Interstellar comet may be oldest object ever seen in solar system

An interstellar comet that blazed past the sun and swung by Earth last year could be nearly three times older than our solar system and is unlike anything ever before seen in our cosmic backyard, astronomers said Monday. The comet 3I/ATLAS is just the third visitor from beyond our solar system that humanity has ever observed, its unusual brightness offering scientists an unprecedented opportunity to study something that came from elsewhere in the galaxy. After being spotted in July last year, the space rock prompted excitement online, with one prominent Harvard researcher speculating it could be an alien spacecraft — a theory that NASA shot down. Now, observations by the world's most powerful telescopes are revealing more about the unique comet. According to a new study published Monday in the journal Nature, 3I/ATLAS could be up to 12 million years old. Our solar system is believed to have formed around 4.5 billion years ago. Lead study author Martin Cordiner of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center told AFP that "maybe it's the oldest object to have been observed in our solar system." This image, provided by NASA, shows the interstellar comet 3I/Atlas captured by the Hubble Space Telescope on Nov. 30, 2025, about 178 million miles from Earth. NASA, ESA, STScI, D. Jewitt (UCLA), M.-T. Hui (Shanghai Astronomical Observatory), J. …