Latest news with #MatthewHopkins
ABC News
3 days ago
- Politics
- ABC News
Loitering charge dropped against National Socialist Network member Thomas Sewell
A charge has been dropped against National Socialist Network member Thomas Sewell over a march through the Adelaide CBD on Australia Day. Mr Sewell, 32, appeared in the Adelaide Magistrates Court on Thursday, via telephone, where a charge of loitering was dropped by the prosecution. The 32-year-old was among 17 members of a group that was arrested after the march on the Australia Day long weekend this year. He was also previously facing a charge of displaying a Nazi symbol — but that was dropped earlier this year. Defence counsel Matthew Hopkins for Mr Sewell told the court on Thursday that the charge his client had been facing was "appropriately described as selective enforcement" and that he had been part of a "peaceful assembly". "This prosecution is a political prosecution," he said. "The charges were for an improper purpose to disrupt their political activities." Mr Sewell also appeared in court for the first time on a charge of breaching of bail on May 16 at Hindmarsh in Adelaide's western suburbs. His defence counsel flagged with the court he would be requesting the prosecution to pay their legal fees in excess of $2,000. "We haven't had the opportunity to prepare an argument, and we have attempted to negotiate reasonably with the prosecution," he said. The matter will return to court in September for an argument on costs, while the breach of bail matter will return to court next month.
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
'Interstellar visitor' 3I/ATLAS could be the oldest comet ever seen — and could grow a spectacular tail later this year
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. The mysterious "interstellar visitor" that was recently spotted whizzing through the solar system may be around 3 billion years older than our cosmic neighborhood, a new study suggests. If confirmed, the alien interloper would be the oldest comet ever seen from Earth. And, if it's made of what researchers think it is, it may also grow a spectacularly long tail in the coming months. 3I/ATLAS is an interstellar comet, potentially up to 15 miles (24 kilometers) across, that is currently shooting toward the sun at more than 130,000 mph (210,000 km/h). Once it passes its closest point to our home star, or perihelion, in late October, the extrasolar entity will begin its long journey back out of the solar system, before eventually leaving us behind forever. The cosmic visitor was discovered July 1 and was confirmed as an interstellar object by NASA less than 24 hours later. Ever since, the astronomical community has been racing to uncover as much as they can about the alien comet. In a new study, uploaded July 7 to the preprint server arXiv and presented July 11 at the Royal Astronomical Society's National Astronomy Meeting in Durham, England, researchers used a computer model to simulate where 3I/ATLAS may have originated from. The team found that the comet likely originates from the Milky Way's "thick disk" — a population of stars located above and below the main disk where the sun and a majority of our galaxy's stars reside. Most of the stars in this part of the galaxy are believed to be billions of years older than our solar system, and because comets are made up from the leftovers of the protoplanetary disks that surround new stars, it is highly likely that 3I/ATLAS could be just as old. Related: Watch newly discovered 'interstellar visitor' 3I/ATLAS shoot toward us in first livestream "Our statistical method suggests that 3I/ATLAS is very likely to be the oldest comet we have ever seen," study lead author Matthew Hopkins, a doctoral candidate at the University of Oxford in the U.K., said in a statement. However, the new findings have not yet been peer-reviewed, and more observations are needed to determine exactly how old the comet is. The study team used a novel computer program, known as the Ōtautahi-Oxford model, which helps predict where interstellar objects (ISOs) come from using data from the European Space Agency's Gaia space observatory. Hopkins designed the model while working toward completing his PhD, and he had only finished defending his doctoral thesis on the topic around a week before 3I/ATLAS was discovered, providing an immediate chance to put his theories to the test. "It's a fantastic opportunity to test our model on something brand new and possibly ancient," Hopkins said. Only two other ISOs have been discovered to date: 1I/'Oumuamua, an asteroid that was discovered in 2017; and 2I/Borisov, a comet spotted in 2019. Both 'Oumuamua and Comet Borisov entered the solar system head-on to the sun, relative to our home star's trajectory through the Milky Way, hinting they come from the galaxy's main disk. But 3I/ATLAS is coming at us side-on, meaning it has a totally different origin from the previous ISOs. "This is an object from a part of the galaxy we've never seen up close before," study co-author Chris Lintott, an astronomer at the University of Oxford, said in the statement. "We think there's a two-thirds chance this comet is older than the solar system, and that it's been drifting through interstellar space ever since," he added. As we collect more data about 3I/ATLAS, the researchers will continue to refine their model to further pinpoint where the alien interloper may have originated from. However, even then, there are limits to how precisely scientists can track its interstellar origins. "We probably won't ever be able to pin it down to a single star system," Aster Taylor, a graduate student at the University of Michigan who was not involved in the new study, previously told Live Science. Understanding where 3I/ATLAS came from can also help researchers predict how it will behave when it shoots past the sun later this year. Experts predict that planetary systems within the thick disk might have an abundance of water, meaning that 3I/ATLAS could be rich with water ice. If this is the case, it means the comet could likely grow a large cometary tail in the coming months, as the sun vaporizes its outer layers, the researchers wrote. RELATED STORIES —An interstellar object exploded over Earth in 2014, declassified government data reveal —1 million 'interstellar objects' — each larger than the Statue of Liberty — may lurk in the outer solar system —An interstellar visitor may have changed the course of 4 solar system planets, study suggests The cloud of ice, dust and gas that surrounds the comet, known as its coma, could also become much larger, allowing it to reflect more sunlight and appear much brighter to us, making it even more visually stunning as it approaches Earth. However, the interstellar comet won't be visible to the naked eye, meaning you will require a decent backyard telescope or a pair of stargazing binoculars to see it for yourself. The best time to see it will likely be in late 2025 and early 2026, the researchers wrote.
NDTV
12-07-2025
- Science
- NDTV
This New Interstellar Object Could Possibly Be The Oldest Comet Ever Seen
A mysterious object, first observed hurtling across the solar system on July 1, has now been identified as "very likely to be the oldest comet ever." The interstellar object 3I/ATLAS could be around 7 billion years old - 3 billion years older than our solar system, according to the University of Oxford researchers. The hyperbolic course of 3I/ATLAS, compared to other comets that originated in the solar system, proves it is not from our solar vicinity. Astronomer Matthew Hopkins of the University of Oxford stated that "all non-interstellar comets, such as Halley's comet, formed at the same time as the solar system, so they are up to 4.5 billion years old." But this potentially "water ice-rich" visitor could be much older, and their statistical approach indicates that "3I/ATLAS is very likely to be the oldest comet we have ever seen" out of those that are now known, per 3I/ATLAS was initially observed by the Atlas survey telescope in Chile on July 1 at a distance of roughly 670 million kilometres from the Sun. It is approximately the distance between Earth and Jupiter and can only be seen at this time with very large telescopes, the BBC reported. This is the third known visitor from space, after 1I/'Oumuamua in 2017 and the comet 2I/Borisov in 2019. However, 3I/ATLAS appears to have retained a large amount of its volatile material, such as dust and ice, compared to its predecessors, allowing scientists to see its coma and tail more vividly. The secret behind 3I/ATLAS's advanced age is that it comes from a totally different region of the Milky Way than earlier interstellar visitors. The object was most likely generated in the Milky Way's "thick disk," an area of old stars that circles both above and below the thin plane where most stars are found, given its extremely steep trajectory. "This is an object from a part of the galaxy we have never seen up close before," Chris Lintott, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford, said. Since then, the comet has been floating across interstellar space, with a "two-thirds chance this comet is older than the solar system," he added.
Forbes
11-07-2025
- Science
- Forbes
3I/Atlas Isn't The First Interstellar Object To Visit Our Solar System
An interstellar object – a comet from a distant star system – is passing through the space between Jupiter and Mars, and according to a recent study, Comet 3I/Atlas may be 3 billion years older than our Solar System. CERRO PACHON, CHILE - JUNE 08: (——EDITORIAL USE ONLY - MANDATORY CREDIT - 'OBSERVATORIO VERA C. ... More RUBIN / HANDOUT' - NO MARKETING NO ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS - DISTRIBUTED AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS——) The night sky dazzles above Rubin Observatory in this image in Cerro Pachon, Chile on June 08, 2025. Beginning in late 2025, Rubin Observatory's decade-long Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) will generate an ultra-wide, ultra-high-definition time-lapse record of the Universe at Observatorio Vera C. Rubin, in Cerro Pachon, Chile. (Photo by OBSERVATORIO VERA C. RUBIN/ HANDOUT/Anadolu via Getty Images) Comet 3I/Atlas appears to hail from somewhere toward the center of the Milky Way (which makes sense, because most of the galaxy is 'toward the middle' from Earth). And according to astronomer Matthew Hopkins and his colleagues, the comet entered our Solar System at a steep angle, which suggests that it came from a region of the galaxy called the 'thick disk.' Most of the stars, gas, and dust that make up our galaxy orbit around the center in the same plane, a spiral-armed disk about 400 light years deep. But about 10% of the Milky Way's stars (by mass) orbit in the 1000 light years 'above' and 'below' the thin disk, like the stellar bread on a galactic sandwich. The thick disk is home to older stars with simpler chemical makeup than our young Sun, and there's very little interstellar gas or dust drifting between them. In other words, interstellar comet 3I/Atlas didn't just come from an alien star system – it came from a cosmic neighborhood very different, and much older than, our own. "We think there's a two-thirds chance this comet is older than the Solar System, and that it's been drifting through interstellar space ever since," said astronomer Chris Lintott, a coauthor of the study, in a recent press release. But though Comet 3I/Atlas may be the oldest interstellar object we've ever seen, it's not the first – it may even be one of thousands. Interstellar Object 'Oumuamua: A Messenger From Afar, Arriving First This artist's illustration shows what 'Oumuamua might look like if we had been able to get a closer ... More look. Interstellar object 1I/'Oumuamua was 21 million miles from Earth and already on its way out of the system when astronomers first spotted it in October 2017. That meant we got just a fleeting glimpse of the long, thin, red-hued chunk of rock as it tumbled into the cosmic distance – just enough to stir up wild speculation about alien space probes, in fact. After 'Oumuamua swung past the Sun, it accelerated slightly. Astronomers watching the asteroid's progress calculated that the pull of the Sun's gravity couldn't have accounted for that burst of speed. 'Oumuamua moved more like a comet than an asteroid; as comets get closer to the Sun, their icy nucleus starts to evaporate, releasing plumes of gas into space – which in turn give the comet a push that can speed it up or change its course. But 'Oumuamua moved like a comet, it didn't look like one. All that erupting gas and dust usually forms a cloud, or coma, around the comet's nucleus, along with a tail pointing away from the Sun. Harvard University astrophysicist Avi Loeb proposed that 'Oumuamua was actually a thin solar sail (a sail designed to catch solar radiation instead of wind), which had caught the solar wind and used it to accelerate. Other astronomers pointed out that the idea made no sense, because 'Oumuamua was tumbling as it passed through the Solar System, and a tumbling solar sail wouldn't have been very effective at all. It turned out that, according to a 2023 study, 'Oumuamua was really a comet all along – just a weird one. As it flew through interstellar space, cosmic rays had broken apart about a third of the water molecules trapped inside 'Oumuamua, creating a lot of loose hydrogen molecules. When 'Oumuamua approached the Sun and started venting gas, the hydrogen was too light to drag any dust along with it as it erupted, so the comet's coma and tail were invisible but could explain the bizarre acceleration. Interstellar Object Borisov: A Rogue Comet From A Dim Red Star The Hubble Space Telescope captured this image of Borisov when it was about 260 million miles away. Another piece of a distant star system, a rogue comet probably born around a red dwarf star, swept through our Solar System in late 2019, streaming a tail of gas and dust 100,000 miles long. (The comet itself, 2I/Borisov, was only about a mile wide when astronomers first spotted it.) 'We reasoned that Borisov is likely a representative of the star system it comes from,' Auburn University astronomer Dennis Bodewits said in a 2020 press release from NASA. In other words, 2I/Borisov's chemical makeup could offer some clues about the alien star it once orbited. The comet contained a surprising amount of carbon monoxide ice (some comets in our Solar System contain carbon monoxide ice, too, but not nearly as much of it), according to data from the Hubble Space Telescope and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory's Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), Because carbon monoxide needs much colder temperatures to freeze than water does, 2I/Borisov must have formed somewhere very cold: less than −337.04° Fahrenheit. That could point to the system of planets orbiting a type of small, dim star called a red dwarf. "Red dwarfs are much smaller and dimmer than the Sun, so the planet-forming material around them would be colder than the building blocks of our solar system," explained NASA in its press release at the time. And the odds are in favor of the red dwarf idea, because these dim, cool-burning stars make up about 75% of the stars in our galaxy. On the other hand, the carbon monoxide ice could also point to someplace like the outskirts of a system like ours; at 3.7 billion miles away from the Sun, dwarf planet Pluto's surface temperature ranges from -375° to -400° Fahrenheit, and there is carbon monoxide ice on its surface. So it's possible that 2I/Borisov is actually a chunk of a dwarf exoplanet – another star's version of Pluto – which got knocked into space by a meteor impact. Or maybe 2I/Borisov was always just a mile-wide clump of ice and dust that coalesced in the chilly outer reaches of its star system. Either way, something must have boosted the comet to escape velocity, letting it slip the bonds of its star's gravity and travel through interstellar space. In our own Solar System, migrating gas giants probably boosted some of the comets of the Oort Cloud into their long, lopsided orbits, and they may also have kicked an entire planet out into interstellar space. The same process could have flung 2I/Borisov out of its own star system. Interstellar Object Atlas: The Oldest Comet Ever Seen This diagram shows Atlas's likely route through our Solar System. And now, for the third time in less than a decade, another comet from another distant star system is passing through. Like 2I/Borisov, 3I/Atlas is probably a comet. Telescopes here on Earth can't see 3I/Atlas in much detail yet, but what they can see suggests that it's surrounded by a haze of gas, some of which is streaming outward to form a short tail, which will get larger as the comet gets closer to the Sun. That means 3I/Atlas is probably made of more ice than rock. And if Hopkins and his colleagues are right about its origins, a lot of that ice should be water, rather than other ices like carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, or methane. 'The gases that may be seen in the future as 3I is heated by the Sun will test our model,' said co-author University of Canterbury in New Zealand astronomer Michele Bannister, a co-author of the recent study, in a press release. Comet 3I/Atlas looks larger than either 1I/'Oumuamua or 2I/Borisov; Atlas is somewhere between 6.2 and 12.4 miles wide, while Borisov was about a mile wide. Cigar-shaped 'Oumuamua, the smallest of the three, was less than 3,000 feet long and less than 500 feet wide. And Atlas is also 'moving considerably faster than the other two extrasolar objects that we previously discovered,' according to University of Lancashire astronomer Mark Norris in comments to Agence France Presse. 'Oumuamua was zooming along at around 86,000 miles per hour when it passed the Sun, and Borizov whizzed past at 98,000 miles per hour. Meanwhile, astronomers have already clocked Atlas at around 137,000 miles per hour, and it will be moving even faster by the time it passes by the Sun in October 2025. Interstellar Objects Pass Through More Often Than We Thought Authorities and scientists attend a simultaneous conference with the United States, after the first ... More images of deep space captured by the Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile were revealed, in Santiago on June 23, 2025. The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile published their first images on June 23, 2025, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant telescope, funded by the US National Science Foundation and the US Department of Energy is perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. (Photo by Rodrigo ARANGUA / AFP) (Photo by RODRIGO ARANGUA/AFP via Getty Images) So why are astronomers suddenly so many interstellar objects wandering through our Solar System? It's not because we're the hot new travel destination for wandering space rocks, but because new telescopes – like Vera Rubin – make it possible to see smaller, dimmer, and more distant objects. The presence of interstellar objects in our Solar System isn't anything new, but our ability to spot them definitely is. 'Astronomers estimate that an interstellar object similar to 'Oumuamua passes through the inner solar system about once per year, but they are faint and hard to spot and have been missed until now. It is only recently that survey telescopes, such as Pan-STARRS1 [which spotted 'Oumuamua], are powerful enough to have a chance to discover them,' explains NASA on its webpage for 'Oumuamua. And now that the Vera Rubin Observatory is up and running, astronomers like Norris are optimistic about spotting more interstellar objects passing through the Solar System on their way to (and from) parts unknown: maybe as many as several a year. Meanwhile, a 2022 study suggested that we may actually have a few million samples of other star systems orbiting our own Sun. If University of Edinburg astronomer and statistician Jorge Peñarrubia is right, our Sun may have trapped a few million passing interstellar objects in the outer reaches of our Solar system. Some of them are stuck permanently, while others may make a couple of laps around the Sun and slingshot off into interstellar space again. It's a fascinating reminder that our Solar System is part of a wider galaxy – and not as isolated from it as we tend to think. As John Noonan of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, Tucson, said in the same 2020 NASA press release,'With an interstellar comet passing through our own solar system, it's like we get a sample of a planet orbiting another star showing up in our own backyard.'
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First Post
11-07-2025
- Science
- First Post
Is this mystery interstellar object the oldest comet ever?
On July 1, scientists discovered a mysterious object hurtling through our solar system. Nicknamed 3I/ATLAS, astronomers say it could be the oldest comet ever and perhaps even older than our solar system read more 3I/ATLAS was discovered by the Atlas telescope in Chile. Reuters Last week saw much excitement within the scientific community. This came after scientists discovered a mysterious object hurtling through our solar system. The object, spotted on July 1, is believed to have come from interstellar space. It was discovered by the Atlas telescope in Chile. Nicknamed 3I/ATLAS, it is only the third interstellar object that has entered our solar system after 1I/Oumuamua in 2017 and 2I/Borisov in 2019. Now, astronomers say that 3I/ATLAS could be the oldest comet ever. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD But what do we know about it? What are scientists saying? Let's take a closer look But what do we know about it? The object was spotted around 669 million kilometres from the sun. It was initially named A11pl3Z. It is thought to have a diameter of 20 kilometers. Nasa has said Earth is no danger from it. Experts say 3I/ATLAS has a tail and a nucleus – which means it is a comet. They say it likely hails from the Milky Way's 'thick disk' of stars. The 'thick disk' comprises around 10 per cent of the Milky Way's stellar mass. It can currently be spotted by very large telescopes. It should be seen via amateur telescopes later this year. They say it is likely made up of a lot of water ice. It will get closest to the Sun in October. However, it will still be only around half as close to the Sun as Earth is. By that time, it will be travelling around 68 kilometers per second or around 245,000 kilometers per hour. Still, as it gets closer and closer to the sun, its frozen ice will transform into gas. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD This will give the 3I/ATLAS a cometary aura, or 'coma,' and a bright tail – for which comets are known. What are scientists saying? They are saying that 3I/ATLAS maybe the oldest comet in history. The research was presented at a meeting f the UK's Royal Astronomical Society at Durham University on Friday. 'We're all very excited by 3I/Atlas,' University of Oxford astronomer Matthew Hopkins told BBC News. 'I've just finished my PhD where I spent four years predicting the discovery of [more] interstellar objects, and then for the first time in my studies, we found one,' he said. Hopkins is among those claiming it could be as old as 7 billion years. Our Milky Way galaxy, for reference, is around 13.6 billion years old. This would make 3I/ATLAS older than our solar system – which is around 4 billion years old. 'All non-interstellar comets, such as Halley's comet, formed at the same time as our solar system, so they are up to 4.5 billion years old,' Hopkins said in a statement to _Space.com_. 'But interstellar visitors have the potential to be far older, and of those known about so far, our statistical method suggests that 3I/ATLAS is very likely to be the oldest comet we have ever seen.' STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Hopkins said there is a nearly 70 per cent chance that 3I/ATLAS is between 7.6 and 14 billion years old. 'This is an object from a part of the galaxy we've never seen up close before,' added professor Chris Lintott, co-author of the study. 'We think there's a two-thirds chance this comet is older than the solar system, and that it's been drifting through interstellar space ever since." Our Milky Way galaxy, for reference, is around 13.6 billion years old. They are thrilled as to what it could mean for the future. 'We're in an exciting time, 3I/ATLAS is already showing signs of activity. The gases that may be seen in the future as 3I/ATLAS is heated by the sun will test our model,' team member Michele Bannister, of the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, told _Space.com._ Some of the biggest telescopes in the world are already observing this new interstellar object – one of them may be able to find out!' STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD With inputs from agencies
