00:00A NASA-funded telescope, the Atlas Survey Telescope in Chile, first reported observations of the comet on July 1, 2025, to the Minor Planet Center.
00:21And NASA has been tracking and studying Comet 3I Atlas ever since.
00:25This object is a comet. It looks and behaves like a comet, and all evidence points to it being a comet.
00:31But this one came from outside the solar system, which makes it fascinating, exciting, and scientifically very important.
00:38This is only the third interstellar object like this that humanity has ever found.
00:42There is circumstantial evidence, given how fast it has come in to our solar system, that it came from some very old population of solar system around a very old star.
01:02Quite possibly, we can't say this for sure, but the likelihood is, it came from a solar system older than our own solar system itself,
01:10which gives me goosebumps to think about, frankly, because that means the 3I Atlas is not just a window into another solar system,
01:19it's a window into the deep past, and so deep in the past that it predates even the formation of our Earth and our sun.
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