
However, Karl Battams from the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, who has operated the NASA funded Sungrazer Comets Project since 2003, claimed otherwise.
“A3 almost certainly has never been near Earth before, nor will it again,” he stated.
Battams went on to explain, “On its way in towards the Sun, the comet was following what appeared to be a very, very long elliptical path, with an orbital period somewhere up in the hundreds of millions of years long.”
“This place its origins far outside the gravitational pull of our Sun. So it absolutely didn’t spend its whole existence on the orbit we saw, but instead was nudged onto it, probably gravitationally, a long time ago,” he added.
Battams also shared that the comet's trajectory changed after passed through its closest approach to the Sun, known as perihelion, on 27 September 2024, reducing its orbital period from hundreds of millions to hundreds of thousands of years.
“In short: I think an alien civilization is more likely to see this comet again than Earth is!” he concluded.
Karl Battams also stated that Astronomers face challenges in tracking comets like A3 due to their brief visibility within the inner Solar System.
