When NASA’s ATLAS survey first spotted the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS in July 2025, astronomers recognized it as a rare and intriguing visitor from beyond our solar system. Yet, with each new observation, 3I/ATLAS has only grown stranger, upending expectations of what an interstellar traveler should look like or how it should behave. In the past two months, the world’s most powerful telescopes, including Hubble, JWST, SPHEREx, and TESS, have locked onto 3I/ATLAS, revealing that this in...
